Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran for seven successful seasons and featured some great up-and-coming actors who have gone on to have varied and productive careers. It spawned the successful spin-off series, Angel, and there's also a successful comic book series that continues to give fans their Buffy-verse fix.
It has also been announced that there will be an audio series titled, Slayers: A Buffy-verse Story, which will reunite many of the original cast including James Marsters, Charisma Carpenter, and Anthony Head. In the seven-season run of the show, many characters perished in different ways, whether it was from the sharp bite of a vicious vampire or a natural death. Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured some truly sad deaths, but some left a greater impact than others.
10 Jesse McNally
Jesse never got the opportunity to become a major player in the Buffy-verse as he was killed in the pilot. The death was sad because he was one of Xander's friends.
It was the start of many deaths the group would deal with over the course of the show. To make matters worse, Jesse didn't just die; he was turned into a creepy vampire and then killed all over again.
9 Jonathan Levinson
Jonathan was a character who turned up throughout the show but gained more prominence in later seasons. All he wanted to do was fit in and be one of the gang, Sadly, he never truly got his wish.
He was stabbed to death by the First in an attempt to open the Seal of Danzalthar. He was on a quest for redemption but paid the ultimate price.
8 Kendra Young
The death of a slayer is never an easy thing to take, and despite the audience experiencing Buffy dying twice and being revived, there was one slayer who never got to come back, and that was Kendra Young in the second season.
Her appearance comes about because of Buffy's short-lived death at the end of season one. With a dark power set to rise in Sunnydale, the world needs a slayer. Buffy has already risen, but Kendra already had instructions to turn up to help. She joins the gang but sadly dies when Drusilla slashes her throat. It would've been interesting to see what more could've been done with Kendra, but it wasn't to be.
7 Jenny Calendar
The first major death on the show way back in the second season was a tough one to take. Yes, Jenny Calendar was a flawed character, but Giles loved her, and, in turn, the audience loved her, too.
Jenny was getting very close to translating the spell to return Angel's soul to him. But more importantly, she was just about to have a romantic endeavor with Giles. Nobody can forget the devastation felt by Giles as he turned up to find her dead at the hands of Angelus. He didn't even consider her worthy of a feed and just snapped her neck instead.
6 Anya Jenkins
Anya started out as a vengeance demon but ended up a fully-fledged member of the Scooby gang. She hated humans until she fell in love with Xander.
Her death was one of the strangest and saddest in the show, as she gets a sword plunged into her back while fighting the Harbingers. She died a hero, but it was an unnecessary death that could've been avoided.
5 Angel
Angel didn't stay dead for long and ended up getting his own show that ran for five seasons. Having said that, the audience didn't know that would be the case at the time when Buffy stabbed him with a sword and sent him to hell.
It ranks as one of the most dramatic break-ups in history as Buffy tells him she loves him, kisses him, and then does what she has to do to save the world, changing the vampire mythos along the way.
4 Spike
Spike had one of the best character arcs in the whole show, going from the villainous vampire who rocks up in Sunnydale to cause havoc to being the ultimate hero at the end of the show. He went out in the last ever episode of Buffy, and despite his delight in doing so, it was a sad moment for the viewers who had followed him through thick and thin as he broke all the rules.
There was good news for fans of the Buffy-verse when he was resurrected for the fifth season of Angel, providing comic relief and acting as a constant thorn in Angel's side. However, this joy was short-lived when Angel was canceled after Spike's first season as a regular.
3 Tara Maclay
Tara was an interesting character, as she spent the majority of her time in the show on the periphery. She was a guest star for most of her appearances but was eventually given a title credit, only to be killed off in that same episode. Brutal.
Tara was hit by a stray bullet meant for Buffy, which was fired by Warren Mears. It had devastating consequences for the storyline, as it was the catalyst for Willow turning evil and essentially becoming the big bad later on.
2 Buffy Summers
Here's another trick death, like Angel's a few seasons earlier, that sees Buffy die in the show. The fifth season saw the introduction of one of the most memorable villains in the whole show, Glory. It felt like Buffy had finally met her match, and, to an extent, she did.
The gang defeats Glory, but it comes at the expense of the hero of the show. Buffy jumped off a tower to close the deadly portal, dying to save the world. Of course, it was one of the most significant retcons when the show returned for a sixth season, but at the time, fans weren't sure if the show would return, so it felt like the end to many. Some fans would argue that this would've been a good way to conclude the show.
1 Joyce Summers
The saddest death of all in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was ironically not at the hands of a vampire or another vicious creature trying to take over the world. It was the death of Buffy's mother, Joyce. Just when it seemed like Joyce's cancer had gone, she died suddenly of a brain aneurism, which left the Scooby gang reeling.
No monster or vampire could ever have the same devastating effect on Buffy that finding her mum dead on the couch did. The episode was aptly titled "The Body," and it's the most realistic and tragic episode the show has ever produced.