We collected input from hundreds of visitors to the site, convention attendees, and industry professionals to compile the list of the 100 Greatest Fictional Characters of All Time. You can see the beginning of the project here, where you’ll also find an index of all the results to date.
We are now in the final week of revealing the winners, and today we bring you #3!
3. Buffy Summers
Appears In: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
Created By: Joss Whedon
Influence:
Buffy’s influence on pop culture and on genre TV in particular is immense. From her supernaturally gifted character to her propensity to make up and own new words and phrases, Buffy Summers echoes throughout modern television. It’s hard to find a current series with smart, dark, and funny writing that doesn’t owe something to Buffy and her Scoobies. Aside from her obvious impact on television and the arts, Buffy also has become an empowering icon for young women, not to mention that academic conferences and classes now meet to discuss her character and the overall TV series.
Fandom:
Buffy’s success as an enduring character is largely thanks to her cult fanbase that grew into a true force to be reckoned with. Even now, more than six years after the last episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired, websites like Whedonesque.com keep legions of fans abreast of what’s going on with “Buffyverse” actors and crew. Buffy’s tale continues to be so popular that Dark Horse Comics now produces an official comic book continuation of the TV series, while IDW publishes a comic continuation of the Buffy spinoff, Angel. So many fans have identified with Buffy that a veritable new genre has sprung up around them.
Voter Comments:
“Buffy is my chief hero. I can identify with her.” – Ginny Keller
“Buffy changed TV in the ’90s. Dark Angel would follow, as well as Alias. Buffy made it possible.” – Dax Collins
“I think [Buffy] has become more than she was meant to be. She’s iconized and used as an example, and girls look to her as a role model, despite her flaws.” – Kelley Harkins
buffy summers absolutely deserves to be #3 she was a huge role model for thousands of people she faught evil died twice saved the world on a weekly basis risked her life every day to help others and even sacrifised herself to save the her sister and the world! and although she was definitely not my favorite character in the buffy series and characters like the joker and luke skywalker should have been put higher in the list she deserves this spot!
Buffy?! Really??! Imean I understand why Batman and Superman are so high on the list but Buffy?!?? When there are so many other cooler characters like Yoda and Severus Snape!!
@nightshade: I can not relate to a 3 foot alien with god powers. But I can definitely see a lot of me in Buffy.
Buffy definitely deserves to be in the top 3! She has prophetic dreams, visions, her own “spidey sense”, can catch flying arrows and daggers, has perfect aim with a gun and a crossbow, an expert swordswoman and martial artist, can throw a stake into a vamp’s heart, slew hundreds or thousands of demons monsters extraterrestrials hell goddesses The First Evil, has spent 5 months in the spirit realms, stopped apocalpyses including interdimensional ones (even when it meant sacrificing her own life or sending her literal soulmate to Hell), was the Protector of The Key, freelance agent for the government’s Psi-division, crawls through airducts, scales down elevator shafts, somersaults between giant buzzsaws, jumped from rooftop to rooftop onto a speeding bus, was the Guardian of the Hellmouth, had a vision quest in the desert meeting her Spirit Guide, rescued slaves from a demon dimension, traveled thousands of years into the past, dated 2 immortal vampires, was a guidance counselor for troubled teens, created her own army of hundreds of superpowered women, etc. She has survived being run through with a sword, shot with an arrow and a bullet, zapped with lightning bolts, poisoned, beat with metal bats, suffocated, run over with a car, stabbed, electrocuted by mystickal energy, drained of blood, strangled, sexually violated, etc, and is still forgiving and compassionate and even stronger emotionally than she is physically.
Ask someone living in a yurt in Mongolia if they’ve ever heard of “Buffy”, then ask if they’ve ever heard of Mickey Mouse or Popeye, see which one is recognized. I rest my case.
Seriously? Why on earth is she even on this list? Goofy and Donald Duck and Pluto didn’t make the top 100, why on earth is Buffy here? ANd at #3?
YES!!! Buffy totally deserves to be number 3 on this list. I think people are forgetting that this isn’t a most iconic fictional characters of all time list. The greatest and most iconic are two seperate things that sometimes intertwine. Buffy is both a great and incredibly iconic character as well as being the best written female character of all time. Buffy is actually my least favorite main character on the show besides Willow and Angel, which is ironic, because those two are the most iconic. Though I understand why Buffy made this list instead of them.
where the hell is goku
@kakarrot: Goku? Tibetan dish of some sort? Oh, that’s the humorous meal they serve in anime “Ranma 1/2”! Ha! Nice joke.
Buffy is a top 50 character, no question, but the only Buffy characters on the list are her and Wesley? How exactly does she get on but Spike doesn’t? I guess he might have lost points with voters for his pussification after the whole love triangle thing, but that was only slightly before Buffy became a total bitch. And where is Mayor Wilkins? There will never be a character that constantly mixes being hilarious and horrifying so effectively in every scene he’s in. Hell, what about the rest of the Scoobies? I don’t see any real argument for Tara, Oz, Riley, Anya, or Angel, but out of the Core Four (Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles), I would think at least one other would make it.
She’s my second only behind Sherlock Holmes. Buffy is by far my favorite fictional property of all time.
@Lawrence Kassab: meant to say favorite TV or movie property