Angel

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - It used to be that when the forces of evil needed staking, you could count on Buffy the Vampire Slayer to save the day, but it’s possible that she’s not that reliable when it comes to supporting her former friends. Despite some speculation that she might drop by The WB’s "Angel" this spring, Sarah Michelle Gellar may have already completed her run as Buffy. "I don’t know that we’ll see her on the show," Whedon tells Sci Fi Wire at the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention. "I don’t know that she’ll ever pick up a stake again. I don’t know. But that’s really something you’d have to ask her."

Last May’s finale of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on UPN left open the possibility of any number of possible crossovers throughout the Whedon universe, but so far this season, only James Marsters’ Spike has made his presence felt on "Angel." Meanwhile, "Scooby-Doo" thespian Gellar has made statements suggesting that she has no plans to visit former co-star David Boreanaz’s Los Angeles haunts any time soon.

Despite adding an average of 400,000 viewers over last season at this time, it’s likely that "Angel" will, once again, find itself on the renewal bubble when its fifth season ends. If the show’s run is nearly over, Whedon may need to remind Gellar that Boreanaz was nice enough to visit Sunnydale before that fictional town got swallowed up into the Earth. "If it became definitely the end of ’Angel,’ that might come up," Whedon says. "But since we don’t know, you know, we’re counting on anything. You know, ’Angel’ really is its own thing, and the cast... they have a lot to go through anyway. I would love to see her on the show. But we’re definitely prepared for anything."

New episodes of "Angel," including the show’s 100th, will begin in January 2004.