15 Most Important Buffy The Vampire Slayer Episodes

Buffy the Vampire Slayer went through a lot of changes during its seven season run. With an incredible amount of plot twists and excellent character development, looking back it's clear the show was always introducing new ways to throw its audiences off and create a strong, multi-layered narrative.

The following 15 episodes are not necessarily the show's best (though many of them are), but they're certainly the most invaluable of the bunch. Whether introducing viewers to characters who would soon become fan favourites, throwing up a mean twist or killing off a major character with little to no warning, all of these episodes helped shape the very fabric of Buffy and its overarching stories.

For this list, we're going to be focussed on the show's most pivotal episodes, starting with its first season and ending with its last, charting the show's most iconic moments and the developments that helped shape the series and its spin-off, Angel.

With that in mind, here are the 15 most important, game-changing episodes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Major spoilers follow.

Looking back, Welcome to the Hellmouth really is a miracle of an episode. Not only is it the show's first episode, introducing fans to Buffy, Xander, Willow, Cordelia and Giles, but it also serves as a genius piece of storytelling, laying out the mythology that would characterise the rest of the show's run and making the threat of Buffy's world instantly formidable.

From the very first scene, in which archetypal high school victim Darla is revealed to be a vampire, Joss Whedon made it clear that the show would not only be scary, but progressive and unique. Welcome to the Hellmouth also introduced audiences to Jesse, who would be sired by the episode's end and killed by his best friend Xander in The Harvest.

From Buffy being introduced to her new Watcher to Xander and Willow finding out about vampires, Welcome to the Hellmouth is a must-watch that perfectly sets up the rest of the show.