Fangs God It’s Friday: Kendra

In the TV series Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, the creators set a rule early on that there could only be one slayer, but it didn’t take long for them to change that rule. Buffy died and then came back to life, but her death opened the door for there to be two slayers at the same time. Lots of people know about the second slayer Faith (played by Eliza Dushku), but technically, Faith was really the “second second slayer.”

Before there was Faith, there was Kendra (played by Bianca Lawson). Kendra started out with a much more rigid approach to vampire slaying than Buffy. That made her a fun foil, but sadly, she turned into the “red shirt” equivalent of slayer. She only lasted three episodes and got killed by the vampire Drusilla. Personally, I always had a big problem with that death, as it showed the vampire use of hypnosis and made Kendra look rather lame as far as slayers go (and that didn’t ring true with the character’s origins). One of my favorite things about Kendra was her stake, which she nicknamed “Mr. Pointy.”

It’s interesting that both “second slayers” provided a foil for Buffy but resulted in such radically different characters. Kendra introduced us to a by-the-book slayer (literally, she had a slayer handbook she followed) and Faith showed how a slayer without any rules could become just as great a threat as any monster.

An interesting fact about the actress who played Kendra is that she was originally cast as the self-absorbed Cordelia Chase. Cordelia was eventually played by Charisma Carpenter, and you can’t help but wonder how things might have played out differently for Cordelia (a character who later became part of the main cast of Angel) if Lawson had been given the role.