Biographie

Plans storylines far in advance for all his television series, allowing for remarkable long-term continuity.

Frequent use of nouns as adjectives, by adding the suffix "-y"

Features tough, strong female characters

Kills off characters who are among his most popular, to keep his audiences surprised.

Supernatural and science fiction themes

Was asked to revise the script for X-Men (2000) and reportedly decided the whole script needed to be totally rewritten. When he handed the studio this draft, they apparently threw it out; they only really wanted him to add a couple jokes here and there.

Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) episode "Hush" was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2000 for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series. "Hush" featured 28 minutes without dialogue, as a group of fairy-tale demons called the Gentlemen arrived in Sunnydale to steal voices, and then hearts (literally).

Has claimed that his script for the Firefly (2002) episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds" is his personal favorite thing he has ever written.

Is responsible for making Thanos the overall villain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Whedon's children have his wife's last name, not his.

[in April 2003, asked how he designed each unstoppable season villain to be unique and threatening] We got into a problem with that. We kept saying, "This monster can't be killed. It's like, "Well, have you used violence? It was never about the unstoppableness. It was never about the monster. It was about the emotion. The monster came from that. We didn't always make them unique. We tried as much as possible, but what was important was how they related to the characters and that's what made them unique.

But nowadays I'm really cranky about comics. Because most of them are just really, really poorly written soft-core. And I miss good old storytelling. And you know what else I miss? Super powers. Why is it now that everybody's like "I can reverse the polarity of your ions!" Like in one big flash everybody's Doctor Strange. I like the guys that can stick to walls and change into sand and stuff. I don't understand anything anymore. And all the girls are wearing nothing, and they all look like they have implants. Well, I sound like a very old man, and a cranky one, but it's true.

[on "NPR Fresh Air", 11/8/02] It's fascinating to me, the shows that I've always loved the best, Hill Street Blues (1981), Wiseguy (1987), Twin Peaks (1990), have always been shows that did have accumulative knowledge. One of the reasons why Aux frontières du réel (1993) started to leave me cold was that after five years, I just started yelling at Scully, "You're an idiot. It's a monster", and I couldn't take it anymore. I need people to grow, I need them to change, I need them to learn and explore, you know, and die and do all of the things that people do in real life. And so [on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997)] we're very, very strict about making sure that things track, that they're presented in the right way. Because, ultimately--and this is one of the things that I did find out after we had aired--the soap opera, the characters, the interaction between them is really what people respond to more than anything else. And although we came out of it as a sort of monster-of-the-week format, it was clear that the interaction was the thing that people were latching onto. So we were happy to sort of go with that and really play it up and really see where these characters were going to go.

[New York Post interview, 5/20/03, about filming the last day of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997)] "The last scene that I filmed [involved] a one-day player with no lines, which is great. I actually said, 'I want the last scene to be a one-day player with no lines, so I don't lose it."

[interview, The Vancouver Sun, 2/3/04] The times are chaotic. For me, I would hope that people look at [Angel (1999)] and gain strength by it. With everything that I do, I hope that they see people struggling to live decent, moral lives in a completely chaotic world. They see how hard it is, how often they fail, and how they get up and keep trying. That, to me, is the most important message I'm ever going to tell.