The Buffyverse Character Countdown (#1)

#1.

Hero: Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

"She's a hero, you see. She's not like us." -- Rupert Giles, "The Gift"

Who did you expect to rank here? Willow? Cordelia? Angel? Some random fake-out gag before revealing Buffy as #1? Obviously, Buffy Summers was going to rank as the best hero in the Buffyverse: the universe is freaking named after her! Contrarians might make tepid commentary like “Buffy can sometimes slip into a self-righteous rut” or some other silly justification to put Wesley or Willow or Angel or whomever their favorite character might be into the top spot, but these comments miss the thematic point of the Buffyverse entirely. Yes, Buffy can be self-righteous. Yes, Buffy isn’t always the most interesting character in her series at any given point. Yes, Buffy isn’t even the best acted character in the Buffyverse (subtlety is not one of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s strong suits). However, Buffy is the only character in the Buffyverse who has a complete character arc, no asinine developments or filler, and limitless potential to learn and grow. Buffy Summers is the best of who we can be. She is the quintessential feminist icon of the silver screen – yes, she’s more complex than Ellen Ripley – and one of the best television characters ever written.

As with Angel, describing Buffy’s entire character arc in one blog post is entirely impossible. Furthermore, given that every single episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – even episodes that seemingly are focused on other characters – in some way ties to Buffy’s personal character arc, looking at highlights alone does her a disservice as well. As I see it, the best way to evaluate Buffy’s character is on a series-wide scale. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, broadly speaking, is a series about growing up and accepting the responsibilities of adulthood. Buffy, the vampire slayer, is the one character in the series who undergoes this process completely and truly becomes an adult by the series’s conclusion. While Xander and Willow grow in tandem with Buffy, they never accept nearly the same onus of responsibility as their superheroine best friend. Each season is a new step in the formation of a complete person: acceptance of adulthood’s inevitability, balancing love and obligation, escaping social constraints and one’s own darker side to form a complete self, understanding one’s origins and coming to terms with one’s place in a larger world, designating the line between hope and cynicism and being willing to make sacrifices, learning to cope with and learn from moments of despair, and teaching the lessons we have learned to the next generation. Nor does Buffy’s story end; with the last line of “Chosen” being “What are we going to do now?,” we know that Buffy’s story of vampire slaying and saving the world has only begun. Whether her story will become as dark as that of Wesley or as poignant as that of Cordelia remains to be seen, but, given the qualities Buffy has expressed throughout the series thus far, we have little doubt that she’ll be able to rise above all her challenges.

Buffy would stand out as the greatest hero in the Buffyverse purely on the basis of her personality alone. For she has one crucial ability that no other character in the entire Buffyverse can rival. No, not super strength: empathy. While other characters can often get rapt up within their own desires and be blind to the needs of others, Buffy is the only character in the series who always thinks of others’ first. Unlike Wesley, the other most empathetic character in the series, she does retain a sense of self outside of her empathy, but, when push comes to shove, Buffy is always willing to understand others’ perspectives and assist them when they need her. In the episode, “Earshot,” Buffy discovers just how complex others’ lives are, equally as frustrating as her own even if the consequences aren’t quite as apocalyptic. It is through this lens that she is able to assist others through so many trials. She will judge people when their actions become selfish to the point of harming others, but her first recourse is always to talk someone from off the ledge rather than actively rip him away. She has zero tolerance for soulless vampires, of course, since they cannot act with empathy and lack the essence of goodness required for moral development. She’s a person who must save the prey from irredeemable predators, and she takes up that burden with an authenticity rivalled by few other superheroes.

This is not to say that Buffy does not have flaws: far from it. She is genuinely bad at maintaining romantic relationships, either obsessing herself with romance to the point of abandoning her duty to others, cutting her romantic partners out of her life entirely such that she really doesn’t engage with them on a deeper level, or using her sexual partners as a mechanism of self-destruction. Her moral high-horsing isn’t capable of beating enemies whose violence is fueled by emotion alone. She can even fall into ruts of crippling emotional and financial dependency, leeching off Giles, Willow, and Spike in ways that legitimately harm her heroic standing. However, Buffy differs from all the other characters in the Buffyverse insofar as she rises above those flaws. Much like Angel, Buffy’s arc isn’t linear, but she always comes back from a dip – something that cannot be said for her former vampire boyfriend. Each season finale shows Buffy at a new level of competence and complexity, and she’s all that more admirable a hero for her growth.

That’s not even touching Buffy’s role as a feminist icon. I’ve noted before that she is the best feminist character to hit the small screen, and it’s one I stand by. There are other feminist television characters who are arguably more complex (Utena Tenjou from Revolutionary Girl Utena comes to mind), but none of them combine their complexity and feminism with the same level of relatability as Buffy. Unlike the generic “strong female character” trope, Buffy falters, has elements of pettiness, and possesses many crippling weaknesses that her enemies have exploited on multiple occasions. However, due to the strength of the writing and the willingness for Buffy to take responsibility and act with integrity, she ends up more relatable, and, more importantly, more powerful than other feminist icons. She might have been more shallow than Cordelia prior to the events of the series, but, by the time of the final cut to black, we’ve seen the most mature character in the series come into being. It’s an incredible journey that’s absolutely satisfying.

The only way to truly do Buffy Summers justice is to watch every episode of the show with a critical eye. Every single episode (with only a few exceptions) relates to Buffy’s journey in some way, with the secondary protagonists and antagonists serving as extensions of her mind, heart, spirit, shadow self, id, ego, superego, and antithesis. Pretty much every other character on this list is a part of Buffy the character as much as he or she is a part of Buffy the show. We turn to this show not because it’s philosophical, not because it’s kickass, not because it’s melodramatic, not because it’s fantastical, not because it’s entertaining; though it is certainly all of these things, it is mostly an exercise in empathy and understanding, coming to grips with every facet of a truly complex, competent, and compelling protagonist. It’s a series that deserves to be watched multiple times so its layers can be appreciated… and none more than its titular heroine.

Villain: Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Seasons 2-6)

"Love isn't brains, children, it's blood - blood screaming inside you to work its will." -- Spike, "Lovers Walk"

As obvious a #1 hero entry as Buffy is, Spike isn’t necessarily the villain one would peg as the best in the series. Sure, most can agree he is the first good Big Bad in the series – a decent enough milestone in and of itself – but that’s not normally enough to secure a villain a place at the top of the evil throne. What gives him the crown? All of his actions during Seasons 4-6. People (especially Spuffy shippers) tend to forget that Spike isn’t a hero until Season Seven. At best, Spike is a morally questionable anti-hero. At worst, he’s the most insidious, manipulative, dangerous, and depraved villain in the entire series. He’s a villain so good at being charismatic, witty, and cool that he honestly dupes the audience into thinking he’s a good guy for three seasons of the show. Spike is the only villain in the entire Buffyverse who changes on a level comparable to the heroes while having his evil nature still hold true. At no point in the series up until Season Seven is he anything other than a cheeky, lustful bastard, and we love him all the more for it. He’s Buffy’s ultimate rival, and it’s fitting that he joins her in the #1 slot.

Once a hopelessly romantic poetaster known as William Pratt, “William the Bloody” had a most pathetic life. Coddled by his mother and rejected by other members of the British genteel class, he found himself at the bottom of the food chain. He would soon become food himself to a hungry Drusilla, but she sired him as her own personal knight. The newly sired Spike went on to sire his terminally ill mother. However, when his mother’s new vampiric form rejected his affections and accused him of incestuous feelings, William turned on her and dusted her. Now freed of his mortal attachments, William fell under the influence of his grandsire, Angelus, who trained him to become a lethal killing machine. Unlike Angelus, though, William’s dreams of idealized romantic love and passionate nature held true to his vampiric form. Giving himself a new working class identity and taking up a new moniker, Spike came to the fray as the second most lethal member of the House of Aurelius. He even outdid his mentors in viciousness by killing two Slayers mono e mono, an unprecedented achievement in vampire history. By the time he arrives in Sunnydale, Spike has broken off from his Aurelian ties to become the most dangerous vampire at large in the entire world.

Spike immediately establishes himself as the best villain in the series by affecting the meta-narrative of the show. In his first appearance, “School Hard,” after serving as little more than a “cool” one-off villain, Spike kills the leader of the Master’s remaining goons, the dour and boring Anointed one, and installs himself as the most dangerous vampire in Sunnydale. With one line, “from now on, we’re going to have a little less and a little more fun,” Spike proclaims to both his new henchmen and the audience that the Buffyverse is about to get a new, more enjoyable dose of evil. And enjoyable Spike is. Unlike the Master, who is content to hide in the shadows and do nothing throughout his entire arc, Spike actively takes action against the Slayer at every turn. In “School Hard,” he infiltrates Sunnydale High and starts picking off parents and teachers as if he were a domestic terrorist. He does so with the glee of Alex DeLarge, cracking jokes and lustily pursuing his prey. It is Spike who best establishes vampires as sexually motivated and predacious creatures, from his cooing towards and doting upon Drusilla to his aping the lines of the Giant from “Jack and the Beanstalk” in an attempt to intimidate Buffy. Throughout the first half of Season Two, he’s an unrelenting force threatening the Slayer. Unfortunately for his villainous standing, he gets immobilized at the halfway point of the season and usurped by Angelus, relegating him to comic relief status… until “Becoming,” in which Spike teams up with the Slayer in order to take Drusilla for himself and bring Angelus down.

This turn is unique to villains in this series, as Spike has fundamentally different ideals than other villains. While most vampires value general gore and mayhem above all else, especially the members of the House of Aurelius, Spike thinks romantic ideals of love are more important. Unfortunately, as a vampire, his vision of love is one-sided and consumptive. Notions such as “personal growth,” “romantic equality,” and “respect for one’s partner” don’t really exist for him. He can hardly understand them, let alone abide by them. Thus, his romantic relationship with Drusilla is very much one of possessor and possession. He gives himself free license to do whatever he wants to Drusilla, including acts of sexual assault. Other vampires might act with sexual desire, but no others stake their identity in it. Thus, when Angelus challenges Spike’s sexual authority over Drusilla, “William the Bloody” doesn’t take it well, to the point that he’s willing to betray his grandsire and his girlfriend in order to get what he wants.

Also, unlike Angelus, who stays down once he’s defeated, Spike has a habit of coming back. In Season Three’s “Lovers Walk,” he pops back in Sunnydale in an attempt to get his groove back after Drusilla dumps him. He abducts Willow and very nearly causes hers, Xander’s, and Cordelia’s death in the process. Then, in Season Four, he briefly takes up Big Bad status once again, discovering the Gem of Amara such that he can attack Buffy and her friends during the day and generally plaguing their progress. Later in the season, however, the Initiative captures Spike and implants a chip into him, preventing him from attacking human beings without undergoing tremendous pain. This leads to plenty of hilarious scenes, as Spike becomes dependent on the Scoobies to supply him with pigs’ blood. He takes up the position of comic relief character throughout much of the season, including some particularly hilarious turns in “Hush” and “Something Blue.” However, it’s crucial to note that just because Spike cannot do bad things, he is not then necessarily a good person. He still lacks a soul and the ability to morally develop, and he’s most definitely still a selfish bastard. Even without the ability to fight, he’s still able to inflict grotesque amounts of pain, even nearly tearing the group apart with emotional manipulation in “Doomed.” His pent-up aggression finally bursts into light when he discovers that he can kill demons, turning against his own kind just to get his violent kicks. The chip in no way improves his behavior or his character, merely stopping him from hurting human beings directly. He even goes on to thwart the chip completely by briefly allying with Adam, almost killing the entire Scooby Gang by spying on them and leading them into a trap. He only manages to get off scot-free because the Scoobies are too tired from beating Adam to bother to punish him.

This brings us to Season Five, wherein Spike’s actions begin to enter the moral grey. After realizing that he has developed feelings for Buffy, Spike begins to act with what appears to be genuine altruism. He’s decent enough to Dawn and openly enthusiastic in his attempts to kill demons alongside Buffy, if only because he thinks he can impress her and earn her affections. Even here, though, his sinister nature holds true. Spike wants Buffy – he doesn’t truly love her in the way a being with a soul can. Much like Drusilla, he views Buffy as a possession, a prize to be won. “Good behavior” is but a means to an end. And even anti-hero Spike can be pushed to his limits. In “Fool for Love,” were it not for news of Joyce developing a brain aneurysm, Spike would have mowed Buffy down with a shotgun in retaliation for her sexually shaming him. Later in the season, Spike grows so impatient with his sexual frustrations that he commissions Warren to build him a sex robot of Buffy, stealing and sexually assaulting Buffy’s spiritual integrity and identity without her consent; it might not be an act of outright rape, but it’s about as close as one can get to such an act. He even goes so far as to trade Drusilla’s life for Buffy’s love, showing just how brittle his consumptive ideal of love is.

However, by the season’s end, Spike does start to pick up on things. By “The Gift,” he does come to the conclusion that Buffy can never truly love him and performs a good number of selfish actions because of it. He saves Dawn’s life multiple times, sacrificing himself in a way that is genuinely selfless, as earning Buffy’s respect means more to him than his own self-preservation. After Buffy’s death during “The Gift,” he even serves as the most competent caretaker to Dawn of the entire Scooby Gang. With nothing left for him to take, good becomes an afterthought. He’s also the only one of the Scooby Gang who is in any way considerate of the costs of Buffy’s resurrection, even serving as her emotional bedrock during the first half of the season. During this time, the viewer is practically seduced into thinking that Spike is a good guy.

This is not the case.

Spike’s good actions during Season Five and the first half of Season Six are purely the result of operant conditioning: a psychological process by which good behaviors are rewarded and bad behaviors punished. The chip is the most literal incarnation of this process, serving as a stick for bad behavior, but far more interesting is the carrot: Buffy herself. Though Buffy might not be fully aware of it, by kissing Spike in “Intervention” and “Once More, with Feeling,” she is rewarding him when he behaves “good.” Spike is thus willing to do whatever he must to keep receiving physical affection. When that conditioning is then applied to unethical behavior, such as Buffy’s relationship with him in Season Six, Spike, much like an animal, gets hooked on the conditioning and can’t move past it. Thus, while Buffy sleeps with Spike in order to destroy herself, Spike sleeps with Buffy in order to reward himself. He’s being rewarded for bad behavior. This new conditioning proves to be far more powerful than his former conditioning, as illustrated plot-wise by his chip no longer limiting him from attacking Buffy. By the end of the season, Spike is hooked onto Buffy as if he were a drug addict, much like Willow. Unlike Willow, however, who has others to help her control her grief and come to grips with her addiction, Spike is a soulless vampire who likes to possess what isn’t his. With that final barrier broken, he performs the single most evil action in the entire Buffyverse: trying to rape Buffy.

Many people hate the episode “Seeing Red.” Some people despise it purely for the death of Tara. Many more hate it for the notion that rape could ever be used as a plot point in a television series whatsoever; why traumatize those viewers who have experienced sexual assault before? I will grant these criticisms one thing without question: the actual rape scene itself is horrifying. With the exception of the episode, “Lonely Souls,” from Twin Peaks, I’m not sure if I’ve seen a more realistic depiction of domestic rape ever put on fictional television; if there is one, I don’t want to see it. However, I do think that the events of “Seeing Red” are a wholly effective and in character development for both characters involved. Season Six has a lot of narrative problems and baggage, and the sheer darkness of the season can sometimes get lost in the whimsy of the amnesia episode and the burger joint episode and the off-Broadway musical episode. The attempted rape scene brings a disturbing clarity to the rest of the season, as we start to see just what the self-destructive tendencies of all the characters have wrought. By keeping the demons within themselves close and refusing to properly confront their problems, Buffy and her friends have surrendered themselves to violent. It is only when Buffy refuses Spike’s affections and stops him from doing the unthinkable that she fully reasserts her place as the Slayer after having practically abandoned that role. She says no. And it is in the bathroom that Spike reverts to what he truly is: a monster who treats love as a thing to be won, a thing to be earned. Love is not earned; it is only ever freely given. The difference between man and beast is the ability to make that distinction and act with integrity, something Spike fundamentally cannot do. His assault is the most extreme version of his character conflict that has been developing over four seasons. It’s only after this, his lowest point, that he’s able to earn a soul for himself, and, even then, the soul is earned for selfish reasons. Spike does eventually become a hero, but not before Season Seven.

Spike is the number one villain in the Buffyverse because of his depth of development as compared to every other villain in the series. Angelus may have had backstory, Lilah may have had psychological complexity, and the Mayor might have had delightful menace, but Spike is the only villain who truly had an arc of his own – one of the most complex in the series alongside Buffy and Wesley. He’s got a hilarious personality and a ridiculous cool factor, but he balances these traits out with genuine terror and a deceptive charm that catches the audience off-guard whenever he sinks to his full depths of depravity. He’s might look like a lustful Billy Idol knock-off (or, inspiration based on the Buffyverse logic), but he’s got enough development to make him many fans’ favorite character. And, though I can never endorse pre-Season Seven Spuffy shipping, I will say that James Marsters has far superior chemistry with Sarah Michelle Gellar than David Boreanaz could have even hoped for. Buffy and Spike are at once perfect romantic foils and ideological rivals to one another: the one being a high-functioning animal who claims to understand everything and the other being a budding adult attempting to adapt to an ever-changing world. Spike is quirky, scary, funny, charming, twisted, manipulative, snide, and deliciously evil: he’s a perfect villain for a nearly perfect show.

    

The Buffyverse Character Countdown (#2)

#2.

Hero: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3, Angel)

"It's our desires that make us human." -- Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, "To Shanshu in L.A."

Oh… Wesley. Oh my Wesley.

I honestly struggled with Wesley’s placement on the heroes list. On one level… he’s my favorite character. There’s no doubt in my mind that Wesley has the best character arc in the Buffyverse except for the #1 entry on the heroes list. It’s melodramatic as heck, but it’s believable and compelling; plus, it’s the only character arc in the series that isn’t bastardized by the events of Angel Season Four. Yet, for all of his development, I’d be hard pressed to call Wesley a good person. He is heroic, possessing some of the very best individual qualities of any of the characters in the Buffyverse. But these qualities come mixed with a lethal cocktail of crippling insecurities, moral righteousness, deep-seated resentments, overwhelming selfishness, a vengeful streak, and a propensity to turn to violence as an outlet for his pain. He is a character for whom empathy and manipulation go hand in hand. All factors considered, Wesley is the hero whose actions border on the villainous the most often, and that’s including reformed villains like Spike, Jonathan, and Anya. Indeed, were any other character to possess these traits, he’d probably belong at the bottom of the list. And yet I can’t rank Wesley anywhere else than #2. For, while I cannot say that the audience should necessarily admire Wesley, he’s the character the audience can probably learn the most from. He is the best tragic hero in the series, so long as we stick to the traditional definition of “tragic hero.” While Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a series about characters growing to ultimately reach their full potential, Angel is one about the trials of adulthood. Some people are able to face those trials and grow stronger because of them; some, by virtue of either personal weakness or a blend of wrong decisions, end up destroyed. Angel is the former, Wesley the latter.

The first time we encounter Wesley Wyndam-Pryce in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Three, we take an immediate dislike to him. He’s an arrogant Brit much like first season Giles, but he holds himself with an aura of superiority and condescension that Giles never possessed. Wesley is an entitled prat, one given privileges within the Watchers’ Council due to his father’s seniority and outstanding influence. Because of this, he becomes so disconnected to the reality of vampire slaying that he is even more useless in battle than Giles – AKA the character who gets knocked out so often that it becomes a running gag. Making matters worse, Wesley adheres to the patriarchal model of the Watchers’ Council without question, treating Faith as if she were little more than an attack dog. It is of little surprise, then, that his “watching” helps push Faith over to the dark side. He’s even got a perverted attraction to Cordelia that’s quite uncomfortable (though Cordelia’s manipulation of these feelings to get Wesley to perform embarrassing acts is hilarious). He’s such a tool that many of the downtime scenes in Season Three comprise of little more than the Scoobies ragging on Wesley; every insult is well-deserved. His only positive character trait is his comprehensive knowledge of demons and vampires, a knowledge that rivals even that of Giles. We also do see signs of a strategist within Wesley, suggesting that he could be far more capable than he currently is. Given his current stage of development, however, it is of little surprise that Wesley is shamed for losing the support of Buffy and the sanity of Faith and ultimately excommunicated from the Watchers’ Council.

One would think this would be the end of one of the silliest characters in the Buffyverse, but Wesley eventually finds his way to Los Angeles, choosing to become a “rogue demon hunter.” His skills have improved, but he’s still somewhat of a lummox. His knowledge of the occult is put to good use when he starts to assist Angel and Cordelia, still reeling from the loss of Doyle, and he eventually becomes a member of the team. He then gets an opportunity to re-join the council, but he sides with Angel in choosing to protect Faith from their clutches, even after Faith tortures him. However, it should be said that Wesley’s darker side has already begun to show. In the final minutes of “Five by Five,” Wesley frees himself from his bonds with the knife used to torture him and heads down into the alley to help Angel fight Faith. He drops the knife once he sees that Faith has capitulated to Angel, but we realize that Wesley was willing to kill another human being in the name of justice or, worse still, in the name of revenge – much like Faith herself.

The first two seasons of Angel more or less serve to build Wesley up to the point where he is on equal footing with Angel and Cordelia as a member of Angel Investigations’ life-saving triumvirate. His intellect is such that he becomes the group’s strategist and magical expert, and his martial prowess improves to the point where he’s probably the second-most powerful member of the team – and that’s including Gunn, the character typically cast in the “muscle” role. His social confidence also sees a significant boost. Heck, in the episode “Guise Will Be Guise,” he actually pulls off a successful romantic and sexual relationship with one of his clients, a romance that lasts multiple episodes. He becomes the leader of Angel Investigations after Angel fires his staff, keeping the group on task and organized while Angel pursues Wolfram & Hart on his own. In Pylea, it is Wesley who ends up leading the human resistance against their demonic captors, doing more than even Angel himself to save the day. Even here, though, Wesley’s more frightening qualities pop up; Wesley seems willing to risk far too many lives for “the greater good” than most of his followers, including Gunn, are comfortable with. Much like Cordelia, Wesley is pragmatic to a T, yet, unlike Cordelia, his pragmatism is cold and oddly dispassionate. He’s more determined to “get the job done” rather than perform an act he intrinsically cares about.

Yet it is in Pylea that Wesley first finds something, rather someone, to truly care about: Fred. Wesley’s relationship with Fred is the most fascinating and rewarding in the entire Buffyverse. Sure, Willow and Tara’s relationship might be more grounded and natural, but no Buffyverse relationship captures the ardor and passion of romance while simultaneously offering genuine connection, honesty, and humility. On paper, there’s no reason for Wesley’s love for Fred to be as pure-hearted and genuine as it is. Sure, the two have commonalities – they’re the two smartest members of Angel Investigations, both have suffered traumatic experiences, both are socially awkward – but one would expect someone of Wesley’s background, a background fraught with patriarchal attitudes, to be patronizing and possessive. Yet Wesley never treats himself as Fred’s superior. He enjoys being with her on equal terms, admiring her not as a prize to be won but as a partner. He also wholeheartedly accepts Fred for whom she is, flaws and all, unlike Gunn, who feels the need to keep her innocent. In “Supersymmetry,” Wesley acknowledges that Fred’s decision to kill her former professor is a bad one, but he does not try to stop her, only equipping her with the knowledge she needs to make a balanced decision. Moreover, Wesley cares about Fred’s happiness more than his own: when Fred is dating Gunn, Wesley keeps himself out of the way and lets Fred be happy with someone other than him. He could easily have reacted with spite, but he bottles his frustration and learns to cope with disappointment. Granted, these feelings do burst forth somewhat in “Billy,” but that’s only under the influence of Billy Blim’s misogynistic magic mojo, so I’m inclined to discount much of it.

“Billy” does, however, reveal something crucial about Wesley’s character: though he might be very good at repressing his violent and negative urges, they do exist. When Wesley has no inhibitions, he is a more terrifying opponent for Fred, and any other character in Angel for that matter, that we’ve ever seen. His intellect combined with his bloodlust and single-minded focus for achieving his goals make him terrifying to behold. The reason, we soon learn, Wesley does not act in this manner all the time is the fact that he’s got people and things to lose. Were it not for his friends and Fred, he would let himself become a monster. Unlike Angel, a character who would lose all choice and agency after one moment of becoming an object in the universe (by virtue of becoming Angelus), Wesley would be willing to continually abnegate his agency in pursuit of completing the next task, satisfying the next “moral end” (whatever it may be), doing the next job. Wesley might act adorable, clumsy, and altruistic, but he’s concealing a very destructive mindset. It’s only his tethers to reality that keep him from crashing.

In Season Three, these tethers strain for the first time. Disturbed by the thought of Angel killing his own son, Wesley chooses to follow his principles above his emotional commitments and kidnaps Connor. The result: having his throat slit by Justine Cooper and being nearly strangled in his hospital room by a vengeful Angel. Worst of all, all of Wesley’s friends, including Fred, abandon him completely in the wake of this decision, with Fred even leaving him with some particularly stinging words of departure. Wesley recovers physically but not spiritually, entering a practical death spiral: sleeping with Lilah, becoming a gun-for-hire, torturing Justine Cooper. His principles of justice keep him firmly in the “heroic” category, but his actions are largely passionless. He saves Angel’s life from Connor’s murder attempt (a twisted inversion of his kidnapping of Connor in the first place), but it’s a passionless act. He is largely dour, cold-hearted, and spiritually inert. In his new, pessimistic mode, the only things he are able to act on are his moral principles and his only remaining desire: companionship with Fred, the only person who did not cut ties with him completely. Angel’s wiping the team’s memory of Connor and the events resulting from Connor’s actions restores Wesley to full membership in Angel Investigations once again, but we’ve already gotten a hint of what is to come. Angel without a soul might be evil, but Wesley without desire is perhaps even more terrifying.

In Season Five, though, we get to see the best of who Wesley can be. With Cordelia’s absence and the entrance of Spike into the fold, it is Wesley who steps into the role of peacekeeper and team organizer. His companionship with Angel is something to behold; without Cordelia around, there is no one whom Angel trusts more than Wesley (and that’s despite knowing that Wesley once kidnapped his son). He retains his martial and tactical prowess from Seasons Three and Four, wielding the most impressive arsenal of weaponry in the entire series, ranging from melee weapons to retractable stakes to magic to dual pistols. He ends up saving the day on multiple occasions throughout the season. Best of all, he finally hooks up with Fred with the most satisfying kiss in the entire Buffyverse. The kiss in “Smile Time” is completely perfect, as Wesley, the most smitten character in the entire series, continues to deny his feelings out of respect for Fred’s previous reticence towards him, only for her to take the initiative and kiss him. It’s a celebration of both of their willpower – hers to have the courage to express her feelings and his to respect his friend’s desires – and one of the most touching moments in the series.

Yet we must remember: Wesley’s story is not a happy one. Just as these wonderful moments emerge from Wesley’s strengths, so are they taken away by virtue of his own faults. In the episode, “Lineage,” Wesley faces down his emotionally abusive father; at the episode’s conclusion, he ends up killing him (or, rather a robot duplicate of him) in order to save Fred’s life, completely cutting off his ties from the Watchers’ Council and abandoning the model of justice he followed throughout the rest of Angel. The only tie he has left in the world is Fred. When she then dies in “A Hole in the World,” we’re left to witness a Wesley who is truly alone. Without Fred, Wesley becomes even more hollow than he is in Angel’s third and fourth seasons. He viciously stabs Gunn, intent upon hospitalizing him, after learning that he was even remotely responsible for what happened to Fred. He shoots any of his staff members who weren’t able to save Fred. He even cuts off his ties with Angel, the only friend he ever truly trusted outside of Fred. The only thing giving him any purpose whatsoever is helping Illyria find a place in the world, and even this he does solely out of respect for Fred’s memory. Illyria’s character might be that of a demon occupying a decaying husk of a body, but, when we’re faced with conversations between her and Wesley, we wonder which character is truly hollow.

The brilliance of the tragedy of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce stems from his attitude towards himself. In a sense, he’s a more extreme version of Willow. While Willow feels empty and unable to function without others, Wesley outright hates himself. Worse yet, unlike Willow, whose self-loathing behaviors largely stem from factors outside of his control, Wesley is able to find justification for his self-loathing within his own actions. While Willow is eventually able to forgive herself and grow past her actions in Season Six, Wesley can’t see past his errors and embrace his own identity for what it is. As clumsy, single-minded, and violent as Wesley may be, he does have the right to love himself. Yet Wesley chooses to abstract his self-identity into two mental frameworks: obligation to moral code and love for Fred. When both of these things are taken away, any chance for Wesley to fully realize himself disappears. He’s too far gone. Just as he presaged in discussing Angel’s fate back in Season One, he has become inhuman by virtue of no longer desiring anything – most importantly, the desire to be all that he can.

This brings us to Wesley’s death. Alongside Fred and Joyce’s deaths, it’s one of the most painful in the series, though not for the same reasons as those. Fred and Joyce’s deaths were moments of empathy: we felt for both the characters passing away and those mourning for their loss. Wesley’s death is a moment of pity: we can no longer bridge the gap of empathy because he has simply abandoned all of the ways he can connect with his audience. On the one night he could spend doing whatever he wants, Wesley consigns himself to dressing Illyria’s wounds to prepare for the fight, as there is “nothing that he wants.” The only thing he is able to which he is able to hold true is his final moral principle: dedication to truth. He will not let Illyria take Fred’s form to give him false comfort that everything will be OK. When he walks into the room to kill Cyvus Vail, there’s a part of him that knows this will be the end. In his final moments, though, Wesley realizes that there will be nothing waiting for him on the other side. With Fred’s soul eradicated and his soul to virtuous for Hell, Wesley’s soul belongs in a state of limbo, practically a state of non-existence. Death brings no peace, no final truth, no catharsis. Much like the audience’s experience in “The Body,” it is nothing but numbness and emptiness. Thus, in his last moments, he allows Illyria to lie to him, taking solace in the false image of Fred and brittle promises that he and Fred will be together in the afterlife. Watching Wesley die is watching a man willfully destroying his soul on the way out, abandoning all of his principles as his essence fades away. It’s a torturous scene, though nothing less than an extraordinary one, given that we’ve seen all of the steps that have brought Wesley to this point.

Wesley is the #2 hero on this list because he isn’t a role model: he’s a character who, in trying to become the hero, destroys himself. He’s the perfect example of how a character who does good things isn’t necessarily a good person, even if he desires to be a good person and others recognize him as good. Unlike the other heroes in the series, Wesley cannot move past his insecurities and tragedies. His storyline is worthy of a Sophoclean tragedy, as his two greatest virtues – his determination and his compassion for others – end up leaving him the most broken character in the Buffyverse. Yet it is because of Wesley’s tragic failure to become the best he can be that he is so compelling and effective. Everyone is able to actualize him or herself – indeed, perhaps most of us never reach that point. While most of us do not die in complete bitterness and isolation as does Wesley, our reflections upon our lives are often filled with anger and regrets. As a heroic model, Wesley is the character whose fate we wish to avoid, but we are still connected to him with extraordinary empathy, sympathy, and pity through the completeness of his arc and the excellence of Alexis Denisof’s performance (easily the best acting in the entire Buffyverse, no questions asked). Of all the Buffyverse heroes, Wesley is the closest reflection of who we are.

#1 is the hero we want to be.

Villain: Mayor Richard Wilkins III (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3)

"I don't find that sort of thing amusing... I'm a family man. Now let's kill your little friend." -- Mayor Wilkins, "Doppelgangland"

The critics’ choice for best Buffyverse villain usually goes to Angelus. Most die-hard Angel fans would pick either Lilah or Lindsey. However, if one polled the Buffyverse fandom as a whole, villain numero uno would probably end up being the Big Bad of Season Three, the Mayor. Lilah might be more complex, Angelus might have the more complete backstory, but there’s no other Big Bad who functions as well within his season as does Richard Wilkins. Every element of his character, from his quirks, his plans, his personality, his performance, his relationship to other characters to his all-important role as a metaphor for institutional sexism, contributes to the best season arc in the entire Buffyverse – Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Three. (For the record, just as Wesley is my character hero in the series, the Mayor is also my personal favorite villain. Just to put that out there.)

In 1841, an ambitious man named Richard Wikins founded the town of Sunnydale over a Hellmouth. In exchange for providing the demons a steady supply of human chew toys, the more powerful demons in the Hellmouth granted Wilkins eternal youth and physical invulnerability. However, Wilkins’s ambitions extend beyond being “Mayor for Life.” He seeks to become a pure demon, a being whose power is only just below that of gods like Glory, by ascending to pure demonic state. To this end, he organizes a network of political corrupt allies, vampiric henchmen, and lesser demons engineered for the sole purpose of consolidating his rule and ensuring that his plan to become a pure demon goes off without a hitch. Prior to Buffy’s arrival in Sunnydale, his scheme is perfectly on track. Despite Buffy’s extermination of most of Sunnydale’s undead in the first two seasons, the Mayor is actually able to take these “setbacks” in stride. While the Mayor is certainly powerful enough to have taken out villains like the Master, Drusilla, and Angelus on his own, he would prefer to have someone else do the work for him. He then orchestrates the expulsion of Buffy from Sunnydale High, almost removing the Slayer from the fight without firing a shot. The name of his office alone is sufficient to chill the hearts of every monster and man in Sunnydale. And that’s all before we even meet the Mayor.

The personality of Richard Wilkins initially seems at odds with his intimidating backstory. He’s the most chipper and optimistic villain in the series, nearly always smiling and rarely ever showing his displeasure. When one plan goes awry, he merely looks ahead to the next step in the process of becoming a pure demon. He delights in the little things: low-sugar sweets, shredding paperwork, his impeccably organized desk, the looks on his enemies’ faces when they fail to hurt his indestructible body. He’s almost like Ned Flanders from The Simpsons… if Ned Flanders were evil. Unlike Angelus and Lilah, who are delightful because of how irredeemably evil they are, the Mayor is delightful for who he is: evil seems to be nothing more than his day job. It’s only when the Mayor has his clutches upon his adversaries and gets the chance to take revenge upon those who have hurt him that his menace truly shows. Harry Groener is able communicate more evil with a single twisted smile than Angelus is able to pull off in an entire murder sequence. The very qualities that make the Mayor the most fun villain of Season Three make him the most off-putting and disturbing Big Bad in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The Mayor’s presence throughout Season Three is rather unique considering the various Big Bads of Buffy. Unlike Angelus and Glory, the Mayor isn’t one to tackle his enemies head on. However, unlike the Master and Adam, the Mayor does not send out his henchmen, one by one, like an idiot, to beat the Slayer. He’s a more strategic villain, cutting his losses and prioritizing those battles essential for his ascension. He takes advantage of villains that Buffy allows to survive, hiring Mr. Trick as his initial right hand man after Faith and Buffy fail to take him out. He secures the most crucial objects for his ascension while Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies are distracted taking out his minions. Most importantly, he manages to do what no other villain in the entire Buffyverse can claim: acquire a rogue Slayer as a henchman. His partnership with Faith makes him one of the most effective baddies in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as she’s able to provide the brawn needed for his schemes to run smoothly. He truly does provide a level of threat unsurpassed in the early days of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the crawl to his ascension on “Graduation Day” is oozing with suspense.

The relationship between the Mayor and Faith is also one of the richest and most complex villainous partnerships in the entire series. The Mayor truly does treat Faith as if she were his own daughter, and he’s shown to care for her – even love her – as if she were his own child. It’s crucial to remember that the Mayor, despite being immortal, is still human; he’s capable of selfless love in a way demons are not. While he is somewhat of a task master for Faith, willing to withhold privileges from her should she disobey his orders, he’s more than willing to provide for her. He gives her an apartment to call her own, a custom-designed combat knife, and even a Playstation. And yet their parent-child relationship is not based on materialism alone. The Mayor is the only character in the series thus far who is willing to acknowledge Faith’s feelings without judging her whatsoever. Her feelings of inferiority towards Buffy, of abandonment, of wanting something more after reaching adulthood: the Mayor embraces them all and guides Faith towards a sort of adulthood. Granted, it’s a path of murder, treachery, and complete evil, but it is genuinely based on concerns for Faith’s actualization. He’d just rather her become a puppet of evil than a purveyor of virtue. Though his kind treatment of Faith is conditional, his love for her as a father is most certainly unconditional; after Faith gets hospitalized in “Graduation Day, Part 1,” the Mayor, instead of shrugging off her loss as he does to those of his other henchmen, vows to eat Buffy. Heck, he very nearly manages to strangle Buffy in her own hospital bed before Giles and Angel interrupt his attempt at revenge. The two are totally adorable in their familial evil.

It’s also crucial to note that the Mayor is arguably the Big Bad with the most “good” qualities. Since the Mayor is human, he is capable of reaching moral insights other villains cannot, and, unlike Warren, the Mayor has lived long enough to pick up the wisdom to know that the “journey” is more important than the destination. His graduation speech to the Sunnydale Class of ’99, though cliché in its discussion of life as a “journey,” is nonetheless relevant to Buffy’s journey. Joss Whedon has noted that the Mayor was the one time he used the Big Bad of the series to end up imparting something he intended the audience to receive earnestly: it’s a quality distinct to the Mayor that no other Big Bad has. It’s also key to remember that some of the Mayor’s actions, while nefarious, ultimately produce some positive consequences. He ends up providing Angel the proper rationale by which he ends his relationship with Buffy. Just as the Mayor outlived his own wife, earning her disgust from having an eternally youthful body, so too would Angel outlive Buffy and leave her hating the fact that she must leave without him. Lastly, his positive treatment of Faith is genuinely fatherly and protective.

These good elements all tie into the Mayor’s function as a metaphor. The high school villains of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are nearly always allegories for crucial life problems. The Master is the evils of ritual, Angelus is the violence of emotional abuse, Drusilla is the danger of the collateral damage we cause through our own actions, Faith is the darkness of our Jungian shadow selves. The Mayor, though, is the most complex, insidious, and dangerous of these metaphors: he is institutionalized, structural sexism and control. Unlike Buffy’s relationship with Giles, a partnership based on mutual respect and individual autonomy, Faith’s relationship with the Mayor is ultimately one of slave to master. The Mayor is nice, loving, and caring, but he always has the upper hand in their relationship and dictates the path it will take. This is much the case with structural sexism: women can advance in certain fields, but they only ever advance through baby steps and by virtue of the whims of men who have previously worked their way up an uneven ladder. Much like the Mayor has genuinely delightful qualities and quirks that distract us from his evil, so too does structural sexism have principles and qualities that misdirect many from the iniquities underlying the system: notions such as “preserving the meritocracy,” “individual choices matter more than reform,” and “paying one’s dues.” While respecting authority and valuing merit are important, they should not come at the expense of an uneven system that inherently throws societal treatment of minorities off-balance. As fun as the Mayor is, he is evil, and his scheme to ascend is ultimately unsustainable. He must feed upon children in order for his demonic form to stabilize, and when the children rise up as one and take him on, he’s unable to defeat their united front.

The Mayor is the best Big Bad in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and, indeed, the Buffyverse as a whole. In terms of his narrative achievement, metaphoric significance, and individual character, he’s as delightful yet menacing as villains in television can get. He’s a villain the audience truly loves to hate, and every second of screen time he gets is delicious. He even excels on a meta-narrative level, raising the stakes from the undead villains of the first two seasons whilst expanding the lore of the series. In terms of creating a villain for a single arc, the Buffyverse never truly topped him. Any villain who’d even think of topping this guy would have to be bloody brilliant…