(Picture donated by 'Nessa)
Joyce is Buffy's mother and the only person within the group of recurring characters that does not know about Buffy's secret. (But then again what parent DOES know about what their kids get up to?)
She met her future husband (and Buffy's dad) at her high school prom. She did not have a date, but she went anyway. There she met Hank (who did have a date) and they just 'clicked' and got married. However, married life really was not for them and by the time Buffy go to high school their fighting and arguing had got so bad that they divorced. Since then, they seem to be getting on better.
After Buffy burnt her school gym down, Joyce and her daughter moved to Sunnydale, so Buffy could go to the only good school that would take her. Joyce opened up an art gallery and spends a lot of her time buying different pieces for it. This leaves Buffy by herself, able to go about her Slaying without her mother knowing.
Joyce thought that things were settling down after moving to Sunnydale. The gallery started to do well and she met a lovely man called Ted, who she started to see. However, things were not all as they seemed as Ted threatened to slap Buffy and tried to kidnap Joyce. He's on the 'scrapheap' now though.
She does try to talk to her daughter, but Buffy's elusiveness does annoy her sometimes; even so, she did buy Buffy a beautiful white gown for the prom.
Joyce went through the second year in Sunnydale still unaware of Buffy's Vampire Slaying destiny. It wasn't until Kendra was killed and Buffy on the run that she discovered her daughter's secret. Shocked that her daughter was willing to go to her death, she told her not to leave the house, or if she did not to come back again. Buffy walked out to go save the world.
Joyce spent the summer wondering where her daughter had gone and worrying whether she was okay or not. She blamed Giles for filling her head full of Vampires and demons, not really understanding that it was her daughter's destiny.
Joyce wasn't sure how to treat Buffy when she returned from her summer away. She found it very hard to talk to her daughter, and told her friend that she wondered whether it was a good thing that Buffy came back at all. No wonder Buffy wanted to run away again.
Joyce and Giles had an uncomfortable relationship to begin with; Joyce was a little bit jealous at how much closer her daughter was to him than to her own mother. There relationship got that little bit more twisted when they succumed to the effects of Ethan's candy and regressed to teenagers again, Giles stole her a top and they ended up having sex on the bonnet of a police car twice before the effects wore off. They stayed away from each other for a while after that and Buffy was none the wiseer until she got telepathic powers.
One night Joyce decided to join her daughter on patrol, unfortunately she found the bodies of two young children, the apparent victims pf a satanic ritual. Joyce founded Mother's Oppose the Occult (MOO) and started a campagin to stop kids getting into witchcraft. She helped to confiscate a pile of Giles' books, got lockers searched for magical items and told Buffy to stay away from that bad influence Willow. Joyce was under the spell of a demon that was embodied in the two children (a Hensel and Gretel effect) who was controlling them to get rid of any threats to its power, namely the Slayer and the two most powerful teenagers in Sunnydale, Willow and Amy.
Once free from the spell, Joyce's mind turned to other things, focusing on Buffy getting into a good university and away from the Hellmouth. However, she can't get rid of her daughter that easily and in the autumn Buffy started at UC Sunnydale.
However, Joyce didn't sit around the house once Buffy went, and when Buffy reurns home she finds her room has been turned into a storage area. Joyce also takes out Buffy's Little Red Riding Hood costume for Halloween. She tells her daughter about how lonely she was when they first moved to Sunnydale and how it took her a long time to make any friends, but he hurries on explaining that she's happy.
When Faith arrives, Joyce is taken hostage. the rogue Slayer taunts her about her absent daughter, just before Buffy smashing in through the bedroom window with a casual "Hi Mom", Joyce replies "Hi honey" just as casually.
Joyce features in two end of season dreams, in Xander's she tries to seduce him, Xander gets scared. And in Buffy's she's living in the wall of Uni, making lemonade and playing Mah Jong. A mouse is tickling her knee. Buffy doesn't want her mother living in a wall and offers to knock it down so she can get out, before getting distracted and wandering off, leaving Joyce behind.
At the start of season five, Joyce has her hands full with her younger daughter, who's at that difficult age, and a number of strange, painful headaches. She brushes them off, until one morning she looks at Dawn strangely and asks "Who are you?" before pasing out. it turns out that Joyce has a shadow on her brain and has to go into hospital for more tests. She faces it stoically, making sure that her daughters are okay.
it turns out that the shadow is actually a tumor and Joyce needs to be operated on, especially as it is pushing against her skull and causing her to act funny. Her deteriorating mental health, makes her a perfect candiate for a demon which kills mentally damaged people. Luckily she is saved by her two daughters and the operation goes ahead successfully.
She knows now though, that Dawn isn't her real daughter and Buffy tells her about the Key. Joyce tells Buffy that if anythign should happen to her to keep Dawn safe.
As Joyce recovers she is taken out on a date by a man called Brian, a friend of hers from the gallery. She has a fantastic time and everything seems to be looking up. He even sends her a huge bunch of flowers. he's a real gent.
Buffy comes home from Uni one sunny, nice, afternoon and finds her mother lying on the sofa. She isn't breathing. she frantically calls the paramedics and is told to do mouth-to-mouth over the phone, but it's too late. Joyce had a suspected anuryseum. A possible side-effect of the surgery. it was possible she didn't even even what was happening. The doctors think she died peacefully.
RIP Joyce Summers