Sequels work best when they understand exactly what made the original work and run with it. And 2026's Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is doing exactly that, doubling down on the same brutality that made 2019's Ready or Not such a hit in the first place. It's still gleefully violent and very aware of how ridiculous its premise is. That's why the film's mini Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) reference works so well.
In the middle of one particularly messy fight, Sarah Michelle Gellar's Ursula Danforth slams a long metal spike (that looks a lot like a stake) straight into Grace MacCaullay's (Samara Weaving) shoulder. It's quick, brutal, and just stylized enough to feel familiar. Not in a "look what we did there" kind of way, but in a more subtly effective way.
To some, it's just another brutal scene in a chaotic movie. But once you connect the dots, it's hard to unsee. The fight between the characters, the placement, even the exaggerated impact of the metal spike, all echo the kind of vampire staking that defined Gellar's legacy as Buffy Summers in the 1997 supernatural horror series (which can be found on Prime Video and Hulu).
Sarah Michelle Gellar Still Owns Buffy
Part of why that moment feels so epic is because Gellar has never really tried to separate herself from Buffy Summers. There's no awkward distancing. No sense that it's something she needed to move past or reframe. If anything, she's always treated Buffy with the exact kind of reverence the character deserves because it was the role that defined her career.
But for some reason, that isn't always how this goes. A lot of actors hit big with one franchise and then spend the next decade trying to downplay it. Robert Pattinson is the obvious comparison, mostly because of how often his relationship with Twilight (2008) has been framed as something he had desperately tried to outgrow.
There are plenty of interviews where Pattinson joked about the film series or dismissed parts of it. And even if some of that is exaggerated, the tone is pretty clear. It's always frustrating when actors do that because those roles matter. They're the reason audiences show up in the first place. Pretending otherwise doesn't really add anything. It just makes people look at you differently.
Gellar's approach is the exact opposite of that. To celebrate the show's 20th anniversary, the actress took to Instagram to share her love for the series, describing Buffy as "one of the greatest female characters ever created." And this is also why people are still interested in anything connected to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer story after all these years.
The Scrapped 'Buffy' Revival
For a while, Buffy Summers was ready to make a comeback in the sequel series Buffy: New Sunnydale. The show was supposed to center on a new slayer played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong. But after filming the pilot, Hulu decided to scrap the entire series. While the studio has not released an official statement, The Hollywood Reporter states that executives were not happy with the quality of the pilot script.
However, behind-the-scenes politics might have had a hand in the show's axing. According to Gellar, an unnamed executive constantly let everyone know that he wasn't a fan of the original series. "That's very hard when you're taking a property that is as beloved as Buffy, not just to the world, but to me and [director Chloé Zaho]," she said. "So that tells you the uphill battle that we had been fighting."
Luckily, Ready or Not 2 allows Gellar to have a little fun with her Buffy legacy. Her character, Ursula Danforth, is not a hero in this story. Instead, she spends the movie hunting Grace and her sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton). But she never turns Ursula into a cartoonish villain, which somehow makes everything around her feel even more unhinged.
That's kind of been the appeal of Ready or Not from the start. It takes the concept of a deadly game of hide-and-seek and just commits to it completely. There's no attempt to explain it away. The movie and the sequel just keep letting things get more chaotic with every scene. If you're the kind of viewer who enjoys horror that doesn't take itself too seriously, these movies are very easy to get into.
