Netflix's 'Warrior Nun' Is The Closest We'll Get To A 'Buffy' Sequel

I'm not sure about you, but it's been way too long since I've gotten to curl up on the couch and watch 40 straight minutes of snarky highschool seniors slay some supernatural ass as an extended metaphor for teenage hormones. But it might finally be time for Buffy: The Vampire Slayer fans to get back in the habit, thanks to Netflix' Warrior Nun.

Warrior Nun, as the time heavily implies, features a 19-year old atheist who's brought back from the dead when she's implanted with an actual angelic halo and is forced to spearhead an ancient Christian order of combative Catholics fighting the forces of hell on Earth. And despite preferring its wooden sticks unsharpened and in a cross, Warrior Nun's demon-slaying, fast quipping, slightly emo overtones sure do tick a lot of Buffy boxes. An unlikely (resurrected) teenage girl becoming the Chosen One of an ancient order?

That Chosen One having to balance her new life as a magic killing machine while still having to contend with enough teen drama to fill a Stephenie Meyer novel?

A group of sardonic besties, including a strange bookworm who can deliver the occult exposition?

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And most important of all: A soft-accented, bespectacled mentor that will spark May-December slash fiction for decades to come?

It might not come as a surprise, then, to find out that Warrior Nun has its roots in the same formative Gen X era as Joss Whedon's works, it being a loose adaptation of the 1994 American anime Warrior Nun: Areala. And by loose, I'm referring both to the comic having a different protagonist, storyline and, most notably, aesthetic -- with comic artist and nipple enthusiast Ben Dunn choosing to give his women of the cloth no more to wear than a habit and a thong.

Since young Gen Z women may not relate to a badass warrior women show looking like the doodles of a sweaty Catholic schoolboy, showrunner Simon Barry made a conscious choice to update the badass girl aesthetic from its chainmail bikini origins. "It's 2019 and women cannot be represented this way," Barry said in an interview with Filmand, adding: "To me, the best way of representing (them) is to find their power in this society and to empower them in the largest patriarchal system that we know." Which, again, sounds pleasantly like the themes and tone from everyone's favorite fang-foiling Scooby gang.

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Top Image: Netflix, 20th Television