‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’: Every Episode Ranked From Worst to Best

Tonally one of the strangest episodes in the entire series. Its placement in the season is bizarre. The plot is nonsensical. All in all, it’s one of the most baffling episodes of television you could watch. Essentially, Buffy and Riley’s sexual energy within his frat house awakens the spirits of children who were abused there by the religious head of an orphanage years past. It’s… a lot.

There’s also a patch of wall that if you touch, you orgasm, which multiple characters demonstrate. Yeah.

The episode tries to deal with the idea of Willow’s grief in the aftermath of Season Six, and it couldn’t fumble the ball any harder. Willow and Kennedy kiss, and it turns Willow into Warren. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Sure, there’s a wacky side plot about Giles potentially being The First, and more importantly, Spike has his chip removed. But it doesn’t save this episode, sadly.

If you speak to any Buffy scholar, there’s a good chance “Beer Bad” will appear in their list of worst episodes. It’s a really odd one – almost puritanical in its views about the effects of alcohol, as an ale at the campus bar turns patrons into Neanderthals. All the while Buffy is slumped in her post-Parker depression, which sucks because the guy is objectively a dick. Season Four has some of the very best episodes Buffy has to offer, but oh me, oh my does it also have some of the worst.

A really odd episode in the wider arc of Season Six, because it’s just kind of… there. It sits before the Xander/Anya shenanigans, and after the whole “Willow is a magic junkie” plot. The gang is trapped inside the Summers’ residence during Buffy’s birthday because Dawn wished it so. But it fails to add much of anything to the story.

The first Xander-centric episode of the series, a character who would often be the “damsel in distress” figure, subverting those pesky expectations in classic Buffy style. “Teacher’s Pet” isn’t anything to write home about though, with a passingly clever take on the teacher/student love affair, with the teacher here being quite literally a predator. It’s OK, but “OK” is a running theme throughout much of Season One.

The episode functions as an allegory for frat boys and date rape, with these college boys manipulating innocent high school girls to their parties for sinister means. Those means would be sacrificing them to a snake demon who bears a shocking resemblance to a phallus as it rises from the ground. It’s about as heavy-handed a metaphor as you’ll find throughout Buffy, and it just feels clunky. Not great given the seriousness of the subject matter.

There’s an interesting premise here about dealing with childhood trauma, but it’s just not executed all that well. The excellent tension between Xander and Angelus aside, this episode just doesn’t offer much. We do however get one the gnarliest monsters in all of Buffy – Der Kindestod. Major ick.

Unlike the series’ prior Halloween-themed episodes, “All the Way” just isn’t fun. Buffy continues in her depression, Dawn goes off with a vampire jock and needs saving, and the friction between Willow and Tara continues to build. It’s just a real downer. We do get Xander and Anya’s engagement announcement and that will end well, right? Right?!?!

“Empty Places” is a real low point in Season Seven, serving up a bleak episode that sees Buffy pushed out of her own home by her family and friends after they lose faith in her ability to lead. The attack comes from all sides as Xander, Willow, Giles, Anya and Dawn all say their piece, and it never felt earned. Honestly, it’s such a bummer.

With Anya returning to her vengeance-demon ways, she still finds herself unable to magically inflict suffering on Xander for jilting her. Sadly, after failing to exact mystical vengeance, she hurts him in the most human way possible by sleeping with Spike. The episode doesn’t really deal with the fallout of Xander and Anya very well, but thankfully that particular arc is handled flawlessly in Season Seven.

One of the stranger episodes throughout the entire series as it starts to deal with the theme of teen sex – something it would handle masterfully in the next two episodes “Surprise” and “Innocence,” but here it just doesn’t really work. Students are given eggs to care for in health class, which turn out to be the spawn of a giant demon nesting beneath the school. It’s pretty silly and largely forgettable, but it does provide an interesting prelude for the following two episodes.

Our Season Two Xander-centric episode is pretty forgettable… literally. I’ve watched Buffy all the way through countless times, and I’d forgotten this episode existed. It’s just kind of… there. It is the first appearance of Oz though, so that’s nice I guess.

The challenge of Buffy balancing her life as a Slayer and her life as a teenage girl who wants to date will continue to play a greater role in the show, but its first exploration begins here. It doesn’t really work though, and that’s mostly because Owen – the boy in question – is about as bland as they come. However, we do get our first Giles/Buffy scene to close an episode, with the former imparting wonderful wisdom on the latter. These always land, and the chemistry between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Anthony Stewart Head absolutely shines.

Your feelings on this episode will largely depend on your feelings about The Initiative plot overall, meaning I’m pretty down on it. We’re given shockingly few reasons to care about The Initiative – it’s Riley’s story, not Buffy’s. When she does join, within a space of 30 minutes, she’s deemed a problem and the brass try to have her taken out. It’s rushed, and frankly, just a bit daft.

Riley is a great supporting character, and he shows this in future episodes where he’s allowed to be that. When the show is structured to revolve around him, however, it just doesn’t click. “Goodbye Iowa” might be the best example of this, as everyone tries to react to the death of Maggie Walsh, keeping Riley at the very forefront of the story. It’s also the episode where we are introduced to Adam as the Big Bad of Season Four, replacing Walsh, and it just further muddies the waters of the season at large.

There are very few times where Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an actively bad show, but sadly, this episode here is one of them. Our first Willow-centric episode (and by far the weakest) is so tragically 1990s it’s almost laughable. A demon has escaped into the internet, intent on wreaking havoc while amassing followers, including Willow, who is unaware of his true identity. Everyone’s favorite soon-to-be-witch deserved so much better than this, but thankfully, her character would undergo infinitely more exploration in the future.

The Trio develops an invisibility ray, accidentally hits Buffy with it, and she goes on all sorts of wacky side quests while battling crippling depression. What are we doing?

Just another super weird Season One episode that falls a little flat. The Sunnydale High talent show is approaching while students turn up with missing organs. The culprit seems to be a creepy (and very problematic) puppet called Sid, who the gang suspect of being a demon, but actually turns out to be a cursed demon hunter. The real antagonist is a random character introduced in the closing minutes. The premise is fun, but it doesn’t come close to sticking the landing.

The whole “Willow is a magic junkie” period of Season Six could’ve been a fascinating exploration into addiction, but it never quite worked. “Wrecked” is where it really loses itself, with Willow visiting a magical crack den for her fix. It just feels ham-fisted, which is a far cry from the excellent metaphors that Buffy typically deploys when tackling issues such as this.

“Hell’s Bells” felt like such a breaking point for Season Six. Xander and Anya’s relationship felt like the sole bright spot in an otherwise despair-filled season of television. But it’s yanked away from us. It’s effective, sure. Xander is a broken man and Anya is full of anguish – but there’s only so much misery we can take.

Season openers are always a challenge. You have to establish new settings, place the characters on the start of their season-long arcs, as well as deal with the aftermath of the previous season. Buffy mostly gets its premieres right, but “The Freshman” is just missing something. Maybe it’s the jarring shift to college, which never quite clicked. However, this is of course the episode featuring a young Pedro Pascal, so points for that. This is the Way.

Not a game-changing episode by any stretch, it is still quite affecting. Attempting to tackle the kind of masculinity that is still so depressingly rife – an attitude focused on rage and envy and dominance. It all centers around a relationship between two of Oz’s friends that moves further and further down the path of abuse, all the while a feral Angel has returned from Hell.

The Trio steal a diamond from a museum while immobilizing a guard with a freeze ray (seriously), while Willow and Amy head to The Bronze and magically alter reality to their whim. It’s sort of played for laughs, but morally it’s actually pretty fucking dark – yet another example of Season Six struggling to establish its identity. “Smashed” is unlikely to be remembered for anything other than Buffy and Spike’s passionate and/or violent and disturbing sexual encounter.

A pretty classic and goofy Buffy premise – star football player for Sunnydale High is brought back to life by his genius brother as a Frankenstein-like monster, and now they are building a corpse’s bride to be his companion, which involves obtaining Cordelia’s head. It’s whacky throughout but doesn’t move the needle too much. We do get our first date between Giles and Jenny Calendar though, which will become one of Season Two’s best plotlines.

This could’ve been a spectacular episode, where the demon to be vanquished is capitalism. The day-to-day grind of working life and adulthood is just as bleak as facing down a horde of demons. It’s fascinating. But of course, it has to get a little silly, and an elderly patron turns out to be a pretty gross demon that eats the workers.

The Potential Slayers were an interesting addition to the show in terms of world-building, but they just never clicked on-screen, consistently taking too much time away from the central cast that we’d come to love over the past seven seasons. “Bring On the Night” also marks the beginning of a tough stretch in Buffy that varies in quality but starts to feel very uniform. Buffy gives an inspirational speech, everyone is cold and broody, and the story loses momentum.

*Insert “Aliens!” Meme* An ambitious episode that doesn’t really deliver, but still gives the show one of its gnarliest monsters. An extra-terrestrial that feeds on fear and suffering follows Joyce home for a juicy meal, only to be slain by Buffy. We do get the wonderful conversation between Joyce and Buffy, with the former understanding that Dawn isn’t biologically hers, but must still be protected. It’s the kind of scene that makes Season Five so special.

Why Buffy and Willow aren’t rooming together from the beginning always felt like a weird decision. Hiding your identity as a Slayer from your roommate is added stress that Buffy and the gang didn’t really need. Luckily, the roommate isn’t a regular person, but a very literal roommate from hell. It’s a fun, but ultimately inconsequential episode that resets the board (read: dorm arrangements) with Willow and Buffy rooming together by episode’s end.

Buffy took a little time to find its feet, as evidenced by “The Harvest.” It’s a fine episode with some great moments – Darla and her fellow Vamps walking toward The Bronze as that very particular style of ’90s grunge kicks in standing out as a particular highlight. As Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies work to stop the eponymous Harvest – a ritual that would allow The Master to walk free – it establishes a core theme of the show at large. Buffy’s greatest strength isn’t just her power, but the family she surrounds herself with, and they’re instrumental in helping avert this disaster.

“Flooded” was the first episode to demonstrate the fundamental issue with Season Six as a whole. Introducing The Trio as a silly and slapstick group of villains while also telling some emotionally heavy stories about depression, isolation and addiction created a real tonal dissonance. One that Season Six could never consistently balance.

Although Willow’s newfound darkness and power is both mesmerizing and distressing to watch, “Two to Go” lacks the magic (pun definitely intended) that we have come to expect from episodes at this point in the season. We do get Giles’ truly iconic return however, standing in the doorway to the Magic Box looking as full of quiet power.

Spike’s chip from The Initiative is firmly in place, and he’s now incapable of harming any living thing, giving us the incredible “performance issues” scene between Willow and him. Outside of that, however, this episode marks a point in time where Buffy never quite found its groove, and the whole Initiative arc is a bit of a struggle.

The opening with Darla in the deserted high school perfectly subverts expectations, and in doing so, sets the tone for the next seven seasons. First episodes often get bogged down in establishing lore, and while “Welcome to the Hellmouth” is no exception, the snappy dialogue and the charm of our core protagonists mean it doesn’t really matter. It’s by no means the best episode, but it’s special for what it began.

“Wild at Heart” sucks. Not because it’s bad. It’s actually a pretty great episode. It’s just really fucking sad. Willow’s heart is broken repeatedly throughout the episode, and seeing our favorite Wicca cry isn’t high on my list of loves. Oz becomes infatuated with fellow werewolf Veruca, cheats on Willow with her, kills Veruca, then leaves town to confront his Lycanthropy. It’s a lot for one episode, and it’s gutting.

Buffy opened its final season heading back to Sunnydale High, taking the show full circle, while delivering a pretty spooky episode about tackling ghosts of the past – a theme that will continue throughout the rest of the final season. It’s a strong season opener, and the closing scene of The First Evil manipulating Spike through the guise of every previous Big Bad is chilling.

Andrew’s purpose in Season Seven was to bring a lot more levity to the story, which he does achieve to a degree. The episode is pretty Spike-centric though, as a lot of this stretch of episodes in Season Seven was. It languishes and feels a bit repetitive frankly, but Buffy telling Spike she believes in him is an emotional touch that keeps the ball rolling.

Sunnydale is swept up in a mystical moral panic and wave of hysteria aimed at witches, leaving Willow as the target of the town’s ire. Who’s behind this hysteria? Hansel & Gretel. That’s right, folks, fairy tales are real. Posing as two murdered children, they rally the town into a frenzy before the Scoobies save the day. Fun episode, if a little lightweight compared to the rest of the season.

Dealing with the trauma and trials of adolescence while instilling its own supernatural flair – classic Buffy. A student who has been overlooked and ignored by her peers has turned invisible, and now aims to destroy Cordelia. It’s not the most subtle of storytelling devices, but it’s effective nonetheless.

Similar to the Season One episode “The Pack,” we have another unhinged monster-of-the-week episode, this time lamenting the dangers of steroids and the privileges of the student athlete. The swim team coach is dosing the athletes with fish DNA (yes, really) giving them success in the pool but having the nasty side effect of killing them as amphibian humanoids eventually emerge from within. At times it’s fun: Cordelia expressing her desire to stay with Xander even after believing he’s infected. At times it’s not fun: the coach implying Buffy is about to be sexually assaulted by fish-men. “Go Fish” is a real rollercoaster of weirdness.

One of the weaker episodes in a season jammed full of classics, “Revelations” is laying groundwork for everything to come later. The main villain of Season Three is Mayor Wilkins, but it’s the simmering tension and “frenemies” relationship firmly established here between Buffy and Faith that makes the season truly hum.

In a haunting look at Willow’s true power, we finally see her break bad following Tara’s death. It’s no doubt best remembered for the grisly death of Warren, as he is magically flayed alive. It’s shocking, and Buffy is really making use of the more relaxed standards at UPN – the new network for Season’s Six and Seven. The main problem with that grisly death though is that we’re all kind of glad to see it. Warren was a reprehensible human being, not a demon or a soulless monster. We don’t really care how far Willow has fallen in that moment – he deserved it.

It’s really such a strange episode, feeling almost uncharacteristic at times. Dealing with the aftermath of her encounter with The Master, and of course, her death at his hands, Buffy is scarred and traumatized. And while the episode is driving home how difficult it can be to overcome trauma, Buffy is kind of a dick here. Her weird seduction of Xander is cruel, something that Buffy has never been before or will be again. There’s a catharsis at the close when she destroys The Master’s bones which feels earned, but the road to that moment is littered with bumps.

It’s staggering how mundane “The Yoko Factor” is given its role in putting the pieces in place for Season Four’s endgame. It’s a Spike-centric episode, sewing dissent among the Scoobies in the hope Adam will remove his chip – a plan which works briefly, until they inevitably make up in the following episode. While the Scoobies do reconcile, their big argument scene is actually quite raw, with each character getting a chance to unload their grievances that have steadily built since the start of the season. That argument saves the episode from being even lower on this list.

Andrew never really clicked with me as a character, particularly so in Season Seven. Yes, he adds a degree of humor to quite an intense season of television, but it’s hard to look past his actions in Season Six as well as his very clear love of Warren – a.k.a. the worst person in the world. “Storyteller” plays a part in redeeming him, but it’s not as effective as you’d hope.

It’s one of the lighter episodes in Season Six, with The Trio pitting Buffy against three separate challenges to analyze her strengths and weaknesses. A very Bond-villain inspired move which fits their characters, and most of the episode plays for some good laughs.

There’s a lot to like about “First Date,” from the charming banter between Buffy, Willow and Xander over her dating history, Anya’s very sweet jealousy about Xander’s upcoming date, and the kind of great showing from Ashanti. We get a little bit more history on Robin Wood too, setting up the tension between Spike and himself, nicely paying off down the line.

Taking on the tough role of advancing the story while building on Slayer lore, “Get It Done” acquits itself fairly well. Intended as a gloomy episode covering the true origins of the Slayer, giving Buffy (and the audience) a vision quest-style exposition dump. The sequence itself is astonishingly dark, telling the story of three powerful men who chained a woman to the Earth and forcibly imbued her with the power of a demon. It’s a tough thing to consider given the core empowering message of the series, but the ultimate payoff in “Chosen” makes it worthwhile.

Buffy was always good at giving you a palate cleanser after high emotional stakes, and “Triangle” is no different. Mostly inconsequential in the wider arc of the season, but it’s a fun episode focusing on the tension between Willow and Anya. There’s a bleak irony to the plot, however, given Willow’s fears that Anya will hurt Xander. We know where that road is leading.

There’s an interesting theme throughout “Potential” about a younger sibling constantly feeling overshadowed by an older one, compounded by their moment in the sun being ripped away from them. It’s a very real familial feeling that deserved a bit more exploration than one episode. We do get the pretty wonderful scene between Xander and Dawn to close the episode though, giving her the pep talk she needs after having her power yanked away from her. It’s really beautiful stuff from the pair, elevating the episode significantly.

A brutal examination of power dynamics, with Spike’s attempted rape of Buffy, and Warren’s murder of Tara. One of the most divisive episodes in the Buffy fandom, with some seeing it as a vital moment for the development of Willow, Spike and Buffy, while others saw it as the straw which broke the camel’s back in a season full of suffering.