Claudia (Kirsten Dunst), Interview with the Vampire (plus Louis and Lestat!)
By popular request, the Vampire Claudia returns! I’ve made this character a few times before, but I’m most pleased with this version. I’ve always loved her blue dress, but now I feel I’ve improved enough sculpting hair that her bangs are closer to how I want them.
Claudia, Louis de Pointe du Lac, and Lestat de Lioncourt are available now for purchase at my Etsy shop. Just in time for Halloween! ♀️♂️♂️⚜️
For those unaware, Claudia was based on Anne Rice’s own daughter Michele, who died at five years old from leukemia. The resulting depression led to Anne Rice publishing her first of many gothic horror novels, starting with Interview with the Vampire, in 1976. While Claudia was based on Michele, so was Lestat on her husband Stan (originally intended to be named Lestan) and Louis on herself.
The 1976 novel is unfortunately the only entry in The Vampire Chronicles from Louis’ POV, which came from a place of her own personal trauma. Lestat was obviously a far more flamboyant, fun, fanciable character for her to focus on, but ultimately not as prone to exploring the existential crises and philosophical questioning present in her original novel.
One may also notice that the doll shop owner Madeleine’s backstory is that of a mother who lost a young daughter who likewise never got to grow up. Rice’s house in New Orleans was famously filled with antique dolls, which is imagery very much associated with Claudia.
For obvious reasons, a five year old was deemed unable to handle the demanding role of Claudia, which is that of a woman’s mind driven mad trapped in a child’s body (she’s actually over eighty years old by the end of her story), and so the role was aged up for a then eleven-year-old Kirsten Dunst. There was a nationwide search that included younger actresses, but Dunst was one of the few who could handle the part. She actually didn’t get to see the film until years later, either. The 1994 film also included her first kiss, which was with none other than Brad Pitt, though neither were enthused! Dunst also wore the blue dress when she attended Rice’s Memnoch Ball in 1995.
The biggest crime of the later books is how Anne Rice completely threw away what would’ve been far more profound for Louis (and of course, Claudia was dead) because of her rampant author’s pet blind spot. Ironically, Louis was her self-insert, while Lestat was her husband and Claudia was her dead daughter.
It’s like it never occurred to her that the “Human Nature” trope (see Clark in Superman II, Angel in Angel: the Series, Clark again in Smallville, the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, Castiel in Supernatural, etc…) is so much more profound for the tragic inhuman character who actually desires most to be human, is at odds with their own species or wants to experience human belonging/family/love, rather than the one who would happily throw away that humanity they never really wanted (Lestat in The Tale of the Body Thief). Funnily enough, Brad Pitt’s Meet Joe Black is also this trope. Louis, not Lestat, is the character who belonged with this trope as it is in every other piece of fiction that uses it. Those medias understood it’s best used as a heartbreaking gut punch instead of a comedy romp. It’s something that hurts when it is cruelly snatched away or must be given up for the sake of a duty larger than oneself. The only Vampire Chronicles character who would prefer even more to be human than Louis because of the profound unhappiness in their physical form would be Claudia. It’s the thing they most have in common together.
Merrick was yet another time when these characters’ potential to continue on the center stage was woefully misused and under-realized in favor of endless new OCs and Lestat. Louis was written out of the starring role that put Anne Rice’s career on the map the second she and the fandom wrote him off as a liar, despite never being able to fully retcon out Lestat’s actions during Interview with the Vampire. There were certainly better uses for Claudia’s ghost than as a cruel manipulation that then never gets closure for her or Louis’ obviously continuing feelings for her. Given that he’s still not over her death more than a century later, it’s always the elephant in the room in regards to Louis in the present. It’s the storyline that keeps Louis frozen in time, unable to continue his own story beyond the 19th century except as a series of vignettes and observations by other characters. Merrick completely failed both Louis and Claudia. He’s as much of a ghost in the present story as she is.
Because of this, Louis’ story now will always be incomplete; a profoundly influential character used as little more than a prop in the background of other characters’ narration. And of course, Claudia’s tragedy was being incomplete from the start.
Characters like Angel and many copycats (not only vampire characters either–Russell T Davies has fully admitted Buffy and Angel’s influence on his Doctor Who revival and Torchwood spinoff, while the entire Fanged Four are Anne Rice’s archetypal lineup) would directly not exist without Louis. And yet, Angel got the center stage as the deeply-flawed inhuman protagonist with a “human soul” that Louis never got again. Louis is Anne Rice’s archetype (a massive influence on all inhuman creatures with human feelings ostracized from their own kinds, doomed to never belong to either world and the outsider looking in on a life they can never have) that has actually inspired more leads than Lestat ever did. Other media, in Interview with the Vampire’s image, knew that the flashier, funnier, cooler Lestat archetype (which was likewise influential, but rarely an initial lead) is instead an antagonistic, often villainous foil to a more serious, introspective character’s existential crisis and the greater philosophical and moral depth that this brings a story.
Anne Rice stumbled upon that when she wrote Interview with the Vampire, but seemingly didn’t understand it. Or perhaps it was easier for her to avoid her personal trauma by focusing instead on an object of fantasy and fancy.
Unfortunately, she denigrated Louis to make Lestat palatable as an antihero instead of a villain or even antivillain. He and his POV became inconvenient to the change in narrative and Lestat’s POV became rarely challenged, despite him being the more likely of the two to fit as the unreliable narrator with far more reasons to lie and make himself look better. His verifiable actions contradict lies like him only killing evildoers. Claudia being the most glaring refutation, but also the fact that Louis was targeted not because he was evil, but rather because he had wealth Lestat wanted. Louis was telling his story as a cautionary tale in which he wasn’t sugarcoating himself (quite the opposite–he’s the king of self-loathing) or anyone else, not a narcissistic ego trip disguised as a rebuttal.
The author’s retcon and fandom buying into the narrative of Louis as the unreliable narrator is a huge mistake and it goes a long way to explain the fall in quality of the later series. Louis should never have been consigned to the role of Antonio Salieri.
Many new shows will film a few filler episodes first while the actors are still building their chemistry, so that the first episodes aired will be even better. This was absolutely the reason why Witch was filmed prior to Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest. Might be worth noting in terms of green performances and chemistry. The chemistry is great already, though this is luckily a very fatherly episode for Giles, so it’s not as jostling as that slightly creepy, personal space-intrusive version in Welcome to the Hellmouth shot later. In Nicholas Brendon’s case with his visible waiting for the next line, outside of the unaired pilot, *this* was actually his first episode.
Obviously, this is one of the cases where the pilot was never aired (for good reason–and not just because of replacing Willow and Flutie) and many times those will have scenes redone for airing. Sometimes things are reshot due to replacing an actor, but without reshooting the whole thing. For example, Smallville had a Martha Kent stand-in due to Annette O'Toole being already cast, but only available at a later date.
In Buffy’s case, the unaired pilot was obviously a lost cause. They were still working out how to do major SFX staples of the show like the dusting effect (they tried stop motion before settling on dodgy CGI with no skeletons until season 3), as well. Even the makeup changed a bit over the first season from Julie Benz being the original test dummy for The Lost Boys prosthetics, as can be seen by the white/purple makeup being made more flesh tone. It was her first scene that coincidentally changed the least in the rewrite and performance (except for a costume change) from the unaired pilot to Welcome to the Hellmouth. She also was originally meant to die in what became The Harvest’s showdown, but was kept for another episode (and then a lot more episodes!) by having her run away (note how often Darla runs away from danger!) from Willow’s holy water.
Darla’s costume change became the Catholic schoolgirl look (she was just wearing a floral ‘90s grunge dress before) that got an explanation in 1x07. Darla doesn’t know she’s trying to jealously scare off a Slayer (she doesn’t know until the mausoleum scene) with the dead guy in the gym locker, but she knows Angel is in Sunnydale and has been following a schoolgirl. Darla later mocks Angel for this, but also exposes her insecurity and jealousy, all the way later in Dear Boy on his spinoff. Angel, of course, is Catholic, so that’s another pointed jab. A lot of viewers don’t even pick up on the Catholic schoolgirl uniform, which was worn prior to Darla knowing Buffy’s secret identity, being that meaningful. The other thing viewers don’t pick up on in regards to 1x07 is the in-hindsight meaning of Angel having human blood in his fridge after two decades eating rats and how that potentially affected his ability to socialize with humans and why he knew about delivery day at the hospital in The Dark Age, despite Whistler mentioning blood from the butcher. Something as simple as a costume change got a whole character-building backstory in a later episode. That layer of storytelling was absent in the pilot.
For continuity reasons that weren’t because of anything being performed badly like Buffy’s hair color and the school library becoming a set (Torrance High’s spiral library staircase would’ve clearly become a hazard for Tony Head!), the footage had to all be redone. Buffy had a slightly longer dialog in the library scene, for example, that is actually something of a loss because it goes into more depth about what happened to her in L.A.
Xander’s tour of the school isn’t strictly necessary for the plot, but was a chemistry-building scene, and perhaps a remnant of Joss Whedon’s intent for him to be the every man who wins the fantasy girl who is out of his league, rather than the female protagonist instead winning her unattainable, forbidden fruit fantasy (the male gaze vs. the female gaze).
Whedon was still being talked into having the Angel character at all back then, originally intending for Xander (notoriously known for being Whedon’s not-so-nice “nice guy” self-insert) to be the love interest. David Greenwalt, Marcia Shulman and Gail Berman were Angel’s biggest cheerleaders and the latter two (rather degradingly described as “puddles of drool”) outvoted Whedon during casting. The WB also only agreed to renew the show (they were actually quite disappointed by season 1) if season 2 contained more Angel and the Bangel romance, which was heavily promoted (look at any of the WB’s ad campaigns) and brought in the show’s highest ratings (the entire show’s ratings peaked at Surprise/Innocence).
Not only was Whedon against casting David Boreanaz, comparing him even to the jocks who beat him up in school and talking about how he hated making a spinoff about a white Alpha male lead as a hero, but he was reluctant to have any good vampires at all. Come season 2, Whedon was also pushing James Marsters up against a wall and threatening to fire him because he was getting too popular. Whedon made the remark that Marsters had it easier than him getting laid because of how he looked (that was on Marsters’ second day of work well before School Hard ever aired!). Whedon didn’t like it when he ended up with a good vampire sex symbol the first time, then ended up with two sympathetic vampire sex symbols on his show.
Coincidentally, both characters weren’t meant to stick around and survived intended final death scenes, as well. Angel was never meant to be more than a cryptic messenger for a few episodes (before he became the love interest or a vampire), then wouldn’t have come back from hell if it weren’t for the spinoff (which the WB wanted–it wasn’t just Whedon being finally impressed by Boreanaz’s performance as Grace Newman). Spike was originally intended to be killed by the church organ falling on him. Faith was originally going to hang herself after staking Finch.
For that matter, the original villain of season 2 was meant to be the Anointed One (hence the absurd build-up in season 1 that goes nowhere) until it was apparent that Collin’s actor had grown up too much and wasn’t that successful (cue Spike flash-frying him in a cage), with Whedon reluctant to believe Boreanaz could carry the Big Bad role. Angelus arguably turned out to be the Buffyverse’s greatest villain and Buffy’s most personal. The most subtle foreshadowing was undoubtedly the fact that the production didn’t feel the need to hire Mark Metcalf for a silent performance of the Master in When She Was Bad, so it’s actually Boreanaz (look for his wider mouth shape) beneath the Master’s prosthetics. Buffy’s having nightmares of the Master, but it’s really Angel underneath! When She Was Bad also teases what would happen if it came down to a fight between Buffy and Angel.
Whedon’s intentions being outvoted so forcefully by other writers, producers, the network and audience is mirrored by the likes of Sera Gamble attempting to villainize and kill off Castiel (whose Little Mermaid-esque arc arguably overshadowed the Winchesters and created an unintended third lead, no matter how much he was nerfed of his powers and left out of Monster of the Week episodes due to him making human hunters irrelevant) on Supernatural, only to fail with a massive audience outcry and was forced out of the show herself. Shows occasionally get away from their creators or showrunners.
Greenwalt had to also create the soul/curse mythology (massively to the franchise’s benefit!) to explain how Angel was the first gray-area exception to Whedon’s black & white world-building where vampires and demons are always bad and only there to be allegories for human problems. This is in stark contrast to today’s vampire mythologies that are no longer default-evil and mostly about “choosing boyfriends, the movie”, whereas the Buffyverse ended up taking most of its vampire archetypes from Anne Rice, despite Whedon absolutely hating “that crap”. Ironically, Rice’s vampires are all sexually impotent and murderously evil, despite Louis feeling guilty and eating rats in alleys (sound familiar?). Come the spinoff, it wasn’t just Angel, but characters like Doyle and Lorne (not to mention Wolfram & Hart’s human lawyers) further muddying that original intent. The Buffyverse was straddling two eras of genre fiction in regards to the development of the evil-to-sympathetic/misunderstood-to-good monster.
The pilot definitely felt like it was a better set-up for Xander to not be so easily friend-zoned, but the friend-zoning is complete here in Witch. That one scene here in Witch actually turns out to be a significant one, and it’s especially significant in an episode that was shot first and doesn’t contain Xander’s rival. By the time that Witch was filmed, it appears the writing staff were aware that Xander wasn’t going to be the love interest. The next few episodes also are aware of it, even when Angel doesn’t or barely appears. Earlier drafts for Never Kill a Boy on the First Date and The Pack didn’t have Angel juxtaposed against Owen/Xander (this episode got the heaviest rewrites of all) or the scene of Buffy (wearing Angel’s jacket) and Willow discussing Angel in the Bronze + Xander’s jealousy under the hyena spell at all.
Only 25 minutes were presented of a full-length pilot script (dated January 1996) that even contained Angel (back when they hadn’t even decided he was a vampire yet and you’ll notice the bigger Angel episodes were all the last episodes written and shot with scenes dropped into earlier scripts that didn’t contain him before) as a mysterious motorcycle guy who stakes a vampire outside of the auditorium showdown. Boreanaz even mentioned shooting the motorcycle scene in the 20th anniversary special that probably confused anyone who hadn’t read the unaired pilot script (which is only a minute fraction of the franchise’s older diehards who even know where to get a hold of it!)!
Despite Boreanaz being already cast with a cut scene, it is only Mercedes McNab who is in both the unaired pilot (yet not Welcome to the Hellmouth) and Not Fade Away. Boreanaz is the only actor in both Welcome to the Hellmouth and Not Fade Away. He’s also in the most episodes by a far margin. Angel is in 167 episodes, with Willow coming in at 147 and Buffy only 146.
Smallville really just took its formula from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (as did the revival of Doctor Who, same as Angel: the Series doing the same for Torchwood by Russell T Davies’ own admission), which also has a superhero in high school origin story and a strange town overrun with freaky things happening. Smallville’s meteor freaks were exactly like the Hellmouth and the high death rates of their respective student bodies.
Roswell is another show that had a similar setup and was actually the first WB show about aliens with magic powers in high school. Max Evans is not too subtly Clark Kent-like, right down to the famous moment of transforming a lump of coal into a diamond. The alien/human hybrid quartet of Max Evans, Michael Guerin, Isabel Evans and the infamous Tess Harding are reincarnations of alien royalty/elite from a destroyed planet, so the connection is obvious.
Except that show went far further with what would happen if the government found out than Smallville dared beyond a few episodes here and there. Max certainly had more done to him (the White Room and going on the run in the finale) than Clark ever did in that regard. Humans who get a little too close to the inhuman with plans for science or personal gain certainly is a trope that pops up in other genre shows (often humans desiring eternal life at a cost or captive experimentation/torture).
Sheriff Jim Valenti (who was the villain of the Roswell High books the shows were based on!) turned out to be the kids’ fiercest protector, not unlike Lionel Luthor, despite being initial antagonists. Lionel being the king of horrific fathers contrasted hugely with Jonathan Kent. Jor-El’s A.I. practically martyred Jonathan in a trade for Lana Lang, so this version is absolutely not comparable to the Christopher Reeve version’s relationship with Marlon Brando’s! Smallville’s Clark is nearly a reversal of the old films in regards to farm boy Clark being the real deal, not the mere disguises of Superman and the hapless reporter (this is also true of Dean Cain’s iteration), as well as the nurture over nature message of the Kents being his true parents in all but blood, whereas the focus is strictly on Jor-El over Jonathan as the father figure in the 1978 and DCEU versions.
Closest to danger Clark ever got outside of Lex Luthor’s experimentation (only with the anonymous blood vial that eventually led to hybrid Lex/Clark clone test tube baby Conner Kent) was from General Sam Lane and the anti-vigilantism plot, but Clark never got nearly so exposed. Max also told his secret in the first episode, so it’s a stark contrast to how long it took for Clark to tell his love interests and friends. Clark and Lucifer Morningstar are the kings of the long-delayed reveal! By contrast, Angel waited seven whole episodes and most of the rest of the characters mentioned here did so in their first episode, if not their first scene.
The WB was already a home to many shows like Smallville, though it certainly started DC adopting the channel as their home to drop their properties into that already-established format.
Angel: the Series, Smallville and Supernatural were the more masculine side (Angel: the Series and Supernatural are definitely the most mature, horror-based shows, as well) on a channel that also had Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the original genre show on a channel that was heavily just sitcoms and 7th Heaven prior to 1997 and quickly transformed the whole channel), Charmed and Roswell (not to mention Dawson’s Creek and other more soapy, non-genre offerings).
Shows like The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were the ones that pretty much formed everything we expect from a modern fantasy/sci-fi/supernatural/horror series now, including the mix of overarching long-form story arcs and soap opera/relationship dramas mixed with the Monster of the Week and seasonal Big Bad formats. Monster of the Week (Smallville used Freak of the Week) and ‘shipping were terms coined by The X-Files’ fandom (yep, the biggest controversy of that show was whether Fox Mulder and Dana Scully should remain platonic colleagues as intended by the creator or become a romantic relationship, which took an interminable slow burn of seven seasons), while Big Bad (and thus arcs surrounding that Big Bad seeded throughout the season) was coined on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All these terms are used for discussing nearly every subsequent genre show today. Television prior to these shows did not have these formats, minus the old-as-dirt episodic Monsters of the Week, but not using that terminology yet.
Smallville was a marriage of comic book superheroes into the genre show format that was already going strong on the old WB. Some of these other non-comic-origin characters wouldn’t be out of place in the comic world either. Definitely true for Buffy Summers and Angel, as they basically are superheroes. Buffy has the more straight-forward Peter Parker-esque origin story, while Angel’s is told completely non-linear (often through a slow drip of flashbacks–his soul was returned a century prior, not during the course of the show, yet he most certainly didn’t become a hero then).
It’s surprising that Supernatural never quite went all-out with a real comic tie-in presence beyond some short runs early on. Neither the comics or the novels use Castiel much at all, who is the most super-powered main on the roster (so much so that the show writers were terrified to put him in Monster of the Week episodes and even tried to kill him off in seasons 6/7 due to him making the Winchesters irrelevant). Castiel is the Eldritch being-level angelic equivalent of The Little Mermaid trying to understand humanity, but with the tragic ending of the novel.
Clark himself has a mix of Dorothy Gale (check out that Over the Rainbow shot on the bridge in Smallville’s pilot, which is an image also echoed in Luke Skywalker’s binary sunset, followed by him doing an Ariel pulling Lex Luthor from the water) and Peter Pan (more than just the flying boy–he also has an immortality problem) in his DNA.
It’s that little piece of inconvenient canon (alluded to numerous times through Smallville) that is at the heart of the adverse reactions of many Superman purists who were horrified by Smallville’s Clark choosing to live a human life and have a family with Lois in the CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. It wasn’t just because Tom Welling still refuses to wear tights, but because it was the real unsolved existential crisis facing the character. Conversations with the Kents, Dax-Ur and General Lane all exposed this issue as an insecurity he had quite early on in the series. It’s hardly teen angst, nor was it with Angel and the Doctor saying it repeatedly to Buffy and Rose; it doesn’t make it teen angst just because they were teenagers. Clark likewise shares the tragedy of many other inhuman immortals (and yet, they keep doing it!) in that he can’t father children naturally with humans without some kind of sci-fi workaround (like Blue or Gold Kryptonite).
We might like to see these characters be Peter Pan forever, but sometimes even Peter needs to grow up (as in Hook), lest he forever remain a tragedy. Make no mistake, the immortality trope is always a tragedy, which is why so many of these characters either run away from seeing it played out or they most desire to live human lives. Having duties greater than themselves and a need to save lives they’d never be able to as mortals are often the reasons for these sacrifices, but it still remains a sacrifice and ultimately a damnation, not a gift. These characters are either doomed to lose everyone they’ve ever loved or go out in a blaze of glory, which is what television shows using the trope are actually daring to show more recently.
Not being a tragic horror story, Superman tends to avoid it, but it’s the same problem. That brief scene in Crisis on Infinite Earths was more in line with Smallville than Superman purists wished.
The Doctor is Peter Pan. It’s most obvious with the imagery of little and big Amelia Pond in her nightgown, but the story with Rose Tyler juxtaposed beside Sarah Jane Smith also shows his Peter Pan-esque tendencies. He’s the immortal who keeps picking up new companions to take on far-off adventures, only to leave them behind over and over again before he has to face their human mortality. Although the Doctor is older than Spock, he has picked up many Spockisms over the years like touch telepathy (yup, the Vulcan mind-meld), the half-human aspect of the 1996 TV movie that fans and the show do their best to ignore and the 10th Doctor’s sacrifice via a glass case of radiation (see The Wrath of Khan).
Angel, of course, is Pinocchio (with a big dollop of Highlander’s Prize), the Beast, the immortality of Peter Pan, Louis de Pointe du Lac and pre-retcon evil!Lestat de Lioncourt (the retconned one is, of course, Spike) morphed into Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and a touch of Steve Rogers meets Clark Kent, but with the aesthetic (not character) of Bruce Wayne (that mix is all there). Like Pinocchio and the Beast, there are those major elements of temptation, redemption and atonement.
The Buffyverse definitely borrowed heavily from the sympathetic vampire begun by Varney the Vampire, Nosferatu’s plagiarization of Dracula that gave birth to death by sunlight (see the whole aesthetic of the Buffyverse’s Master), the antiheroization (quite evil initially) in Dark Shadows, the archetypes of Anne Rice (the entire Master + Fanged Four are her lineup–Akasha, Gabrielle, IwtV!Lestat/Louis, Claudia and retcon!Lestat vs. the Master, Darla, Angel(us), Drusilla and Spike), the prosthetics of The Lost Boys and the vampire detective setup of Forever Knight (which copied Barnabas Collins’ cure for vampirism arc, while Angel’s Shanshu borrows more from Highlander’s Prize). Blade and Angel added apocalypse-fighting/comic superheroes to that mix.
Ironically, the more recent examples of the good vampire have gutted their mythologies of evil-default vampires entirely (making the exceptions to the rule far less alienated and unique amongst their own kinds) and certainly kicked out the apocalyptic superheroing for soap opera. The Buffyverse is ironically closer to Anne Rice’s full-blooded, evil, murderous inhuman creatures (no matter the guilt and eating rats in alleys) than it is Twilight and The Vampire Diaries in spite of the human/inhuman romance plots, marking a strong separation between the WB’s era and the CW’s.
That’s a strong example of how the genre show environment has changed in the last two decades, so it’s not just the differences between the eras of Smallville and the Arrowverse/DCEU.
Supernatural is a particularly weird example in that it ran for so long with the same cast (unlike Doctor Who, which is fast approaching its 60th anniversary and has gone through many changes, not just its format) that it was still following the same show format and catering to a generation who grew up along with it (not to mention the actors going from young to middle-aged) from 2005 through 2020. The format all the way to the end (though never again as desaturated, jump-scare horrific as that first season was–its inspirations from The X-Files showed) is most certainly pre-streaming and owes much to its old WB origins using a formula born in the 1990s, despite the CW’s rebranding in 2006. Castiel’s ushering in of the whole angel mythology was the most seismic change in Supernatural’s history, though even he was like a horror creature early on. The show certainly had early comedy episodes, but they definitely got more frequent later. One only has to look at the season 15 premiere’s handling of the Woman in White and Bloody Mary’s returns to see how alien the season 1 atmosphere was to the show by then.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer likewise shed its gothic horror atmosphere and went into the sunlight (not for the better) around the time Angel took his gothic fairy tale-turned-noir with him to L.A. See Lucifer aiming for the same aesthetic in its first season. Smallville was likewise a show that spanned the WB and CW, but before the television landscape completely left that late-'90s/'00s aesthetic. You can definitely start to feel similar differences in the change from Smallville High to Metropolis and Lana to Lois. There’s a pretty stark generational shift in the shows aimed at late Gen-X/older Gen-Y (Millennials) and now Gen-Z (Zoomers). That’s the biggest shift between the WB and the Arrowverse-era CW.
Castiel, despite him learning how to love, is the ultimate example of free will in a mythology that has none by design (he truly did have a “crack in his chassis”) and even adopts a son whom he can finally relate to, ends with him tired, very sad and unloved in return. Not a single character in the history of Supernatural ever tells Castiel that they love him. Frankly, Meg and Crowley, who kept saving his life, showed more care about and affection for him than the Winchesters, particularly Dean (who belittled, refused to help and abandoned Castiel for years before the Jack and Mary drama shattered the relationship irrevocably). Sam, who used to feel the same othering from John and Dean as the Boy with the Demon Blood that got heaped on Castiel if he dared remind Dean he wasn’t “human, or at least like one”, had a bad habit of following his brother in questionable acts like putting Jack in the box. Castiel says he loves others several times, but he never once hears it back. As in The Little Mermaid, Castiel sacrifices himself for someone who will never love him back, except in place of sea form is the black goo of the Empty. At least Jack cared, but you’ll notice Castiel is nowhere to be seen when the Winchesters reunite in Heaven. Not even Sam (who was equally sad and tired at the end, while Dean was just angrily lashing out at everyone while blaming everyone but himself) bothered to place a single photo of Castiel amongst his shrine to John, Mary and Dean. Sam literally knew Castiel longer than he ever knew Mary and his relationship with John was so bad that he left his father and brother to go to Stanford. Boy, did that final episode say it all about Castiel loving, but never being loved in return. Bobby Singer was wrong; it turns out that, for the Winchesters, family did end in blood.
The alienated outsider archetype who doesn’t quite fit in amongst human society (often with an immortality/lifespan problem on top of other interspecies differences), but often desperately wants to find human belonging, love and family, is true of characters like Clark, the Doctor, Spock, Connor/Duncan MacLeod, Angel, Castiel, Lucifer, etc… These are subsequently the shows and storylines that borrow most from the Superman mythos.
See the many takes on Superman II’s Pinocchio plot, except having to give it all up for a higher purpose (not to mention many other Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Pinocchio and Peter Pan parallels), such as Angel’s I Will Remember You, Smallville!Clark’s Arrival/Mortal/Hidden, the Doctor’s Human Nature/The Family of Blood and Castiel’s season 9 arc.
That’s Superman and Clark’s real impact on the television landscape.
David Boreanaz played the ironically-named Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series. His character has *so many* parallels with Lucifer (far more than Booth outside of the law enforcement/crime procedural connection).
Angel’s spinoff also has noir crime drama aspects mixed with the supernatural starring an immortal protagonist with a dark past and infamously villainous reputation fighting evil as a supernatural private detective in the City of Angels (a city known for its dark underbelly juxtaposed with fame and glamor, broken dreams and chasing eternal youth) and navigating human law (including the LAPD and evil lawyers) while not legally existing.
Angel also fell in love with a blonde human heroine (Buffy Summers) after lifetimes of self-destructive, not-so-heroic behaviors (getting his soul back did *not* make Angel a hero and human Liam was a lecherous drunk with unfulfilled ambitions and father issues) who inspired him to become a better man and make human connections.
AtS made heavy use of sprawling nighttime Downtown L.A. cityscape shots, which Lucifer also shared an abundance of.
During both of their first cases, they failed to save the troubled blonde girl they were trying to help (Tina and Delilah, respectively). They also have a connection inside the LAPD through a blonde cop who also takes their identity secrets pretty badly (Kate Lockley in Angel’s case).
Note that Buffy not only screamed (twice, given it repeated during her memory loss in Halloween), but also came after Angel with a crossbow when she thought he’d attacked her mother (it was Darla), so Chloe taking the Devil face reveal (Monster Reveals are iconic old horror imagery) poorly to the point of considering poisoning is par for the course. However, it only took Buffy seven episodes instead of three seasons to get the identity reveal via seeing the horrific second face (arguably also an accident on Angel’s part).
They are metaphorically or literally Hell’s angels. They also had long stays in Hell or a hell dimension.
Lucifer and Angel are also both Prodigal Sons with long-held grudges against their long-absent fathers (patricide in Liam/Angel(us)’s case) and they’re later faced with a situation where they have unexpected, thought-impossible offspring who show up as adults (neither got to raise their miracle child) wanting revenge. Yup, major Connor/Rory parallel there.
Angel is also in a constant struggle with the Powers that Be manipulating his fate and free will (like Lucifer, he’s a champion of free will no matter the cost) and making him prophecy’s bitch.
Bones famously got jokes about how Booth is Angel getting his Shanshu (made human), since the character is given constant Angel-isms like references to a dark past having killed people (Booth is also named after a historical murderer, in addition to having been a sniper), both being Catholics full of Catholic guilt (note that the Buffyverse is most accurately polytheistic, though Angel does face off against a take on the antichrist–Angel has constant biblical imagery/themes and not just because of vampire iconography), kicking down doors (just not off their entire frames–LOL), turning on a dime and threatening people up against walls, constant wink-wink references to the Buffyverse (familiar casting, references to the Hyperion Hotel, etc…), etc…
The Lucifer finale used the words “Close your eyes.” right before Lucifer is sent to Hell. This is literally the BtVS season 2 finale where Buffy kisses Angel and sends him to hell for a century with a stab to the gut (see the season 5 finale, not to mention Lucifer giving up his life for Chloe’s à la I Will Remember You).
Note that D.B. Woodside was on BtVS (playing Robin Wood, whose Slayer mother Nikki Wood was killed by Spike). Aimee Garcia was in both episodes of AtS (Birthday–she’s older than she looks!) and Bones. See her also playing a cross-wearing religious girl on Supernatural who was slaughtered in a police precinct by Lilith. Kevin Alejandro was also in an episode of Bones.
Tricia Helfer was in an episode of Supernatural playing a ghost who reenacts the night of her death every year. BtVS also had an episode along those lines, but with Buffy and Angelus possessed (not to mention Phantom Dennis!). Lucifer having Dan as a ghost is yet another thing they all have in common (ditto referencing Ghost, Patrick Swayze and/or Unchained Melody–Vincent Schiavelli a.k.a. Ghost’s subway ghost was Jenny’s uncle Enyos, whom Angelus killed).
Lucifer name-checked Castiel and Supernatural referenced Lucifer using their Lucifer (crime-fighting angel in L.A. made it a double-reference whammy). Supernatural returned the favor again by having Castiel forced to sing in Enochian. Lucifer’s reference to his singing voice was already a zing about Misha Collins having to put on that monotone gravel voice and Enochian being far from melodious.
Russell T Davies was quite heavily inspired by the Buffyverse when he revived Doctor Who and spun off Torchwood, so there are absolute tons of Buffy, Angel and Spike respectively in Rose Tyler, the 9th/10th Doctors, Captain Jack Harkness and Captain John Hart (right down to the actor). School Reunion is the episode where the Buffyverse inspiration is most on the nose, complete with Anthony Stewart Head saying “shooty dog thing” in a school setting and a Mayor/Angel-esque speech about the curse of immortality. The Time War gave the Doctor a huge genocide-level guilt complex. Note that the creator of DC comics’ version of Lucifer, Neil Gaiman, has also written for Doctor Who and is also the co-creator of Good Omens (the show is brimming with Doctor Who Easter eggs thanks to David Tennant). A barely-recognizable Tom Ellis played Martha Jones’ ex-fiancé Tom Milligan during the Year that Never Was, as well.
A lot of shows take inspiration from the Buffyverse and you’ve probably seen some of them. It isn’t just the copycat vampire romance stories either.
Angel’s forerunners in turn were a mix of guilt-stricken, rat-eating Louis de Pointe du Lac (his Jekyll/Hyde-esque alter-ego Angelus is closer to the pre-retcon, fully-evil Lestat de Lioncourt, who got woobified into an antihero rocker not unlike Spike–the entire Fanged Four mirror Anne Rice’s character lineup), sword-wielding, immortality trope-influencers Connor/Duncan MacLeod of Highlander fighting for the Prize of humanity (akin to Pinocchio becoming a “real boy”–see also Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows, though he was before vampires became antihero superheroes, not just sympathetic antivillains) and Nick Knight of Forever Knight (vampire detective).
Additionally, Tom Welling was famously the longest-serving Clark Kent of them all (Smallville) on the old WB (there’s that DC comics connection, too), so it’s not just a Fox shows thing (though Fox, not just Warner Brothers, did indeed own the Buffyverse). One of the least-known things about Clark is that he also has an immortality problem where he wouldn’t age parallel to Lois (they wouldn’t be able to have kids either) without a workaround. The Kryptonite line directed at Cain/Pierce by Lucifer was quite on the nose! Lucifer and Smallville sort of crossed over even further in Crisis on Infinite Earths, so Tom is canonically the face of both Clark and Cain in parallel universes of the DC multiverse.
Supernatural had quite recently had their own takes on Cain (played by Timothy Omundson, who also played God Johnson) and the Mark of Cain when Lucifer did it. Dan’s killer Le Mec was, of course, Rob Benedict, who was God a.k.a. Chuck Shurley, the ultimate villain of Supernatural. Richard Speight, Jr., who was archangel Gabriel/Loki the Trickster, directed a lot of Lucifer’s later episodes in addition to being a prolific Supernatural director.
Supernatural and Lucifer use the exact same font for their titles (Supernatural Knight).
The X-Files (which Supernatural referenced constantly) and Supernatural also had stories about nephilim (see the apocryphal Book of Enoch). Lucifer ultimately had two nephilim (forbidden interspecies offspring of angels and humans), even if not saying so as a known concept. Connor can also be compared to the vampire equivalent of being something like a dhampir, though he’s not quite that (mostly-but-not-quite-human offspring of two vampires instead of a human/vampire hybrid–see Blade for an actual dhampir). Supernatural has also covered the even rarer cambion species (human/demon hybrid).
“It was Lestat beyond question, restored and intact as he hung in the doorway, his head thrust forward, his eyes bulging, as if he were drunk and needed the door jamb to keep him from plunging headlong into the room. His skin was a mass of scars, a hideous covering of injured flesh, as though every wrinkle of his ‘death’ had left its mark upon him. He was seared and marked as if by the random strokes of a hot poker, and his once clear gray eyes were shot with hemorrhaged vessels…”
imagine being the journalist in interview with the vampire. Imagine meeting a weirdo at a bar who thinks hes a vampire and being all ‘lmfao im gonna interview this guy its going to be so funny’ and you go back to his house only to discover that hes an Actual Vampire who Feeds On Human Blood and your stuck in his house while he rants about his ex for 371 pages
Anne Rice is dead and I feel both saddened and amused. This woman was both an inspiration to me and a hated enemy. I was 13 years old when I received a C and D from her for a fic I had unknowingly gotten published in a zine. Needless to say that was a great experience in having to tell my parents I had written a somewhat erotic story about Lestat and a certain prominent New Orleans pirate. Oh well at least it was historical fiction. I’m glad she at least will be reunited with her family.
