is a
Fictional Character played by
Kristine Sutherland on the television show ''
Buffy The Vampire Slayer ''.
Joyce Summers appeared in the series premiere
Welcome To The Hellmouth as the mother of title character
Buffy . She appeared in 58 episodes, at least once per season -- one of the few outside the core cast to do so.
Joyce brought Buffy to
Sunnydale after Buffy burnt down the gym at her old school. She was at first a typical, somewhat overprotective parent. They were close though, and there were glimpses of a complicated and cool woman. On one occasion (''
School Hard '') she attacked
A Vampire with an axe to protect her daughter when everyone else fled the school. She owned her own art gallery in town, and brought some of the artwork home, but Buffy never actually attended any of her own mother's gallery shows.
Joyce was divorced from Buffy's father
Hank and rarely dated. She saw Ted, a
Robot played by
John Ritter (''
Ted ''). She flirted with
Xander Harris under a spell (''
Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered ''). She had sex with Buffy's
Watcher Rupert Giles twice on top of a police car under another spell (''
Band Candy ''). Though they had been and remained friends, after this incident they were both too embarrassed to take matters further.
Joyce did not take kindly to Buffy's adventures at first. She and Hank had put Buffy in a mental institution in Los Angeles for a couple of weeks when her daughter first revealed her calling. Buffy decided no one would believe her, and got out by keeping her tongue. The first two seasons saw this conflict intensify, reaching the breaking point when Buffy walked out the door after staking a vampire in front of her and Spike. They reconciled after a tough summer and Joyce learned to accept Buffy's extracurricular activities. She suffered a temporary relapse under a demon's spell, when she led other adults in an attempt to burn Buffy,
Willow Rosenberg and
Amy Madison at the stake (''
Gingerbread '').
Joyce Summers found a new daughter in
Dawn at the end of the season five opener. She became sick (''
Out Of My Mind '') with what proved to be a benign brain tumor; this occasionally allowed her, like a number of others suffering from mental illnesses, to sense something of Dawn's anomalous nature. She improved after a successful surgery, but died soon afterward of a brain aneurysm caused by the disease. The following episode (
The Body ) detailed the aftermath of her death, featuring only
Diegetic Music .
Kristine Sutherland appeared in ''Buffy'' three times after Joyce's death: in an alternate reality where Buffy remained a mental patient (''
Normal Again ''); as a manifestation of the
First Evil , visiting Dawn in the guise of Joyce's ghost (''
Conversations With Dead People ''); and in Buffy's dream (''
Bring On The Night '').
