Introduction
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Other Bodies | Episodes | Dramatis Personae
Ramblings | Links | Fanfic
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Oh, come on! This is Sunnydale! How bad an evil can there be here?
—Welcome to the Hellmouth
In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.
The current Slayer is Buffy Summers. A southern California student. She just wanted to have a normal life: be a cheerleader; go on dates; do normal kid stuff. But fate had something else in mind for her.
Buffy is an atypical Slayer. Usually the Watchers find the Slayer while she is still a young girl, and train her from childhood to prepare her for her future role. For some unexplained reason this didn’t happen with Buffy, and she grew up as a normal southern California kid, and didn’t learn anything about her destiny until she was fifteen years old.
Buffy first learns that she is The Slayer while attending Hemery High School in Los Angeles. What exactly happened at Hemery we don’t know, but it ended with the school gym being burnt down, and Buffy being expelled from school. Shortly after this happens, her parents divorce, and Buffy and her mother move to Sunnydale. (There is a temptation to pay too much attention to the movie Buffy The Vampire Slayer but there are too many differences between it and the TV series to use it as a guide to Buffy’s first vampire slaying adventure.)
When she first arrives in Sunnydale Buffy hopes that her career as a Vampire Slayer is over. She doesn’t know that her new school is built on top of the Hellmouth. She quickly learns differently though when she meets her new Watcher, Rupert Giles, and finds her first vampire victim, who was stuffed into Aura’s locker.
A lot has happened to Buffy since then. She has died (twice.) She has fallen in love with a vampire with a soul, and had to send him to Hell to save the world. She has gained a younger sister who is really a mystical Key with the power to destroy the universe. She has grown from a teenager to a young lady in her twenties, having to care for a younger sister without the aid of her parents.
The Slayer doesn’t do her job entirely on her own. Every Slayer has a Watcher. It is the Watcher’s job to train and support the Slayer.
I appreciate your thoughts on the matter, in fact I… well, I encourage you to always challenge me when you feel it’s appropriate. You should never be cowed by authority. Except, of course, in this instance, when I am clearly right and you are clearly wrong.
—I Only Have Eyes For You
Buffy’s Watcher is Rupert Giles, the Oxford educated high school librarian.
Giles appears to be a very stuffy, and boring person. His entire wardrobe seems to be tweed, but—like many people in Sunnydale—there is much more to him than meets the eye, and he has some dark secrets in his past.
Giles has known that he was to become a Watcher for most of his life. His father and his grandmother were both Watchers before him.
The Watcher’s Council relieves Giles of his duties in the third season episode Helpless. They feel that he has become too attached to the Slayer to do his job properly. They send Wesley Wyndam-Pryce to Sunnydale to replace him.
With the loss of his official position as Buffy’s Watcher, and the destruction of Sunnydale Highschool during Buffy’s graduation ceremony Giles spends some time at loose ends. (He didn’t seem to have any financial difficulties though. He could still afford to buy himself a BMW (albeit a used one) after Spike wrecked his Citroen.) After a year of unemployment he takes over ownership of Sunnydale’s magic shop (following the death of the third owner, that we know of.) Buffy also asks him to resume his duties as her Watcher. (She sent Wesley and the rest of the Council packing just before they blew up the High School.) She even manages to force the council to put him back on their payroll (with retroactive pay to the day they fired him.)
After Buffy dies (again) and then is brought back to life Giles decides that she has outgrown her need for him, and that he is actually holding her back from reaching her full potential by staying around, so he moves back to England.
Traditionally, Slayers have worked in secret, with only their Watchers knowing who they are, and what they do. Buffy doesn’t do things the traditional way. She has a support group of people who know that she is the Slayer, and who sometimes help her with her duties. These people are the Slayerettes (so named by Willow in the episode The Witch). The charter members of the Slayerettes are Willow and Xander. Others have been added as the story progresses.
I’m probably the only girl in school who has the coroner’s office bookmarked as a favourite place.
—Some Assembly Required
Willow is Buffy’s best friend (female), and the smartest kid in school. Willow is shy, and socially awkward, more comfortable dealing with a computer than with most people, but drop her into a crisis, and she blossoms.
In many ways she is the leader of the Slayerettes. She is the one who keeps her head in a crisis, and thinks her way out of it. More than once we have seen her take charge, and lay down the law with the other Slayerettes. She has even bawled out Giles and Angel for their treatment of Buffy.
Willow and Xander have been best friends forever, but Willow wants more out of their relationship. She wants Xander to notice that she is a girl. This finally happens in the third season, but not until both Willow and Xander have entered into relationships with Oz and Cordelia. Willow and Xander start having illicit smoochies on the side, until Oz and Cordy catch them at it.
Willow starts to study magic. Her abilities there really begin to take off after she enters college, and meets fellow magic user Tara Maclay. With the departure of Oz, on a quest to find a way to control his inner wolf, Willow enters into a lesbian relationship with Tara, and together they really develop their powers.
Willow’s use of magic starts to become a problem in season six. She uses it irresponsibly, and resorts to magic to try to solve all her problems. Tara and Giles start to become very worried about her. Things come to a head after Willow starts using magic to make Tara forget about their arguments about Willow’s use of magic. When Tara figures out what’s happening, she leaves Willow.
Willow goes on a magical bender, with the newly de-ratted Amy Madison. Amy introduces Willow to a warlock named Rack, who casts addictive spells on witches, and Willow falls under his thrall. Willow is finally forced to admit that she has a problem, and ask Buffy for help, after she nearly gets Dawn killed.
Willow goes onto the magical wagon, until Warren accidentally shoots Tara while shooting at Buffy. Willow goes on a tear, rips Warren’s skin off, tries to kill Andrew and Jonathan, and winds up nearly destroying the world until she’s stopped by Xander.
I laugh in the face of danger…Then I hide until it goes away.
—The Witch
Xander is Buffy’s best friend (male). Xander is the class clown who—on the surface—never takes anything seriously. The worse the situation gets, the worse his jokes get. He’s also a bit of a knight errant. He makes jokes about being a coward, but there is nothing cowardly about him. He will put his life on the line to protect the people he cares about, and the ones he doesn’t too. Everything considered, he is a good guy to have watching your back in a dark alley when there are nasty things about.
Xander has terrible taste in women (with the exception of Buffy.) First he falls for a substitute teacher, who is really a shape shifting giant preying mantis who wants to eat his head. Then he falls for a girl who is really an Incan mummy who sucks the life out of those she kisses. To cap it all off he falls for Cordelia.
The relationship with Cordy lasts until she catches him making out with Willow.
Xander has a brief tryst with Faith, which ends when she tries to strangle him.
Xander’s latest girlfriend is the former vengeance demon Anya.
Xander does not go on to college with Buffy and Willow. He is currently living in his parent’s basement, while holding down a series of odd jobs. None of which seems to last longer than a week.
Xander finally settles down with a job in construction, he gets himself a nice apartment, and his relationship with Anya develops to the point where he proposes to her.
Things do not go well for Xander and Anya after that. A former victim of Anya’s shows up at their wedding, and gives Xander a vision of what his future with Anya holds: He becomes a bitter old man, bickering with his wife (who has been unfaithful to him) and ends with him killing her. This visions are false, not a true vision of the future, but they scare Xander into leaving Anya at the alter.
Okay, I pretty much missed out on some stuff, didn’t I? Because this is all making a kind of sense that’s…not.
—Becoming
Oz may be the smartest person in Sunnydale (after Willow) but it is hard to tell since he is a chronic underachiever. He plays lead guitar in the local rock band “Dingoes Ate My Baby” and has been admiring Willow from afar from the first time he saw her. They finally meet and begin a relationship during the episode What’s My Line.
Nothing fazes Oz. On discovering that vampires are real, and that they tend to hang out in Sunnydale his reaction is: “That explains a lot.”
(Okay, one thing fazed him a little. Discovering that he was a werewolf threw him for a bit of a loop, but he recovered quickly)
It took him a bit longer to recover from catching Willow and Xander in flagrante delicto but he seems to have done so. He has forgiven her, no doubt aided by Willow’s extreme contrition over what happened.
Oz and Willow consummate their relationship in the 3rd season finale episode Graduation Day. Unlike the consummation of Buffy and Angel’s relationship this does not seem to have any dire consequences.
Oz and Willow stay together until he suddenly finds himself attracted to another girl on the UCSunnydale campus. It turns out that she is another werewolf named Veruca. Veruca wants Oz to get in touch with his inner wolf. She also wants Oz, and will stop at nothing to get him. One evening as a werewolf Veruca makes an attempt to kill Willow. Oz stops her, by ripping her throat out, but since he is a wolf too at the time he follows up by attacking Willow himself. Buffy arrives in the nick of time to save Willow. Next day Oz thinks that he needs some time to himself to think things through, and he leaves Sunnydale.
Oz travels around the world searching for a cure for his lycanthropy. He thinks he finds it. With some help from a warlock in Romania, and some Tibetan monks he learns to control his inner wolf. With the help in some meditation, and some herbs, and charms he learns how he can remain human during the full moon.
There is a down side to his new control. (Isn’t there always.) If he loses his cool he can turn into a wolf, even during daylight. (Whether or not this is a full time problem, or if it only happens during the days around a full moon hasn’t been revealed.)
He returns to Sunnydale with his newfound control to resume his relationship with Willow. Unfortunately Willow has moved on. She has found someone new in her life: Tara.
It is Oz’s return which forces Willow to acknowledge the importance of her new relationship with Tara to Buffy, and possibly to herself for the first time.
When Oz learns about Tara he loses his cool, and wolfs out in broad daylight. The Ozwolf attacks Tara, and she is saved by Riley and some other Initiative commandos. They take Oz away before Tara can explain to them who he really is.
Oz is rescued from The Initiative by Buffy, but he has to leave town again in order to stay free.
Y’know, the part that gets me though, is where Buffy is the Vampire Slayer. She’s so little.
—Prophecy Girl
Jenny was the school’s computer science teacher, and a technopagan. She was first introduced in the episode I Robot—You Jane where she helped Giles cast the spell to remove the demon Moloch from the internet, but she didn’t officially learn about Buffy being the Slayer until the events of Prophecy Girl.
It was later revealed that she may have known more than she was letting on. She is a member of the same gypsy tribe which cursed Angel, and was sent to Sunnydale to keep an eye on him for her family. Whether or not she actually knew about Buffy being the Slayer before Prophecy Girl is not known.
Jenny and Giles have had a growing relationship since she was first introduced into the series, but it had a major setback when Buffy and Giles discovered who she really was. Buffy held Jenny partially responsible for the loss of Angel’s soul.
In an attempt to make amends to Buffy and the rest, Jenny secretly went to work on finding a way to restore Angel’s soul. Her attempt to do so was successful, but Angel discovered what she was doing and killed her before she could tell anyone about it. He also destroyed her computer, and burned the printout of the spell, but the spell still existed on a yellow floppy disk, which fell between Jenny’s desk and a filing cabinet, where it was not discovered until part 1 of Becoming, the second season finale.
I’m eleven hundred and twenty years old. Just give me a frigging beer!
—Doppelgängland
Eleven hundred years ago, Anya was a fairly normal girl who got jilted by her lover. Anya resorted to magic to get revenge, and she was so good at it that the demon D’Hoffryn offered to raise her up to become a demon herself. Anya accepted. As a demon she granted wishes for scorned women. These wishes generally resulted in some man dieing a horrible death. Anya loved her work.
Anya came to Sunnydale to grant a wish for Cordelia, after Cordy caught Xander inflagrante dilecto with Willow in Lovers Walk.
In order to reverse the results of Cordelia’s wish (The Wish) Giles destroyed Anya’s power center, which made Anya revert back to human. She has been trapped in Sunnydale ever since.
Anya is having to re-learn how to be a human being. In the process she has hooked up with Xander.
In order to make ends meet, Anya goes to work for Giles in the Magic Box. She turns out to have a natural talent for retail, and she takes over the management of the shop when he returns to England.
Anya becomes engaged to Xander, but then he leaves her at the alter. The demon D’Hoffryn gives the jilted Anya her powers back, but her heart really isn’t in it anymore. She makes a few half-hearted attempts to curse Xander which come to nothing. She also doesn’t seem to be interested in actually granting wishes for any other scorned women.
I go online sometimes, but everyone’s spelling is really bad. It’s depressing.
—I Was Made to Love You
Willow meets Tara in the UCSunnydale Wicca group. Tara recognises Willow as the only other girl in the group who has any sort of a clue that magic is real. When the Gentlemen take the voices of everyone in Sunnydale—rendering everyone mute—Tara goes to Willow to see if they can find some sort of spell to restore people’s voices. That doesn’t work out, but Willow and Tara start practicing spells together.
Spells aren’t the only thing they are doing together. Willow and Tara also develop a romantic involvement with one another.
Willow hides Tara from the rest of her friends for a long time, going so far as to lie about her whereabouts to Buffy when she spends time with Tara. Willow doesn’t introduce Tara to Buffy and the others until some time later. Willow doesn’t acknowledge to her friends just how far her relationship with Tara has gone until after Oz returns to Sunnydale.
Tara’s family has a long tradition of using magic. Both her mother and her grandmother were apparently powerful magic users.
Tara also has a secret or two of her own. When Willow enlists her help to perform a spell to detect demonic activity in the Sunnydale area Tara deliberately botches it. Despite this Tara definitely seems to be a member of the good guy’s camp. She wanted to help with the Gentlemen, and she is the one who recognises that Faith has switched bodies with Buffy, and provides the means to switch them back.
We learn what Tara is hiding in the episode Family. First her family are a bunch of hicks. Second they have told Tara that the magical power of the women in the family comes from them having demon in them. It first manifested in Tara’s mother when she was 20, and they think it is about to manifest in Tara. This is why Tara sabotaged the demon location spell Willow tried to do. She was afraid it would reveal her true nature to Willow.
It turns out that her family has been feeding Tara a load of bullshit. She doesn’t really have any demon in her.
Tara is shot and killed by Warren Mears in the episode Seeing Red.
You know Buffy, looking back at everything that’s happened, maybe I should have sent you to a different school.
—Graduation Day
Joyce is Buffy’s long suffering mother, and knew nothing about her daughter’s nocturnal activities until Buffy stakes a vampire right under her nose in the season 2 finale Becoming.
She didn’t know why Buffy burnt down the school gym on prom night, or the abandoned school science lab. She didn’t know why Buffy comes home at 2 in the morning with torn and bloody clothing. She didn’t understand why a girl who spends so much time with Willow can get such lousy marks in school. (She also didn’t notice, or chose not to notice, that her daughter spends a lot of time with the school librarian, who is 3 times her age.)
She does know that her daughter is a bright, considerate, intelligent person. Resourceful, and one who thinks of others before herself. It is just that she also seems to be such a flake at times.
In the third season Joyce has come to know more about her daughter’s calling. She isn’t happy about it, and still seems to spend a lot of time in denial, hoping for her daughter to have a normal life, but she slowly comes to accept that this just isn’t going to happen. Buffy still works hard to keep her mother out of the Slayer side of her life. In the third season finale Graduation Buffy goes as far as to pack a suitcase for Joyce, and send her out of town. It is a sign of Joyce’s growing acceptance of Buffy’s situation that she goes without putting up much of a fight. Buffy’s argument “If you stay, you’ll get me killed!” wins her over.
Buffy doesn’t see too much of her Mom during the fourth season of the show. She has moved out of the house, and is living in a UCSunnydale dorm.
In the fifth season Buffy decides to move back home after she discovers Dawn’s true nature so that she can better protect her. Joyce has also become sick, so Buffy has been spending a lot of time at home anyway. Joyce’s illness is eventually diagnosed to be caused by a brain tumour. She has surgery to remove it, and seems to be recovering quite nicely. Just when it seems that her life is getting back to normal—she’s back at work, and back dating—Joyce dies from an aneurysm.
Nobody knows who I am…not the real me.
—Real Me
Dawn is Buffy’s sister. She is six years younger than Buffy.
Wait a minute! Buffy’s an only child! Where the heck did this sister come from?
Dawn just showed up one day at the beginning of the fifth season, and everyone treated her like she had been around all along. Joyce Summers believes that Dawn is her daughter, and Buffy believes that she is her sister.
We knew better, and Buffy learns better too in the episode No Place Like Home. Joyce realizes that Dawn isn’t her daughter in Listening to Fear.
Dawn is a magical construct, created by a group of Czech monks. Originally she was pure energy, and the Key to some sort of portal. The monks gave Dawn human form, and inserted her into the Slayer’s home so that Buffy would protect her. There is a creature that is hunting for Dawn, that the monks refer to as “the Beast” or “the Abomination.” If the Beast gets its hands on Dawn it will be a very bad thing.
Dawn herself doesn’t know any of this at first. She believes that she is Buffy’s sister. She learns the truth after noticing that conversations tend to stop when she shows up, and overhearing a couple of veiled references to the Key, she decides to break into Giles’ shop one night and read through some of his diaries.
There was a group of people at UCSunnydale operating in secret under the name “the Initiative.” Buffy is peripherally aware of them for some time, having seen some of their members lurking in the bushes and such from time to time, but she had no idea who they were or what they were up to.
The Initiative is a military operation which is capturing and studying vampires and other demons. They are very well funded, have a large establishment built under the UCSunnydale campus, and employ dozens of people.
Buffy learns more about the Initiative from Spike after he escapes from them, but he doesn’t really know that much himself, and he is very cagey about how much he tells Buffy since he figures she will kill him once she has learned all he knows.
Buffy continues to keep her knowledge of Spike a secret from them, even after she and the Initiative become fully aware of one another, and she gets invited to join them.
Those of you who fall under my good graces will come to know me as Maggie. Those of you who don’t will come to know me by the name my TAs use, and think I don’t know about, “The Evil Bitch Monster of Death.”
—The Freshman
Maggie Walsh is a world renowned Professor of Psychology teaching at UCSunnydale, and is the local head of the Initiative. One of her specialties is operant conditioning. Buffy and Willow are students in her Psychology 105 class.
Buffy passes the class (with a B-.) Early in her second semester of classes at UCSunnydale Buffy learns of the existence of the Initiative, and of Walsh’s role in it. The Initiative also learns that Buffy is the Slayer, something that the people working for the Initiative had believed to be some sort of mythical bogeyman of the demons. Buffy gets invited to join them.
Dr. Walsh lives up to her nickname though. She discovers that Buffy is close to learning about her pet project. Project 314 that Ethan warned Giles about. She tries to have Buffy killed. Buffy survives the trap Walsh sets up for her, and knows that she was set up. Walsh doesn’t survive long enough to try again. The Frankenstein’s monster that she and Dr. Angleman have been building wakes up early, and kills her.
What kind of girl is going to go out with a guy who’s acting all Joe Regular by day, and turns all demon hunter by night?
—The Initiative
Riley is one of Professor Walsh’s TAs for Psych 105, and is the head of the Initiative’s field teams (AKA The UCSunnydale Commando Squad (UCSCS).) He is also sweet on Buffy.
Buffy and Riley start dating while having absolutely no idea of how the other is spending their evenings. This changes in Hush. Buffy and Riley are both on the trail of some demons who have stolen the voices of the entire population of Sunnydale, and are now working on stealing some of their hearts too. Buffy and Riley come face to face in the middle of a fight against the demons.
Riley and Buffy take their discoveries about one another slowly. Not telling any of their friends and associates about what they have discovered about the other’s secret lives. Xander and Willow discover the truth about Riley when he shows up in full commando gear in time to help Buffy stop some demons from opening the Hellmouth. They just don’t believe his excuse that he was just passing by on the way to a paintball game. After about a month though they fill everyone in on most of their secrets.
Walsh tries to kill Buffy the day after Buffy and Riley first make love. Riley doesn’t have any advance warning of what Walsh attempted to do. He doesn’t learn about it until later, when Walsh is telling him about Buffy’s tragic accidental death, still unaware that her trap for Buffy has failed. He gets to listen when Buffy lets Walsh know that her trap has failed, and that Buffy is now on to her.
After Maggie Walsh’s attempt on Buffy’s life Riley begins to question the true purpose of the Initiative. He remains a member of it, but he also feeds information about their activities to Buffy and her friends.
Things come to a head after the Initiative captures Oz. Once Riley learns who he is he finds himself unable to stand by and let Oz be experimented on. He attempts to break Oz free, and gets caught in the process. Buffy and her friends break Oz and Riley out of the Initiative, and Riley becomes a fugitive.
After the final battle between the Initiative, and Adam’s demon army—which only the intervention of Buffy and her friends along with Riley kept from being a complete massacre—Riley was forgiven, and given a discharge from the military.
Riley finds himself at loose ends, not knowing what to do with his life. He sticks around Sunnydale, helping Buffy, but he isn’t really satisfied with that life, and feels something is missing from his relationship with Buffy. Seeking thrills—or something—he starts paying vampires to suck on him. Buffy is not amused when she learns about that. Then he gets invited to re-join the military as part of a special demon hunting unit. (Not like the Initiative. These guys just hunt and kill them.) He leaves town.
Riley makes a brief appearance when he returns to Sunnydale during the sixth season in pursuit of a demon. He also brings his new wife along with him.
Slayer? A thrash band. Anvil-heavy guitar rock with delusions of Black Sabbath.
—Doomed
Forrest and Graham are a couple of Riley’s buddies in the Initiative.
Forrest doesn’t like Buffy much, and his dislike only grows when he learns that Buffy is the Slayer. He thinks of her as a “supernatural freak.” Buffy is also at the top of Forrest’s suspect list when Maggie Walsh is killed by a stab wound to the chest. Forrest is killed by Adam, and his body is used to create the first of Adam’s planned army of bio-mechanical demonoids.
Graham is much more reserved than Forrest, and he doesn’t seem to share Forrest’s dislike of Buffy. Graham is one of the few Initiative survivors of their final battle with Adam’s army of demons.
Normally there is only one Slayer alive at one time, but Buffy’s death and revival in Prophecy Girl threw a bit of a monkey wrench into the works, so now there are two Slayers.
I am Kendra, da Vampire Slayer!
—What’s My Line?
Kendra was called when Buffy died for a couple of minutes in Prophecy Girl. She was a “by the book” Slayer. She even had a copy of The Slayer Handbook, something which Buffy has apparently never seen.
Kendra was extremely disciplined. Her life was 100% focused on slaying vampires, with no time off for a personal life. She has been raised by her Watcher from early childhood to be a Slayer. She does not remember her parents.
Kendra’s career as a Slayer only lasted a year. She was killed by Drusilla.
Come on. We’ll find a couple studs, we’ll use ’em and discard ’em. That’s always fun.
—Homecoming
Faith is the Slayer who was called on Kendra’s death. Faith’s personality is very different from both Kendra’s and Buffy’s. Faith seems to be intent on “living large.” She knows that she only has a short time on this Earth and she is intent to live her life to the fullest, taking out as many vampires as she can before they kill her.
This seems to be mostly an act. Everyone whom Faith has ever let get near her seems to have either died, or betrayed her in some way. Her first watcher was killed horribly in front of her. No mention has been made of her father, and her mother appears to have been an alcoholic and is most likely dead. She claims to have had a string of loser boyfriends, and has given up on finding any sort of real relationship.
Faith’s problems come to a head after she accidentally kills the Mayor’s assistant Allan Finch in the episode Bad Girls. In the followup episode Consequences she shows little remorse for her actions. She is much more interested in covering up what she has done than in taking any sort of responsibility for her actions. When it becomes clear that she can’t keep it a secret she tries to blame Allan’s death on Buffy. Fortunately for Buffy Faith isn’t a very good liar.
At the end of Consequences Faith approaches the Mayor looking for a job. Having just dusted Mr. Trick, she figures the Mayor has an opening.
Some early speculation has her apparent defection to the other side being just an act, but the possibility of this being the case quickly fades. First she rats out on Willow’s attempts to penetrate the Mayor’s computer security, leading the Mayor to have some of his vampires make an attempt on Willow’s life which Faith does nothing to stop. Then she makes a play for Angel, attempting to give him a moment of happiness so that he will lose his soul again. She caps it all off with the cold blooded murder of a harmless volcanologist to cover up some information about the Mayor’s impending Ascension.
By the 3rd season finale Graduation Day it is clear that Faith has completely gone over to the dark side. She and Buffy have a final show down which leaves Faith in a coma from which she is not expected to recover.
Faith comes out of her coma in the fourth season episode This Year’s Girl and creates a little more havoc in Buffy’s life by doing a magical body switch with her. She also manages to take a small step back from the dark side. She has the opportunity to escape from Sunnydale, in Buffy’s body, but she turns away from it to rescue a group of people held hostage in a church by some vampires. This also gives Buffy the opportunity to get her body back. Faith leaves town in a freight car.
Faith goes to Los Angeles, where the law firm of Wolfram and Hart hires her get rid of a pesky vampire who has been causing them all sorts of problems: Angel. Faith takes the job, but she seems to treat it more as an attempt at suicide. She tries to goad Angel into killing her. This doesn’t work.
With a little help from Angel, Faith goes to the police, and confesses her crimes. She is convicted for murder, and sentenced to twenty-five to life.
Faith doesn’t spend her life in jail. When Angel loses his soul again, Wesley comes to her for help, and she breaks out of prison. After helping recapture Angel, so Willow can restore his soul, Faith returns to Sunnydale with Willow to join in the fight against the First.
I am weary, and their deaths will bring me little joy. Of course sometimes a little is enough.
—Angel
The Master was one of the oldest, and most powerful vampires on record. He first came to Sunnydale about 60 years ago, to attempt to open the Hellmouth, but he botched his first attempt, and wound up trapped in it instead.
The main story arc of the first season concerned the Master’s attempts to free himself from the Hellmouth, and Buffy’s attempts to keep him trapped. This all culminated in the first season finale with the Master killing Buffy, and there by gaining the energy he required to escape from the Hellmouth. Fortunately for us, he didn’t do a very good job, and Xander managed to revive her using CPR. Round 2 of Buffy v the Master went to Buffy.
I hate that girl!
—When She Was Bad
The Anointed One was a child vampire. Originally a protege of the Master’s, he becomes the leader of the Sunnydale vampires after the Master’s death. (Until Spike gives him a suntan.)
We were in Paris. You had a branding iron, and there were worms in my baguette!
—What’s My Line
Drusilla is nuts. While she was still a human being Angel made a project out of tormenting her. He killed all of her friends and family, and visited every mental torture on her that he could devise. Then he made her a vampire.
Drusilla has the gift of prophecy. She has visions of events which have not yet happened. He gift isn’t very long range, or very specific. She seems to get general impressions of important events a day or two before they happen, but does not get detailed visions.
Drusilla is turned into a vampire by Angel sometime in the early 1860s. Angel seems to have been attracted to her by her gift.
When she first arrives in Sunnydale Dru is not in very good health, the result of a run in with an angry mob in Prague. Spike and Dru come to Sunnydale in the hope of using the Hellmouth’s power to restore her to health.
Drusilla leaves Spike after he helps Buffy keep Angel from sucking the world into Hell. She is brought to LA by the evil law firm of Wolfram and Hart in order to make Darla a vampire again.
She pays a brief visit to Sunnydale, hoping to take up with Spike again, but she discovers that he has become completely smitten with Buffy.
So who do you kill for fun around here?
—School Hard
Spike replaced The Anointed One as the leader of the local vampires. He is barely 200 years old, but in that ‘short’ time he has killed two Slayers. He seems to have been a protege of Angel’s. Spike and Dru are in love with each other (or at least what passes for love among vampires.)
Spike is pretty smart—as vampires go—but he doesn’t seem to have much of a plan, beyond making a general nuisance of himself. Unlike the Master he doesn’t seem to want to open the Hellmouth, and end the world. He came to Sunnydale primarily to use the Hellmouth’s power to restore Drusilla’s health. Spike likes the world pretty much the way it is. He likes dog racing, and Manchester United, and “billions of people walking around like happy meals on legs.”
Spike spent a fair amount of time confined to a wheel chair, recovering from Buffy dropping a pipe organ on him, and then having a church burn down around him. He also put up with a lot of abuse from Angel, who since the loss of his soul seems to be moving in on Dru. Spike was not a happy camper, leading to him making a temporary alliance of convenience with Buffy in the season II finale.
Drusilla dumps Spike after he helps Buffy save the world from Acathla.
Spike has made a couple of return visits to Sunnydale since then, which usually end badly for him. His most recent visit started out with him being captured the Initiative. He manages to escape from them, but not before they put some sort of implant into him which gives him severe headaches whenever he tries to feed off or injure anyone.
Desperate for food, and unable to protect himself from other vampires, Spike wound up going to Buffy for help. He traded what little information he knows about the Initiative for food and shelter. He lives with Giles for a while, and then moves into Xander’s basement. He eventually discovers that he can fight demons without getting a headache, so he moves out of there for someplace less dark and dank: a crypt in one of the cemeteries.
After hanging out in Sunnydale for almost a year Spike comes to a horrifying realization about himself: he has fallen in love with Buffy. He starts lurking around her house watching her, sneaking in when she’s out and sniffing her sweaters, and stealing her underwear. Buffy is a little too distracted by other events in her life at first to figure out what he has been up to.
After she dies the second time, and gets yanked out of heaven Buffy finds herself very depressed, and she finally succumbs to Spike’s advances. Sex with Spike is one of the few things she finds that makes her really feel alive.
Buffy eventually rejects Spike. He has trouble accepting that, and attempts to rape her. Buffy fights off his attack, and Spike leaves Sunnydale on a quest. He goes to Africa and undergoes a series of trials administered by a demon. After Spike passes the trials, the demon restores Spike’s soul. Whether or not that’s what Spike really wanted, is not clear.
Y’know, I hope you’re not taking this personally, Buffy. I actually kinda like you. It’s just that I like myself a whole lot more.
—The Dark Age
Ethan is an old “friend” of Giles’. Part of Giles’ dark past. Ethan is totally amoral. He looks out for #1, and to hell with the rest of the universe. He has made four appearances so far, in Halloween, The Dark Age, Band Candy and A New Man.
In A New Man Giles catches him skulking in a crypt in one of Sunnydale’s cemeteries. Ethan has some news. Something is scaring the pants off the demon population. Something new. Giles surmises that it must be the Initiative, something he himself has just become aware of. Ethan reports that the demons are most spooked by something they call 314. He then proceeds to turn Giles into a demon.
Ethan is last seen in Initiative custody, being sent somewhere in Nevada for “rehabilitation”.
That’s one of the things I love about this country. You produce a good product, and people come to you. Of course, a lot of people are going to die, but that’s the other thing I love about this country.
—Band Candy
Mr. Trick came to town with an ancient vampire named Kakistos on the trail of Faith. He evidently decided that he could do better on his own, and let his former master meet his fate at the hands of Buffy and Faith.
Trick is a modern vampire, who makes use of the latest technology. He also has a lot in common with Spike. Like Spike, Trick seems to be mostly interested in having fun. He is not interested in things like vengeance. He also does not seem to be directly confrontational when it comes to Slayers. He prefers to stand back and watch while other vampires get themselves killed going after them.
Trick has also been recruited onto the Mayor’s team, for whatever scheme he has hatching.
Trick doesn’t live long enough to see the Mayor’s plan come to fruition though. He gets dusted by Faith in the episode Consequences. For all his talk, he dies stupid, attacking Buffy and Faith in the same old vampire way, instead of using an Uzi as he suggested to one vampire who tried to assassinate the Mayor.
That’s what separates me from other politicians Mr. Trick. I keep my campaign promises.
—Band Candy
Richard Wilkins has been Mayor of Sunnydale for quite some time. He has been around town for at least 100 years. Richard Wilkins I and II were apparently both the same guy.
Mayor Wilkins has made some very unpleasant deals with some very unpleasant things to get where he is today. One of them was the demon Lurconis who demanded a tributary feeding every 30 years. Lurconis eats babies. We don’t know what other deals the Mayor may have made with other demons.
Mayor Wilkins knows about the Hellmouth. He knows about vampires and other things that go bump in the Sunnydale night. He knows about Buffy being the Slayer.
Mayor Wilkins is a sorcerer who has been using the power of the Hellmouth to further his own ambitions. He has built the city of Sunnydale as a place where demons can come and feed. His ultimate goal is Ascension: He will become a demon.
Adam is a kinematically redundant bio-mechanical demonoid created by Maggie Walsh. He is your basic Frankenstein’s Monster put together with parts from demons, people and machines. He was meant to be Maggie’s ultimate warrior, but she goofed. He has a design flaw. Adam is inimical to all life, human and demonic. He wants to destroy it all. He starts by killing the two people who know the most about him. Maggie Walsh and Dr. Angleman.
Adam’s plan seems to be to wipe out both humanity and demon kind, and to use the parts left over from the battle to build more like himself.
Oh sh—
—No Place Like Home, Blood Ties
Glory is a god, one of three who ruled a particularly nasty demon dimension. She came to earth some time ago, and seems to be stuck here. She is looking for the Key, and she has a pretty good idea that Buffy knows where it is.
While on earth she is stuck in human form, which pretty much restricts what she can do. She is also slowly being driven insane. She maintains her sanity by sucking the brains out of people by sticking her fingers into their heads, and leaving them insane. She is super strong (much stronger than Buffy) and seems to be pretty much invulnerable to harm, but she hasn’t exhibited any other powers (other than brain sucking.)
Glory is working on a deadline which is rapidly approaching. She needs the Key to open an interdimensional portal which will allow her to return to her home dimension, where she plans to “rain down more super-sized portions of slaughter, mayhem, and bloodshed than any of you scabs can even dream about.” The only problems with that plan are that 1) Dawn is the Key, and using her will kill her, and 2) the Key will break down the barriers between all dimensions, causing them to bleed together, and if it isn’t stopped the entire universe will be destroyed.
Ben appears to be a mild mannered intern working at Sunnydale Hospital. Buffy first meets him when Joyce becomes ill. He seems to be a nice guy, but he is connected to Glory, and he has a bit of a ruthless streak. When the hospital’s psychiatric ward starts overflowing with Glory’s victims, and they start to send them home Ben calls in a Queller demon to kill them. When one of Glory’s minion demons asks him why he did it he says “Because I’m cleaning up Glory’s mess, just like I’ve done my whole damn life.” One of the reason’s he does this may be that these crazy people are capable of recognising the Key for what it is, and he doesn’t want them running loose around town where they might stumble onto it, and somehow have the information get back to Glory.
Ben does not want Glory to find the Key. He refuses to cooperate with her when she sends one of her minions to ask him to help get the information from Buffy (this is how he learns that Buffy is the Slayer.) He later discovers on his own that Dawn is the Key, and his first reaction to that news is that she needs to be protected from Glory. This is more difficult for him than it might seem, because Ben and Glory are sharing a single body.
When Glory’s fellow hellgods expelled her from her home dimension they imprisoned her in the body of a human infant. Their plan was for her to spend the span of his life trapped inside him, growing old, and eventually dying. Ben is the person they imprisoned her inside, but she was too powerful to stay trapped. Glory manages to escape for brief periods of time. A magical spell keeps anyone who becomes aware of the connection between Ben and Glory from remembering it.
In the sixth season Buffy has to put up with a trio of nerds who make her life miserable. As bad guys go, these three are pretty light weight. They bill themselves as “supervillains” but they are mostly pretty pathetic.
Here’s the Slayer’s name, address, and telephone number. You want to kill her? Make it so.
—Flooded
Warren is the leader of the trio, and he recruits Jonathan and Andrew to help him. He first showed up during the fifth season, in the episode I Was Made to Love You.
Warren is the most dangerous of the three nerds. At first Jonathan and Andrew treat their partnership as mostly a game. They play with neat toys, and they don’t want anyone to get hurt. Warren is much more ruthless, and he doesn’t care who gets hurt, as long as he gets what he wants.
Warren is a electronics wiz. His first appearance was as a guy who had created a robot girlfriend for himself, and then Spike commissioned him to build a robot Buffy.
In Dead Things the trio brainwashes Warren’s ex-girlfriend Katrina into becoming their sex slave. The brainwashing wears off before they actually do anything with her, and when she tries to escape Warren bashes her over the head with a champaign bottle and kills her.
Warren attempts to frame Buffy for Katrina’s murder, and for a while he even manages to make her believe that she was the one who killed her, but the frame crumbles as soon as Buffy recognises that Katrina is Warren’s ex-girlfriend.
After Buffy foils an attempt by Warren and the other nerds to rob an armoured car, Warren attempts to shoot her. He only succeeds in wounding Buffy, but a stray bullet hits and kills Tara. Willow goes postal, hunts Warren down, rips his skin off, and incinerates his remains.
You all think I’m an idiot! A short idiot!
—Earshot.
Jonathan has been a long term recurring character, ever since the second season. Jonathan was Sunnydale’s answer to Kenny (except he manages to survive each episode.) Jonathan is the perennial victim. Since his first appearance in Inca Mummy Girl he has:
Jonathan is also the only non-child character we have ever seen who is shorter than Buffy.
Jonathan is the trio’s expert in magic. He doesn’t want to hurt anybody, especially Buffy. He likes Buffy. She’s saved his life, a lot.
The killing of Katrina seems to bring home to Jonathan that this is not a game that they’re playing. He has gotten himself into some serious trouble. Warren knows that Jonathan is having serious second thoughts about the situation he has gotten himself into, and is keeping a close eye on him.
After Warren kills Tara Jonathan escapes Willow, and skips town with Andrew.
Jonathan and Andrew return to Sunnydale in Conversations With Dead People. Jonathan thinks they’re back to uncover a pentagram in the new school basement, and then warn Buffy about the danger, so she can deal with it. Andrew has another plan. He murders Jonathan as a sacrifice to activate the pentagram.
How many times do I have to say it? The Prom thing was my lame-o brother Tucker. I trained flying demon monkeys to attack the school play. School play, dude.
—Flooded
Andrew is the trio’s expert in summoning demons. Andrew has lived his entire life in the shadow of his brother Tucker. Everyone remembers that Tucker sent hellhounds to attack the Prom, but no one remembers the flying monkeys that Andrew sent to attack the school play.
After Warren kills Tara Andrew escapes Willow, and skips town with Jonathan.
Andrew returns to Sunnydale with Jonathan in Conversations With Dead People. He murders Jonathan as a sacrifice to active a pentagram on top of the Hellmouth in the school basement.
The First Evil claims to the be the source of all Evil, and to have existed from the beginning of time. It is ancient, and can not be killed, but it is also incorporeal. It can only act by influencing others to act on its behalf. It can take on the form of any person who has died. This includes vampires, and Buffy, since she’s died twice.
The First first appeared in the third season episode Amends when it tried to convince Angel to kill Buffy.
It comes back in season seven with a more ambitious plan. It seems to want to take over the world, and the first step in that plan is to eliminate the Slayers, for good.
Caleb is an agent for the First. He is a serial killer who uses the guise of a preacher to lure women to him, and then he kills them. He likes it when the First lets him reenact his favourite kills, by pretending to be his past victims.
The First has imbued Caleb with super strength, stronger even than a Slayer.
The Bringers, or Harbingers are the priests of the First. They were once human, but they have been transformed into creatures whose eyes have been sealed shut, with runes branded on their eyelids. They get along quite well for things that can’t see though. Bringers are not particularly powerful, or good fighters, but the First seems to have a large supply of them.
The Turok-Han, or ubervamp, is an ancient form of vampire: “The vampires that vampires fear.” In the beginning the First only brings one Turok-Han out of the Hellmouth, but the one seems to be plenty. It kills Annabelle, and beats Buffy into a bloody pulp during their first big fight. Buffy arranges a second round with that Turok-Han, and manages to beat it, but the First has lots more waiting. Within the Hellmouth it has an army of thousands of Turok-Hans waiting to be released.
The First starts a campaign to wipe out the Slayer line, by killing all of the Potential Slayers, all around the world, along with their Watchers. The Potential Slayers that survive the first round of attacks start coming to Sunnydale, so that Buffy can protect them.
That’s what I did: I stuck up for myself. The other day after class, I jumped him in the parking lot, and I slammed his stupid-ass insecure face right into the pavement!
—Help
Amanda is a native of Sunnydale, and one of Dawn’s classmates. She is first seen as a student that Buffy is counselling, because of her tendency to get into fights. It is later discovered that she is one of the Potential Slayers. She is killed during the final battle with the Turok-Hans.
You must learn to control your fear.
—Bring on the Night
Annabelle is one of the first trio of Potentials to arrive at the Summers house. She was brought there by Giles. She appears to have been Council trained. Annabelle panics shortly after arriving in Sunnydale, and tries to run away. She is caught and killed by a Turok-Han.
Chao Ahn is a Potential from China. She doesn’t speak any English, and no one else in Buffy’s house speaks Cantonese.
Chloe is one of the youngest of the Potentials. She cracks under the pressure, and commits suicide by hanging herself in Buffy’s bathroom.
Hey, if I wanted to sleep, I’d be downstairs catching Zs with the other girls.
—Showtime
Kennedy is one of the older Potentials. She is nineteen years old, and appears to have been in training to be a Slayer for some time. She was not taken from her family though. Her family is quite well off, with at least two homes, including a summer home in the Hamptons.
Kennedy is a lesbian, and quickly sets her sights on Willow, and begins an affair with her. She also freely admits to being kind of a brat.
Molly is a British Potential. She is killed by Caleb, when Buffy leads her, and several of the others into a trap.
The black chick always gets it first.
—Potential
Rona is an American Potential with an attitude. She didn’t know anything about vampires or Slayers, or an of the rest of that stuff until the Bringers started trying to kill her.
She survives the final battle with the Turok-Hans, although she is badly wounded in it.
Shannon is one of the last Potentials to arrive. She is ‘rescued’ by Caleb when fleeing from Bringers. Caleb ‘rescued’ her so he could use her to deliver a message to Buffy. The message involved stabbing her in the gut with a knife, and then dumping her onto the road from his moving truck.
I’ve seen a vampire, well, my Watcher once showed me a photograph of one…a blurry photograph.
—Showtime
Vi is a rather timid girl, with a penchant for wearing wool caps.
There are about thirty Potentials in Buffy’s house toward the end.
I’m always here if you need a hug—but not a real hug—because there’s no touching, this school is sensitive to wrong touching.
—Teacher’s Pet
Mr. Flutie was the Principal of Sunnydale High when Buffy first arrived there. He was a believer in giving students fresh starts. In his first meeting with Buffy he starts by tearing up her records from Hemery High. Then he reads the part about her burning down the school gym, and starts taping them back together again.
He gets eaten by a bunch of students who have been possessed by a hyena.
A lot of educators tell students “Think of your principal as your pal.” I say “Think of me as your judge, jury and executioner.”
—School Hard
Principal Snyder is Flutie’s replacement as Principal of Sunnydale high, and is his complete opposite. Where Flutie was a feel good, let’s all have a nice hug (but not a real hug) kind of guy, Snyder is a strict disciplinarian. Snyder is probably rather upset that corporal punishment is no longer allowed in California’s school system. He may even wish for capital punishment on some days, especially where Buffy is concerned. He seems to particularly have it in for Buffy. He doesn’t like her, thinks she is a trouble maker, and suspects that she will end up in prison some day.
Snyder knows that Sunnydale High is built on top of the Hellmouth. So do some members of the Sunnydale police department, the city council, and the Mayor. Snyder was placed in his position at Sunnydale High to help cover up the weird things that keep happening there. He does not seem to know about Buffy being The Slayer. From his behaviour toward her I think that he thinks that she is part of the problem.
Various portions of the Sunnydale city authorities being aware of the Hellmouth makes it clear why no one seems to take much official notice of what is going on: They are covering it up. Either they are in some way aligned with the evil forces emanating from the Hellmouth, and are using it for their own profit, or they simply don’t want Sunnydale to turn into a ghost town when the sorts of things which go on there becomes common knowledge.
In the end Snyder’s efforts to cover things up at the school don’t do him any good. He comes to much the same end as his predecessor Principal Flutie. He gets eaten by the Mayor after he transforms into a giant demon snake.
There’s only three things these kids understand: the boot, the bat, and the bastinada!
—Beneath You
Robin Wood is the new Principal of Sunnydale High. He isn’t as clueless as Flutie, nor is he as strict as Snyder. He has a bit of a skewed sense of humour. Buffy seems to be the first person he met who understood that “bastinada” comment. (It’s a wooden rod used to beat the feet of prisoners in Turkish prisons…and when made out of the right sort of wood makes an awesome billy club.) He is also rather young for his job.
Robin Wood is very familiar with Buffy’s record (the School Board recommended that he read it) but he hires her anyway to be a student counselor in the rebuilt Sunnydale High.
Wood actually knows that Buffy is the Slayer. He knows all about Slayers. His mother was a Slayer. In fact she was the Slayer that Spike killed in New York in 1977.
Detective Stein is a member of the Sunnydale Police Department. He now has Buffy connected to two unsolved murders (Kendra, and Allan) and Ted’s disappearance. Given the treatment given to Allan’s body he is probably wondering if Buffy did a better job of weighting Ted’s.
Most of the Sunnydale Police Department seems to be either Deeply Stupid, or working for the Mayor. Stein doesn’t seem to fit into either category. He seems to be a reasonably competent cop, and I don’t get bad guy vibes from him. Could he be an honest cop? Sunnydale needs one of two of those to handle the occasional mundane crime which must still take place there.
How long was I in the cage?
—Smashed
Amy is an old friend of Willow’s. They used to hang together in junior high. Amy’s mother was the leader of the Sunnydale High cheerleader squad in her day, and later became a powerful witch. She tried switching bodies with her daughter to recapture her glory days, but Buffy foiled that scheme, and Catherine Madison wound up trapped inside a cheerleading trophy.
Amy followed in her mother’s footsteps and took up magic herself. Xander caught her using magic to fool her teachers into thinking that she’d done her homework, and blackmailed her into doing a love spell for him. It backfired, and made every woman in town fall in love with him except the person he’d aimed the spell at (Cordelia.) She also temporarily turned Buffy into a rat.
After a demon provokes a witch hunt in Sunnydale, Amy nearly gets burned at the stake. She escapes by turning her rat spell on herself. (Whether she was actually trying to turn herself into a rat to escape being burned alive, or if she was trying to turn the people trying to burn her, and it backfired isn’t clear.) She spends the next several years as a rat, living in a cage in Willow’s room, while Willow tries to turn her back.
It takes Willow several years to figure out how to change Amy back. (But she does manage to accidentally de-rat Amy, and re-rat her for about five seconds in Something Blue).
After she’s been de-ratted, Amy leads Willow on a bit of a magical bender, and introduces her to the magic pusher Rack.
After Buffy graduated from high school Angel moved to Los Angeles in order to try to let Buffy try to carry on a more normal life. Some of Sunnydale’s former residents have joined him there.
A hundred years, just hanging out…feeling guilty…I really honed my brooding skills.
—Lie To Me
Angel keeps flipping back and forth between being one of the good guys and one of the bad guys. He spent the first half of the first season as ‘cryptic guy’, a mysterious stranger who would show up and warn Buffy about the upcoming evil doings of Sunnydale’s vampire community and then disappear again.
Buffy learns the truth about Angel in the episode Angel. Angel is a vampire, who about 100 years ago fed off a gypsy girl, “Really beautiful, but dumb as a post. A favourite among her tribe.” To take their vengeance the elders of the tribe cast a spell on Angel which restored his soul, and he spent the next hundred years tormented by the knowledge of the evil things he had done.
Angel starts to come out of his funk after Buffy is pointed out to him by Whistler—An immortal demon sent to Earth to even the score between good and evil. Angel and Buffy fall in love, and their relationship is finally consummated in the episode Surprise. Unfortunately the gypsies left an escape clause in their curse. If Angel ever achieves even a moment of happiness, his soul will be taken from him. The night with Buffy is enough to do it.
With the loss of his soul, Angel reverted to his old habits, which include the systematic stalking and destruction of everyone close to the current object of his obsession…Buffy.
Angel gets his soul back at the end of Becoming, the season 2 finale, but it is too late to prevent him from awakening the demon Acathla. Buffy has to send Angel to hell in order to prevent Acathla from destroying the world.
Angel returns from hell at the end of the third season episode Faith, Hope and Trick, somewhat the worse for wear. He has apparently spent a few centuries of torture there, while only a few months have passed in Sunnydale. When he first returns he seems to be little more than an animal (but one who thinks to put on a pair of pants.)
At first Buffy keeps Angel’s return a secret from the Slayerettes, while she helps him to recover. She doesn’t know how to deal with it, and is afraid of how they will react. Her fears aren’t totally unfounded. When they learn of Angel’s return they are not thrilled, but a lot of that comes from Buffy having kept Angel’s return a secret.
Angel moves to Los Angeles after Buffy graduates from high school. At first he just lurks in the shadows there, looking for vampires or other evil things he can kill, until one day he is approached by Doyle—a half demon himself—who tells him that if he keeps on the way he is going he is likely to revert to his evil ways. Doyle has a new mission for him. Angel needs to connect with people, and save souls.
Tact is just not saying true stuff…I’ll pass.
—Killed by Death
Cordelia had the life that Buffy wished she had. Cordy was the most popular girl in school (she had a bit of a popularity setback, when she started hanging out with Buffy,) a cheerleader, and favourite date of all the school jocks.
On the down side she started out as a totally self centered snob. The entire world revolved around her, and if it didn’t effect her in a direct and obvious way, she wasn’t interested in it. Cordy has become less self involved, but she still has a way to go.
Cordelia spent most of the first season spurning Buffy and her friends. (She seems to have been spurning Willow and Xander for most of their lives.) But after being besieged in the library by a bunch of vampires on prom night she has become one of the people who knows that Buffy is The Slayer.
At first she was a rather reluctant member of the Slayerettes, who’s primary role seemed to be providing transportation (she has a car.) Later she became more involved with the Slayerettes, and less involved with her former circle of friends. This wasn’t entirely by choice. Many of her ‘friends’ did not treat her kindly after she started hanging with the Slayerettes, and her relationship with Xander came out of the closet.
Cordy and Xander were a classic odd couple. For most of their lives they couldn’t stand each other. (Xander is the treasurer of the “We Hate Cordelia Club.”) Cordelia was the leader of the coolest clique in school, and then she started dating the head geek.
At first they kept their growing relationship in the closet (literally) but after Willow caught them making out back among the stacks in the library, they became more public.
Of course it couldn’t last. She catches Xander and Willow making out together, and she drops him like a hot potato. This casts Cordy adrift. She has burned her bridges to her old circle of friends, and tries to do the same with the Slayerettes. She tries building a new bridge to Wesley though. This crashes and burns the first time they try to kiss.
After she graduated from Sunnydale High, Cordelia moves to LA to pursue an acting career. This doesn’t work out too well for her at first so she goes to work for Angel.
Cordelia inherits Doyle’s visions of things to come after he dies. The visions give her severe headaches, and are slowly killing her. Another demon, named Skip, gives Cordy a chance to escape the visions, and have the life of a Hollywood star, but she rejects that offer. She wants to use the visions to help people, and takes door B. She becomes part demon in order to survive the visions.
I have, in fact, faced two vampires myself. Under controlled circumstances, of course.
—Bad Girls
Wesley is Giles replacement as Buffy’s Watcher. Wesley is even more of a stuffed shirt than Giles. He is also woefully ill prepared to take up his duties as Buffy’s Watcher.
He is a quick learner though. After a bit of a rough start he realizes that he has a lot to learn. At first he tries to discourage Buffy and Giles from having anything to do with each other, and Giles from having any say about the Slaying, but that attitude is quickly dropped after he has a couple of near-death experiences.
He never manages to learn how to handle Buffy. He keeps trying to give her orders, backed up simply by his authority as a Watcher. He expects her to hop whenever he says “frog.” Things come to a head in the 3rd season finale when the Watcher’s Council through Wesley tries to tell her to ignore Angel’s poisoning to concentrate on stopping the Ascension. This is too much for Buffy. She tells Wesley that this is where she’s getting off. She will not be listening to him, or the Watcher’s Council any more.
Wesley manages to redeem himself a little bit in the end by volunteering to help in the final battle against the Mayor. He lasts about 10 seconds before he gets knocked out by a vampire.
The Watcher’s Council fires Wesley when he gives them the news that Buffy is no longer working for them, so he goes into business for himself as a rogue demon hunter. (I’m still not sure whether that means he is a rogue who hunts demons, or he hunts rogue demons.) This brings him to Los Angeles where he joins up with Angel and Cordelia.
So many body parts, so few bullets. Let’s begin with the kneecaps. No fun dancing without them.
—Angel
Darla was the first vampire we ever saw in the series. She was a cute blonde, and one of the chief minions of the Master. She was also Angel’s Sire, and still seemed to be carrying a torch for him, until he staked her.
In the final episode of the first season of Angel the lawyers from the law firm of Wolfram and Hart brought Darla back, but they brought her back as a human being, instead of a vampire. It is still not clear why they did this. They wanted to use Darla to get at Angel, but exactly what they hoped to accomplish is still not clear.
Darla really isn’t too pleased to be a human being again. After Angel discovers that she’s back she pleads with him to make her a vampire again. He refuses. The lawyers at Wolfram and Hart have a plan for that too. They bring back Drusilla and have her make Darla into a vampire. Darla becomes her own vampiric great-grandmother.
Drusilla and Darla return the favour by massacring the Wolfram and Hart Special Projects Group.
Wolfram and Hart’s campaign to drive Angel crazy seems to be working though. In an attempt to end his suffering, Angel has sex with Darla. She’s rather upset that this doesn’t give him a moment of pure happiness and make him lose his soul, but she ends up with something else. Darla gets pregnant.
Darla and Angel’s baby is human, and as it approaches term she becomes infected by its soul. She knows that this will end when the baby is born, and she will become a killer again. She can not accept that, and stakes herself to prevent it, leaving the baby behind.
Being a vampire sucks!
—The Harsh Light of Day
Harmony was Cordelia’s chief lieutenant among the Cordettes, and pretty much took them over after Cordy’s fall from grace when she started dating Xander. Harmony was killed by a vampire during the Sunnydale High senior class’s graduation ceremony.
She didn’t stay dead though. She came back as a vampire. She may be the only person in the world who ever had their personality improved be being changed into a blood sucking demon.
As a vampire she has also hooked up with Spike. Spike doesn’t really like her much. He uses her as a surrogate for the other blonde obsession in his life: Buffy.
Once she finally figures out what Spike is using her for, Harmony skips town. She visits her old friend Cordelia in LA, and falls in with a vampire “Motivational Speaker” who has a vampire pyramid scheme going. Angel brings him down, but Harmony tries to keep his scheme running somewhere in Mexico.
Harmony eventually figures out that she completely sucks at being evil, and takes a job at Wolfram and Hart, where she ends up as Angel’s secretary after the Senior Partners hand control of the L.A. offices over to him.
Created by Don Sample
Last updated: September 5, 2007