Before heading on a date, Buffy Summers informed the nervous Giles to contact her in the event the world ends.

“If the apocalypse comes, beep me,” she said.

Nearly 30 years later, Sarah Michelle Gellar, who portrayed Summers, posted a photo of this quote on Instagram with the announcement of a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” sequel series receiving a pilot order from Hulu.

Gellar and Gail Berman will executive produce with Nora Zuckerman and Oscar winner Chloé Zhao as writers, showrunners and executive producers, too. Other executive producers include Suite B, owned by former “Buffy” director Fran Kuzui, and Sandollar, owned by Dolly Parton.

Not much is known about the sequel series’ plot besides a new slayer will take up the mantle, and Summers will return as a recurring character.

At the time of “Buffy’s” release, the show was applauded for its strides in diversity, including being the first show to air a lesbian kiss on primetime TV, said media and journalism assistant professor Karisa Butler-Wall. 

“Even just developing Willow [Rosenberg] and Tara [Mclay] as characters, not just fully tokenizing,” she said. “I think, again, in that era queer representation was pretty dismal, so I think ‘Buffy’ was really ahead of its time.” 

However, “Buffy” also fueled the later phrase “bury your gays” with the death of Mclay. The “bury your gays” trope involves a TV show or movie killing off a queer character to further the plot. In “Buffy’s” case, Mclay’s death sent Rosenberg on a pathway to revenge.

When viewed through a 21st century lens, the show lacks in other areas of diversity, like race.

“The way that they deal with race is pretty clumsy at best,” Butler-Wall said. “I would hope that the reboot will provide an opportunity to engage a little bit meaningfully and less problematically.”

The sequel series inclusion of diversity seems promising with Zhao as director, and the series alienating itself from “Buffy” creator Joss Whedon, who in recent years has been the subject of harassment claims from former “Buffy” actors.

“I think it offers a new chance for this story to be told in a new way,” Butler-Wall said. “I think some of the limitations of the time period, of [Whedon] and the cast, they’re going to have more to work with now”

Summers is a complex character because she has the opportunity to embrace femininity and masculinity allowing for women to have greater space in the horror genre, she said. 

“[Summers], herself, is an interesting character because in some way she’s this all-American teen cheerleader,” Butler-Wall said. “Then in some ways she has the instincts of a killer, these sort of traits that we don’t associate with femininity.”

With this in mind, queer people and individuals of color can benefit from seeing characters like them on screen in a flushed out role.

“I think the images we engage with have power, so I think it would be really meaningful if they cast somebody who was not blonde,” Butler-Wall said.

To increase on-screen representation, people should look to increasing the diversity in the writer’s room and the creative team first, she said.

“There’s been such a tokenized approach, I think that trying to move past and trying to actually write rich characters and have interesting personalities,” Butler-Wall said. “They’re not just there to add a little bit of color to this whitewashed script.”

Those behind and in front of the camera have begun to look more diverse as Hollywood begins to move away from the one-dimensional tropes of women in slasher films to a new slayer preparing to pierce Hollywood’s heart.

“We’re used to, in cinema, the woman being the object of desire, and when different things are happening it can be a little more interesting,” Butler-Wall said.

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