After the Avengers: From Joss Whedon's Hottest, Newest Franchises to the Future of the Whedonverse

By Popmatters

With contributions from professors, scholars, bloggers, playwrights, and novelists from Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, and Great Britain, as well as the US, this collection explores recent additions to the multifaceted Whedonverse. But it doesn't stop there. Above all comes the question "What's Next?" How will Whedon adapt other Shakespeares like Hamlet and Twelfth Night, seeing that he hates to make the same project twice? Will he offer a female Horatio, a stronger Ophelia, a play set on a spaceship or S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters? Who will star? Other creators have signed on for the Wonder Woman film, but can they surpass his unpublished script? What will come after Avengers: Age of Ultron – Star Wars?

In today's world of Netflix shows, comic continuations, and web releases, Whedon has far more options than he did in the '90s Meanwhile, fans across the world are devouring his Buffy motion comics even as American creators pay homage to his works in their own shows, from Husbands and The Guild to How I Met Your Mother. All of this combines to build a glittering future for Whedon's fans and for the creator himself as the Whedonverse swells larger with each passing year.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483559971

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Cited

Presenting the Collection

Valerie Frankel

Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It’s harsh and cruel. But that’s why there’s us. Champions. It doesn’t matter where we come from, what we’ve done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be. (Deep Down, Angel 4.1)

This is Joss Whedon’s message, his call to summon fans to battle against injustice, misogyny, and oppression in their own worlds. Among a universe of directors, showrunners, scriptwriters and creators, Whedon stands out. His cult following gathered during Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), the epic television show of a teen forced to confront her superpowers and thus metaphorically take on a world of adult responsibility, even while dealing with a mini-fear demon, her sex-robot double, and a potentially killer musical. Close on its heels came the short-lived Firefly (2002-2003), overflowing with humor, comradeship, and elaborate Chinese cursing (It’s just so satisfying to call someone a stupid inbred stack of meat or a son of a drooling whore and a monkey). Between the two series, fans were hooked. Small-budget Serenity’s (2005) climb to the big screen only cemented viewers’ love of all things Whedon.

As the Internet grew, fans crowded the web, not only with blog and chatroom posts, but with a stunning output of fanfiction and art. In 2006, a fan in Portland, Oregon held a charity screening of Serenity for Equality Now. Soon Can’t Stop the Serenity events appeared in 46 cities in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, often with contests, parties, and banquets. Singalongs and Firefly shindigs are highlights of many conventions, with many proud fans hand-sewing Kaylee’s pink ballgown or handing out ribbons written upon with their favorite bits of dialogue. Thus the Whedon fans have made a name for themselves with their grassroots passion. Who else has brought such overwhelming, sustained love to fandom?

Alongside all this came scholarship in the form of dozens of books analyzing the themes and effects the beloved shows have on pop culture, from Angel’s hop into the Forever Knight convertible to lesbian subtext. In classrooms and online journals, Buffy Studies continue expanding, as teachers and creative writers harness Whedon’s stories to inspire their own imaginations.

After years of small successes from the independently produced Internet sensation of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (2008) to comic books to the short-lived Dollhouse (2009-1010), Whedon returned to the big screen. Fans crowded the theaters looking for his plainly visible stamp, and they found it in his new wave of storytelling. His Cabin in the Woods (2012) combines Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s criticism of horror and its disposable cheerleaders with the evil of corporate conglomerates, issues tackled by scholars in this collection. The Avengers are a misfit team like those of Angel, Buffy, and Firefly, and like them, the Avengers save the world from apocalypse, all while protecting innocent life and pounding supervillains into the floorboards.

The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013-), another misfit team, likewise rescue the helpless while quipping happily about The Hunger Games and cosplay. Their mentor (Coulson), the girl with superpowers (Skye), the antihero who loves her (Ward), the nice girl scientist (Simmons) and the loving boy with no superpowers but plenty of monkey jokes (Fitz) feel to many like Giles, Buffy, Spike, Willow, and Xander. Their gender battles and media-crossing triumphs echo Buffy’s, as do the practical jokes and snark. Unlike earlier shows, however, this one bears the substantial weight of its crossover with the Marvel universe. Besides the tie-in adventures, the show features characters who pop in from films and preexisting comic books, to say nothing of Marvel’s grand plan for S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Inhumans. As Whedon, now a film director, has little time to script the episodes, the series gradually spreads away from his influence even while celebrating girl power with the birth of superheroine Skye.

In the midst of planning the next stage of Marvel with Avengers 2: Age of Ultron (2015), Whedon returned to smaller stories. Much Ado About Nothing (2012) united Whedon’s favorite television actors, recombining them in a delightful nod to the different fandoms. Despite its artsy origin, it links powerfully with The Avengers for those who look deeper, as well as offers more of Whedon’s colorful commentary on gender and society. How could he follow this? Apparently by revisiting his early unpublished scripts. His independent film In Your Eyes (2014) explores similar themes as the evil doctor and damaged mad girl from a myriad of Whedon works struggle through a paranormal romance. With his new Bellwether Studios, fans wonder: Will he finally create the projects they’ve all been clamoring to see?

His continuation comics in all the franchises (most recently including Buffy Seasons 8-10, Angel & Faith, and Serenity: Leaves on the Wind) offer surprises and twists but are foremost fan-thrilling extensions of the beloved shows. Inara and Mal finally fall in love, while Harmony the reality TV star hires Angel to track down her sex tape in a new world of Twilight fans and vampire culture. To fans’ glee, the comics incorporate many lost stories – the Faith the Vampire Slayer film and Ripper miniseries that have been postponed and canceled over and over, along with the New Rebellion that might have appeared on Firefly. These are multi-collaborative works, but Whedon continues to design the larger arcs. They also spring upon new technology, appearing as ebooks and motion comics. As they continue his classic characters’ adventures yet on a larger scale, they merge his new type of storytelling with the old.

With contributions from professors, scholars, bloggers, playwrights, and novelists from Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, and Great Britain, as well as the US, this collection explores these recent additions to the multifaceted Whedonverse. But it doesn’t stop there. Above all comes the question What’s Next? How will Whedon adapt other Shakespeares like Hamlet and Twelfth Night, seeing that he hates to make the same project twice? Will he offer a female Horatio, a stronger Ophelia, a play set on a spaceship or S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters? Who will star? Other creators have signed on for the Wonder Woman film, but can they surpass his unpublished script? What will come after Avengers: Age of Ultron – Star Wars?

In today’s world of Netflix shows, comic continuations, and web releases, Whedon has far more options than he did in the ’90s Meanwhile, fans across the world are devouring his Buffy motion comics even as American creators pay homage to his works in their own shows, from Husbands and The Guild to How I Met Your Mother. All of this combines to build a glittering future for Whedon’s fans and for the creator himself as the Whedonverse swells larger with each passing year.

Presenting the Classic Shows

Valerie Frankel

While Joss Whedon wrote several early screenplays (the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film, Alien: Resurrection) and script-doctored others, from Toy Story and Speed to Twister, Waterworld, and Titan A.E., he’s best known for the television shows that made him a household name: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly (though one should also give a short salute to Angel and Dollhouse). And of course, the gleeful wickedness of Dr. Horrible deserves a shining pedestal all its own. This set of films and shows, made from the ’90s through 2010, must be considered classic in the Whedonverse. There’s a time gap between Dollhouse and the big-screen films, one that especially emphasizes his shift in mediums.

It seems impossible to write a Whedon collection without a moment to admire these past glories. This book offers a friendly wave and nostalgic smile before venturing on through new territory. In fact, new Buffy scholarship rushes onto shelves every day, as Professor Rhonda Wilcox explains in an interview in this collection. What are some of the newest voices and cleverest perspectives? Offering their own imaginative looks at the beloved series, Janet Brennan Croft explores the richness and depth of naming patterns within the dysfunctional generations of Buffy vampires, while Kate Johnson and J.T. Bock present their colorful creative writing lessons at conferences. What’s the best way to create characters? Just copy Joss. In a moment of pure fannishness, Calvin Peat, writer and news editor for Shadowlocked.com, explores how other shows, especially The Guild and How I Met Your Mother, owe the Whedonverse a tremendous debt.

For those who haven’t experienced these (though likely everyone reading this collection has), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) defined girl power in the ’90s: Frivolous valley-girl Buffy Summers claimed her soul-wrenching destiny and battled the monsters that echoed her deep-hidden personal demons. Angel (1999-2004) continued the tale, though as supernatural detective show more than coming-of-age story.

Whedon’s beloved scifi-western Firefly lasted a single season (2002-2003), followed by the film Serenity (2005). In these, the misfit crew of the Firefly class ship Serenity takes on semi-legal jobs on the ragged frontier of space, while clinging to each other with heartfelt family struggles. From amoral but conscience-ridden Jayne to perfect warrior and loving wife Zoe, all the characters stand out for their multifaceted brilliance.

Doctor Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog, made on a nonexistent budget and released on the web in 2008, is quoted, sung, and embraced by giggling fans across the world. A hilarious parody that mixes musical and superhero genres, it stands out for its self-aware humor and wit. Dollhouse (2009-1010) follows the Rossum Corporation in L.A., which lures lost souls into a life of mindwiped sex slavery as dolls, with new personalities each week. As Rossum and its morally murky employees sell these services, ranging from the perfect date to virtual immortality, the show evokes questions of ethics, personhood, and the soul.

These works, along with the early films, introduced the staples of Whedon storytelling – surprising deaths, gender flipping, geeky ordinary heroes, chosen families rebelling against tyranny, and an extraordinary amount of girl power – all combining to make the famed Whedonverse.

Buffy’s Successors: How Both The Guild and How I Met Your Mother Spring from Buffy

Calvin Peat

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is rightly regarded as a cult classic, and holds a special place in its creator Joss Whedon’s heart for being the first television series he created. While the story still continues in comics, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has also had a tremendous legacy of influencing other visual media, especially television.

In early Season Six of Buffy, Tara says, The only really real Buffy is really Buffy, and she’s gone. It’s a poetic statement that belies the simplicity of its repetition, and is also meta-textually applicable, referring not just to the iconic character of Buffy Summers, but also to the show that bears her name.

Buffy’s almost unparallelable (totally a word now) brilliance – at least outside of the Whedonverse – notwithstanding, other shows are still worth appreciating and examining in depth.

As Buffy Summers has inspired other characters (such as Chanterelle/Lily/Anne, in a terrific, largely off-screen character arc) to become heroes, so too has Buffy the Vampire Slayer inspired other TV shows to up their game in areas such as characterisation (of female characters particularly), structural balance, witty wordplay, and many others. Like Willow says, She’s the Slayer, and we’re, like… the Slayerettes.

Buffy’s influence spans not only vampire shows, but also work across a wide range of genres, even, surprisingly, influencing David Simon, who drew on the lack of non-diegetic music (that is, anything outside of what’s playing in the scene itself) from Joss Whedon’s acclaimed episode The Body when depicting West Baltimore with an authentic, gritty realism in The Wire.

This essay, however, will focus on The Guild and How I Met Your Mother as successors to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tonally, all three share an expectation-subverting sense of humour combined with emotional resonance, and have a freshness to their characters. Structurally, they balance often more playful stand-alone episodes with engrossing ongoing story and character arcs. Thematically, they all explore the central Whedonverse theme of found family. (Similar things could be said about other shows like Chuck, Merlin, and the rebooted Doctor Who, but for the purposes of simplicity, we’ll just look at two shows as Buffy successors in this essay.)

Buffy, The Guild, and How I Met Your Mother are all about dealing with failure, and how found family helps.

As Anya says, Please, continue the story of failure.

Giles’ speech to Buffy at the end of Lie to Me (B2.7) neatly, ironically expresses the complexities of life.

Buffy: Does it ever get easy?

Giles: You mean life?

Buffy: Yeah. Does it get easy?

Giles: What do you want me to say?

Buffy: Lie to me.

Giles: Yes. It’s terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.

Buffy: Liar.

Through banding together and facing the inevitable defeats of life, standing up, looking them in the eye, and saying, You’re evitable, the characters nevertheless have meaningful triumphs, not only in their own lives, but also in the impact they have on others. Buffy’s gravestone reads, She saved the world. A lot. And none of that would have happened had Buffy just given up the first time she died…

The ending of The Gift (B5.22) (with Buffy fulfilling the prophecy that Death is your gift.) subverts traditional notions of failure, with heroic self-sacrifice.

The underrated Buffy Season Six is perhaps the most quintessential ongoing depiction of failure in the Whedonverse; and, paradoxically, also the show’s funniest season; though this is not that surprising when you consider Joss’ ability to find humour in the unlikeliest of places.

Over the course of the show, many of the main characters have (what might be seen as significant) failures in the eyes of themselves and others – Buffy not winning Homecoming Queen, Xander not winning Class Clown, Giles not being invited to the prestigious annual Watchers’ Council conference – and yet they’re far from failures in the hearts of fans.

In How I Met Your Mother, Barney says, When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story. Similarly, another time, Barney awakens from a night spent drunkenly sleeping in a dumpster, and lurches out of the alley, declaring I’m awesome! (This is because Barney has no shame. Nonetheless, as we’ll see later on in this essay, he has a meaningful character arc despite himself.)

However, that quality, awesomeness, that Barney Stinson (and Doctor Horrible’s Captain Hammer, for that matter) claims simply to have, is actually better expressed by those characters who are aware of their failings, learn from them, accept help and support from their found family, and in turn help and support others, becoming heroes in the process.

Joss Whedon’s work depicts realistic heroes, who fail more often than they succeed, but they celebrate the small successes that they have, get back up from their failures, and keep fighting (C.f. Nathan Fillion’s foreword, and Amy Pascale’s introduction her excellent biography Joss Whedon: Geek King of the Universe). How I Met Your Mother, like Buffy, adeptly balances comedy with pathos.

The Guild has a similarly hilarious sense of humour, but represents failure more in terms of awkwardness (from which much of the humour is derived). At the end of each season, the various Guild members, with their respective dysfunctional lives, nonetheless team up in order to save their day, albeit in their own quirky way.

The characters are there for each other, through each other’s’ failures. (In the words of Walk Through the Fire from Once More, With Feeling: We’ll see it through / It’s what we’re always here to do / So we will walk through the fire…. This majestic ode to friendship and courage continues, One by one, they turn from me / What if my friends can’t face the cold? / (What can’t we face? / When we’re together?)

In contrast to traditional television, The Guild is a web series like Doctor Horrible. However, it’s still worthwhile to consider it, for several reasons. First off, the web series is a form of expression arguably capable of rivalling television in quality, with The Guild itself as a prime example.

Secondly, while the budgets, episodes, and seasons may tend to be smaller on the web, the form nevertheless allows for similar kinds of long-form storytelling. Thirdly, despite the growth in TV show fandom online in recent years, web series like The Guild are even better positioned to connect directly with the fans, a key element in the success of a show with cult appeal, like Buffy and its successors.

Of course, How I Met Your Mother could be considered a Whedonesque show because of its cast alone. A guy who looks like Warren hangs out with a guy who acts like Xander (who’s married to Willow), and they all hang out with Maria Hill and Doctor Horrible as a found family.

In fact, the wife of Craig Thomas – one of the creators of the show – is a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and her husband asked her if he could base the character of Lily Aldrin on her, which she agreed to on the condition that he cast Alyson Hannigan, aka Willow. And the rest is history.

How I Met Your Mother has a wonderful ensemble cast dynamic. This is yet another example of Whedon’s found family creating fictional found families for us all to enjoy. Joss has awesome mutual friends, and (even when Joss isn’t directly involved) they make awesome things together. In the words of The Lego Movie, Everything is Awesome!

In fact, both The Guild and How I Met Your Mother share cast members with the Whedonverse. The Guild is created by, written by, produced by, and stars Felicia Day (Vi from Buffy Season Seven, Mag from Dollhouse’s Epitaph One and Two, Penny from Doctor Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog). Guest stars include Simon Helberg (Moist), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Tom Lenk (Andrew), Eliza Dushku, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Nathan Fillion.

How I Met Your Mother stars Neil Patrick Harris (Doctor Horrible), Alyson Hannigan (Willow from Buffy), and Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill from The Avengers and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), as well as featuring guest-starring roles from the likes of Alexis Denisof (Wesley from Buffy and Angel), Tom Lenk (Andrew from Buffy), and Morena Baccarin (Inara from Firefly). (This is not a definitive list of credits; rather, it’s just to give you an idea of some of the Whedonverse casting connections.)

All three shows feature linear storytelling (notwithstanding How I Met’s playing with narrative conventions, particularly with respect to time) which allows for long story arcs so the audience can experience the lives of the characters along with them. The characters evolve and mature.

In fact, all three shows are in some way about growing up: Buffy is about dealing with life through adolescence and early adulthood, How I Met Your Mother is about navigating being in your twenties and early thirties, and The Guild is about becoming not just a gamer, but also a real-world-functioning person as well.

They’re also about how life can be hard, and full of angst and heartbreak and tragedy, but There’s nothing we can’t face if we’re together… / Except for bunnies. .

Thematically, How I Met Your Mother reflects Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s portrayal of found family. While the main character has an overarching quest (Ted’s self-imposed one to find the woman to settle down with and start a family, and Buffy’s destiny that was bestowed on her to be the Slayer, fighting evil and keeping people safe… as far as possible), their close group of friends are almost always there to support and encourage them through everything that life throws at them along the way. So while How I Met Your Mother may be about finding lasting love and Buffy the Vampire Slayer may be about fighting evil, they’re both ultimately about friendship and support.

Buffy is celebrated for its formal experimentation, with episodes such as Hush (silence), Once More, With Feeling (musical), and Tabula Rasa (the main characters losing their memories) being only a few examples of ideas that could have been dismissed as gimmicks, but are instead pulled off with such aplomb that they’re essential episodes of television.

How I Met Your Mother similarly toys with narrative conventions, especially in relation to time, and most often in a comedic fashion. This is one of the ways in which the intelligence of the writing (another aspect that all three shows have in common) comes across.

One thing that How I Met Your Mother does particularly well is variations on a theme, with the main cast getting to play alternate versions of themselves, whether through historical flashbacks (where Barney’s ancestor Barnabus Stinson is basically an old-timey version of him), actual flashbacks, imagined or misrepresented events via the unreliable narrator device, doppelgangers, or any number of other reasons. This allows them to wear ridiculous costumes, adopt silly accents, and just generally have a lot of fun. This is mirrored in Suave Xander, Vampire Willow, Liam/Angel/Angelus, Spike/William Pratt, Anya/Aud/Anyanka, and many Buffys, from Homecoming campaigner to Halloween character to Caveman Buffy to Buffybot to The First.

As How I Met Your Mother’s title itself suggests, essentially the entire series takes place in flashback. The show even incorporates time travel – at the end of The Window (5.10), plus there’s even an episode called The Time Travelers (8.20) – thus effectively bringing the show into the realm of science fiction, even if only briefly. It calls to mind Buffy’s genre-bending approach, which visits multiple genres on regular occasions, including science fiction.

The Guild has some music videos featuring the main cast, two of which are directed by one Jed Whedon, Joss’s brother and Dr. Horrible/Dollhouse/SHIELD collaborator. The first of these, Do You Want to Date My Avatar? is a commentary on real and online identity, featuring the cast in costume as their characters from the Game.

The second (directed by Sean Becker & Kim Evey), the Bollywood-style Game On, notwithstanding its flippant attitude to videogame addiction, is integrated into the narrative, furthering the story (as Zaboo persuades Codex to get back into the game) while featuring a very catchy tune.

The third (directed by Jed Whedon), I’m the One That’s Cool, is less successful, purporting to celebrate the victory of geek culture, but instead comes across as slightly mean, looking down on the bullies who used to think themselves above nerds. As the Scooby Gang offers the former villains Anya and Andrew (and arguably Cordelia) a safe place to thrive (albeit reluctantly at first), Buffy would have handled that one with more sensitivity.

There’s an entire season set at a convention (Season Five), emphasising the show’s satirical points about the nature of fandom – but as always from a place of love – and featuring several geek-famous cameos, including Dichen Lachman, Eliza Dushku. Nathan Fillion, Doug Jones, and Maurissa Tancharoen. There’s also another season set behind the scenes of the Game (Season Six), exploring the sometimes complex relationship between fans and creators. The storyteller concept is similarly deconstructed in Storyteller (of course) as well as Normal Again, Dollhouse, Doctor Horrible, and others.

The Guild as an entire show has a meta-textual, self-deprecating sense of humour, poking fun at various aspects of creativity and storytelling, as do both How I Met Your Mother and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The Guild, as with Buffy, concerns itself with the tension between the fantastical and the mundane. In both cases, the characters have epic adventures in a fantasy realm, which they have to juggle with the annoyingly, surprisingly difficult challenges posed by the real world. Within the world of The Guild, the fantasy realm is fictional, in the form of an online role-playing game, but forms a large part of each of its main characters’ lives. As such, the mundane real world is often seen as an unwanted intrusion, or a perplexing series of obstacles. Hence, the humour – and the character arcs – are derived from this tension.

Within the Buffy’s world, by contrast, the fantasy realm and the real world are – or at least take place in – the same world. (That is, Normal Again notwithstanding. For the purposes of this essay, we will assume that Buffy is not crazy and that the Slayerverse is her reality.) This allows the show to function so well both as fantasy fiction and as human drama; so the show soars both as a grand, stirring mythology and as an exquisite, poignant metaphor for life (and death, and everything in between).

The challenges the characters in Buffy face are woven between the fantastical and real worlds, with the former often functioning as a metaphor for the latter, helping to lend the events emotional resonance. Of course, some of the emotional resonance simply comes from the characters themselves, whether or not they understand the significance of the events they’re going through (c.f. Anya’s moving speech about death in The Body – "…and nobody will tell me why!")

The ending of the series finale of The Guild illustrates this perfectly, bringing things full circle with Codex’s (Felicia Day) vlog soliloquy (see? The Internet is Shakespeare now) that echoes and vindicates the very start of the series. In Codex’s own words: "So, it’s Friday night, no longer jobless, yay! Wow, I was such a mess when I started doing these, but, now, not so much, because I have The Guild. I guess helping heal them kinda helped heal me. We’re a team. We’re friends. And, yeah, I guess that’s all I needed."

Another interesting way to look at the relationship between different shows is to draw parallels between the characters. One could draw various character parallels between these three shows, but we’ll concentrate on Zaboo from The Guild, Barney from How I Met Your Mother, and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They’re all flawed, nuanced characters with terrific, complicated yet redemptive arcs. (As one might expect, spoilers for all three shows follow.)

In The Guild, Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh) starts off romantically obsessed with Codex, having serious boundary issues, which we then find out are at least partly explained by his very overbearing mother. He then goes on a quest to level up enough to earn Codex’s love. When she’s still not interested in him, he embarks on an ill-advised and unhealthy relationship with Riley, before he finally stands up to her and ends it. Zaboo then sets about attempting to be a proper friend to Codex, and, notwithstanding his usual awkwardness, mostly succeeds in being an actual supportive part of her life.

As Zaboo says in Supportiv’d (4.3): Look at how far we’ve come, huh? From star-crossed lovers to inseparable BFFs. Rollercoaster’d. To which Codex replies: I wouldn’t put it either of those ways… but thanks.

He turns to evil in Season Five as he sets up the Seat Savers Network, but must realise he’s been corrupted by power and let Stan Lee go free.

In the final season, he rejoins his Guildmates as they awkwardly triumph over the odds as a team. Thus, Zaboo ends the series a much more mature person, and a much better friend, than he started.

In How I Met Your Mother, Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) starts out as a brash, confident, sharp-suited ladies’ man, convinced of his own awesomeness, constantly accepting outlandish challenges and recounting stories of how he’s been (or discovered something that is) Legen… wait for it… dary! Legendary!

Barney’s cynical, manipulative attitude to women would be considered sociopathic if any such character really existed. However, both the writing and Neil Patrick Harris’ performance are deliberately far from realistic, regularly making fun of the character’s ludicrousness.

In Game Night, we find out Barney’s tragic backstory. He began as a scruffy, pony-tailed hippie, devoted to his steady girlfriend, and about to join the Peace Corps. Then an amoral, sharp-suited man swooped in and seduced her, breaking Barney’s heart. With his world in tatters, Barney rose besuited, in slow motion like Darth Vader, the Barney Stinson we know and… now pity. (It’s a Star Wars reference and emotional resonance, all in one. Legen… wait for it… dary!)

As the series progresses, Barney is tested, and hence grows, as, despite his commitment to an evil playboy lifestyle, he falls in love with Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders). (Yes, Doctor Horrible is in love with Marvel’s Maria Hill. Who’s also Lego Wonder Woman.) Thus he earns sympathy from viewers through his new emotional depth.

In Season Two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike (James Marsters) starts as an arrogant, fun-loving, yet vicious vampire, very much much in love