By Chris Snellgrove
| Printed
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a present that very almost received an animated spinoff. Sadly, that present by no means noticed the sunshine of day, and this cartoon undertaking stays deader than the Grasp. Nonetheless, that didn’t maintain this seminal city fantasy present from inspiring one of many biggest animated collection in tv historical past!
You see, one in every of Buffy’s greatest followers was Bruce Timm, who kickstarted the DC Animated Universe with Batman: The Animated Sequence. He went on to supply different beloved DCAU exhibits, together with Justice League Limitless. In a little bit of geeky synchronicity, the JLU episode “This Little Piggy” was impressed by the Season 2 Buffy episode “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.”
Ratty, The Vampire Slayer
The Buffy episode in query has its characters gearing up for Valentine’s Day, and Xander will get his coronary heart damaged when a peer-pressured Cordelia breaks up with him. He then forces native witch Amy to forged a love spell on his ex, however it finally ends up backfiring, and everybody however Cordelia falls in love with the younger man. Finally, the spell is reversed, and Xander will get again along with Cordelia, however alongside the way in which, a jealous Amy transforms Buffy right into a rat.
What does this rat transformation need to do with Justice League Limitless? That present’s producer (animation legend Bruce Timm) was an enormous fan of Buffyand he thought that “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” would function a special ending. Particularly, he thought that Buffy must use her Slayer abilities to struggle off a cat (she does strategy the kitty and unexpectedly scares him off) whereas she was nonetheless remodeled right into a rat!
Surprise Lady Or Surprise Bacon?
Clearly, that didn’t occur, however Timm nonetheless thought it was a cool idea. So cool, in reality, that he wrote one thing related into his personal present. Within the Justice League Limitless episode “This Little Piggy,” Circe transforms Surprise Lady right into a pig, leaving Batman with the unenviable activity of determining restore his kindasorta goddess girlfriend (it’s difficult) again to her divine self.
Within the audio commentary for “This Little Piggy,” Bruce Tim revealed that this Surprise Lady plot level was primarily based on how he thought the ratty Slayer must struggle the cat. Within the Justice League Limitless episode, Surprise Lady is a bit like Buffy: she is remodeled into an animal however in any other case retains her human intelligence. In contrast to Buffy, although, Surprise Lady has to struggle towards people who aren’t afraid to take her to the slaughterhouse.
Slay, Queens!
That is evident when one of many people tries to kill her with a gun; when he fires what would have in any other case been a deadly blast, Surprise Lady deflects the shot together with her bracers. It’s a crowd-pleasing second, one which exhibits that the Amazon’s warrior spirit is greater than pores and skin deep. The scene additionally helps as an example what Timm hoped to see in “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered:” a remodeled hero taking up foes who’re method above her weight class.
As a really totally different sort of cartoon pig may say, th-th-th-that’s all, of us! A forgotten episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended up inspiring one of many craziest episodes of Justice League Limitlessreworking Surprise Lady right into a pig simply as Buffy was remodeled right into a rat. It’s a enjoyable little bit of franchise crossover that reminds us of a vital level: it doesn’t matter what type they take, these two ladies know slay!