- J. O. Y. F. F. A -

We're fairly sure you wouldn't be here if you didn't know who Joyce is, but if you've stumbled across us by some freak accident, Joyce Summers is a character on the TV series Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, specifically the title character's long-suffering mother. She is played by Kristine Sutherland.

When did she last appear?

Joyce was last seen in episode 10 of season 7, Bring on the Night, appearing to Buffy in her dreams and warning her that there is evil in everyone. As with the her other season 7 appearance (in Conversations With Dead People) it was unclear if it was really Joyce's spirit, or a more sinister force using Joyce as a mask. Either way, it was creepy. Will we ever discover her true nature? Actually, yes.

In total, Joyce appeared in 59 fabulous episodes of Buffy, which made her by far the most omnipresent of those characters who did not appeared in the credits. In fact Joyce ranks eighth in the overall chart of character appearances (after Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, Spike, Anya and Dawn), even ahead of Riley (33 episodes), Oz (39), Angel and Cordelia (both 56). Kristine Sutherland herself has only starred in 58 episodes, unless she actually was the zombie!Joyce in Forever (and it wasn't Joss in a big wig).

In addition, she's the only character other than the four original Scoobies who appeared in all seven seasons of the show.

Will we ever see her again?

With both Buffy and Angel having come to an end, the door on Joyce's return is probably shut for good - at least, as a live-action character. As far as we here at HQ are aware there is an animated spin-off in the works and Joyce is pencilled in as a character, although it's not clear whether or not she'll be voiced by Kristine.

And who knows, the next show in the franchise could well involve Joyce's ghost helping Giles solve crime in a Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) manner, or something like that - you really never know what Mutant Enemy will come up with next. Even if not, she still managed to reappear four times after her initial death so we've been very lucky.

How old is (was) Joyce?

It was a mystery for 99 tortuous episodes, but we finally discovered that Joyce was born in 1958 in Weight of the World making her 38 or 39 when she arrived in Sunnydale (depending on her exact birthdate) and a tragically young 42 or 43 at the time of her death. This means she was 22 or 23 when she spawned Buffy.

She either managed or owned an art gallery in Sunnydale. Over the years it has displayed African tribal art, Greek amphorae and cameo portraits. We have never seen it, and it will probably be forever shrouded in mystery.

Technically, Buffy first told Joyce she was the Slayer in season 1's The Witch, but Joyce thought Buffy was babbling and forgot about it. However, in Becoming Part II Buffy was forced to dust a vampire in front of her mother, and this kind of gave it away. Joyce didn't take the news that well, but it did at least mean she had to believe.

Joyce's body was discovered by Buffy at the very end of I Was Made to Love You, cliffhanger style, but we didn't know for certain that she was dead until The Body, a truly magnificent episode that dealt entirely with this event.

Much as it pains us to say so, yes. Although anything on Buffy was possible, Buffy never did step out of the shower to discover that everything since Buffy vs Dracula was all a dream. Though that would have been very funny.

Considering the show's supernatural theme, Joyce's death was ironically just natural. She was killed by an aneurysm, a complication of her earlier neurosurgery. Put another way, Joyce suffered a fatal brain haemorrhage caused by the bursting of an artery in her brain. The artery had almost certainly been weakened during the earlier surgery to treat her brain tumour.

Brian was in Joyce's words, "a nice normal guy … from a publishing house." He apparently met Joyce in the gallery in which she works just before her death. They went on one date, he sent her flowers, then she died. The events were not related. Joss has apparently gone on record as saying that Brian was just simply a plot device and we won't ever meet him onscreen.

Joyce's only appearance in season six, Normal Again, somewhat upset the apple cart by suggesting that everything we've seen is merely the delusions of an insane Buffy. In this alternate reality Buffy is confined to an asylum and Joyce is alive - and still married to Hank no less. We're left at the end of the episode to wonder which we should believe - and the Dictators have no answers. However, Marti Noxon has said that there were never any plans to do any other asylum episodes, and that it should be treated as a "what if?" like The Wish.

Where can I write to Kristine Sutherland?

or alternatively you could write straight to 20th Century Fox:

Kristine Sutherland
c/o Buffy the Vampire Slayer
20th Century Fox Productions
10201 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035
USA

The Dictators have no other way of contacting Kristine, and even if we did we'd probably be too busy being her willing and devoted personal slaves to have any time to pass on any correspondence from you.