The Buffyverse Character Countdown (#20)

#20.

Hero: Gwen Raiden (Angel Season 4)

What do you get when you combine Rogue from X-Men, Electro from Spiderman, and Catwoman from Batman? You’d get Gwen Raiden, the closest the Buffyverse has come to creating an out-and-out comic book character. Though her electricity powers might be the most outlandish in the entire Buffyverse, Gwen remarkably does not suffer from bad writing, as is the case for most of the other characters in Angel Season Four. She’s hardly the most original character and she’s not the best example of a reformed antagonist in the Buffyverse, but she’s a classic example of how a monster-of-the-week character can be used to startling effectiveness to generate empathy and develop other characters.

Gwen Raiden was born with a tragic mutation: her body is a giant superconductor that kills anything it touches. This power minimizes her contact with the rest of humanity, as she lives a life sheltered from friendship and personal intimacy. After all, she can’t go around touching people willy-nilly. However, Gwen is fiercely independent and refuses to join up with government agencies, Wolfram & Hart, or any other villainous power that would use her powers and forge her into a contract killer. She instead opts for the life of a freelance thief, as her abilities allow her to effortlessly destroy security networks and immobilize any who get in her way. That said, despite her thriving upon theft as a way of life, Gwen mostly targets those who smuggle illegal government technology and demonic artifacts. She might be an anti-hero, but she’s an anti-hero whose selfishness doesn’t come at the detriment of innocents. Thus, she’s most definitely not one of the series’s villains.

The strongest elements of Gwen’s character is her motivation, ability, and relationships to other characters. Her desire for human touch, the impetus for most of her thefts, is a delight. She is already a comic book character in a fantasy franchise, but it’s fitting that her motivations are similar to those of Mr. Freeze – one of the very best comic book characters ever. Her determination and deadly ability combine with that motivation to make a character whom one never wants to cross but could easily get along with. She’s self-motivated, to be sure, but she’s not malicious; she’s more than willing to ally with others for the greater good. She also manages to become genuine friends with Angel, the first man ever able to touch her due to his being undead. Her most important relationship, though, is with Gunn. Despite originally treating him as little more than a muscle man, Gwen develops a genuine chemistry with Gunn over the course of the episode, “Players,” even sleeping with him at the episode’s conclusion. The relationship doesn’t feel forced, demeaning, or manipulative, but instead a logical conclusion for a relationship that’s been building over the course of a few episodes.

Unfortunately, Gwen’s character does have some significant drawbacks. While her personality is fun, her brand of snark and confidence isn’t exactly new for the Buffyverse. By Angel’s fourth season, we’ve gotten rather tired of the ultra-confident woman with the troubled past stereotype that Gwen falls into. Moreover, should one compare Gwen’s character with that of Rogue from X-Men, the fictional character she clearly rips off, and she definitely pales in comparison. Rogue has decades of development, whereas Gwen only gets three episodes. She’s definitely a fun hero for the episodes she’s in, but she doesn’t have enough of an impact on the plot to really stand with the best of the best. She only gets as high on the list as she does by virtue of having less bad deeds and anger-inducing elements than the previous heroes. In a way, she showcases the difficulties with many of the Buffyverse heroes outside of the main cast: they’re just not given the development and “wow factor” of series with larger ensemble casts.

Villain: Caleb (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 7)

The First Evil might have been a disappointing villain, but it did offer us one of the very best, most menacing henchmen in the Buffyverse. In fact, aside from one villain in the top ten of this list, Caleb might just earn the trophy for the most memorable #2 flunky in the Buffyverse. He’s also easily the most dangerous henchman in the series: while Mr. Trick and Doc ultimately perished in rather pathetic ways, the battle between Caleb and Buffy in “End of Days” and “Chosen” is one of the most memorable and exciting in the franchise. While Caleb continues the trend of Joss Whedon casting Nathan Fillion as an asshole in every single series he’s in, he’s undoubtedly Fillion’s most frightening and disgustingly evil part ever.

As would befit a Big Bad who is the Buffyverse equivalent of the Devil, the top henchman is none other than an evil priest, and a misogynistic one at that. Indeed, in terms of sheer misogyny, Caleb might just be the most overtly woman-hating character on the entire list aside from Billy, a character whose entire character is his misogyny. Caleb does not hesitate to callously murder any woman he comes across, though not without lecturing and mocking her first. And murder he does: not only does Caleb slaughter several innocent women and Potential slayers, he also blows up the entire Watchers’ Council, leaving the Slayers with few to no resources in the battle against the First. He also gouges out Xander’s eye in one of the most horrifying moments in the entire show. He’s quite possibly the most dangerous physical threat the Scoobies ever face, as he’s able to beat up Spike, Faith, and Buffy on numerous occasions. Unlike Adam, though, Caleb complements his physical menace with genuine psychological threat and actual humor.

Caleb’s strongest points are his threat level and his utter dedication to his job. He definitely ranks as more memorable than his boss by virtue of the fact that he actually accomplished tasks the First was able to perform only by proxy – after all, he IS the proxy. His misogyny also makes him more noticeably human than the First, who is ultimately little more than the culmination of all the world’s evil. However, there are a number of factors that do tie him down. His first episode and appearance, “Dirty Girls,” is one of the highlights of Season Seven, but, after that, he pretty much waits out the season until the final two episodes. His fight in “End of Days” and “Chosen” may be delicious, but it’s insufficient to make up for his absence throughout the rest of the season. Furthermore, his allegory is somewhat underdeveloped as compared to other villains in the series. Sure, having an evil priest might be a chance for Whedon to complain about the lack of female priests in the Catholic Church, but that’s about it as far as metaphors go. He’s evil, but he lacks the depth that the best villains in Buffy the Vampire Slayer have.

Caleb, at the end of the day, was a functional and fun mini-boss for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’s one of the stronger elements of Season Seven, and his fight choreography and misogynistic menace make him one of the most memorable henchmen the series has ever seen. Unfortunately, though, these elements only go so far for him on this list. He’s more horrific than most of the one-offs in the series and the weaker Big Bads, but once he’s stacked up against the villains who are unequivocally great, he really doesn’t pass the bar. That said, as demonstrated by the previous ten entries, we could have gotten a lot worse.