Joyce Summers is a fictional character in the action-horror television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003). Played by Kristine Sutherland, Joyce is the mother of the main character, Buffy Summers, and appears in 58 of the 144 episodes, the show's most recurring character and only one to appear in every season. The premise of the series is that Buffy is the latest Slayer, a young woman endowed by mystical forces with superhuman powers to fight and defeat vampires, demons, and other evil forces in the fictional town of Sunnydale. Like every Slayer before her, she was chosen and informed of her destiny when she was 15 years old. Her mother is unaware of her daughter's powers and responsibilities until Buffy is forced to tell her at the end of the second season of the television series. Although Joyce is shocked at this revelation, she recovers quickly and remains a source of stability for Buffy and Buffy's small circle of friends who assist her, dubbed the Scooby Gang. Eventually Joyce is able to take Buffy's dangerous demon-fighting in stride and even become proud and respectful of her daughter's abilities. Her natural death from an illness in the fifth season forces Buffy to face becoming an adult. Creation and casting The television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (often simplified as Buffy) was created by Joss Whedon, who originally used the concept of a teenage girl who is given superhuman powers to fight evil, in a screenplay that became a film in 1992. Unhappy with the outcome of the film, Whedon created the series, which picks up shortly after the events of the film and is loosely based on its ending. At the end of the film, which was set in Los Angeles, Buffy fights and defeats a gang of vampires in her school's gymnasium. At the start of the television series Buffy and her mother Joyce, who has divorced Buffy's father, move to a new town named Sunnydale where Buffy is to attend Sunnydale High School, which, unknown to her, is situated on a portal to hell, called a Hellmouth. The series explains that she has relocated from Los Angeles after burning down the gymnasium, marking her as a trouble-making student and a worrisome daughter. The series regularly employs the elements of dark fantasy and horror to represent the real problems regularly encountered by adolescents, with many situations also reflecting adult fears