How the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot can succeed: Keep the title, but don't make it about "Buffy"

The Ringer

The biggest obstacle facing the Buffy reboot, featuring a black female lead, is Sarah Michelle Gellar's close connection with the iconic role. "Given how intrinsically linked Gellar is to the character—with a multilayered performance tackling adolescence, depression, and sexual desire—it’d be a small miracle for any actress to capably fill her shoes," says Miles Surrey. "Luckily, the producers can just avoid that problem. The Slayer mythology runs very deep, as Buffy Summers is just one person who assumed the mantle of Slayer—a woman chosen by fate to repel and eliminate vampires, demons, and the like from wiping out humanity—that spans millennia. A Buffy reboot could simply use the Buffy name to lure viewers, but tackle an entirely different Slayer. The original series even briefly featured a different Slayer, Kendra Young, who was black....This non-Buffy, new-Slayer direction would also fall in line with the reboot’s mandate to make the next Buffy more inclusive while also creating a new story for a character of color, rather than retelling an existing story with a new lead actress."

ALSO:

• The problem with a black Buffy is that "all the flaws will be its own and anything good will be attributed to (Joss) Whedon’s influence"
• Buffy's story was neatly wrapped up on screen, so why give the name to another vampire slayer?
• There's value in a new Buffy, but the natural recoiling of fans after a reboot announcement is getting tiresome