Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Every Character Ranked Worst To Best

If you set up a competition to figure out who was TV's best on-screen mother, chances are the answer would come easily and without hesitation: Joyce Summers.

Forced to relocate to Sunnydale after Buffy's earlier school expulsion, Joyce was a single parent who always put her daughter first, even before the end of season two came along and she learned the truth about Buffy's pre-destined role as the Slayer.

At first distraught, Joyce soon learned to accept her daughter's place in the world and continued to put her first in everything she did. On top of that, the warmth and likeability Kristine Sutherland brought to the role made her even more endearing.

Considering everything she went through, Joyce was one of the key emotional centres of the series, and her death in the middle of the fifth season remains one of the most harrowing TV deaths of all time. She may not have been that integral to the mainline stories of the show, but things surely wouldn't have felt right with her gone.