A Slayer in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel (both created by Joss Whedon), is a young woman bestowed by fate with supernatural powers and abilities that originate from the heart, soul, and spirit of a pure-demon.
The opening narration in the Buffy series states "In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer."
While they are commonly referred to as "Vampire Slayers" within the series, even by Watchers and vampires themselves, The Slayer operates as a defender of humanity against all supernatural threats.
The reputation of the Slayer is well-known and revered even throughout other dimensions. The notion of the Slayer has been compared to the equivalent of a Demonic "Boogey-Man", feared and considered by most to be essentially unconquerable.
Reception and analysis Rhonda Wilcox explains that the First Slayer was violated by the Shadow Men. She contrasts this with Buffy's offer of choice to the potentials. Wilcox notes that despite the message of sharing power around the world, not all women are made slayers. She then equates being a slayer with being a leader. Patricia Pender discusses the potentials and sharing of power as well, noting the cultural aspects and providing a critique of the cultural portrayals.
Pender also analyzes the reception of Buffy as the slayer in early criticism of the show: "the Slayer is celebrated at the expense of the girl, and the composite character is found inexplicably wanting," going on to explain this is a flaw in analysis of the character. Pender goes on to discuss the "struggle to balance the demands of her supernatural duties as the Slayer and her desire to live what she sees as a normal teenage life. As several critics have pointed out, this struggle literalises the challenges many, if not all, adolescents experience when negotiating their entry into the adult world".
Cynthia Fuchs similarly says Buffy's character brought an understanding of teenage life, but that her "'secret identity' as the slayer exacerbates such ordeals and dreams. She explains further, when analyzing a sequence with the First Slayer, "Buffy's perpetual sense of displacement, her sense that she belongs to another "race", apart from her world (which is populated by humans, demons, and vampires, communities into which she never quite fits), is made concrete for her in the First Slayer.
The Chosen One
The First Slayer Thousands of years ago in prehistoric Africa, after the rise of vampires, a group of tribal elders known as the Shadow Men used powerful magic to infuse a captive girl with the heart, soul and spirit of a pure demon known as the Shadow Demon. This process granted the girl great strength, speed, agility, reflexes, healing, endurance and psychic abilities, though it cost her her sanity and connection to humanity. She became The First Slayer: chosen to destroy the demons that plagued the Earth. The Shadow Men's descendants went on to form the Watchers' Council, an organization dedicated to finding, training, and supporting Slayers.
The Slayer line Due to the violent nature of the life of a Slayer, their average lifespan is quite short after being called. Consequently, the Shadow Men's spell also created a large number of Potential Slayers—normal girls around the world who may one day be called. When a Slayer dies, one of the Potentials—seemingly chosen at random—gains the powers and abilities of a Slayer. The Watcher's Council tries to identify and train these "Potentials" before they are called, locating some as babies, but are not always able to do so, with some girls only being found after they have been activated as the Slayer. Since then, people reportedly witnessing young women stopping a series of strange grisly murders, including one in the Port of Boston in 1845 and another, in the Oklahoma Territory in 1893.
This process continues through the generations until 1997, when one Slayer—Buffy Summers—is killed in battle (by drowning) only to be revived via CPR. Buffy retains her Slayer powers, but her clinical death is enough for the next Slayer to be called. For the next year there are two Slayers in the world: first Kendra, who was called on Buffy's death, and then Faith, who was called when Kendra was killed by Drusilla.
The mystical "rules" governing the Calling of Slayers change again in 2003, when Buffy discovers a Scythe forged for the Slayer to wield. Willow Rosenberg uses magic to tap into the Scythe's essence at Buffy's request, and performs a spell that calls every living Potential Slayer at once, thus ending the legacy of "one girl in all the world".
After taking the time to find and count them, Buffy states that there are at least 1800 Slayers in the world, 500 of whom are working with the Scooby Gang. Potentials now awaken as Slayers when they reach suitable maturation; for instance, the Slayer Soledad was awakened on her sixteenth birthday.
At the end of Season Eight, Buffy destroys the Seed of Wonder, affecting the magical world; while all active Slayers present on Earth remain, no new Slayers can be called.
At some point in the 21st century, a Slayer faces an army of demons. As a result of this battle, all demons and magicks are banished from Earth's dimension. At this point, the Slayer line becomes dormant—while Potential Slayers still exist, none are called for two hundred years.
In the far future, demons eventually find a way to return to Earth's dimension, and the next Slayer is finally called—a girl named Melaka Fray.
Powers and abilities The powers that are bestowed upon the Slayer are mostly physical enhancements that vary in degree from Slayer to Slayer.
Strength Slayers are endowed with strength far greater than that of regular humans, some demons and the vast majority of vampires. Buffy Summers, for instance, has been shown to lift, with great effort, a metal portcullis which an entire group of people were unable to budge. She is also capable of bending a steel rifle barrel with little apparent effort and easily bending open the bars of prison cells with her bare hands. Buffy has been recorded throwing human-sized subjects sizable distances and casually lifting steel girders used in construction building
During a fight, Faith Lehane is able to pick up the vampire Angel with one hand and easily throw him across a room, then lift him over her head and slam him into the ceiling. Once, while fighting Buffy, she punched her fist into a wall. She is also seen picking up a barbell with one hand and hitting a woman in the face with it. Genevieve Savidge once slapped a fellow Slayer so hard that her neck snapped in a fit of rage. Since Slayers can take blows from superhuman beings with little to no injury, this indicates the high-end feats of Slayer strength can go above and beyond what one would expect.
One example of a Slayer being stronger than most vampires is in "The Gift", when Buffy easily lifts Olaf's hammer with one hand when Spike was barely able to do so with both hands in "Blood Ties", and when she defeats the demon Doc easily when Spike is unable to. Angel also remarked in "Sanctuary" that Buffy is "a little bit stronger" than he is, though the humorous tenor of the exchange suggests he may have been understating the difference.
The Slayer's strength appears to be largely metaphysical, as it does not seem to add to their body mass and they remain buoyant enough to swim.
Melaka Fray is able to pick up an overweight vampire several times her own size and body mass, lift him up over her head with both hands and throw him over a distance of presumably over 20–25 feet, with no downward arc to his trajectory (which was only interrupted due to his hitting a metal grate, which was extensively deformed on impact).Fray #2
The psychotic Slayer Dana is able to, through several violent shoves, knock down a metal door as well as deform the edges of a metal gate as she tore it from its hinges.
Buffy and Angel often shows inconsistencies in their characters' physical strength; for example, Buffy was unable to bust open a metal door in "I, Robot... You, Jane", but casually breaks down metal doors in both "The Harvest" and "End of Days". Buffy also been successfully bound by rope or chains on multiple occasions. This has been acknowledged frequently in commentaries and interviews by writers and creators of the shows. However, it is stated by Riley that Buffy gets stronger "every day" and is inferred that she may be stronger due to the fact that she has been activated the longest.
Agility and reflexes Slayers are able to move faster and react more quickly than normal human beings. Buffy has been shown snatching a crossbow bolt in mid-flight, dodging gunfire from multiple ranges and setting off a bear trap, but not getting caught in it. At one point Buffy was fast enough to outrun a raiding motorcyclist on his bike shortly after her resurrection. Faith has been shown to dodge shotgun blasts at point-blank range and Dana was able to dodge a tranquilizer dart also fired at point-blank range. A Slayer is capable of superhuman feats of agility. She can leap to great heights; though the maximum is unknown, Buffy was shown to be capable of reaching the roof of the original Sunnydale High in a very short period of time, after running up a sloping wall then flipping onto the roof.
Resilience and healing A Slayer's body is substantially more durable and resistant to blunt force trauma than an ordinary human's and there is evidence of an incredibly high pain tolerance. It is difficult, though not impossible, to bruise them, break their bones or strain their joints. Buffy has suffered from a sprained arm as a consequence of fighting vampires. Melaka Fray is hit with a steel girder thrown at her from a demon and recovers within minutes; she is also shown to fall from a height of over five stories to land face-first on a cement sidewalk and be only dazed before fully recovering in moments, and at a later time, to fall four stories down, crash through the cement roof of an adjacent building and fall down the height of one more story, and recover instantly. Buffy can leap from a window with a man in her arms, landing on the ground and letting her body take the brunt of the fall. Buffy has been hit by a moving truck, got up and run off. Faith has fallen from a height of three stories on top of a closed dumpster, rolled off it to hit the ground and got up immediately with no signs of damage; she also was able to hold her own in a fight with Buffy less than 24 hours after waking from a nine-month coma—a coma which she entered after surviving a deep stab wound to the abdomen immediately followed by a fall from the top of a multi-story building into a moving truck. Also, in an attempt from the Watcher's Council to capture Faith without killing her in "Sanctuary", they prepare a tranquilizer that is capable of knocking out a man twice her size, which is more than enough to subdue an ordinary young woman her size.