There are a lot of similarities between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Teen Wolf besides both shows have a group of teenagers trying to save their small Californian towns from the supernatural. It's also worth noting that Bianca Lawson appeared on both shows. She was the slayer Kendra on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Marin Morrell the balance seeking Emissary on Teen Wolf. In my opinion she was so underused on both shows but that's a post for another Fandom Friday.
For this post I wanted to point out how Cordelia Chase and Lydia Martin both dealt with losing their popularity due to their involvement with the supernatural. Both were the most popular girls at their schools and both decided to take the new girl (Buffy Summers and Allison Argent) under their wing so to speak. However this is where things differ because Buffy ended up rejecting Cordelia's "friendship" and influence in order to be friends with outcasts Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris making Buffy incur Cordelia's wrath and thus being labeled an outcast as well. It was later on when they all became friends to some degree.
Meanwhile, Allison had become friends with Lydia despite Allison's romantic interest in outcast Scott McCall. And tagging along was his equally outcast best friend Stiles Stilinski. Although Lydia looked down her nose at both Scott and Stiles, she didn't make a point of steering Allison away from them especially not when Scott started to become popular due to his new found skills (due to becoming a werewolf) on the lacrosse field. The thing is this was not some benevolent gesture on Lydia's part, no she understood popularity and how to wield it. Although she was the envy of all the students and was dating Jackson Whittemore, the captain of the lacrosse team, she knew that Scott's increasing popularity as a breakout lacrosse player would benefit her through association.
Cordelia also knew how to wield her popularity but she wanted everyone to bend to her will. If they didn't agree with her or see things her way they were cut from her inner circle. Which is why Buffy's defiance in choosing to hang out with Willow and Xander over her was so shocking because she was so used to people following her orders.
But once Lydia and Cordelia became involved (at first unwittingly) with the supernatural their popularity underwent a change. After Lydia survived her near death experience of being bitten by Alpha werewolf Peter Hale, she started to exhibit changes that were out of her control including seeing things that weren't there and her popularity quickly declined. Once her birthday party arrived, her popularity was pretty much non-existent because aside from Allison, Scott and Stiles hardly anyone showed up for the event which is usually highly sought after. It took some help from Scott and Stiles calling in a few friends but eventually people started to show up for the party.
After dealing with the lows of her declining popularity, Lydia once she immersed herself into the supernatural no longer clung to the mean girl Queen B facade she was presenting to the world. It gave her a chance to not only develop real friends through Allison, Scott and Stiles but it also made it easier for Lydia to showcase her real intelligence. Because she is extremely smart, like genius level smart but she had been pretending to be an airhead to be popular.
Meanwhile, Cordelia's association with Buffy and her friends gradually started to chip away at her Queen B status especially once she started dating Xander. Although she seemed okay with hanging with Buffy and her friends (or the Scoobies as they were called), her popularity meant a lot to her. Because unlike Lydia, being popular was all that Cordelia had. And when things ended badly between her and Xander, she no longer felt connected with Buffy and the Scoobies and the so-called friends she had when she was popular could not be counted on because they were too busy trying to take over her vacant throne.
You can see the influence that Buffy the Vampire Slayer had on shows like Teen Wolf because Lydia Martin seems like a late model version of Cordelia Chase. Teen Wolf took the Mean Girl prototype and improved it. Where Lydia got to be a more well-rounded character, it took a bit longer for that to happen for Cordelia during her three seasons on BTVS and another four seasons on Angel.
Even though they both lost their popularity, I think Lydia may have benefited the most from the loss, she gained real friends, embraced her intelligence and also found out that she was a Banshee all while they were fighting the supernatural. Meanwhile, Cordelia while in high school never seemed to develop close friendships. Although she worked with Buffy and the Scoobies to fight the supernatural, she never quite seemed like one of them and it wasn't until she moved to Los Angeles and started working with Angel that she finally got that bond of friendship. And without having to deal with maintaining her popularity, she was finally able to grow into a better person. And before she graduated from high school, Cordelia learned a valuable lesson because after her family lost all of their money (it had been seized by the government), she had to get a job to earn money. This turned out to be a good thing because it taught her perseverance which is a skill she was going to need later on once she moved to L.A..
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