Characters / Buffyverse: Scooby Gang

Buffyverse Character Index
Sunnydale: The Scooby Gang (Buffy Summers / Willow Rosenberg / Spike / Angel) | Big Bads | Sunnydale Residents | Sunnydale High | Vampires | Demons and Monsters | Watchers and Slayers (Faith Lehane) | Other Characters
Los Angeles: Angel Investigations (Angel / Wesley Wyndam-Pryce / Spike) | Wolfram and Hart | Recurring Los Angeles Residents | One-Shot Los Angeles Residents | Big Bads | Other Characters
Comics: The Twilight Group | Fray | Comic Characters | Boom! Studios

Character-Specific Pages

• Original Members:
  • Buffy Summers
  • Willow Rosenberg
• Later Additions:
  • Angel
  • Spike

---

In General

"There is only one thing on this earth more powerful than evil, and that's us. Any questions?"

—-Buffy Summers

Tropes that apply to the Scooby Gang as a whole:

• Badass Crew: The Scoobies are a handful of humans and vampires that keep all the nasties in the Hellmouth from overrunning the world.
• Badass Normal: Xander is the most prominent example because he stays relevant even after his friends have become mages or werewolves or Super Soldiers. Giles and Anya have some magical connections, but largely rely on their wits and knowledge.
• Better as Friends: Willow and Xander, whose Unlucky Childhood Friend and Oblivious to Love statuses only give way to romance when they're both in other relationships. Willow chooses her relationship with Oz (and then, after they break up, discovers she's a lesbian) and she and Xander remain best friends.
• Breaking the Fellowship: Happens to them in-between Seasons 6 and 7. Willow and Giles have departed to London for Willow to undergo rehabilitation over her magic addiction, Anya has become a vengeance demon again, and Spike has departed Sunnydale to regain his soul; in "Beneath You," when Dawn suggests rounding up the rest of the gang to deal with the Monster of the Week, Xander points out that she, himself, and Buffy are what's left of the Scoobies. This is rectified over the course of Season 7.
• Childhood Friends: Willow and Xander have been best friends since kindergarten. They knew Cordelia for a long time - and hated her so much they formed a club devoted to it.
• Childhood Friend Romance:
  • Willow had a crush on Xander for years. They get together briefly in season three, only for Willow to realize she'd rather be with Oz. (And then with Tara.) Turns out they were born to be Platonic Life-Partners, not lovers. In "The Gift", the fifth season finale, Xander declares, "Smart chicks are so hot!" Willow replies with a wistful smile, "You couldn't have figured that out in 10th grade?"
  • The comics reveal Dawn and Xander, who appear to be together in the comics now. Dawn has always had a crush on Xander.
    • Also opens up some questions about free will when you realize Dawn was a construct built by the monks to hide the key. ALWAYS in her case is literally from the beginning of season 5 when she was made. The crush memories she has that ARE shown from before then were implanted by the monks.
• Deadpan Snarker: Buffy and Xander are the most prominent, but they all have their moments.
• Dysfunction Junction: It's more subtle in the earliest seasons, but it becomes increasingly obvious the Scoobies all have a lot of issues and troubled pasts to go around.
  • Buffy has the responsibility of saving the world at the age of just 15 which clashes with her own plans for a happy and stable life, her parents had a messy divorce which deeply affects her well into adulthood, her dad abandoned her...and this is when the series starts.
  • Willow's parents are also divorced; her father is apparently never around while her mother is rather oblivious or overly pushy and preachy, and she spends most of her life up until college as a social outcast with poor self-esteem and no confidence.
  • Xander's parents are actually not divorced, though he probably wishes they were because they do nothing but fight and are extremely oblivious to his problems; he covers up his lack of self-esteem and insecurities with humour.
  • Giles has a very Dark and Troubled Past involving teen rebellion gone wrong and black magic, earning him the nickname Ripper, which he now tries desperately to move past (to the point of going a little too far the other way).
  • Angel is brooding good vampire, cursed with a soul to punish him for all of past evils (of which there are many) and he is also tormented by his doomed love for Buffy.
  • Cordelia is an Alpha Bitch who secretly only acts the way she does because she doesn't want to be alone, even though she suspects none of her 'friends' really care about her.
  • Oz seems to have the most stable homelife, but also happens to be a werewolf, forcing him to be locked in a cage for three nights every month lest he goes on a rampage and hurts someone.
  • Faith's mother was a neglectful substance abuser and her Watcher was brutally murdered in front of her; she continues down an emotional tailspin before having a Face–Heel Turn, then goes down a long, hard road to redemption.
  • Anya is an ex-vengeance demon who Does Not Like Men, but finds herself falling for Xander anyway – her insecurities around relationships and lack of awareness about social interaction cause some problems here, though.
  • Riley is a soldier who was trained to follow orders blindly, discovers that the organisation he works for is not the force of good he believed it to be and that his admired mentor is actually a pretty nasty piece of work, who performs unethical experiments, tried to murder his girlfriend and experimented on him without his knowledge or consent; he subsequently struggles with being a Defector from Decadence and with his increasing awareness that Buffy doesn't love him as much as he loves her.
  • Tara's family are so controlling and abusive, it's a miracle they even let her go to college, grinding her down until she was a stuttering and painfully shy doormat who made teen!Willow look confident. Her mother was the only family member who was nice to her and died when she was 17. And that's not even getting into the part where they tricked her into believing she was part-demon, which turns out to be an utter lie designed to control her and the other women in her family.
  • Dawn is a magic-made Cosmic Retcon who has to grapple with the realization that all her memories are fake and all her friends and family were magicked into being so. Then she has to deal with being hunted by a Hellgod, watching all her friends get hurt trying to protect her, and then the deaths of her mother and sister in quick succession.
  • Spike was a once much-maligned Victorian poet, who was routinely mocked by his peers. After being turned, he attempted to save his sickly mother from worsening tuberculosis by siring her, only to be traumatized when she comes back cruel and tries to molest him. By the time he becomes a Scooby, he's been neutered and humiliated countless times, forced to work with the good guys until he falls in love with a woman who despises him. After which he continually tries and fails to grapple with morality, which his soulless nature leaves him wholly unequipped to understand.
    • Things really reach a head in Season 6. Buffy sums it up to Giles pretty sufficiently:
      Giles: Buffy, what's happened here?
      Buffy: God. I don't know where to start.
      Giles: Well, Willow's clearly been abusing the magicks.
      Buffy: She has. She was, and I barely even noticed. Everything's been so...Xander left Anya at the altar and Anya's a vengeance demon again. Dawn's a total klepto. Money's been so tight that I've been slinging burgers at the Doublemeat Palace. And I've been sleeping with Spike.
• Family of Choice: Several examples throughout the show:
  • When Tara's Abusive Parents try to take her home, Buffy and her friends insist that they are Tara's family instead, as they actually care for her.
  • Giles was the closest thing Buffy, Willow, and Xander had to a father as teenagers; this doesn't really become clear until later seasons, when we see just how distant all of their fathers are.
  • Also, although the Scoobies themselves were something more like Fire-Forged Friends for the first five seasons, the deaths of Joyce and then Buffy and Giles' absence knitted them together domestically as they banded up to take care of Dawn; Willow and Tara moved in to the Summers' house and made her morning pancakes, Spike became the friendly villainous babysitter, Buffy became the hard-working mother after her resurrection, and Xander was always there fixing the windows. Seasons 6-7 definitely portrayed them as a well-oiled family unit with a home base and designated roles.
• Fire-Forged Friends: This is how they became friends. It is also the most common solution to any major strife among the Scoobies. A notable example is Xander and Spike in the final season. Despite openly hating each other until this point, they manage to work together to save the girls from the influence of RJ's magic jacket in "Him". After Spike goes back to save Xander from Caleb in "Dirty Girls" their previous animosity is almost completely set aside. Perhaps the most prominent example is in "Dead Man's Party" during season three. After just about everyone spends most of the episode trashing Buffy for running away to the point that she nearly runs away again, all is forgiven and they're all best buds again right after they stop a magic mask-induced Zombie Apocalypse.
• The Friend Nobody Likes:
  • Spike is an example in Season 7 – most of the Scoobies neither like nor trust him (lampshaded by Anya), but Buffy insists he stick around because he's valuable. That's not the only reason, though.
  • Cordelia qualifies as this in the second and third seasons, hanging around only because she's "in the know" and because she's dating Xander at certain points.
  • Later, Anya (a former vengeance demon-turned-human) is this for the same reasons as Cordelia.
• "Friends" Rent Control: Get this in the comics, but for a good reason: the building was haunted and the owner couldn't get anyone else to live there. As a result they have three very nice apartments for a group that generally only has one or two members working at a time.
• The Friends Who Never Hang:
  • Anya and Tara had barely any close personal interaction despite hanging out together for years in the Scooby Gang and their love interests being best friends with each other, possibly due to their vividly contrasting personalities.
  • Oz and Cordelia got along well enough, yet when he crosses over to Angel, they briefly catch up, then run out of things to say.
  • Oz and Angel rarely interacted, mainly due to the fact that Oz joined the gang around the time Angelus was on the loose. When Oz arrived in Los Angeles, he and Angel exchanged brief words, Cordelia noting that their conversation was typical of their relationship.
• Good Is Not Soft: They're all nice kids and Giles is a Quintessential British Gentleman, but they've killed a lot of monsters.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: As of Season 8, many people believe them to be a speciesist group preying on vampires. Only gets worse in Season 9 due to Simone's antics, but they finally shake it off in Season 10.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Buffy and Willow. It made for a bit of awkwardness when Willow came out as gay, partially because they had grown apart quite a bit during that season and Buffy had no clue until then. It's given shippers more ammunition than every bullet in every war ever.
• Honorary True Companion: Cordelia and Angel would sometimes join in the early seasons; but the former still does not like being in their presence, and the latter, being a vampire, can't be there during the day.
• Honor Before Reason: Throughout Season 4 and most of Season 5, they all are largely against killing Spike after he got his Restraining Bolt because he's helpless, despite the fact that he was one of their worst enemies and kept saying that he would kill them all at the first opportunity once he got the chip removed. Of course, that doesn't stop them from regularly taunting him over his "impotence" and beating him up for fun or information.
• Kid Hero: Most of them started demon fighting when they were back in high school.
• Kid Hero All Grown-Up: Most of the Scoobies were high schoolers that began demon-hunting at age 16. The show ends with them in their early twenties, with the sequel comics following them until their late twenties or early thirties (Buffy mentions being 30 years old in Season 12).
• Like Brother and Sister:
  • Buffy and Xander after Season Two. For the first two seasons it's a bit one-sided (Xander's in love with Buffy during this time).
  • Xander and Willow also end up like this. They start off more like Platonic Life-Partners, but as the series progresses they drift apart a bit, and form close relationships with other people. They remain part of the same group of True Companions.
• Platonic Life-Partners:
  • Xander and Willow are like this at least for the first three seasons. They've known each other their whole lives (or at least since kindergarten), and are so close that Xander is even able to save the world at the end of Season 6 by telling Willow how much he loves her. They "dated" as children, Willow had a mostly unrequited adolescent crush on Xander, and have a brief fling as teenagers, but are basically friends throughout.
  • What Angel and Faith have become by Season 9.
  • Buffy is this with Xander eventually. To get there he had to get over his crush on her and she had to stop thinking of him as a simple 'friend'.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Scooby Gang has had, at various points, a Slayer (Buffy), a confident outcast (Xander), a computer geek turned witch (Willow), a stuffy librarian (Giles), a snotty cheerleader (Cordelia), a taciturn werewolf (Oz), two vampires (Angel and Spike), a soldier (Riley), a millenium old ex-demon (Anya), an energy being turned human (Dawn), a gentle and shy witch (Tara), and a geeky demon summoner (Andrew) - and that's not even counting their various allies and friends from all walks of life. No matter the line-up, the Scooby Gang is very good at what they do when it comes to hunting demons.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
  • Cordelia was a reluctant team member (sort of). It gets worse after her breakup with Xander.
  • Spike could also be an example, especially in season 4, when he's only working with them so he can get to kill anything at all. Especially prominent with Xander.
  • Xander towards Angel, although not so much Angel towards Xander.
  • Anya winds up behaving this way to the rest of the Scoobies during the end of season 6 and the beginning of season 7 when she becomes a vengeance demon again after Xander leaves her at the altar.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill Muggles: The group insists that, while demons are fair game, humans are out of their jurisdiction period, though Buffy is the most adamant on this.
• True Companions: They've all become this throughout the series, to the extent of calling one another family.
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • Willow and Anya, with an entire episode dealing with the matter and Anya serving as a surrogate annoying younger sister.
  • Spike and Xander become this by season seven.
  • Buffy and Faith were this before Faith's Face–Heel Turn to the dark side. She and Buffy do become closer again at the ends of Season 7 and Season 8 of Buffy after Faith's Heel–Face Turn.

Original Members

Xander

Alexander LaVelle "Xander" Harris

"I laugh in the face of danger! Then I... hide until it goes away."

Played By: Nicholas Brendon (primarily) & Kelly Donovan

"Whatever you choose, you've got my support. Just think of me as... as your... You know, I'm searching for supportive things and I'm coming up all bras. So, something slightly more manly, think of me as that."

Buffy's other best friend. Unlike Willow, Xander never gained any powers (apart from some military training). He had a crush on Buffy early on.

---

• Abusive Parents: Not explicitly abusive per se, but they're definitely not loving parents. His father is also, at least verbally and emotionally, abusive of his mother, and on one occasion tried to sell him to some Armenians. It's also noted that every Christmas, Xander sleeps outside so as not to deal with his drunken family.
• Accidental Pornomancer: Both girls he hooked up with (Faith and Anya) propositioned him, without Xander being able to get a word in edgewise and neither willing to take no for an answer. This being Xander, however, he was all too eager to take them up on their offer.
• Allegedly Dateless: It's a running joke that the only dates he gets are with demons disguised as women who want to eat or sacrifice him, which is partially true, but he did spend most of the series in long-term committed relationships with Cordelia (Seasons 2-3) and Anya (4-6). Admittedly, Anya is a former demon and Cordelia would eventually become part demon. Plus he had a one night stand with Faith and Willow wanted him. As of Season 8, even Buffy confesses her love for Xander. He turns her down, since he's now in a relationship with Dawn and he believes Buffy has just finally gotten to the settle-for-the-best-friend option (after "trying girls", mind you, so he might be right.) Earlier in the comic, he was dating a Slayer named Renee, who was killed during a mission in Japan.
• All Therapists Are Muggles: While he is smart enough to seek professional help for his building anger issues and the trauma he's been through by Season 10, Dr. Mike is only useful for the personal stuff. Dealing with the potential ghost of an ex-girlfriend is out of his league and the advice he gives Xander proves disastrous.
• Amazon Chaser: Xander has a noted thing for Slayers, showing interest in Buffy, Kendra, and Faith (and losing interest in Kendra when she becomes tongue-tied). Cordelia, Anya, and Dawn aren't exactly pushovers, either.
• Ambiguously Bi: Was originally written to come out as gay in a later season, until Oz left the show and Willow came out instead. That leaves us with many different early-seasoned moments that support queer readings of his character.
  • And let's not forget the amount of ho yay moments he had with Spike, including the time in season 5 that he described what Buffy could find attractive about him in a way that made her respond with "I'm not having sex with Spike, but I'm starting to think that you might be!"invoked
• The Artifact: Nicholas Brendon was apparently told by Joss Whedon around season four that his story had come to an end, but since he was one of the original four, he couldn't go. Even the show itself dealt with Xander complaining about his own uselessness a few times. The Season 8 comics decided to give him something to do by basically having him replace Giles as Watcher. Since the Slayers are a giant international organization now, he has much more work to do than Giles did.
• Author Avatar: According to Nicholas Brendon, his character is based on Joss Whedon in high school, which is why Xander "gets all the good lines." They also dress alike. It would explain Xander's avowed fetish for spandex and his taste in comics.
• Babies Ever After: With Dawn. They end off Season 12 seemingly married, living together and with a baby girl named after Joyce.
• Badass Normal: He's the only Scooby who never gains any superpowers, but he manages to keep up with the rest and can be quite fearsome when he wants to be. For example, in "Killed by Death," he stands up to Angelus, the most evil and brutal vampire in history, and actually intimidates him into leaving the hospital, and in "The Gift," he nails Glory with a wrecking ball.
• Basement-Dweller: Downplayed in that he pays rent and works a variety of jobs to support himself. It is very clear that he loathes every minute of having to live with his parents.
• Beard of Sorrow: Grows one shortly after Renee's death in Season 8.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Cordelia before they started dating.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He's always helpful and brave, but being non-superpowered, is not a formidable hand-to-hand fighter. Demons and vamps typically don't have to worry too much about him. But if you mess with someone he loves, you'll find yourself on the wrong end of his berserker rage. In "The Pack" he is released from his hyena curse and the first thing he sees is the crazed zoo-keeper attacking Willow. Xander attacks and strikes first, with Buffy finishing the job. Despite previously stating that he hides until danger leaves, when backed into a corner while protecting Buffy, he threatens Angelus, one of the most dangerous vampires in history, and warns that he will be there to see him staked. Angelus actually takes him seriously and leaves. In "Hush" Xander sees a bloody jowled Spike leaning over a napping Anya, his point of view suggesting that Spike had attacked her. Xander immediately launches a what-should-be-a-suicidal-attack-against-what-he-thinks-is-a-restored-vampire and starts pounding Spike. In "The Gift", he sucker-punches Glory with a wrecking ball. After Willow is kidnapped by vampires in "When She Was Bad", he, in full Tranquil Fury, openly threatens to kill Buffy if anything happened to Willow.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He's very goofy and snarky, but when push comes to shove, he proves just why he's the Badass Normal of the Scooby Gang. Just ask Angelus, the vampire he threatened into a complete retreat, Buffy herself, who took him completely seriously when he threatened to kill her if Willow died, or Glory, who never quite recovered from the wrecking ball he hit her with.
• Body Motifs: Xander is the one who sees everything, so Caleb pokes out one of his eyes. In "Restless", Xander is The Heart of the group, so the First Slayer rips out his heart.
• Book Dumb: Granted, he's a little slow on some of the academic stuff (mostly math and spatial relations), but is a quick thinker and has a lot of common sense.
• Brainwash Residue:
  • After being turned into a soldier during "Halloween", he still retains his knowledge of military training, and uses it to help the gang on multiple occasions (such as when he sneaks into a military base to steal a rocket launcher).
  • After being temporarily Brainwashed and Crazy by Dracula in "Buffy vs. Dracula", he continued to refer to Dracula as "Master" several episodes later and in the Season 8 comics.
• Brutal Honesty: He's very forward and brutally blunt when it came to expressing his opinion, never afraid to speak out and tell his friends if they're doing something wrong, making him very opinionated; this has caused him to clash and argue with his friends many times, especially Buffy.
• Butt-Monkey: Trope Namer.
  Xander: Dammit! You know what? I'm sick of this crap. I'm sick of being the guy who eats insects and gets the funny syphilis. As of this moment, it's over. I'm finished being everybody's butt-monkey!
  [Giles, Riley, and Buffy nod and try to look solemn]
  Buffy: Check. No more butt-monkey.
• Cartwright Curse:
  • Of his four major love interests, three are dead: Cordelia, Anya, and Renee (though Cordelia had been broken up with him for 5 years by the time she died on Angel), and all his other possible love interests turned out to be demons trying to kill him. Hopefully Dawn will have better luck.
  • In the comics, she nearly dies and then has her emotional state reset to when she was first created, erasing her romantic feelings for him. They're back together by the end of the series.
• Character Development: He started out as a cowardly, snarky goofball who was regarded as a loser. By the end of the series, he's found his role in the group, managed to hold down a steady job, face evil without running and hiding and (eventually) found love.
• Characterization Marches On: He's first seen skateboarding. This was abandoned after the first episode.
• Chick Magnet: He's THE Butt-Monkey, but there's no denying that a lot of women fall for him throughout the course of the series. To wit, there's Cordelia, Anya, Willow and Dawn, and even Faith has had sex with him. In the love spell episode, Amy's botched spell accidentally forces every woman except Cordelia in Xander's vicinity to fall madly in love with him.
• Class Clown: His personality in the early seasons is comical. In "The Prom", he complains about not winning the Class Clown award.
• Combat Pragmatist: In a world where most people think they need to use swords, stakes, axes, and other similar melee/medieval weapons, Xander came up with the idea to use a rocket launcher to kill the Judge, and later bashed Glory with a wrecking ball.
• Cowardly Lion: His fear is a Running Gag, yet he shows incredible courage for someone with no superpowers whatsoever.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's a goofball, but when push comes to shove, he's unstoppable.
• Deadpan Snarker: Even among an entire cast of snarkers, Xander reigns supreme.
  Oz: That was my sarcastic voice.
  Xander: Sounds a lot like your regular voice.
• Dork Knight: Xander is a nerdy loser of the first water — hugely into comics and science fiction and socially awkward. But he's got a moral center as strong as tungsten steel and, when pushed, the sheer unbreakable will to back it up. Angelus referred to him — sarcastically — as "Buffy's White Knight", not really comprehending just how correct he was being. The best example of this might be his stand-off with Zombie Jack while a bomb ticks down to zero right in front of him.
  Zombie Jack: I'm not afraid to die. I'm already dead.
  Xander: Yeah, but this is different. Being blown up isn't walking around and drinking with your buddies dead. It's little bits swept up by the janitor dead, and I don't think you're ready for that.
  Zombie Jack: [visibly nervous and trying to hide it] Are you?
  Xander: [as calm as a cucumber] I like the quiet.
• Dub Name Change: The French dub changes his nickname to a more widespread "Alex".
• Easy Amnesia: Exploited. After Xander is possessed by hyenas, he tells Buffy and Willow he has no memory of it, but when Giles confronts him about there being no record of animal possession causing amnesia, he confesses that he was lying so he wouldn't have to talk about it. In Season 2, he inadvertently reveals he was lying.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: LaVelle.
• Even Nerds Have Standards: His interactions with Andrew, whom he would indulge in pop culture-based conversations with before telling him to shut up.
• The Everyman: He demonstrates that even an "average" person can make a difference and save the world. He never developed any permanent superpowers of his own but gained much experience from battling by Buffy's side. As Buffy explains to the Watchers Council, Xander had "clocked more field time" than all other Watchers combined.
• Eyepatch of Power: After he loses his eye in Season 7, he wears a Nick Fury-style eyepatch.
• Eye Scream: At least he gets to be Nick Fury now, right?
• The Face: He lacks the supernatural powers of his teammates, but is best friends with Buffy and Willow to the end. His storylines tends to revolve around interpersonal relationships, and, as the most consistent of the Scooby Gang, he interacts with everyone.
• Failed a Spot Check: In "Villains," he's so in shock over the fact that Warren shot Buffy that he completely fails to notice that Willow's shirt is covered in Tara's blood.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • His hatred of vampires has always been noticeably stronger than that of the other characters, as seen by his relentless dislike of Angel and Spike during even their "good" periods. Particularly notable in that he's far more likely to dangle what they are over their heads, and often fell back on calling Spike in particular a "thing". Best summed up in "The Harvest":
    Xander: I don't like vampires. I'm gonna take a stand and say that they're not good.
  • The comics contextualize this as being trauma-based, due to having to stake his longtime friend Jesse after having been turned into a vampire in the pilot. He does eventually curb his vampire hatred by befriending Spike and, weirdly enough, Dracula.
• Fatal Attractor: All of his dates are demons. All of them. He and Willow have devised a secret phone code for "My date's a demon who's trying to kill me."
• The Gadfly: He often joked in serious situations or when someone made what was intended to be a dramatic statement which is usually unnecessary. He also had a frequent tendency to quip against his foes with the most ridiculous choice of words, often finding something insulting to say.
• Green-Eyed Monster: While he has plenty of reasons not to like vampires, the ongoing tension he has with Angel is clearly based on the fact that Angel won Buffy's heart where Xander didn't.
• The Heart: His position in the Scooby Gang as 'The Heart' was a key component of a spell — the others were 'The Mind', 'The Spirit', and 'The Hands'. It's made clear more than once that Xander's strength doesn't lie in battle or conjuring spells, but in his interpersonal skills which hold the group together and keep them sane despite all the insanity swirling around them. He brought Willow back from the brink by telling her he loved her.

• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: It's mostly hinted at through the series run, but his parents were super de duper not there for him. His dad was an abusive drunk (judging by his nightmare vision of the man in Restless), and his mom doesn't even realize it's her only child calling her in season two. There's a reason he spent most nights at Buffy's and Willow's homes and felt like absolute shit when he was forced to move back into the basement (because they'd remodeled his room) in season four.
  Xander: Hey, mom, it's me. [Beat] Xander.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager:
  Cordelia: Does looking at guns make you wanna have sex?
  Xander: I'm 17. Looking at linoleum makes me wanna have sex.
  • When Buffy reads his mind...
    Xander: "What am I going to do? I think about sex all the time. Sex. Help. Four times five is thirty. Five times six is thirty-two... Naked girls. Naked women. Naked Buffy. Oh, stop me!"
    Buffy: "God, Xander! Is that all you think about?!"
• Hopeless Suitor: In the first season, he tries and fails to get Buffy's attention in a romantic manner.
• Hot Men at Work: In "Pangs", Anya openly ogles him in a tank-top.
• Hypocrite:
  • In Season 3, he's furious that Buffy knew that Angel had come Back from the Dead and withheld the information from the others, when he himself had deliberately neglected to tell Buffy that Willow was planning to curse Angel with a soul again in the Season 2 finale to ensure that Buffy would kill him.
  • He also has a relationship with Anya, a former demon, whilst looking down on Buffy's relationship with Angel because Angel is a vampire. As Angel has a soul and regrets the things Angelus did, he is really just as moral as Anya is—perhaps moreso, considering Anya had a soul throughout her killings. This gets magnified when he yells at Buffy for wanting to kill Anya, who is back on a vengeance demon killing spree, and she reminds him that she killed Angel to save the world.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: He eventually reconciles himself to Buffy seeing him as a friend. In Season 8, Buffy briefly comes onto him. However, Xander recognizes that she's looking for a warm body, not love, and reaffirms that they are friends only.
• I Warned You: In "Passion," he gives off such a rant regarding Angelus after he kills Jenny.
  Xander: I'm sorry, but let's not forget that I hated Angel long before you guys jumped on the bandwagon. So I think I deserve a little something for not saying "I told you so" long before now. And if Giles wants to go after the, uh, fiend that murdered his girlfriend, I say, "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"
• In with the In Crowd: Due to possession by hyena spirits in "The Pack" he hangs out with a clique, who was also possessed.
• Indy Ploy: He had an expert ability to think on the fly, mostly relating to talking to others in stressful situations. He managed to convince Jack to not blow up the school (which would, unknown to Jack, doom the world due to the Hellmouth opening that night) with nothing other than his words. He threatened both Angel and Angelus into complete submission; even if he didn’t have the skills to back up those threats, Angelus, in particular, realized that Xander could lead the people around him, even those that didn’t know him, against him if he attacked. His decision to hit Glory with the wrecking ball was not in the original plan and Giles even came to depend on his skills to talk Dark Willow down, which he did by relying on memory all the way back in kindergarten.
• It's All About Me: Sometimes. Overlaps with his issues taking blame for some things, like when he didn't want his friends feeling sympathy for Cordelia after he cheated on her. He also dismissed Buffy's need to leave Sunnydale to grieve having to kill Angel as "boy troubles," focusing on the worry she caused them instead of any real empathy even though Angel's death was partly due to a lie he told.
• It's All My Fault: In the final episodes of Season 6, he views Dark Willow's rampage as his fault, revealing that he saw the gun in Warren's hand before he even raised it and just froze up in fear and stood there while Warren shot Buffy and Tara.
• I Choose to Stay: At the end of the third season he is offered a chance by Anya to leave town but loyally refuses so he can stay and help his friends beat Wilkins.
• I Just Want to Be Special: It relates more to his lack of powers or supernatural abilities as anyone who has helped save the world multiple times can hardly claim that they have lived an unexceptional or unexciting life.
• Jerkass Realization:
  • In "Revelations," Xander, furious that Angel has come Back from the Dead and Buffy withheld it from the rest of the Scoobies, gives Faith the bare minimum of details regarding it, knowing she won't hesitate to stake Angel. However, Angel isn't evil anymore and helps in the resulting fight against the treacherous Watcher Gwen Post. While his lie to Buffy in "Becoming, Part 2" was a bit justified, since Angelus was actively trying to bring about an apocalypse, Xander realizes that he crossed a line here, and makes it up to Buffy by helping her save Angel from the First in "Amends."
  • In "Forever", Willow and Xander run into Spike, who's in the process of trying to deliver a bouquet of flowers to the Summers home. Xander believes he's trying to take advantage of Buffy's mother's death to score points with Buffy, but Spike adamantly insists that he was actually trying to pay his respects to Joyce, as she was the only one of Buffy's "lot" that was ever nice to him. Xander refuses to believe Spike, who eventually gives in, throws the flowers down, and storms off, telling Xander to think whatever he wants. As soon as he's gone, Willow picks up the bouquet and informs Xander that Spike didn't include a card with the flowers, surprising them both with the knowledge that Spike really was trying to pay his respects.
  • In "Entropy", once Buffy's Secret Relationship with Spike is revealed, while the other Scoobies accept it relatively easily, Xander is left shocked and horrified, spending the majority of the next episode, "Seeing Red," confused and disgusted as to why she would ever want to have sex with him. Eventually, however, Xander realizes and acknowledges he gave her plenty of reason not to tell him, and he reacted exactly as badly as he feared he would when he did find out.
• Jerkass to One: He's generally a goofy Nice Guy, but Xander outright hates Angel and Spike, taking every possible opportunity to throw their past sins in their faces and disapproving of Buffy's relationships with both. This is in large part motivated by Fantastic Racism against vampires and, in Angel's case, jealousy due to his crush on Buffy during the high school seasons; come Season 10, he's taken therapy and managed to curb his vampire hatred, befriending Spike and making peace with Angel.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For all his jerky moments (mostly towards anyone who is a vampire), he is deep-down a very good man, and his Undying Loyalty is pretty much a superpower to someone who is just a Badass Normal in a World of Badass. Indeed, he was The Heart to a spell to possess Buffy, and had this trait in the series as a whole, trying to reach out to any human person in their time of need, even Faith after she kills someone and shows no remorse for pinning the blame on Buffy.
• The Lancer: Often acts as Buffy's "voice of reason" when he feels she's not thinking straight. By Season 8, he's her official second-in-command. Also plays this to Spike in Season 10, particularly the "Love Dares You" arc.
• The Leader: Come Season 8, he's the de facto leader of the international Slayers' organization because of his uncanny ability to bring out the best in his girls. See The Heart above.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: After telling Buffy he was once roped into working as a male stripper.
• Likes Older Women: Harbors an unspoken desire for Joyce Summers. He's a conquistador! This is true for some Sunnydale High teachers as well. Also Anya, who is 1120 years old.
• Literal Metaphor: In "Dead Man's Party," while Joyce and the Scoobies are taking turns giving Buffy a What the Hell, Hero? speech, Xander tells Buffy that "You can't just bury stuff; it'll come right back up to get you." Unbeknownst to the gang, Sunnydale is undergoing a Zombie Apocalypse at that very moment.
• The Load: Most new characters think he's useless. They're wrong...
• Love Makes You Dumb: Discussed in Season 7 when he objects to Buffy planning to kill Anya, despite the fact that Anya brutally murdered several humans; Buffy herself believes that Xander's lingering feelings for Anya are clouding his judgment:
  Xander: Buffy, I still love her.
  Buffy: I know. And that's why you can't see this for what it really is.
• Manchild: He sometimes behaves like a child and comes off as very immature. In "Band Candy", an enchanted chocolate is distributed in Sunnydale, which mentally brings the adults back to the level of children and teenagers. Xander says he does not feel any change even after three plates of chocolate.
• The Masochism Tango: With Cordelia, from acting like they hated each other in public to having private makeout sessions in the school broom closet.

• Monster Roommate: Had Spike forced to be his in Seasons 4 and 7, much to their mutual dislike. In Season 10, however, they're splitting an apartment willingly.
• Mr. Fanservice: Not nearly as often as Angel or Spike, but he does fill the role every once in a while.
• Mr. Fixit: He became a skilled carpenter, gaining practical job experience from repairing damage caused by various conflicts involving the Scooby Gang (most notably the windows at Buffy's house; he complained that he was doomed to replace their windows for all eternity) and as a foreman of a construction crew. Spike mockingly referred to him as "a glorified bricklayer."
• Neural Implanting: After being turned into a soldier during the first Halloween episode, he still retains military knowledge, which helps out the Scoobies on more than one occasion.
• Never My Fault:
  • He doesn't want the other Scoobies to feel sorry for Cordelia after the break-up, despite the fact that he cheated on her with Willow.
  • In "Dead Man's Party," he blatantly ignores the fact that him refusing to tell Buffy crucial information (that she should stall the fight because Willow was going to try to restore Angel's soul) probably caused her more suffering than if he had just told her. Also, him lying to her by saying that Willow wanted Buffy to "kick [Angel's] ass" when she actually said the opposite didn't help with Buffy's fear of opening up to Willow. But of course Xander just blames Buffy for keeping things to herself.
  • Throughout "Seeing Red," he's angry and annoyed over Buffy's Destructive Romance with Spike and how she kept it from him, despite his active dislike of Spike and how he told Spike that only a complete loser would ever want to sleep with him right in front of Buffy. By the end of the episode, he gets past it, and acknowledges that he gave Buffy a lot of reasons not to tell him.
• The Nicknamer: He makes up nicknames for nearly everyone. (Contrary to most fanfic, though, he never reuses them, which might be why we almost never hear him give Willow a nickname... he ran out of original nicknames for her years ago.)
• No Sympathy:
  • During Seasons 2 and 3. Having always hated Angel, Xander is ecstatic that now that he's evil, he finally has an excuse and repeatedly urges Buffy to kill him, uncaring that Buffy still loves him and it's very hard on her. When she returns in "Dead Man's Party," rather than be even remotely sympathetic for her need to mourn Angel, he gripes about how she "ruined his life" by running away and dismisses the months of Mind Rape she suffered at Angelus' hands as "boy troubles."
  • He hits it again in "Doomed." Unlike Willow, he couldn't care one bit about how depressed and purposeless Spike is after being chipped and actively taunts him over it, declaring he's a pathetic waste of space who's Not Worth Killing. When he and Willow come back to find Spike trying to stake himself, Xander disapproves... because Spike was wearing his clothes at the time and he didn't want them dusted, and because he'd much rather kill Spike himself.
• Non-Action Guy: He gained in combat ability throughout the series, but was still a second-line fighter at best by the end, taking on the Mission Control role in the "Season 8" comics. Even so, he's another example where lack of combat ability is compensated by extreme testicular fortitude; his more powerful friends often worry about his near-suicidal charges against superpowered opponents.
• Number Two: Official second-in-command to Buffy in the Slayer Organization.
• Oblivious Mockery: In "Gone," he mocks Spike for his continued obsession with Buffy, declaring that only a complete loser would ever want to sleep with him... right in front of Buffy, who had done just that two episodes ago. Needless to say, this gives her an added incentive not to tell her friends about her Destructive Romance with Spike.
• Odd Friendship: Considering how often he helps in the vampire slaying, he and Dracula get along well.
• Of Course I'm Not a Virgin: In "Teacher's Pet", the reason that the praying mantis teacher wants to kill him is because he is a virgin, which Xander vigorously tries to deny once Buffy and Willow find out. He eventually loses his virginity to Faith of all people.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • He's normally one of Buffy's biggest fans, especially during the high school seasons, so when Xander of all people is pissed at her, you know Buffy's really messed up this time.
  • In "When She Was Bad," Buffy's attitude problem causes her to get baited easily by the vamps, leaving her friends unprotected so that Willow, Cordelia, Giles, and Miss Calendar get kidnapped by the vampires working for the Anointed One. When Buffy returns to the library to find it ransacked and Xander beaten to a pulp, Xander gives her a scathing What the Hell, Hero?, going so far as to openly threaten to kill her if the vamps hurt Willow.
  • In "Dead Man's Party," he's easily the least enthusiastic to see Buffy return to Sunnydale after she ran out on them, going on about how miserable his life was while she was gone.
    Xander: And what'll we talk about at a gathering, anyway? "So, Buffy, did you meet any nice pimps on your travels? And oh, by the by, thanks for ruining our lives for the past three months."
• Out of Focus: In Season 7. He has an all-time low of three lines in "Lies My Parents Told Me" and is completely absent from "Conversations with Dead People."
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Giving him a sense of kinship with Dawn, who likewise feels overshadowed by her big sister.
• Pals with Jesus: With Dracula in the comics. Xander taught him how to motorbike.

• Perpetual Poverty: Until he gets promoted at work, he had little spending money.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Buffy and Willow. While he gets sufficient Ship Tease with both, they ultimately decide they are Better as Friends.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: He read X-Men comics and referenced both the Human Torch and Nick Fury. He displayed the ability to read Klingon and often demonstrated pop culture knowledge rivaling Andrew's.
• Positive Friend Influence:
  • In "The Freshman", he snaps Buffy out of her self-doubt with some wise words:
    Buffy, I've gone through some fairly dark times in my life, faced some scary things, among them the kitchen at the fabulous Ladies Night club. Let me tell you something, when it's dark and I'm all alone and I'm scared or freaked out or whatever, I always think, "What would Buffy do?" You're my hero.
  • In "Wild at Heart", Willow seeks a male perspective over her situation with Oz. He tells her to that they need to talk about their issues.
  • In "Crush", when Buffy realized that Spike had an unsettling obsession with her, she began to wonder if something was wrong with her and seemed very dismayed with her personal life. Xander, however, comforted her, insisting that there was nothing wrong with her and that if she was just Buffy, someone would see her amazing heart and fall in love with her and Buffy, touched at his words, hugged him.
  • In "Potential", he reassures Dawn that just because she has no powers that doesn't mean she's useless.
    They'll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn't chosen. To live so near to the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes because nobody's watching me. I saw you last night. I see you working here today. You're not special. You're extraordinary.
• Psycho Supporter: Believing that Buffy is compromised by her love for Angel, he tries to ensure his demise on two separate occasions, "Becoming, Part Two" and "Revelations", first by not telling Buffy that Willow was working on a spell to restore his soul, then by encouraging vampire Slayer Faith to kill Angel after he'd come back from the dead.
• Runaway Groom: In "Hells' Bells", he dumps Anya at the altar, although that's just cold feet; there's no other woman involved. There were exceptional circumstances, too: an old man claiming to be Xander himself from the future showed up, showing young Xander horrible visions implying he would kill Anya if the two of them got together (which merely augmented his fear from his parents' own unhappy marriage). It turns out this old man is lying; he's actually an old enemy of Anya's trying to ruin her wedding out of revenge, but by the time this comes out Xander is too freaked out to go through with it. Both Anya and Xander are depicted sympathetically.
• Strong as They Need to Be: A particularly irritating case. Many times throughout the series and even before receiving any kind of instruction, Xander was able to take down several Vampires in hand-to-hand combat without showing the slightest fear or hesitation in combat. But whenever some school bully showed up, Xander nearly freaked out. Not to mention the Scooby Gang irrational insistence on almost always treating him like a dead weight during combat despite how skilled he's shown to be and how many times he's saved the lives of every member of the group.
• Sad Clown: Big time. Usually has all the snarkiest dialogue, and it's pretty obvious that it's just something to mask the loneliness and inferiority complex he deals with.
• Sarcastic Devotee: If he's got issues with The Plan, he will tell the group, in true Xander fashion.
• Scars Are Forever: His eye never heals.
• Screw Learning, I Have Phlebotinum!: He was mystically turned into a soldier during "Halloween", and even after the spell is broken, he still recalls everything about military protocol. It helps the Scoobies more than once.
• Settle for Sibling: He had had a crush on Buffy way back in season one and in the comics winds up dating Dawn (who likewise had a crush on him back when she was a teenager in season five). Made even more awkward because this was right when Buffy realized that she might have feelings for him herself.
• Sex God: According to Anya, he is "a real Viking in the sack!" and she would know, because she was a real Viking once upon a time.
  Anya: I love Xander because of his thoughtfulness, and compassion, and his kindness. Plus he can hold his breath for nearly twenty minutes, which is a bonus during some sexual acts, I can tell you.
• Shipper on Deck: He delivers an impassioned speech for Buffy to get back together with Riley in "Into the Woods". Ironically by Season 10, despite formerly being one of its biggest naysayers, he's actually pro-Spike and Buffy, to the point of calling Spike out for turning Buffy down for a date when its obvious Spike is still in love with her.
• Shipping Torpedo: To wit: he loathed Buffy with Angel because he's in love with Buffy; was a Torpedo to Spike/Buffy because he dislikes Spike and thinks he's bad for Buffy, and anti-shipped Wesley/Cordelia for all of the above reasons.
• Slut-Shaming:
  • Xander's favorite form of comeback against Cordelia after they break up.
    Cordelia: You dragged me out of bed for a ride? What am I, mass transportation?
    Xander: That's what a lot of the guys say, but it's just locker room talk. I wouldn't pay it any mind.
  • His response to Anya sleeping with Spike, despite the fact that he had left her at the altar and broken her heart, was to shame her and express his disgust for letting a "soulless thing" touch her. He later recounts this however, expressing understanding as to why she'd done it.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: He tends to participate in this with the other resident snarkers on the show. Most often with Buffy, Spike or Giles.
• Stepford Snarker: Xander's primary defense mechanism is snark, which he sometimes uses to mask hurt feelings or lack of self-confidence. Lampshaded by Anya after he calls off their wedding and she refers to him as "a scared, insecure little boy" who has spent his entire life telling "stupid, pointless jokes" to conceal it. "The Zeppo" and "The Replacement" center around Xander's poor self-image and how he really thinks of himself among the Scoobies.
• Stupid Sexy Friend: Xander only awakens to his attraction to Willow when they're both going steady, with other people.
• Talking the Monster to Death: How he beat Dark!Willow in Season 6.
  "I saved the world with talking from my mouth. My mouth saved the world!"
• Team Dad: To the new Slayers in Season 8. Any Slayer who ever seems depressed or on the verge of a Heroic BSoD is always quickly cheered up by Xander.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Buffy's vampire Love Interests because he is in love with her himself and overshadowed by them.
• This Is Unforgivable!:
  • While he never liked Angel and repeatedly vouched for just dusting Angelus, he doubles down on it after Angelus kills Jenny in cold blood in "Passion," citing it as proof that Angel is beyond redemption.
  • In "Villains," after Warren shoots Buffy and Tara, nearly killing the former and actually killing the latter, Xander agrees with Dawn that Warren deserves to die, declaring he's no better than the vampires and demons they fight every day. Even in "Two to Go," despite being physically sick at the sight of Willow flaying him alive, Xander still insists that Warren deserved what he got.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: As foreman on the Sunnydale High 2.0 construction project, he has intimate knowledge of its blueprints. He's also handy at building barricades at Chez Summers. Once got in a fantastic shot on Glory using a wrecking ball.
• Tranquil Fury: He's a surprising example of this trope, given his usual goofy temperament, but threaten some one he cares about and it doesn't matter how much stronger than him you may be—he will calmly inform you that he will kill you (see his conversation with Buffy after she got Willow kidnapped, or his conversation with Angel at the hospital). It is telling that none of the super-powered characters he has threatened have ignored the threat. The man can be scary when he wants to be.
• Undying Loyalty: Seven seasons of this, when most guys his age would probably have just fled the city ages ago.

• Unusual Euphemism: After being propositioned by Faith in "The Zeppo", he sheepishly admits that he's "never been up with people before". It doesn't stop her.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Despite once openly loathing him, he becomes this with Spike in Season 10 onward. For as much as they snipe at each other, they also willingly share an apartment, raise cats together, confide their woes and offer advice to each other.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Leaving Anya at the altar was not so suave.
• Weirdness Magnet: While everyone shows some of this, Xander has it more than most. He comes closest to fulfilling this trope when he is recruited by Zombie Bank Robbers as a wheelman. Most of the women interested in him turn out to be a demon.

Giles

Rupert Giles

"The Earth is definitely doomed."

Played By: Anthony Stewart Head

"In the end, we all are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed."

Buffy's Watcher. A Quintessential British Gentleman of British Gentlemen. Originally just Mr. Exposition, turned out to have quite a past. Also played Team Dad to the Scoobies.

---

• Accent Relapse: When he reverts back to Ripper in "Band Candy" his accent shifts to a lower-class accent similar to Spike's. Towards the end of the episode his usual Received Pronunciation starts to bleed back in as he exposits about Lurconis.
• Actually Pretty Funny: While he's describing how the phases of the moon exert a degree of psychological influence over people and the full moon brings out their darkest qualities, Xander quips that it led to the creation of the moon pie. Buffy and Willow are unimpressed, but Giles almost cracks up right then and there.
• Admiring the Abomination: He does this occasionally. "Werewolves, it's... it's one of the classics!"

• All of the Other Reindeer: The Council shunned him even before they fired him, and wouldn't let him come to the Watcher Retreat in the Cotswolds. This is Justified: before Giles was as we currently see him, he was part of a group of magic-abusing rebellious youths, who did things like summoning demons and getting high on the possession as a fun, everyday activity.
• Ambiguously Bi: Giles and Ethan have very strong "embittered ex" vibes. Writer Jane Espersen has said that this was intentional, and they were a couple back in Giles' Ripper days.
• AM/FM Characterization: He's a fan of classic rock like Cream, The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, David Bowie, The Velvet Underground and The Bay City Rollers, showing he's not as stuffy and stuck-up as he seems at first.
• Anti-Hero: As he puts it, Buffy is a "real hero" who always puts helping others above anything else. That's also what allows Giles to assume this role, as the group needs someone more ruthless and vicious when difficult choices have to be made – Giles is the man who carries that burden so Buffy and the others don't have to. He then promptly and calmly suffocates Ben (host of Glory), who he'd been explaining this to.
• The Artifact: He was such a key part of the good old days of the show that getting rid of him would have caused an outcry; he left and came back several times, even if he didn't seem to contribute anything much. It could be argued that he was pointless as early as Season 3, when he was no longer Buffy's Watcher, though he still kept doing the job after the Council fired him and it wasn't until Season 4 that his role really lessened in importance.
• Badass Bookworm: Watcher pretending to be a Librarian and using to assist slaying demons. However, the Badass part only really started to become apparent once his Dark and Troubled Past did as well. Of course, even before that, he was willing to go toe to toe with vampires himself in desperate situations.
• Badass Normal: While he had no true supernatural powers of his own, his extensive experience in dealing with vampires, demons, and other creatures made him capable of handling them effectively.
• Batman Gambit: Season 6. The magic Willow stole from him tapped into what humanity was left in her. As a result Willow senses the pain of all human beings. And her reaction is to try to wipe out all life on earth. However, this also gives Xander the opportunity to get through to her and talk her down.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He efficiently beats the crap out of Ethan Rayne, then kicks him to get information. He goes after Angelus with a flaming bat. He stabs the Mayor in the chest with a sword. He delays Buffy so Principal Wood can beat Spike to death with his bare hands. He physically and professionally threatened Principal Snyder into readmitting Buffy back into Sunnydale High. He really proves it in season five. First, when a recalcitrant servant of the Big Bad refuses to talk, he tells the girls to get some rope; the camera follows them and we hear a noise; whip pan back to a now very talkative demon. He manhandled Spike while ordering him to get over his obsession with Buffy and move on. In "The Gift", he suffocates innocent and long suffering Ben in order to kill Glory. After all, Giles used to go by the name Ripper.
• Blue-Collar Warlock: He's a school librarian and the local supernatural expert. Later seasons revealed that this is an Exploited Trope; he's only pretending to be a school librarian as part of his Watcher duties, and when the Watcher's Council makes an appearance, it's clear that he's more like the 'proper, austere, middle class or higher' lineage.
• Book Smart: He's excellent at research, being a librarian and watcher.
• British Stuffiness:
  • When Giles is mad, but too English to say anything, he makes a weird "cluck-cluck" sound with his tongue. Early in Season 3, Joyce acquires an artifact that summons zombies. When he finds out (after calling Buffy's house only to be hung up on by a drunk partygoer), Giles is pissing and moaning as he speeds to the rescue:
    "Unbelievable. 'Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty? It RAISES THE DEAD.' Americans!"
    • The best part is that he becomes so engrossed in kvetching about Eaglelanders that he wraps his Alleged Car around one of the aforementioned raised dead.
• Brits Love Tea: He's fairly fond of tea, but has been known to violate people's expectations and drink coffee instead. Xander accuses him of destroying a perfectly good stereotype. "Tea is soothing. I wish to be tense." Highlighting Giles drinking coffee is an in-joke. Before Anthony Stewart Head played Giles, he was widely recognised in Britain as "The guy from the Gold Blend coffee adverts." He also appeared in America in ads for Taster's Choice instant coffee.
• Broken Pedestal: Buffy has moments like this with Giles, although she usually eventually gets over them. Until Season 7, when Giles conspires with Robin Wood to kill Spike behind her back; when the attempt fails, Buffy tells Giles point-blank that he's taught her everything she needs to know and shuts the door in his face. It only gets worse in Season 8, when Giles forms a secret partnership with Faith to assassinate a rogue Slayer; he and Buffy fall out of speaking terms for several issues as a result.
• Came Back Strong: When he's resurrected in his child body at the end of Season 9, it reawakens the great magical potential he had previously repressed.
• Character Tics: He had a tendency to take off his glasses and wipe them during situations. It was eventually figured out by Buffy that this was his way of avoiding having to see the activities of the other Scoobies when he did so as Xander and Anya passionately kissed after announcing their engagement. At one point, he wiped his glasses so hard they broke when the Watchers Council came to Sunnydale.
• Commuting on a Bus: In Seasons 6 and 7, due to Anthony Head finding all the travel between the UK and USA to be too difficult. He requested a reduced role in the series.
• The Comically Serious: Surround a stuffy British nerd with three very 90s California teenagers, and you're gonna get a lot of this.

• Cunning Linguist: He was proficient in several languages, including Latin, ancient Greek, Sumerian, Japanese and possibly Gaelic, but weak in German, Mandarin and Cantonese.
• Dark and Troubled Past: It has trouble staying buried, too. "Ripper" Giles used to be evil (or at the very least, violent and criminally inclined Jerk With A Deeply Buried Heart Of Gold) in his younger days; a vicious delinquent practicing dark magic.
• Deadpan Snarker: Of a somewhat more eloquent nature than the others, but no less cutting. Especially around Principal Snyder and Wesley.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Throughout the Season 10 comics, he's disconnected and unsure what to do with his life, now that he's been resurrected in a 12-year-old body and Buffy and the Scoobies don't seem to need him anymore. By the end, he's managed to find something to do; being the vice president of the new Magic Council.
• Embarrassing Tattoo: Not so much embarrassing as evil, but it's embarrassing because it's evil. It's like a DIY Dark Mark except it binds him, Ethan Rayne and other former "friends" from his youth to the demon they used to get high on.
• Expansion Pack Past: Bits are added on as time goes by, most notably The Reveal of his past as 'Ripper'.
• Evil Twin: Two Alternate Universe versions of him; Ripper from the game Chaos Bleeds, and a vampire Evil Overlord from the The Lost Slayer book series.

• Failed a Spot Check: In "Dead Man's Party," while arguing with the Scoobies over what kind of welcome home party to throw Buffy, he turns a page in his book and fails to notice a picture of the mask Joyce has mounted on her wall.
• Fake Guest Star: Throughout Season 7. But we'll act conciliatory and call him a Super-Duper Extra Special Guest Star.

• Former Teen Rebel: Most of his friends from his rebellious twentysomethings still call him "Ripper."
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He slips into this trope now and again, mainly because of I Did What I Had to Do. It becomes prevalent in "The Gift" when he prepares to sacrifice Dawn and suffocate Ben in cold blood to stop Glory's return.
• Gentleman and a Scholar: A well dressed, well mannered classical English gentleman who happens to be ludicrously well-versed in History, Linguistics and the Occult, implied to have formerly been Curator of the British Museum.
• Gentleman Snarker: Not as prolific a snarker as other Scoobies, often being The Comically Serious, but he's plenty snarky.
• The Glasses Come Off: He does this frequently, such as in "I Was Made to Love You," where he does so before going Papa Wolf on Spike, ordering him to back off of Buffy. In Season 6, Xander and Willow mention in passing that Giles' habit of taking off his glasses and cleaning them was both a silent signal that he disapproved of what the Scooby Gang were doing, whether this be goofing off or doing something morally grey, and also a way of averting his eyes in the latter case so he could claim to have no knowledge of what they were doing.
  • Notably averted in "The Gift." Before he smothers Ben to death, Giles makes sure to put his glasses back on, so as not to spare himself the horror of what he's doing.
• Good Is Not Soft: Smothering a wounded Ben to death rather than risk Glory coming back. Before doing the deed, Giles cryptically remarks, "[Buffy's] a hero, you see. She's not like us." He wanted to spare Buffy from doing it.

• The Handler: In theory anyway; he realizes early on that Buffy doesn't respond well to orders.
• Hard Head: Giles tends to get knocked out, but never suffers any brain damage. On one occasion, he quipped that he believed that he had developed a resistance to head trauma. Though in Season 3, one such incident led to him being hospitalized.
  "I know I'm back in America now; I've been knocked unconscious."
• Heroic Sacrifice: Giles got between a Twilight-possessed Angel and Buffy as they fought near the Seed of Wonder, wielding the Scythe to try and destroy the Seed himself and end Twilight's invasion of Earth, or get killed by Twilight and give Buffy the motivation she needed to take the Scythe and end things herself.
• Helping Would Be Kill Stealing: In Season 6, he chose to abandon Buffy because he felt that she was limiting herself by clinging to him in a immature way. In principle he had good reasons, but he chose to make his stand right in the middle of a crisis, and forbade everyone else from helping Buffy. That can only vaguely be justified by him following musical logic at the time. When he comes back to help against Dark Willow, he apologizes for leaving her, especially after hearing about everything that had gone wrong with the gang since he skipped town, but Buffy assured him that he was right.
• Hopeless with Tech: He's not what one would call technology-savvy, and was even somewhat technophobic by his own admission, a fact which often brought him into conflict with technopagan and computer science teacher Jenny Calendar. However, after Jenny aided him in casting the demon Moloch the Corruptor out of the Internet, the pair reached an understanding and began a romantic relationship. Despite this, he never overcame his aversion to technology and was horrified to see that the new Sunnydale High School library had only computers.
• Hot Librarian: In the view of Faith, Joyce and possibly Willow.
• I Am Very British: In the second episode, he asks Willow to "wrest more information from that dread machine... That was a bit... British."
• I Did What I Had to Do: His reaction to smothering Ben to stop Glory for good is acknowledging it was nasty work, which is why he did it; Buffy shouldn't.
• I Hate Past Me: He looks back on his youthful days as "Ripper" with shame, given his contempt for his former friend Ethan and how the latter's still caught up in similar shenanigans in middle-age. It's also implied that the reason he's more hostile to Spike than Angel is because he sees too much of himself in the former.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: "It's all right... I have more scotch."
• In-Series Nickname: "Ripper." He earned it.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: A kidnapped minion of Glory defiantly refuses to talk. Giles asks Willow and Anya to get twine, the camera follows them, and a Sickening "Crunch!" is heard. The minion sings like a canary, with Giles answering Willow's question about what happened with a very casual, "He changed his mind." Exactly what he did is unclear.
  • Giles has also managed to withstand being on the receiving end of this: when Angelus attempts to resurrect Acathla, Giles tells him that, in order to be worthy, he must perform the ritual in... a tutu, before calling Angel a pillock.
• Jerkass to One: He is more critical and dismissive to Xander than he is to anyone else.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: While in London during Season 6, Giles did a spell to bind a demon, but it required him to lose the memory of one of the happiest days in his life. That day was the day he fell in love with Jenny Calendar, leaving him with a heartache that he felt would never go away, even though he had no idea what the memory was about.
• Last-Name Basis: Very few people address him by his first name, Rupert, including the Scoobies. Willow called him "Rupert" while she was evil, and Spike did so often in disdain or just to be annoying. He was called by his nickname, Ripper, by Ethan Rayne and by Joyce Summers, when she and Giles were both under a spell that made them like teenagers.
• Limited Wardrobe:
  • A Watcher scoffs at fashion! One tweed suit is all you need.
    Jenny: Do you own anything else?
    Giles: Uh well, not as such, no.
  • It gets to the extent that the Scoobies joke that he wore tweed diapers as a baby. However, in the post-high school seasons, he dresses casually far more often.
  • In fact, his wardrobe also included houndstooth, twill, and other classic mid-century patterns.... that are indistinguishable from tweed if you don't nkow anything about "warm looking brown suit patterns".
• Living Emotional Crutch: For Buffy in the first half of Season 6. Giles eventually leaves to force her to become independent. Come Season 10, the Scoobies try to lean on Giles again, only for him to quickly point out his return as a 12 year old is more than physical, and that he can't be relied on for everything.
• Magic Librarian: A librarian with a certain talent for magic, albeit one he largely forsook after his My God, What Have I Done? moment with Eyghon.

• Mark of the Beast: The Mark of Eyghon on his left arm. First revealed in "The Dark Age" and is still there by season 4's "Goodbye Iowa" suggesting Giles opted not to have it removed in the interim.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Frequently threatened. In the comics but not the series because he doesn't die in the series.
• Mid-Life Crisis Car: It seduced him, all red and sporty.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: When transformed into a Fyarl demon in "A New Man", Giles experiences the demon's natural violent urges. Also, in Season 10, his being resurrected in a 12-year-old body leads to him being more impulsive and less able to concentrate, not to mention becoming more fixated on the other sex's physical charms, much to his embarrassment.
• Minored in Ass-Kicking: Quiet, scholarly, and can (and will) kick your ass. It could be with a spell, it could be with one of the hundreds (if not thousands) of weapons that he is familiar with, or (as Ethan Rayne knows) Good Old Fisticuffs. As stated elsewhere here, there is a reason why he used to be known as 'Ripper'.
• Mr. Exposition: As the Watcher, librarian, and general authority/father figure, he frequently delivered exposition. Gets parodied in "Restless" when he sings his latest exposition.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "Ripper."
• Necessarily Evil: Most noticeable in "The Gift," where he smothers Ben with his bare hands to prevent Glory from resurfacing because he knows Buffy can't bring herself to do it.
• Neck Snap: This is how Angel, as Twilight, ultimately kills him.
• Nightmare Fetishist:
  Giles: But that's the thrill of living on the Hellmouth! There's a veritable cornucopia of fiends and devils and ghouls to engage! [Beat] ...Well, excuse me for finding the glass half-full.

• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In the Season 5 episode "Tough Love", Giles, Willow, and Anya capture one of Glory's minions and are about to interrogate him for information. Giles tells Willow and Anya to get some rope to tie him up, and the minute they turn around, we hear a Sickening "Crunch!" and the minion painfully and frantically agrees to tell them everything. Giles' response to their questions?
  Giles: He changed his mind.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In "The Gift", Buffy flat-out tells him to the face that they are not talking about killing Dawn to stop Glory, at which point Giles loses his temper and screams "YES, WE BLOODY WELL ARE!!" at the top of his voice. Cue shocked reactions and gaping mouths from all the other Scoobies.
  • While in early seasons, he often chided the Scoobies for their immature behavior, he did have a certain respect for their talents and tried to speak to them like rational adults. In "Flooded", when he eventually calls Willow out on her magic by referring to her as a "rank amateur" and an idiot, you know that the line has been crossed.
  • While most of the series showed him as a bookish, nerdy Watcher, some of his most terrifying moments come when he taps back into his days as a hardcore magic-user named Ripper and wipes the floor with his opponents.
• Opening Narration: Previouslys just aren't previouslys without Giles' smooth buttery tone.
• Papa Wolf: Threatening Buffy isn't a wise move if you want to stay healthy.
  • In "Dead Man's Party," after Snyder shoots down multiple attempts to allow Buffy to return to Sunnydale High, Giles has a go. In full Ripper mode, he threatens to tell the state supreme court about Snyder's unjust treatment of Buffy and make life very difficult for him, professionally speaking. When Snyder still refuses, Giles shoves him against a filing cabinet and asks if Snyder would like him to convince him with a smile on his face. By the next episode, Buffy is readmitted.
  • In "I Was Made to Love You": when Spike shows up at the Magic Box, Giles shoves him against the wall and, in full Tranquil Fury mode, tells him off; Spike wisely chooses to beat it at that.
    Giles: We are not your friends. We are not your way to Buffy. There is no way to Buffy. Clear out of here. And Spike, this thing... get over it.
    Spike: [smirks] I don't know what you mean.
    Giles: Yes, you do. Move the hell on.
• Parental Substitute:
  • Buffy's father has little contact with her, even after her mother dies, but Giles serves as a surrogate father. In "Helpless", Quentin describes Giles as having "a father's love" for Buffy. Especially noticeable when a spell causes Buffy to decide to get married and she ask Giles to give her away. In the comics, Giles does for Faith what he did for Buffy.
  • Willow and Xander are similar, as well. Willow's parents are away for months at a time and have virtually abandoned her, rarely seeing her at all. Xander's parents are drunk and too busy yelling at each other to notice him most of the time. Giles often serves as a surrogate father to them both. It makes Giles' somewhat dismissive and snippy treatment of Xander in early seasons kind of upsetting — for instance, in a season 3 episode, he is angry at Xander for sleeping during "Oz-watch", but later seems to find it almost endearing when Buffy does the same.
  • He's also the only real adult in Dawn's life after her mother's death, and he clearly has a fatherly role in her life as well. His Team Dad status amongst a group of kids without parents makes it pretty easy for him to end up in this role a lot.
  • Similarly, he also has this role to Anya and Tara, as Anya is an awkward ex-demon who Giles takes under his wing as a business partner, and Tara is a survivor of familial abuse and is the most grounded, sensible young adult in the main gang, a trait that Giles resonates with.

• Promotion to Parent: Averted. While he does help Buffy and Dawn with settling some of Joyce's affairs after she passes away, and he does love them like his own daughters, he ultimately leaves for Europe shortly thereafter so as to avoid Buffy becoming too reliant on him.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Compared to Wesley and the rest of the Watchers' Council. He understandably often tries to get Buffy to take her studies more seriously, but he's also one of the few Watchers who doesn't feel the need to prevent her from having friends or a life outside of slaying.
• Revenge Before Reason: In "Passion," he attacks Angelus in a rage after the latter kills Jenny Calendar. While Xander, who always hated Angel, openly supports and endorses Giles' intent, Buffy realizes right away that Giles' plan is only going to get him killed, and rushes off to save him.
• Shipper on Deck: Initially Giles considers Angel's love for Buffy "rather poetic" and encourages it. This understandably changes after Jenny's death though he puts his feelings aside for Buffy's sake.
• The Smart Guy: Giles knows something about everything, except synchronized swimming.

• Smart People Speak the Queen's English: One of the smartest characters, held up as the brainbox of the Scoobies (along with Willow, though her expertise leans more towards the technical), and speaker of flawless Queen's English — unless he gets reverted back to his youthful Ripper persona.
• So Proud of You:
  • He tells Buffy as such in "Spiral," while badly injured.
    Giles: I'm so proud of you. You're everything a Watcher... that I could have hoped for.
  • He does it a second time in the penultimate issue of the Season 12 comics. Buffy is legitimately moved to tears by his confession.
    Giles: If I may say, Buffy... you have surpassed every hope and ambition I ever had for you. I never had any children of my own... and it's probably just as well. Because I cannot imagine how they could ever compare to you.
• Sparing Them the Dirty Work: On several occasions, in particular beating the crap out of Ethan in "Halloween", killing Ben in "The Gift", and plotting with Robin to kill Spike in "Lies My Parents Told Me". And sending Faith to kill Gigi in the Season Eight comics.
  • He even gives a nice speech about it in "The Gift".
    Giles: No she couldn't [have killed you]. Never. And sooner or later Glory will re-emerge, and make Buffy pay for that mercy—and the world with her. Buffy even knows that, and still she couldn't take a human life. She's a hero, you see. She's not like us.
    Ben: ... Us?
    Giles [calmly suffocates Ben]
• Pragmatic Hero: As he puts it to Buffy in "The Gift":
  Giles: I imagine you hate me right now. I love Dawn.
  Buffy: I know.
  Giles: But I've sworn to protect this sorry world, and sometimes that means saying and doing... what other people can't. What they shouldn't have to.

• Straight Man: He's often portrayed as somewhat of a "straight man" and his "stuffy" Oxford sensibility served as a counterpoint to the stereotypical Southern Californian characters and setting.
• Surpassed the Teacher: He worries about this from season four onwards, since Buffy's at college and he's no longer her Watcher officially or unofficially. He considers leaving Sunnydale entirely, but changes his mind when Buffy asks for more training. When he does leave in Season 6, it's for the opposite reason.
  • Played with in late Season 7; Spike directly confronts Giles with words along these lines, accusing Giles of participating in the mutiny against Buffy for this reason.
    Spike: You used to be the big man, didn't you? The teacher, all full of wisdom. Now she's surpassed you, and you can't handle it.
• Team Dad: Particularly with respect to Buffy. It helps that he's a Parental Substitute for a bunch of kids with few if any parents, especially fathers. Buffy and Dawn's father is in another country with his secretary, Willow's father was mentioned once and basically never again, Xander's is an alcoholic, Cordelia and Oz's are never seen, Anya's has been dead for centuries, and Tara's is an abusive bastard. Giles is literally the only positive adult male in any of their lives.
• Teen Genius: After he's killed in Season 8, Angel and Faith resurrect him, but due to other circumstances, he comes back with his adult memories intact, but in the body of a 12-year-old, thanks to his immortal aunts, who remember him as a 12 year old, doing the resurrecting. His behavior is also influenced by being a hormonal teenager, much to his chagrin.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • In season six, he abandons Buffy when she's at her most vulnerable because he's worried that she's becoming too dependent on him. Plus, he doesn't seem to give a crap about Dawn. When he returns in "Grave," however, he acknowledges that his leaving was a mistake and asks for Buffy's forgiveness.
  • In season seven, he goes behind Buffy's back to try and have Spike killed and undermines her even though she's right. He's also a lot less patient, snapping at people and not even hugging anyone when he returns to Sunnydale, which makes everyone suspect that he's the First.
  • In "Shells", Angel contacts him to try to reach Willow in a desperate bid to save Fred, but he refuses to help because of Angel's association with Wolfram & Hart.
• Tranquil Fury: He often falls into this.
  • In "Passion," upon discovering that Angelus murdered Jenny Calendar, he goes after him in revenge. He sets his hideout on fire with a Molotov cocktail, strides in with a baseball bat, and lights the bat aflame before beating Angelus senseless with it, utterly expressionless all the while.
  • In "Revelations," while the other Scoobies are just outraged over Buffy keeping Angel's resurrection from them and openly bicker over it, Giles calls a halt to the bickering, saying that Buffy's coverup of Angel's whereabouts, "however ill-advised, can be understood." He dismisses everybody, then disappears into his office. Unwisely, Buffy tails at his heels and start to thank him for bailing her out until Giles tells her to be quiet. He slowly turns, regards her with a burning intensity, and delivers the following while remaining completely calm:
    Giles: I won't remind you that the fate of the world often lies with the Slayer; what would be the point? Nor shall I remind you that you've jeopardized the lives of all that you hold dear by harboring a known murderer. But sadly, I must remind you that Angel tortured me, for hours, for pleasure. You should have told me he was alive; you didn't. You have no respect for me, or the job I perform. [turns his back on her]
  • A perfect example is in "I Was Made to Love You," when Spike shows up at the Magic Box. Giles shoves him into a wall, gets in his face, and tells him to get over his obsession with Buffy and move on, all with nothing more than a cool glare and while barely raising his voice. Spike decides not to push his luck and beats it.
• Underestimating Badassery: In "School Hard," he initially dismisses Spike as a major threat as he's "barely 200" and vampires are Stronger with Age. He quickly realizes his mistake when he discovers that Spike has killed two past Slayers.
• Unwanted Revival: Zigzagged; at the end of Angel & Faith, Giles is successfully resurrected by Angel in the body of a twelve-year-old boy. Considering his soul had been held captive by Eyghon, as well as his being trapped in Angel's body and forced to endure Angelus' crimes and Angel's sorrow, Giles admits he would be grateful for Angel bringing him back and saving him from all that... were it not for the fact that Angel killed him in the first place and focused on reviving him rather than dealing with Whistler's plan.
• Uptight Loves Wild: With the lovely Romani granola girl monster-truck loving techno-pagan Wicca hippie Ms. Calender.
• Verbal Tic: According to Willow, he made a "weird cluck-cluck sound with his tongue" when he was angry but was "too English to say anything."
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Andrew has this reaction when he finds out that Giles knew that Buffy had gone to the future and killed an evil version of Willow, but didn't tell him or set up precautions in case Willow turned evil again. Giles even acknowledges he is right, and they begin working on an emergency plan in case Willow does go evil again.
  • Spike has this reaction to all of Buffy's friends and allies in "Touched" when he finds out they threw her out of her house while he and Andrew were away on a mission. When Giles starts to defend the group, Spike cuts him off and begins to focus on his faults specifically. In a way, it mirrors their conversation in Season 5 when Giles found out about Spike's romantic interest in Buffy. There, Giles called upon the remnants of his darker Ripper persona in an effort to get Spike to drop his Stalker with a Crush tendencies by making him know that there would be severe consequences if he didn't. By contrast, in Season 7, Spike draws upon his lighter side via a newly-restored soul to call out Giles for turning against his own student in a way that Spike saw as a betrayal.
    Spike: Oh, that's ballsy of you. You're her friends and you betray her like this.
    Giles: No, no, you don't understand—
    Spike: Oh, I think I do... Rupert. You used to be the big man, didn't you? The teacher, all full of wisdom. Now she's surpassed you, and you can't handle it.
• Workaholic: Particularly evident in Season 4. Due to his not having a job at the time, and Buffy not really requiring a Watcher in the same way as she once did, he struggles to fill his time. Whenever any opportunity to help the gang or investigate evil comes about, he leaps on it.
• Your Door Was Open: This happens to Giles a lot in the fourth season, even when he's sure he locked the door.

Later Additions

Buffybot

Buffybot

Played By: Sarah Michelle Gellar

A Sex Bot created in Buffy's likeness by Warren at Spike's behest.

---

• Bond One-Liner: She tries throughout "Bargaining," but never gets it quite right.
  Buffybot: That'll put marzipan on your pie plate, Bingo!
• Chekhov's Gunman: It proves useful to the Scoobies in "The Gift" and "Bargaining," being reprogrammed by Willow to perform Slayer duties.
• Replacement Goldfish: Serves as this in "Bargaining." Dawn curls up in bed next to it as it recharges. Giles finds himself teaching the bot Eastern martial arts philosophy until Anya calls him on it. Averted with Spike who refuses even to look at it, and the Scoobies all agree that it could never replace the real Buffy.
• Retargeted Lust: The entire reason Spike had it created; if he couldn't have the real Buffy, he'd have the next best thing.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Not at first, since Spike only intended to use it for sex, but after Willow reprograms and upgrades her, she behaves much more human (though not perfectly). She even seems to experience a moment of genuine shock when she sees the resurrected (real) Buffy just before she's destroyed.
• Robot Me: A robotic duplicate of Buffy.
• Sex Bot: Its entire purpose is to be this to Spike.
• Spot the Imposter: Despite the Buffybot's strange behavior, the Scoobies completely fail to notice that it's actually a robot, much to the real Buffy's annoyance. Especially jarring, since they were able to realize right away that April was a robot.
• Stat-O-Vision: The Buffybot sees like this, with information about Buffy's friends displayed on screen when they're in its line of sight. Having been programmed by Warren to specifications given by Spike however, the information is extremely basic or displays a laughably 2D idea of the characters. For instance, Willow's screen reads: "Best Friend. Gay (1999–Present). Witch. Good with computers." Also displayed on screen are the Buffybot's two primary objectives in life, "Locate Spike" and "Make Spike Happy." The latter has a drop-down menu of files with titles like "kissing" and "position-1" and so on.
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Justified; Spike gets off on fighting the Slayer as much as having sex with her, so Buffy's strength and combat abilities are part of the package.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: In contrast to her treatment of April, Buffy is repulsed by the existence of the Buffybot and outright refers to it as a "thing" and an "it".

Cordelia

See Angel Investigations

Oz

Daniel "Oz" Osbourne

"Hey, I may be a cold-blooded jelly doughnut, but my timing is impeccable."

Played By: Seth Green

Appearances: Buffy the Vampire Slayer | Angel

"The wolf is inside me all the time, and I don't know where that line is anymore between me and it."

A brilliant (yet generally unmotivated) student, and part-time rock guitarist. He is Willow's first and only boyfriend, and an active member of Buffy's inner circle, despite the fact that he has recently become a werewolf.

---

• Above the Influence: The first time Willow tries to get him to kiss her, he thinks she is trying to get at Cordelia and Xander and instead he wants to be the gentleman and wait. The second time is after he caught Willow cheating on him, and she tries to seduce him. He lets her down and says she doesn't have to prove anything to him, and rejects her obvious sexual advances.
• AM/FM Characterization: He's an alternative rock/indie band and while driving to Los Angeles, he listens to a alternative rock radio station. He also shares Giles' interest in classic rock.
• Babies Ever After: He married Bayarmaa and they had a son, Kelden. They resided in a Tibetan temple with their pet dog, where together they taught other werewolves to overcome their demons.
• Back for the Finale: His final on-screen appearance is in Willow's dream in the Season 4 finale, "Restless".
• Beware the Nice Ones: A laid-back, easy-going fellow who just happens to be a werewolf.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: He's a very mellow guy who speaks when he feels like it. He's also a werewolf.
• Black Eyes of Evil: One of the first things to change during a transformation.
• Breakout Character: He was the one originally intended to be killed by Angelus in "Passion," but due to his popularity, he was spared, and Jenny Calendar was killed in his place.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Oz is stated to be a genius by Willow, he's naturally gifted at academia whenever he actually takes a test, and he has deep philosophical thoughts (that he never voices). The two of them were scouted by a leading software company during Career Week, which is how they met. He also lacks any and all kind of drive or ambition, putting little to no effort into life. Failing to show up for the finals and then for summer school leads to him repeating a grade in Season 3, and Willow states that he usually gets up at 3:00 PM.
• The Bus Came Back: He returns in "New Moon Rising", where he attempts to reconnect with Willow, only to discover she's now gay. He makes a cameo in "Restless", meaning that the last time we see him in the show is in a Dream Sequence.
• Cannot Convey Sarcasm: "That was my sarcastic voice."
  Xander: You know, it sounds a lot like your regular voice.
  Oz: I've been told that.
• Captain Obvious: Usually states the obvious about whatever situation the Scoobies find themselves in.
• The Comically Serious: Though far less uptight than most other examples.
• Consistent Clothing Style: In high school, he typically wore t-shirts underneath a bowler shirt, jeans and black boots. In college, he wore sneakers, baggy pants and a sheepskin jacket when outside. He also sometimes wore ear piercings, studded bracelets and sported black painted nails. After moving to Tibet permanently, his outfits were mostly mixes of what he wore previously, ranging from monk's robes with a t-shirt over it, a combination of a long-sleeved shirt and a t-shirt, band shirts and sweaters.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Phases", "Wild At Heart", and "New Moon Rising" are all Oz-centric episodes.
• Deadpan Snarker: He had a characteristic and smooth sense of humor, being witty and intellectual. As noted by Xander, Oz tended to express himself in short, non-committal phrases.
• Dismotivation: He and Willow were both tracked by a leading software company in "What's My Line" - the difference is, he wasn't all that excited about it. "I sort of test well, which is cool. Except it leads to jobs".
• Dull Surprise:
  • The minute he sees Buffy stake a vampire, he brushes it off and says it "explains a lot."
  • After Oz awakens from his first transformation into a werewolf, he notices he's naked among some bushes and simply lets out a quizzical "huh."
• Evolutionary Retcon: Oz's wolf form went from an animatronic to a much sleeker full-body skunk-wolf suit.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: His hair color continuously changed:
  • Before meeting Willow, he had light red hair.
  • He dyed it chestnut brown after his first meeting with Willow, who noticed the change.
  • He dyed his hair blond after his first monthly transformations.
  • During the first months of his repeated senior year, he had dark hair with light spikes, which teenage Principal Snyder thought was "great hair".
  • He dyed his hair black around the time he began dating Willow again.
  • He dyed his hair blond shortly before graduation.
  • At graduation Oz had dark hair with light spikes again.
  • During college at UC Sunnydale and in Tibet, he had auburn hair.
• Fake Band: He plays guitar in a band called Dingoes Ate My Baby.
• Fantastically Indifferent: The first time he gets caught up in a fight with vampires, Willow hesitantly begins to explain the whole situation, prefacing it with "Now don't freak out..." Oz doesn't, because not only is he really that calm, but because the fact that vampires are real suddenly makes a lot of things about Sunnydale make sense. In the comics, he tops himself when his ex drops by outside the monastery he's meditating at, in a submarine, that she teleported to Tibet. His reaction: a nonchalant "Huh".
• Goal in Life: To perfect the diminished ninth! "You could lose a finger".
• Happily Married: In the Season 8 comic, he settles down with Bayarmaa, who he meets in Tibet. They settle down in a temple with their son and dog.
• Hidden Depths: His detached and collected demeanor and ironic approach to life masked a deeply philosophical interior.
• Hulking Out: When he learns of Willow and Tara's relationship, he involuntarily transforms into the big werewolf.
• Iconic Sequel Character: He provides Willow with her first primary love interest. He would be promoted to the main cast in Season 3.
• Informed Flaw: He makes constant self-deprecating comments about his and his bandmates' musical skills, but when we actually hear Dingoes play at the Bronze, they are not appreciably worse than any of the place's other acts. Now, whether the viewer actually likes their music is a different, much more subjective story.
• Involuntary Shapeshifting: Before going to Tibet he is forced to transform during the full moon and the two nights surrounding it. Afterwards, he can suppress his transformation under the full moon but it can be brought out by great emotional distress.
• Kaleidoscope Hair:
  Willow: Your hair! ...is brown.
  Oz: Oh, yeah. Sometimes.
• Leaving You to Find Myself: After losing control with Veruca, Oz realizes that locking himself up every month isn't a permanent solution and it's just a waiting game until something goes wrong. He leaves Sunnydale to stay away from people and search for a cure.
• Look What I Can Do Now!: Oz gains mastery over his werewolf side by the time he returns, able to stand directly under a full moon without transforming.
• Love at First Sight: Was clearly smitten with Willow from his first glimpse of her (even though, if not because, she was dressed in an unflattering Eskimo costume), even though they didn't actually meet until several episodes later. For a while him catching a glimpse of Willow and asking "Who is that girl?" in an awed tone was a Running Gag.
• Mellow Fellow: He's a detached, collected guy who takes supernatural occurences in his stride. His general approach to anything is one of laid-back stoicism.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: The closer it is to sunset on a full moon night, the harder it is to resist his most primal urges.
• Nerves of Steel: Not a man easily shaken by anything.
• Nice Guy: A chill, laid-back, easy-going, sensitive sort who nobody has a word against.
• The Nose Knows: He had a highly enhanced sense of smell even when in human form. He was able to smell Willow from great distance although she didn't even wear perfume. He could also tell that she was fearful by her scent, mimicking an ability often attributed to many animals, especially canines.
• Not a Morning Person: He sleeps until 3PM.
• Not So Stoic: His trademark cool demeanor cracks when things get really serious. Willow being held hostage in "Choices" results in him quietly walking over to the vase he and Xander prepared for a ritual, and chucking it into the wall, smashing it to pieces.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His full name (Daniel Osbourne) is only mentioned once in the series, in "The Initiative" — which is incidentally the episode after he leaves.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He approaches almost every situation with his trademark stoicism, even when he's in danger. The only time he ever loses his temper is when his werewolf's carnal desire gets the better of him, he shags Veruca (although, to be fair, part of the reason he did it was to lock her in with him so she couldn't be loose to hurt any innocents), and the two are caught by Willow. When Veruca tries to snark at Willow, Oz screams at her to leave.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: He transforms by moonlight but can control it with training.
• Painful Transformation: Although his later transformations transpire much more quietly. Nevertheless he agrees with Veruca when she describes the first few stages as blood boiling.
• Partial Transformation: Mode locked into a partial werewolf form during "Fear, Itself".
• Put on a Bus: He leaves the series and is gone until "New Moon Rising".
• The Quiet One: He's quite philosophical in his own head. Out loud, not so much.
  Xander: I see how he is around me. You know, that steely gaze...that pointed silence.
  Buffy: Cause he's usually such a chatterbox.
• The Reliable One: A cool, calm guy who can always be counted on to keep his head in a crisis and doesn't involve himself in conflicts.
• Retired Badass: A point of contention between him and Willow in Season 8 is the fact that he stopped fighting evil and started a family.
• Romantic Runner-Up: To Tara for Willow in "New Moon Rising". Willow decided she was more interested in Tara.
• Satellite Love Interest: His role on the show was entirely defined by being Willow's love interest. Proof that Tropes Are Not Bad in that he still managed to be a likeable and entertaining character.
• Spiky Hair: Most of the time, and usually a different colour each episode.
• Split-Personality Takeover: Comes very close to invoking this voluntarily after it appears his struggles against his werewolf self are futile.
• The Stoic: So, so much. His reaction upon finding out that he's a werewolf? "Huh." He has the same reaction with a bemused grin when he's meditating in Tibet and a submarine is teleported outside the temple.
• Terse Talker: Take this exchange while Xander is quizzing him on what makes him "cool"-
  Xander: Is it about the talking? You know, the-the way you tend to express yourself in short, non-committal phrases?
  Oz: Could be.
• Unfazed Everyman:
  • He had the potential for this before going all wolfie. His reaction to discovering the existence of the supernatural (though he did react like that to everything...):
    Oz: Yeah. Hey, did everybody see that guy just turn to dust?
    Willow: Ohhh, well ... sort of.
    Xander: Yep. Vampires are real. A lot of them live in Sunnydale. Willow will fill you in.
    Willow: I know it's hard to accept at first.
    Oz: Actually, it explains a lot.
  • He has more of a reaction to Willow being with Xander than he does to:
    Helping find Buffy after she was turned into a rat, who then turns out to be naked when she's changed back.
    A student who's turned into Mr. Hyde wanting to kill him.
    Willow appearing to have become a vampire.
    Buffy gaining the ability to read his thoughts.
• Walking the Earth: He leaves in Season 4 to do this, staying clear of humans and trying to find a cure.
• Wolf Man: In Season 2, his werewolf form is portrayed as standing on two legs with a fully lupine head. In Seasons 3 and 4, it's portrayed as a quadruped with a muzzle-less face.

Anya

Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins, formerly Anyanka, née Aud

"It's an omen! It's a higher power trying to tell me through bunnies that we're all gonna die! Oh god!"

Played By: Emma Caulfield

"I was feared and worshipped across the mortal globe and now I'm stuck at Sunnydale High. A mortal! A child! And I'm flunking math."

Originally a 1,120-year-old vengeance demon who lost her powers and eventually joined the Scooby Gang. She was a Love Interest for Xander for three seasons before their relationship ended, and she went back to being a Vengeance Demon. Lost her powers and rejoined the Scoobies in early Season 7.

---

• Action Girl: She's a lowkey Magic Knight, being familiar with magic as well as physical fighting.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Her relationship with Willow is meant to be like this; despite being thousands of years older than Willow, she's more naive and immature, which Willow is frequently annoyed by.
• The Artifact: After "Selfless", she served no real purpose in the show other than being Xander's ex (though they would slowly reconcile). Buffy even questions why she's even there and what she actually contributes.
• Ascended Extra: Originally intended as a one-shot villain for "The Wish."
• Becoming the Mask: After she becomes stuck as a high school girl, she experiences a strange urge to have Xander invite her to the prom, despite claiming to loathe all men.
• Been There, Shaped History: According to one flashback, she was responsible for the 1905 Revolution in Russia.
• Being Evil Sucks: The second time she becomes a vengeance demon, she gets no pleasure out of the work whatsoever.
• Being Human Sucks: She often complains about how she's powerless as a human, but her main concern is that she's now mortal and will eventually die.
• Big Sister Instinct: Like the rest of the Scoobies, she looks out for Dawn, although she has a habit of talking to her like she's five rather than fifteen.
• Breakout Character: Originally a literal Monster of the Week, she was such an interesting character that she got a second episode outing, then was repurposed as Xander's rebound love interest. Joss Whedon did try to write her out on more than one occasion, but kept bringing her back. He waited until the Grand Finale to kill her off.
• Break the Cutie: She spends most of her time on the show as the perky and bubbly comic relief. Then Xander leaves her at the altar. She reacts to this by returning to vengeance. She finds herself unable to do it properly at first, but when she does get back into the swing by slaughtering ten frat boys who humiliated a girl, she suddenly realizes what she's done and plunges into Death Seeker-dom. When she begs D'Hoffryn to undo it—the price of which would be a life and soul—he instead kills her friend Halfrek in front of her as the payment. He follows this by saying, "Haven't I taught you anything, Anya? Never go for the kill when you can go for the pain".
• Brutal Honesty:
  • "I hate us! Everybody's so nice. Nobody says what's on their mind."
  • Her reputation for Brutal Honesty, being a Deadpan Snarker, and basically being an insensitive bitch lead to one of the most powerful and poignant moments in the entire series: her emotional breakdown after the death of Joyce Summers in "The Body".
    Anya: Are they gonna cut the body open?
    Willow: Oh my God! Would you just... stop talking? Just... shut your mouth. Please.
    Anya: What am I doing?
    Willow: How can you act like that?
    Anya: Am I supposed to be changing my clothes a lot? I mean, is that the helpful thing to do?
    Xander: Guys...
    Willow: The way you behave...
    Anya: Nobody will tell me.
    Willow: Because it's not okay for you to be asking these things!
    Anya: But I don't understand! [begins to cry] I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's — There's just a body! And I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore! [begins crying heavily] It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And-and Xander's crying and not talking, and — and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, "Well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever," [completely loses it] and no one will explain to me why.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In "Hell's Bells," a demon shows up disguised as Xander from the future to ruin Xander and Anya's wedding, because, as it turns out, he was once an adulterous human who Anya punished back during her days as a vengeance demon. Anya, who has most likely done such things to thousands of men, has no memory of doing so.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: If Giles's imagination is anything to go by.
• Casual Kink: She appears to have adventurous sexual side hinting that she and Xander have indulged in costume roleplaying, bondage,[citation needed] spanking and using Buffy's vaulting horse in their intercourse. She also considers some of the magic spells she performs with Willow to be "sexy".
• Character Development: She started out as a villain who skipped down during her first apocalypse. By the series's end, she'd come to terms with being human, accepted humanity and was willing to fight evil.
• Characterization Marches On: She was able to infiltrate Cordelia's social circle in her first appearance, then she swung in the opposite direction once she started appearing regularly.
• The Comically Serious: By a long shot.
  Dawn: [with chopsticks hanging from her mouth] When I was younger, I used to put my chopsticks in my mouth like this, and then Buffy would chase me around the house yelling, "I am the Slayer! I'm going to get you!"
  Anya: That's disturbing. You're emotionally scarred and will end up badly.
• Cunning Linguist: Although her native language was Old Norse, she spoke fluent, if sometimes stilted, English as well as some French and Latin.
• Cute Ghost Girl: She may be this as of Season 10 or Xander may just be going insane. It turns out to be a ghost impersonating her (though the ghost genuinely believes itself to be Anya).
• Death Is Dramatic: Tragically averted. Her death is extremely abrupt and met with little fanfare. Xander doesn't even get a chance to recover her body.
• Death Seeker: When she returns to the vengeance fold, she finds no pleasure in doing what she used to love, and eventually offers to sacrifice herself to revive some of her victims, having lost her purpose without Xander. D'Hoffryn instead kills Hallie to spite her.

• The Empath: She had a psychic sense of empathy for women's desire for vengeance and could tell if a vampire has a soul.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Completely freaked witnessing an Evil Sorcerer become an Eldritch Abomination and go on a rampage via performing a ritual similar to the one the Mayor planned on using.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: For most of history, her hair remained dark brown and long in length. While at Sunnydale High, she retained short, light brown hair while made it darker when she started dating Xander. By the end of 1999, she lightened her hair cut it down into a bob but let it grow out the following months. During the months Glory was around, she retained short, curly and blondish hair which eventually grew out the later months. After Buffy's resurrection, she kept long, sandy blonde hair, similar to Buffy's the year before. In the months as a vengeance demon after Willow's attempt at destroying the world, she had long, dark brown hair and eventually cut it down and made it blonde again before her death.
• Forgotten Phlebotinum: Her power center necklace. She keeps it out of sight for whatever reason after becoming a vengeance demon again.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: For most of her time on the show Anya was, in-universe, the least popular member of the Scoobies (Spike was even less popular, but for most his time in the show he wasn't seen as a friend at all, just an, at best, untrustworthy ally.) Willow particularly disliked Anya, but Dawn found her irritating and even Buffy and Giles could get tired of her quickly. Only Tara (who was friends with everyone and whom Anya had as a bridesmaid at her wedding) and Xander (who was dating her and the one who brought her into the gang to begin with) were consistently friendly. It is quite telling that no one bothered to check in on Anya after Xander dumped her at the altar until she became a vengeance demon again.
• Friendship Denial: In "Get It Done," during Buffy's "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Xander tells her not to forget they're her friends. Anya cuts in, stating she's not Buffy's friend. Buffy subsequently demands to know why Anya's even there and what she contributes to the group besides getting rescued.
• Good Costume Switch: When Anya is introduced, she has brunette hair. She colors it blond after becoming human, then goes back to brunette when she becomes a vengeance demon again. When she turns human for the second time, she goes back to blond.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: When she's a vengeance demon, she's a brunette. When human, she's blonde.
• Happy Dance: The Dance of Capitalist Superiority!
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: From professional vengeance demon to human, then back to her old ways after Xander leaves her at the altar, and finally human again at the end of "Selfless."
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: She couldn't act on any of it (until mid-Season 6), but she openly missed the days when she could solve her problems by eviscerating people. Spike can relate.
  Anya: I'd kill for [R.J]!
  Willow: You'd kill for a chocolate bar.
• Humanity Ensues: Becoming human makes her act more human, though it's eventually revealed she was human to begin with, a very long time ago.
• Humans Are Bastards: It was easy for her to be a vengeance demon because humans do a lot of things that need avenging. Three years of fighting alongside the Scoobies allowed her to see the goodness in people and made it hard to go back to vengeance.
• Iconic Sequel Character: She first appears midway into Season 3 as a Villain of the Week before popping up again in the last few episodes of the season as a villain again and then as a love interest to Xander. She gets brought back again on a fuller recurring basis in Season 4 before her Promotion to Opening Titles in Season 5 where she remains for the rest of the series.
• Immortals Fear Death: After losing her powers and becoming human, she becomes terrified of growing old and dying. When Joyce dies, Anya has a breakdown over how stupid the concept of death is to her.
• In Love with the Mark: Originally appears with the intention of cursing Xander who cheated on Cordelia.
• Jackass Genie: She would take wishes that were already negative in nature and make them even worse, which is how she sparked the Russian Revolution. And let's not forget "The Wish," where Cordelia wishes that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, and Anya responds by making an Alternate Universe where vampires completely rule the town with no Slayer to stop them.
• Jack of All Stats: She's competent in both hand-to-hand combat and spellcasting, although she pales by comparison to Buffy and Spike in hand-to-hand combat, and to Willow, Tara, and Giles in magic.
• Killed Off for Real: She is slain by a Bringer in the Season 7 finale.
• Literal Genie: She had great fun with this. She creates a heart-eating monster when an upset girl wishes that some frat boys find out what it's like to have their hearts ripped out. On the other hand, when asked to turn a cheating lover into a frog, she turns him French. In "The Wish", Cordelia wishes that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale; in the Alternate Universe that results, with no Slayer to keep them in check, the vampires rule the town.
• Literal-Minded: She's very much like this.
  Anya: That's so very humorous. Make fun of the ex-demon! I can just hear you in private. "I dislike that Anya. She's newly human and strangely literal."
• The Load: Buffy accuses her as such in "Get It Done" after she openly states that she's not Buffy's friend. Buffy demands to know why Anya's there and what she contributes to the group "aside from getting rescued," and Anya can barely come up with a response.
  Anya: I provide much-needed... sarcasm.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Whenever she'd get even slightly aroused, she would drag Xander away to have naughty time with him. She would often casually and innocently bring up how much sex she and Xander had, much to the chagrin of the group at large.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Anya's a little "Aud", isn't she?
  • "Anyanka" is possibly derived from old Greek ἀνάγκη, "necessity". Just read the Other Wiki's entry and think of her Reality Warper powers.
• Money Fetish: She seems to have a thing for cash. Whilst playing The Game of Life, asked if she could sell her children for more money.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: As a result of being both knowledgeable about demons and very, very blunt.
• No Social Skills: She was a 1000-year-old demon trying to learn how to be a passable human. At least, at first it was that simple; later on, it was revealed that she was born human (1,000 years ago in Sjornjost). Still later, it was shown that she'd always talked and acted like an eccentric, even in her original human life. Many fans on the autistic spectrum identify with her.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Anya describes herself as a righteous sword for all Woman Scorned, but her behavior as a vengeance demon is more along the lines of a Jackass Genie rather than the "patron saint of scorned women" she claims to be. She essentially tricks women into inflicting Disproportionate Retribution on former loved ones, and in "The Wish," when Cordelia's wish leads her to create a Crapsack World where vampires rule Sunnydale, Anya takes open pleasure in the results.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Her personality made her offend a lot of people and she was similar to Cordelia. A few examples were when she referred to Olivia Williams as Giles' "orgasm friend"; upon discovering that Dawn was the Key, she openly remarked "You make a lovely little girl!"; she repeatedly asked inappropriate questions about what the doctors were going to do with Joyce Summers' body, which deeply disgusted and upset Willow, though Anya responded by breaking down into tears, explaining that she could not understand why Joyce died or how death works. She repeatedly mentioned to Buffy that she had been in Hell, earning multiple reprimands from Xander and the gang; and she kept remarking right in front of the Potential Slayers that they were all going to die one way or another. According to Olaf, Anya had the same personality prior to become a vengeance demon.
• Opt Out: Anya got the hell out of Dodge before Graduation Day. Contrast with the fifth and seventh season finales.
• Paint It Black: When she became a demon again her color scheme went back to black.
• Patriotic Fervor: "You know what else is un-American? French people". She's technically speaking from Scandanavia.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Starting Season 5.
• Punny Name: Aud. (Yes, she is.)
• Reality Warper: In "The Wish", she creates an entire Alternate Universe where Buffy never came to Sunnydale.
• Really 700 Years Old: 1,120 and she's still being carded.
• Replacement Flat Character: For Cordelia, who probably underwent the most amount of character development in the entire Buffyverse. Though in this case, most of Cordelia's character development occurred on Angel, so it was really a matter of her leaving the show and having Anya to fill in that place.
• Restored My Faith in Humanity: Initially, she jumps at the chance to become a vengeance demon because Humans Are Bastards and due a lot of things that need avenging. Three years of fighting alongside the Scoobies allowed her to see the good side of humanity, and when she becomes a vengeance demon again, she finds no pleasure in the work.
• Revenge Against Men: Describes herself as a righteous sword for all Woman Scorned.
• Sarcasm-Blind: To give one example:
  Dawn: Oh my god, you'll never believe what happened at school today...
  Buffy: [Not even looking up] Everyone started singing and dancing?
  Dawn:...[Annoyed] I gave birth to a pterodactyl.
  Anya: Oh my god. Did it sing?
• Start of Darkness: Her back story of how she became a demon is shown in Season 7's "Selfless".

• Super-Strength: She was much stronger than some demons and vampires (knocking Spike across the room while lying down) in addition to holding her own against Buffy, surviving being run through with a sword.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: For Cordelia. Greedy and high-maintenance? Check. Xander's love interest? Check. Brutally honest to a fault? Check.
• Teleportation with Drawbacks: Played with. When Anya is turned back into a demon, she is able to teleport to wherever she wishes whenever she wants. Unfortunately, after pissing off her boss for undoing several curses, she is punished by being forced to file paperwork whenever she wants to teleport.
  Anya: I can only teleport for official business.
• Too Much Information: A Running Gag is her eagerly telling the Scoobies details of her sex life with Xander that everyone (including Xander) would rather she kept private.
• Took a Level in Badass: After becoming a vengeance demon again near the end of Season 6, plus she manages to hold her own in a fight with Buffy and proves well-versed in swordsmanship during the final battle.
• Tsundere: "My feelings are changeable but intense."
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Anya serving as a surrogate annoying younger sister for Willow.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
  • Bunnies. Though she was shown to be fine with them while alive, suggesting something (possibly a wish gone horribly awry) occured while she was demon, or they're a subconscious reminder of her human past.
  • It seems that she also had a slight fear of getting old, as it was something she never had to consider as a vengeance demon. Her previous demon life also left her with the impression that to die was "mortal and stupid".
• Woman Scorned: Is described as being the "Patron Saint" of these, and refers to herself as their "righteous sword". She was originally recruited for the position after becoming one herself and turning her philandering husband into a troll.

Riley

Riley Finn

"Turns out I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of "apocalypse"."

Played By: Marc Blucas

"Yeah, I'm well aware of how lucky I am. Like, lottery lucky. Buffy's like nobody else in the world. When I'm with her, it's like — it's like I'm split in two — half of me is just on fire, goin' crazy if I'm not touching her. The other half is so still and peaceful, just perfectly content. Just knows, this is the one. But she doesn't love me."

Buffy's first serious boyfriend after Angel. He is initially an operative in a military organization called "The Initiative" that uses science and military technology to hunt down HSTs or "hostile sub-terrestrials" (demons). Riley is Angel's opposite, an Iowa-born-and-raised man whose strength lies in his military secret identity. Buffy's superior physical strength causes him insecurity, particularly after his medically enhanced powers were removed.

---

• Amazon Chaser: Double Subverted. He likes Buffy's strength and skill, but after a while the fact that she's stronger than him chips away at his self confidence. Then he marries a Badass Normal action girl instead of one with Super-Strength.
• Amicable Exes: He and Buffy still get along famously even after the less than terrific way their relationship fell apart - in fact, his wife and Buffy get along famously too.
• Animal Motifs: He's compared to cats a couple of times. Dawn describes him as "kittenish", while Xander compares him to a big jungle cat.
• Badass Normal: Despite being human, he displays the physical strength and endurance necessary to fight demons and vampires alike.
• Battle Couple: Riley is eager to form one with Buffy, but she finds his lack of superpowers cramps her style. When Riley returns for one episode ("As You Were") in Season 6, he's married a Badass Normal Action Girl, forming a new Battle Couple.
• Break the Cutie: When he's introduced, he is happy with his job at the Initiative and thinks they're doing good work, and all in all is a pretty normal guy, 'cept the whole demon-fighting thing. Then he falls in love with Buffy, who his boss and mother-figure tries to kill; he then learns that Maggie created a Frankenstein-like monster who will take over the world, and Riley is meant to become like the monster too. He gets discarded from the Initiative and loses his faith in what they did, and two people he cared about are turned either into zombies or Adam Mk. II by Adam. He then goes through horrible drug withdrawal from all the chemicals the Initiative pumped into him to make him into a Super Soldier. After that's all over, he comes to realize that no matter how much he loves Buffy, she doesn't feel as strongly about him and never really will. All these issues, especially Buffy's lack of love for him, lead to him masochistically paying female vampires to suck his blood, and eventually he leaves town completely.
• The Bus Came Back: He returns in "As You Were", where we see he's still doing military operations. He also got over Buffy and married a fellow operative named Sam.
  • He also returns for small cameos in the comics, mostly in season 8, 10 and 11.
• Character Shilling: A lot of characters go on about how great he is and how Buffy's apparently not treating him right; in "Into the Woods," Xander goes on about how Riley has given her everything and risked everything for her, whereas Buffy, still hurting over her breakup with Angel, has just treated him as the "convenient rebound guy," expecting him to be there when she needs him and to disappear when she doesn't. Of course, that doesn't match up with what we see. Riley becomes insecure over Buffy's attraction to darkness and resents her for not leaning on him for emotional support when she has to look after her mother (who's suffering from a life-threatening brain tumor), goes to a vampire "whorehouse" (to get off on getting bitten by them), thinks Buffy is entirely to blame for his behavior, and gives her an ultimatum: he's leaving if she doesn't forgive him.
• Combat Medic: One aspect of his Initiative training, as he competently treats a severe puncture wound that Buffy suffered to the abdomen in "Fool for Love".
• Conflicting Loyalty: A key factor in his Season 4 arc is him being torn between the Initiative and the Scooby Gang, especially after Professor Walsh, his Parental Substitute, tries to have Buffy killed. When the Initiative captures Oz, a werewolf, and conducted inhumane experiments on him even after he reverted to human form, that's the straw that broke the camel's back; he promptly turns his back on them in favor of the Scoobies and helps Buffy and co. break Oz out.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: He was the polar opposite to Buffy's previous Love Interest Angel, the wholesome, easy-going farmboy to his brooding vampire.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: He was seen to have a fierce jealous streak in him, as he had quickly came to blows with Angel in an alleyway while he was on his way to apologize to Buffy and had violently confronted Spike on three separate occasions—particularly notable for the latter, as Buffy showed no particular interest in Spike at the time and Spike's own affections for Buffy were only sussed out by Riley in their final confrontation.
• Down on the Farm: Lampshaded by Riley Finn when he describes to Buffy the farm he grew up on, and admits he's making it sound like a Grant Wood painting. Later when Buffy finds out Riley is a secret agent, she naturally assumes this is all a front. Riley says that no, he really did grow up on a small farm in Iowa.
• The Easy Way or the Hard Way: "We can do this the hard way, or the fatal way."
• Expy: Owed to its nature of genetic super-soldier and his patriotic comportment, he seems to be a Shout-Out to Captain America.
• Fantastic Drug: Became addicted to having his blood sucked by vampire prostitutes. No, that is not an Unusual Euphemism.
• Fantastic Racism: At first he blasts the Scoobies and Willy the Snitch for harboring Spike and serving demons at his bar respectively, and later made negative comments on Willow's relationship with Oz, a werewolf. While he mostly grows out of it, some of it still remains; in "Buffy vs. Dracula," he makes it clear that unlike Buffy, he has no qualms against dusting a helpless Spike, and in the Season 8 comics, Angel outright describes him as "very humans first."
  • In the Season 10 comics, he is made the military contact of the new Magic Council, and gets blasted for referring to himself as a representative of "normal" people, with one councilman outright calling him a bigot for implying nonhumans aren't "normal."
• Farm Boy: From Iowa, no less. "Growing up on a farm" is his real backstory, not cover story.
• Feel No Pain: An eventual side-effect of Professor Walsh's experiments, though the strain it put on his body led to a Hollywood Heart Attack.
• For Science!: As a psychology major, his more curious interests occasionally pop up, like when Xander was accidentally doubled.
  Riley: Psychologically, this is fascinating! Doesn't it make everyone wanna lock them in separate rooms and do experiments on them?
  Giles: [Beat]
  Riley: ...Just me, then.
• The Generic Guy: Compared to Buffy's other bad-boy love interests (Angel, Spike, and Parker), at the core Riley's just a normal, squeaky-clean, church-going guy from the midwestern US.
• Happily Married: He returns in Season 6 with a wife. Their happiness together is a 180 contrast to the self-destructive Spuffy going on at the time.
• Heroic Build: Broad-shouldered and muscular, which makes him physically stand out from the rest of the gang.
• Love Interest: For Buffy, for Season 4 and part of 5.
• Momma's Boy: Raised by his mother and has no trouble accepting Maggie Walsh's authority. That he regards her as a Parental Substitute is lampshaded by Adam, and he takes both her death and the revelation that she was secretly experimenting on him hard.
• Mr. Fanservice: As is customary for Buffy's Love Interest, he has at least as many Shirtless Scenes as Angel.
• Nice Guy: Deconstructed - he was a prime example of how to not do this character since he ended up being regarded as a bland replacement for Angel (and later attempts to make him more compelling didn't really work). However, Riley comes back to the show Happily Married and his nice guy persona is much better executed. When he finds Buffy working in a dead-end job and sleeping with Spike, Riley refuses to condemn her for it, instead giving Buffy the encouragement she needs to start pulling her life back together. His wife, Sam, is really nice and supportive, even when Buffy kills a demon they were tracking.
• One Head Taller: Marc Blucas' height made scenes where he had to kiss the diminutive Sarah Michelle Gellar a bit awkward.
• Real Men Love Jesus: In "Who Are You?", Buffy turns up at a church where vampires have taken the congregation hostage, and finds him already taking charge of the crisis.
  "How'd you get here so fast?"
  "I didn't, I'm just late for church."
• The Reliable One: Buffy herself has described him as very reliable and solid, which was proven to be true on many occasions throughout their dating years.
• Restraining Bolt: In "Primeval," it's revealed that Professor Walsh implanted him with a microchip that ties directly into his central nervous system through his thoracic nerve in order to control his motor functions, which Adam activates in order to pacify him while his plans reach their fruition. During the fight, Riley literally cuts it out of his body in order to save Buffy.
• The Rival: With Angel and Spike, for obvious reasons. He mostly gets over it.
• Romantic Runner-Up: He has a successful relationship with Buffy for some time, but it's made plain that she doesn't love him the way she loved Angel.
• Rugged Scar: After coming back in Season 6, he is shown to be much more proficient and gained a really cool scar over an eye.
• Scars Are Forever: When he comes back in "As You Were", he has your standard Awesome McCool scar across his left eye. He also has one from when he cut out Adam's mind control chip, and probably has another from when Adam stabbed him.
• Super-Soldier: On the mild side of "super", but he and the other Initiative troops are chemically augmented.
• Super-Strength: For a time, he possessed enhanced physical strength due to the drugs he was secretly fed, though nowhere near the level of a Slayer, but lost these abilities after suffering symptoms of long term withdrawal from the drugs, including surpassed pain receptors, rapid heart rate and eventually a heart attack.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In Season 5, where his attempts to become Darker and Edgier because it's what Buffy likes ultimately lead to their breakup.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In "As You Were", as well as when he features in the comics. He's Happily Married and massively matured since he was a part of the Scooby Gang, and even seems to have gotten over his resentment towards Spike.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: He makes negative comments about Oz being a werewolf, leading to Buffy angrily calling him a bigot. However, when the Initiative capture and torture a human Oz despite his objections, he snaps out of it.
• Wham Line: "But she doesn't love me."

Tara

Tara Maclay

"Um, that-that was funny if you, um, studied Taglarin mythic rites…and are a complete dork."

Played By: Amber Benson

"Nobody messes with my girl."

A fellow member of a Wicca group during Willow's first year of college. Their close friendship evolves into an ongoing romantic relationship. Tara uses her magical skills to assist the Scooby Gang in their fight against evil, and she struggles with how to deal with Willow's growing addiction to magic.

---

• Abusive Parents: More like Abusive Family. As part of her family's misogynistic tyranny of the women of the clan, they lied to her that she was half-demon her entire life and that if she ever left them for too long, she'd turn into a monster. Her father doesn't even need to raise her voice to terrify Tara, her cousin is a vicious bitch and her brother explicitly threatens to beat her up if she doesn't come with them.
• Action Girl: While she's not as tough as Buffy, Willow, or Anya, she's still able to hold her own in combat when she needs to. She's only weak in comparison to her much stronger and knowledgable friends.
• All-Loving Hero: Her most commendable and endearing traits were, undoubtedly, her compassion, her understanding, and her capacity for forgiveness when it was truly deserved. For instance, when Joyce died, Tara was the one who offered Buffy the only helpful guidance, having experienced the exact same grief when she lost her own mother.
• All Witches Have Cats: Miss Kitty Fantastico! Though Tara was more interested in having a Cute Kitten than a witch's familiar.
• And I Must Scream: Is stuck in this state from "Tough Love" to "The Gift" after Glory Mind Rapes her. Glory describes her brain-sucking as essentially trapping them in a Black Bug Room, and it's made clear at different points, such as the horrified reaction on her face when she slaps Willow in "The Gift," that Tara is fully aware of what she's doing and what's going on, but she can't stop herself; Glory essentially disconnected her from her body.
• Bad Liar: In "Intervention," Spike makes a Buffybot to have sex with, and Tara tells Dawn that he made it to play checkers with ("It sounded convincing when I thought it"). Dawn, of course, doesn't buy it for a second.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She is, by far, the gentlest of the Scoobies, both past and present. That said, she's no longer the milquetoast she used to be: she outright threatens a fight with Anya when the latter tries to force Willow to use magic, and she implicitly threatens Spike when the latter gets too sexually aggressive with Buffy. It's enough that both wither at the thought of pissing Tara off.

• Break the Cutie: She's first introduced as shy and insecure with no social contact at all until she meets Willow. Then we learn that Tara's mother died when she was 17, and she needed to deal with all her family's problems while being psychologically abused by her father, who convinced her she was a demon. Just as she finds a sense of belonging and grows happy in her relationship, she is mentally violated by a hell god that steals her sanity. She is cured later on, but then further manipulated by her lover, who takes her memories. Worst of all, as she begins to reconcile she gets shot and killed off for real. Break the cutie indeed, as well as break the fanbase.
• Character Development: She really came out of her shell during her time with Scoobies, finding her confidence and inner strength. When we first meet her, she's so afraid to speak up she that she stammers. By season six, she's snarking with the rest.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: A mild case: she gets hurt and upset if Willow so much as looks at another girl, such as when April is noticed to be attractive or examining the Buffybot and Tara feels threatened that there is some attraction there.
• Closet Key: Willow didn't know she was into girls until she met Tara.
• Clothing Reflects Personality: See Red Oni, Blue Oni. Tara also wears brighter and more attractive clothes in later seasons as she gains in confidence.
• The Confidant: The only Scooby that Buffy risks confessing to about her Secret Relationship with Spike. Tara is so sympathetic that a self-loathing Buffy breaks down in tears, begging Tara not to forgive her.
• The Conscience: When Willow disregards her advice, things tend to get...bad. She also plays this role towards Buffy, to some degree. Rather than being Christian, like most examples of this, Tara's a (spiritual, in contrast to Willow, who sees her magic as more of a tool) Wiccan.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: She replaced Oz as Willow's Love Interest. Whereas he was a quiet, laid-back werewolf, she was a shy lesbian wicca.
• Cure Your Gays: Parodied in "Once More, With Feeling."
  "Oh my God, I'm cured! I want the boys!" (pretends to run off, only to collapse giggling into Willow's arms)
• Cute Witch: She practices magic and is one of the sweetest, most adorable characters in the show.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Her death occurs for the sole purpose of pushing Willow over the edge and transforming her into Dark Willow.
• Demoted to Satellite Love Interest: Inverted. Introduced as a friend and eventually love interest for Willow - to the point that the episode "Family" lampshades how the rest of the gang don't know her that well - she comes into her own as a friend to Buffy and caretaker of Dawn.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Her hair is platinum blonde when she's first introduced, but becomes a light brown in "Family", which also reflects her confidence growing.
• Fake Guest Star: Despite appearing in almost fifty episodes, she's still billed a guest star. Eventually she gets Promoted to Opening Titles, but that's just a cruel trick by Joss, the ginger dominatrix of fandom.^note In fact, this was more-or-less confirmed by Whedon to be an intentionally evil check on his bucket list (given that he'd wanted to do this with Eric Balfour as Jesse, who was killed in the Pilot); he'd always wanted to kill a character in the first episode they received star billing, and he knew that whomever was dating Willow was destined to die, hence Benson not receiving star billing despite being a regular in all but name.
• Family of Choice: After finding out her father and brother lied to her her whole life and she isn't a demon at all, she severs all ties with her biological family in favor of the Scooby Gang.
• Foil: She's a natural witch compared to Willow, who started studying magic later in life. While Willow is obsessed with becoming more powerful and pushing the boundaries of what's possible, Tara is more cautious and dislikes the idea of meddling with forces outside their comprehension. Best illustrated in "Forever", where they present two opposing viewpoints - Willow gives Dawn a chance to resurrect Joyce, which results in her coming back wrong, while Tara insists that death should be respected.
• Grew a Spine: When we first meet her, she's shy, awkward and reserved, afraid to speak up for herself as a result of her upbringing. Being with the Scoobies saw her gain confidence, especially when they send said awful family packing. As time goes on, she's as brave and snarky as the others, even telling Anya to back off when she tries to bully Willow into using magic.
• The Heart: She's the one who keeps the Scoobies from fraying because of how much they all love her. Beyond Willow's relationship with her, Buffy trusts her enough to have her be a Secret-Keeper for her relationship with Spike, Giles treats her like another one of his surrogate children, Spike likes having her around enough that he puts himself through some serious pain to prove she's not a demon, Xander and Anya have her as a bridesmaid, and Dawn thinks of her as a second mother. All of them are devastated when she dies, and the group dynamic is permanently altered.
• Hot Witch: Lampshaded in "Once More With Feeling"; having gained in confidence thanks to her relationship with Willow, she's dressing a lot more attractively.
• Hypocrite: In "Intervention," she at first tries to defend Buffy's actions when Xander and Anya insist that Buffy's grief over Joyce's death has driven her insane, stating that she herself did dumb things like lying to her family and staying out at night while grieving her own mother. When Anya clarifies that Buffy (actually the Buffybot) is having sex with Spike, Tara immediately backpedals and agrees with their assessment.
  Willow: [struggling to understand] Oh. Well, Tara's right, grief can be powerful and we shouldn't judge—
  Tara: What, are you kidding? She's nuts!
• Iconic Sequel Character: She is not brought in until Season 4's "Hush" and remains a recurring character until Season 6's "Seeing Red" (where she is killed off). As Willow's girlfriend, she was seen as a milestone of LGBTQ representation at the time of airing.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Word of Saint Paul has it that one of the reasons Tara never appears as a shade to tempt Willow is that she herself was never tempted by evil, making her basically unique among the characters on the show, and meaning that evil entities can't usurp her appearance to corrupt others.
• Instant Death Bullet: After being shot by Warren, she manages to get two words out and drops, dead before she hits the ground.
• Killed Off for Real: Since her death was not a supernatural one, Willow cannot bring her back as she did Buffy at the beginning of the season. In the comics, Andrew eventually makes an attempt to bring her back (along with Jonathan), but Willow stops him because she knows they would be taking her out of heaven to do so.
• Kill the Cutie: Warren shows up with the intention to kill Buffy, only for a stray bullet to accidentally hit Tara as well, and she dies almost instantly.
• The Lost Lenore: Downplayed: while Willow is able to move on after her death and date other women, it's abundantly clear that Tara will always hold a special place in Willow's heart. In the comics, she admits to Andrew that whenever she finds a spell or artifact that might be able to bring back the dead, her first thought is always of possibly using it to bring Tara back.
• Magic Misfire: While usually the poster-girl for ethical and responsible witchcraft, she has one of these in "Family." Falsely believing that she's part-demon, she casts a spell to hide it from the other Scoobies, but it ends up making all demons invisible to them. Mortal danger ensues when around the same time, Glory forcibly recruits a horde of demons to kill Buffy, and Tara barely manages to show up in time to realize the spell has gone wrong and undo it.
• Mind Rape: What Glory did in "Tough Love," and what Willow did in "All The Way." It's referred to as "mind sucking".
• Nice Girl: Most definitely one of the nicest people in the series and — after overcoming her Shrinking Violet phase — she proves to be the most morally well-adjusted of the main cast, dispensing advice to the others on coping with grief after Joyce died. She's also a very understanding and forgiving (without being a doormat about it) lover to Willow, and becomes the group's Cool Big Sis and Team Mom (especially to Dawn).
• N-Word Privileges: In this cut scene from "Dead Things".
  "Sweetie, I'm a fag. I've been there."
• Only Sane Woman: Compared to most of the other Scoobies, she has the fewest issues to deal with personally: this makes her a naturally maternal and wise figure in their group, especially after Joyce passes away and Giles leaves town. She helps with Willow's magic addiction, Buffy's pain after her resurrection, and Dawn's depression, all without getting overwhelmed.
• Parental Substitute: She and Willow take care of Dawn after Buffy dies. Even after they split, Tara still played a role in Dawn's life, spending time with her in the manner of a divorced parent sharing joint custody.
• Positive Friend Influence: She helps Buffy through her breakup with Riley, her mother's death and her relationship with Spike. Really, she's the glue of the group.
• The Prankster: She was quite playful and not above winding her friends up on occasion, like tricking Dawn into seeing a book with a funnily-endowed demon, teasing Willow about being cured when she thinks men might be attracted to her, or cock-blocking Spike.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: For one episode, to trick the fans into thinking she's safe. Whedon is a cruel mistress.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: When Willow and Tara first meet in Season 4, Tara wears blue and Willow wears red — Tara is shy, cautious yet with longer experience in magic use, while Willow is more powerful, impulsive and (by that stage) outgoing in personality.
• The Reliable One: Mature, grounded, sensible, caring and the only one to not turn evil or be corrupted at least once.
• Replacement Flat Character: With Willow becoming more and more powerful, the writers realised that they couldn't put her in danger anymore, so Tara was introduced as the "new Willow" - shy, reserved, socially awkward and so lacking in confidence that she's afraid to speak up for herself. It eventually gets subverted when she gains self-esteem and becomes one of the moral backbones of the group.
• Sacrificial Lion: In one of the most iconic and devastating moments in the entire series, she's killed by a stray bullet intended for Buffy, fired by Warren Mears.
• Satellite Character: At least initially, she doesn't get much in the way of a storyline outside of being Willow's girlfriend. Later on, she ends up having her own involvement in A-plots and generally much more significance to the point of being an integral and independent member of the group, such as in "Family," "Tough Love," "All the Way," and tragically, "Seeing Red."
• Shrinking Violet: Early on, when she's nervous and introverted. When she begins a relationship with Willow and subsequently gains her friends (and overcomes her family issues) she becomes much more confident.
• Speech Impediment: Clearly an artifact of her abusive childhood, as it gets worse when her family comes to town, but almost disappears once she gains more confidence in herself.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Her death comes out of absolutely nowhere and was over very quickly.
• Team Mom: She became a surrogate mother of sorts to the Scoobies, caring for Dawn when Buffy was busy with slaying or too emotionally cut off.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Without a doubt the kindest, most mature and most good-natured character of the series - and several critics have noted that of all the Buffyverse regulars, she's the only one never to be even temporarily seduced by evil, making her the only true Morality Chain for literally everybody else. And this being a Joss Whedon show, she ends up getting shot and killed for no real reason by one of the most loathsome villains in the series. Doesn't make it any less of a shock.
• Took a Level in Badass: Progressively throughout Seasons 5 and 6, she becomes more formidable by gaining greater confidence.
• Took a Level in Smartass: She was introduced as a quiet, shy girl with a stutter who kept to herself. Hanging out with the Scoobies really helps her come out of her shell. Season four Tara would have never been brave enough to tease Spike about his groin.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Even though her skills are on the research and magic side, so she otherwise never gets physically involved in battles, when Willow is threatened by demon bike gang leader Razer? Lack of weapons training is irrelevant, she's getting a one-blow instant kill with an axe.
• Wham Line: If you thought Willow and Tara were "just friends"...
  Tara: I am, you know.
  Willow: What?
  Tara: Yours.
• White Magician Girl: She has all the makings of one: she's a maternal and calming moral center of the group, she's plenty feminine, and while she can and does fight with her magic, her true prowess in the group comes from natural, pure magic that she uses for altruistic and supportive means (much more than Willow, whose magic is generally more martial and based in darker sources).
• White Sheep: Tara is the only good egg in the entire rotten Maclay clan, and they still presume to take the moral high ground.
• Wise Beyond Her Years: Despite being the most innocent of the Scoobies, Tara takes the revelation of Joyce's death much more like an adult than any other member of the gang. We later learn it's because her own mother died when she was 17, so she's been through this before.

Dawn

Dawn Summers

"We destroyed The Mall? ...I fought on the wrong side."

Played By: Michelle Trachtenberg

"She still thinks I'm Little Miss Nobody, just her dumb little sister. Boy, is she in for a surprise."

Buffy's younger sister who was Cosmic Retconned into existence in Season 5. She's actually a Key that could open dimensional barriers.

---

• Action Girl: As of the final season; she leans more towards an Action Survivor in Season 5 and until the final episode of Season 6.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Buffy stroking Dawn's hair. Which she and Joyce do a lot.
• Affectionate Nickname: Spike calle her "Little Bit", while most of the Scoobies call her "Dawnie".
• Age-Appropriate Angst: Her whininess and kleptomania are considered severely obnoxious, but when you consider she's a 15 year old girl whose mother and sister died, and then her sister comes back completely depressed and incapable of taking care of her, and then her pseudo foster moms (Willow and Tara) break up, and then one of them DIES and the other tries to kill her, her behavior seems rather understandable. This is compounding the fact that her parents divorced when she was 8 or 9, she knows her sister is going to die young, she lives with the fact that she could easily become demon prey to fuck with or bait Buffy, Buffy seems to not give a damn about this, and more. The icing on the cake is that at 14, she finds out that she's a magical construct who's only existed for six months, that all of her memories are false, and that the people she loves the most knew this and didn't tell her. The fact that she hasn't snapped and killed them all or become a Serial Killer is actually pretty surprising.
• Age Is Relative: Depending on how you look at her, when she first is seen in Buffy's bedroom, Dawn is either 14 billion years old, 14 years old, or mere minutes old.
• AM/FM Characterization: She's fan of pop music. She likes Britney Spears' early work ("before she sold out") and once forced Giles to endure people hired more for their dancing than their singing ability.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Buffy thinks of Dawn as a burden to be endured quite often, and not only because of the usual younger sister nonsense.
• Apocalypse Maiden: Spilling her blood in a certain place and time creates an interdimensional tear that brings down the walls separating the various worlds, thus destroying the entire multi-verse.
• Artificial Human: She only looks human. Her existence is supernatural.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: In the Season 6 finale, it's heavily implied that she picked up some fighting skills by watching Buffy slay.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Highlighted in the final season when she complains that everyone treats her like a baby to be protected when she's now older than Buffy was when she started her slaying career.
• Backstory Invader: She was created at the beginning of the fifth season and all the other characters given false memories of her. When people, including Dawn, discover this, they have obviously mixed reactions to both the information and towards her. Notably, characters on Angel make reference to her despite her never appearing on the show (because they would have met her if she'd existed), and she appears in comics set before Season Five because everyone remembers her being there even though she wasn't.
• Badass Adorable: By the end of the series she's a fairly skilled hand-to-hand fighter, for a normal human, has a base level of competency when it comes to magic, speaks a dozen languages, and is generally Giles' number one backup when it comes to research.
  • The comics continue this trend. When she's in the form of a giantess, her strength is still proportionate to her body. Regardless, Dawn has taken out foes of the same size with greater strength, including mecha Dawn and the creater of all vampires.
• Barrier Maiden: She's the key to opening dimensional barriers.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  Dawn: You sleep, right? Because if you hurt my sister, you'll wake up on fire.
  Spike: [later, to Buffy] Also, when did your sister become unbelievably scary?
• Big Little Brother: A female variant: she grows up to be taller than Buffy and her mother Joyce.
• Big Sister Worship: Dawn both idolizes her superhero sister, but at the same time also resents her (such as the overprotective streak).
• Bizarre Taste in Food: Anchovies on pizza is fine, but peanut butter and baloney sandwiches?
• Born of Magic: She's revealed to actually be a mystical being of living energy called The Key. She and everyone around her were given retroactive memories of her to hide her true nature. She was later transformed into a normal, organic, teenage girl.
• Bratty Half-Pint: She spends most of Season 6 whining and bitching, to the extent that in "Two to Go", Dark Willow point-blank calls her on it and outright threatens to kill her just to put a stop to it:
  Dark Willow: Wanna go back? End the pain? You'll be happier. I'd be happier. We'll all be a lot happier without having to listen to all your constant whining. "Mom! Buffy! Tara! Wah!"
• Break the Cutie: Most of the fifth season is one long trauma-line for Dawn. She is targeted by a Physical God for murder, her mother dies abruptly, and then her sister commits suicide in order to save her life. Its safe to say that it really was a bad year for Dawn. No wonder she starts acting out...
• Broken Pedestal: She hero-worships Spike throughout Seasons 5 and 6 and looks up to him as a surrogate big brother, but finding out from Xander in "Grave" that Spike tried to rape Buffy completely shatters that. When they next interact in Season 7, Dawn outright threatens to set him on fire if he hurts Buffy without batting an eye. Nonetheless, upon the reveal that Spike regained his soul, they eventually begin to rebuild their friendship, with Dawn readily defending Spike when Andrew asked why Buffy was so desperate to save him from the First.
• Character Development: She matured from a bratty teenaged annoyance to a capable and smart member of the team.
• Characterization Marches On: She was originally conceived as a pre-teen, and when Trachtenberg was cast instead there wasn't enough time to rewrite the season's first few episodes to reflect her being a teenager, which makes her come off as very immature for her age. Around Glory's introduction, this got better.
• Cousin Oliver: Parodied and Justified. Buffy comes home at the end of "Buffy vs. Dracula" and suddenly has a little sister, when previously she'd been explicitly an only child, as stated in two prior episodes where she'd had trouble sharing with Faith and her new dormmate, respectively. Everyone, including Buffy herself, acts like she'd had a sister all along, and no one notices anything strange - except crazy people. An episode passes like this. Then another. And another. Eventually we learn that Dawn is there because of a magic spell which altered everyone's memories (including her own) and that she's actually a Cosmic Keystone in human form.
• Cosmic Retcon: When the Monks of Dagon changed the all-powerful orb of glowing green energy she used to be into a 14 year old girl, they also inserted an entire life history for her into the memories of everyone who would logically have met her. And photographs, etc.
• Cursed with Awesome: While being a giant and centaurette were annoying to her, she at least acknowledged they had some good points. When she was a centaur, Xander even pointed out that she was a "majestic creature of legend" and said he was honestly jealous. Being turned into a living doll wasn't funny. According to Joss Whedon's script notes, Dawn Summers, being technically a clone of her older sister Buffy, should have been a Potential Slayer, were it not for the fact that the Key, a force that was infinitely more powerful than the Slayer spirit, was already in residence in her body. Thus, her "potential" to be a Potential was erased.
• Damsel in Distress: The fact that Dawn is put in danger so often is even lamp-shaded.
  Buffy: Dawn's in trouble. Must be Tuesday.
• Empowered Badass Normal: As of Season 10, she's developed new powers related to the Key, such as Hand Blasts powerful enough to reduce demons to ash.
• Everyone's Baby Sister: She's the youngest of the Scoobies and Buffy's literal baby sister. As a result, the gang's very protective of her.
• Fascinating Eyebrow: Though more because she's being sardonic.
• Freak Out: Learning that her existence as a person was the creation of the Monks of Dagon shocked her so much that she sliced her own arm open just to see if she would really bleed.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Her bed often has teddy bears and other assorted stuffed toys on it.
• Iconic Sequel Character: She isn't introduced until the beginning of Season 5, and remains a main character for the rest of the show.
• I Just Want to Be Special:
  • She undergoes this, briefly, in Season 7. (Yes, Dawn is the Key, but that doesn't give her any controllable powers in this dimension, so compared to Buffy and the Potential Slayers she's an ordinary girl.) She eventually learns that she can do as much from her position as any of the Slayers, thanks to a talk with Xander, who briefly underwent this trope himself in "The Zeppo".
  • Bites her in the ass in Season 8. Thanks to a curse from a demon ex-boyfriend after sleeping with his roommate, she gets turned into a giant (which is problematic for her, though she does get to fight a giant Mecha-Dawn), a centaurette, and a living doll (which gets her captured by an insane magic dollmaker) in succession. Kenny was convinced to forgive her and take it off before she turned into a fire crab, however. Xander was basically running the Slayer Organization and Dawn is quite happy to be normal again and is actually comforted by Xander throughout the whole ordeal while everyone else basically ignores her. They get together.
  • Finally in Season 10, it turns out that as the Key she can open portals at will when she's in other dimensions. The Gang later write it into the Reality Warper Vampyr book that she can do this on Earth, too, when they need to use this against D'Hoffryn.
• It's All About Me: Sometimes, with her typical teenage tendencies. For example, she accuses Buffy of wanting to go away again when Buffy is struggling after being resurrected rather than trying to show empathy for Buffy's obvious depression or gratitude that Buffy sacrificed herself to save Dawn, and her kleptomaniac tendencies later on seem to be partly motivated by a need for attention.
• Jerkass Realization: In "Forever", near the end, Dawn openly accuses Buffy of not caring or even grieving over their mother's death, because she's been running around and treating it like "just another chore." At that, Buffy breaks down and confesses that, far from being emotionless about Joyce's death, Buffy has been bottling up her emotions because it's the only way she can deal with the grief. Dawn's expression as Buffy steadily breaks down into grief-stricken sobbing goes from cold anger to tearful horror as she realizes just how much her older sister is hurting.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: After her mother's death and Buffy's return, she gets increasingly sticky-fingered as a way to act out due to the trauma she'd endured.
• Like Brother and Sister: She grows to view Spike as a sort of surrogate-older-brother-figure in season 5-6. The relationship breaks down for a while in season 7, but picks up again in the comics stronger than ever.
• The Load: Buffy has to protect her from those that know she is the key, but Dawn gets kidnapped, paralyzed, and attacked all the time, not to mention the trouble she causes by herself by inviting vampires into their house, making wishes to vengeance demons, resurrecting dead people and parking with vampires. That being said, the show makes it fairly obvious that half of this is Buffy's fault, as she refuses to train her in combat so that she can have the normal life Buffy never had, yet personal problems and various tragedies intervene and she ends up ignoring the poor girl more than half the time. The only way Dawn could ever get attention was when she got in trouble, so it might be that subconsciously she wanted to be in danger, which might explain her lack of caution in certain situations that should have warranted it, and certainly explains her brief stint as a kleptomaniac in the sixth season. Once Buffy does start training her and giving her a bit more attention, Dawn stops getting kidnapped so much and even manages to become a decent supporting fighter.
• The Lost Lenore: For Xander Harris. Just as their relationship is becoming solid and stable, she nearly dies due to the death of magic, and has all of her emotional settings restored to how they were just after she was created, erasing the relationship completely. They do, however, end up getting back together and eventually married with a baby.
• MacGuffin Turned Human: In season five, she's the Key that Glory seeks and that Buffy and co. must protect.
• Minored in Ass-Kicking: She might not be as badass, but she has shown potential in magic and combat (multiple times, including fighting side by side with Buffy and holding her own). Oh, and there was the time she tasered Xander.
• Missed the Call: Joss Whedon admitted that she was almost a Slayer, as she is effectively a clone of Buffy. Problem is, the energy of the Key, which is infinitely more powerful than the Slayer essence, burned it out of her. "Potential" explored the fact that she should have been a potential slayer, but wasn't.
• Morality Pet: To Spike in season 5 and early season 6. She was the first Scooby to treat him nicely, and he in turn became rather fond of her and many of his earlier Pet the Dog moments were with her. He manages to make his way as a true Scooby largely because of his genuine efforts to care for and protect her, as protecting Dawn is the first thing Buffy shows real trust in him for.
• The Not-Love Interest: Joss Whedon has stated that Buffy's Love Interest for Season 5 is Dawn.
• Odd Friendship: With Spike. Frustrated with the rest of the Scoobies treating her like a child, she starts hanging out with the former Big Bad and soon develops a strange, sibling-like bond with him.
• Omniglot: She somehow found the time to learn at least Turkish and Sumerian(!) off-screen in a matter of months. Not many languages, true, but pretty impressive.
• Precocious Crush: First on Xander; to the point of being jealous of Anya and dreaming of him looking at her as a woman, then after seeking Spike's help to find out what she is on him, wanting to be around to hang out with and be told ghost stories, knowing how strong he is and safe she feels with him, and he in turn protects her.
• Screaming Woman: As per the Damsel in Distress role, there is a lot of screaming for help.
• Self-Harm: When she discovers her origins in "Blood Ties", she flips out and cuts open her own arm just to make sure she'd really bleed.
• She Is All Grown Up: In "Him", Xander and Willow come to the simultaneous realization that the girl they've both been ogling is Buffy's kid sister.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • She's a hardcore Willow/Tara shipper, although that's mostly to make the "kid caught up in a divorce" metaphor work. The two of them pretty much adopted Dawn after Buffy's death.
  • In the season 10 comics, she ships Spike/Buffy and even goes as far as to call Buffy out for avoiding their obvious UST.
• The Smart Guy: By the last season of the show, Dawn had become an efficient researcher and a master linguist. In the comics, she additionally earns herself a Psychology degree, which is surely useful for the Scoobies...
• Sticky Fingers: She started doing this late in season 5, and it became a serious issue in season 6 when the Dysfunction Junction was at its worst.
• The Team Wannabe: Pesters Buffy to let her patrol. Buffy finally starts training her in Season 7, but still won't let her patrol.
• Thinking Up Portals: In Season 10, she discovers that being the Key gives her this ability in dimensions other than Earth's. Later, the gang write into the Vampyr book (which has become a Reality Warper) that she can do this on Earth, too.
• Tomato in the Mirror: After thinking of herself as a bog-standard human, she suddenly finds out that she's anything but and has a freak-out.
• Took a Level in Badass: During Season 5 and most of Season 6, she's taken Willow's place as the show's token Damsel in Distress. By "Grave", she steps up a level by helping Buffy fight, and in Season 7, she's an active Scooby.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In the final season, she got less bratty and whiny and was shown to be a very caring, empathetic person.
• Ungrateful Bitch: No matter how many times Buffy saves her, she'll bitch her out over something, even after she not only raised her after their mother died but literally died for her. She does grow out of this in the final season (forcing Buffy out of her own house notwithstanding).
• Wham Line:
  • Dawn has a couple, inadvertently or otherwise. Like when talking to Riley about Buffy's relationship with Angel:
    "Everyday was like the end of the world. She doesn't get worked up like that over you."
  • Or to her sister:
    "Buffy, Spike's completely in love with you."
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In a lot of Season 7, she seems to think she's in CSI.
• Younger than She Looks: A 14-year old girl who is more than Really 700 Years Old and is technically no more than a few hours old when first introduced.

Andrew

Andrew Wells

"I admit I went over to the Dark Side, but only to pick up a few things."

Played By: Tom Lenk

Appearances: Buffy the Vampire Slayer | Angel

"Join me on a new voyage of the mind. A little tale I like to call: Buffy, Slayer of the Vampyrs."

Member of the Trio, and hopelessly nerdy. Skilled at summoning demons and making sci-fi references. Spends a few episodes in Season 7 as the Scoobies' prisoner before they start trusting him. Later becomes a Watcher in the Slayer Organization, running the Rome squad. After the destruction of the Seed of Wonder, he moves to San Francisco along with most of the other Scoobies.

---

• 20% More Awesome: When he shows up on Angel, Andrew boasts that he's become "82 percent more manly" than the last time Spike saw him.
• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: He has a pretty unique way of pronouncing "Vampire" and certain other words.
• Ambiguously Gay: The actor who plays him is quite openly gay, and Joss Whedon decided to toy with the notion.
  • It's lampshaded in "Life Serial".
    Jonathan: All right, now you have to hold hands.
    Andrew: With each other?
    Warren: Well, you know what homophobia really means about you, don't you?
  • Exaggerated in his Angel appearance (where he was flanked by two Ms. Fanservice examples), and then again in the comics, which had him as unimpressed with walking in on two girls making out and implying that his Angel cameo was a feint.
  • As of Season 10, issue 11, it's no longer ambiguous.
• The Atoner: Though initially forced into it by the Scoobies, Andrew makes it his personal mission in Season 7 to start doing the right thing. Episodes like "First Date" and "Storyteller" highlight this.
  • Crops up again in Season 10 where he tries to resurrect Jonathon and Tara and his plot is tied up in how guilty he feels for killing Jonathon. He also feels like the Scoobies distrust him, and admits they would do so with good reason given his Season 9 robot plan.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Forms one with Jonathan and Warren to become the Trio, but Warren turns out to be far more evil than the other two could ever hope to be.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Is pretty pathetic as a villain, and Warren and the First manipulate him for their own schemes.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Gets one with Clive, which is when he figures out his sexuality.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's a major nerd but he's skilled enough to build robots and ray guns. He also successfully leads a squad of Slayers in season 5 of Angel.
• Butt-Monkey: In Season 7, though really no more than he deserved, having previously been a villain.
  • Again in Season 10, constantly being the butt of jokes and having villains not know who he is in comparison to the other Scoobies. He again deserves it given the Buffybot incident in Season 9.
• Camera Fiend: In "Storyteller", where he attempts to make a documentary about Buffy and the current events in Sunnydale.
• Cloudcuckoolander: To an extent, generally to inject some comedy into a tense sitution. Going on a hunt for the demon lord Archaeus? Andrew brings banana walkie talkies.
• Death Seeker: Invoked: his final line in "Storyteller" indicates that Andrew believes he will neither survive the coming final battle with the armies of the First Evil, and nor does he deserve to (though that could just be him being realistic about his chances). As the Scoobies and surviving Potentials flee Sunnydale's destruction, Andrew mutters to himself in a near-catatonic state, having survived where Anya didn't, "Why didn't I die?"
• Delusions of Eloquence: Occasionally he will act as if he's a high class gentleman, only for that facade to quickly break when he reverts to his immature self.
• Demoted to Dragon: He and Jonathan are sidelined into Warren's minions.
• Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: He occasionally smokes one to give the appearance of sophistication. And then he starts coughing.
• Evil Feels Good: As Season 6 goes on, he becomes enamored with the idea of getting away with crimes; by the time of "Seeing Red", he's gleefully cheering for Warren to kill Buffy.
• Fake Guest Star: Appears in 15 of the 22 episodes during the final season.
• Fatal Flaw: Andrew often goes off to do things without informing anyone else of his plans, leading to everyone else getting blindsided when things go wrong. In Season 9, he replaces Buffy with a robot decoy without telling anyone and in Season 10 he goes behind the group's back to try and resurrect Jonathon and Tara. He learns his lesson mid-Season 10 and tells the team when the Sculptor tries to win him over instead of acting unilaterally.
  • He also has a tendency to overreact. In small doses this leads to people finding him obnoxious. But the Jonathan Copy used it against him by showing him things the Scoobies, Clive, and another guy Andrew dated said about him out of context in order to upset him into breaking away from the group. This pushed Andrew so far he nearly abandoned the group.
• Forgettable Character: His Running Gag is that no one in the main cast knows who he is, often defaulting to calling him "Tucker's brother". It's meant to be a lampshade towards the fact that Tucker was originally meant to be the third member of the trio alongside Warren and Jonathan ^note  and was supposed to be the original Big Bad of the three instead of Warren, given the comparatively sinister nature of his original appearance in the show. but they couldn't secure the actor to return, and thus created Andrew to fill the third slot.
  • In season 7, Spike asks who he is and receives the usual answer with a nod of understanding. This is despite that Spike has already met Andrew and wasn't even in Sunnydale at the time Tucker was pulling his prom night shenanigans.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: He sticks around the Scoobies from season seven onward but is kept at an arms distance for most of it. Justifiably, as his discretions didn't even have the excuse of having no soul at the time. By season ten, he attempts to resurrect Tara in an effort to help make up for his sins towards the group. After which, he is forgiven and accepted fully into the group.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Shown off more in the comics. By Season 10, he uses his inventions to keep up with the gang on patrol and brings over experimental weapons for battles.
• Genre Savvy: Being geeks, however, he and the other members of the Trio are smart enough to avert/take into consideration certain things when carrying out their evil plans. They're still not as clever as they think.
  • Tries this with the Vampyr book in Season 10, but it doesn't like his attempts at retcon and cliche.
• Gratuitous Latin: He displays a knowledge of Latin several times in the show and comics.
• Heel–Face Turn: His arc in Season 7 is about him trying to do the right thing following his murder of Jonathan. "First Date" shows where his newfound allegiance lies.
• Heel Realization: Provokes an in-story Tear Jerker moment from him when he finally allows himself to realize just how cruel his betrayal of Jonathan was.
  Buffy: When your blood pours out, it might save the world. What do you think about that? Does it buy it all back? Are you redeemed?
  Andrew: No!
  Buffy: Why not?
  Andrew: Because I killed him! Because I listened to Warren, and I pretended I thought it was him, but I knew I knew it wasn't. And I killed Jonathan. And now you're gonna kill me. And I'm scared, and I'm going to die. And this this is what Jonathan felt.

• Ignored Enamored Underling: Works for Warren out of love but Warren couldn't care less.
• I Reject Your Reality: Andrew has an unfortunate tendency to distort his own past.
• It's All My Fault: Takes the fact that Simone turned evil while he was her Watcher very hard, and is determined to find and stop her.
• Laughably Evil: His attempts to become the dastardly supervillain he wants to be comically fail, though his actions do quite a bit of harm in "Normal Again".
• Love Makes You Evil: It's all but outright stated that he was in love with Warren.
• Mad Scientist: Even with the Slayer army, he never stops experimenting with demon summoning and DNA, even breeding a dangerous demon back into existence.
• Mentors: He teaches the Slayer squad in Rome.
• Must Make Amends: He spends most of Season 7 trying to make up for his "Member of the Trio" stuff. Exploited by the Sculptor in Season 10 to try to get him to give over the scythe in exchange for the demon making a body for the AI copy of Jonathan's mind.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Buffy, at one point, says, "My friends... My family... Andrew..." Even by Season 10 he's still the most separate of the Scoobies, while all the others all live in the same apartment building — to the point where the Big Bad doesn't know who he is.
• Never My Fault: His attitude throughout "Two to Go", insisting that they didn't do anything and Dark Willow has no reason to come after them. Jonathan disagrees, reminding Andrew they signed on with Warren:
  Andrew: Why is she doing this? Tell her we didn't do anything!
  Jonathan: Yes, we did. We signed on, we teamed up. We wanted to see where our plans would take us? Well, take a look.
• Noodle Incident: Summoning flying monkeys to ruin a production of Romeo and Juliet. Never shown on screen, and Buffy and the Scoobies have no memory of it.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Andrew is mostly harmless, but he shows a giddy excitement when the Trio kill Katrina and seemingly get away with it, and he later kills Jonathan after being pressured into it by the First Evil.
• Omniglot: Good at speaking demon languages as well as summoning them.
• Pet the Dog: Even after his Heel–Face Turn he mostly comes off as a selfish jerk but he does show Xander sympathy for Anya's death.
• Plucky Comic Relief: In Season 7. Aside from his redemption arc, he mostly fills in for Spike and Xander (the usual sources of Comic Relief who'd taken more dramatic roles in the season) in providing levity.
• Poor Communication Kills: Andrew has a bad habit of running off half-cocked and enacting plans without telling the other Scoobies:
  • In Season 9, he roofies Buffy at a party and transfers her mind into a robot body to protect her from an unknown Big Bad, which was all done without telling anyone else. This leads to Buffy thinking she is pregnant due to limitations of the robot body and only discovering she's a robot when her arm gets ripped off; Buffy and Spike waste no time giving Andrew absolute hell over it, with Spike going so far as to threaten to kill him if he doesn't fix the situation.
  • In Season 10, he steals the Vampyr book and takes it to Sunnydale with him, planning to use the new rules of magic to his advantage to resurrect Jonathan and Tara. This leads the gang to think he's trying to resurrect Warren. When he's talked down from doing so, Andrew rants about how he didn't tell them because they don't trust him or make him feel like he belongs; Buffy apologizes for doing so, but also points out he's given them plenty of reason not to.
• Remember the New Guy?: Averted. He constantly has to remind others of his Offscreen Moment of Awesome, which nobody remembers on their own.
• The Renfield: Acts as Warren's eager accomplice after being excited by the notion of them getting away with murder.
• Replacement Flat Character: To the Xander Harris of old, providing butt monkey style much of Season 7's comic relief. Andrew too eventually gets a dose of Character Development.
• Running Gag: "Who?" "Tucker's brother."
  • In Season 10 the Big Bad is unable to remember who he is in the finale despite him having been around all season and involved heavily in most arcs. Andrew even lampshades that he's been there the entire time.
• Shipper on Deck: The guy loves to watch the romances around him unfold. In season 7 alone, he shows that he ships Xander/Anya, Spike/Buffy, and Spike/Wood. In the comics, he plainly states he's in support of Spike/Buffy over Angel/Buffy, and feels betrayed on Spike's behalf when the latter briefly gets back together in season 8.
• Sixth Ranger: Very prevelant in Season 10, where he is the only member of the Scoobies to live apart from the rest and the Big Bad doesn't even know his name during the final confrontation.
• The Storyteller: The archetype serves as the basis for an entire episode, appropriately titled "Storyteller." The comics have the Scoobies invoke this trope when they have to deal with the Vampyr book in Season 10, but Andrew's acknowledges of various methods of retcon are all rejected by the book (which hates blatant retcons and cliche).
• Summon Magic: He has some magical ability such at summoning demons.
• Sycophantic Servant: To Warren, who he was in love with, and so fawned over him and did his bidding.
• Those Two Guys: With Jonathan. No one can remember him, just "Tucker's Brother".
• Took a Level in Badass: During the final battle of Season 8 in the hole in the ground formerly known as Sunnydale, Andrew is seen killing several demons. He takes another level when he drugs Buffy and puts her mind into a Buffybot he built so she can be protected. Naturally, Buffy and Spike give him hell for it.
  • Season 10 shows him putting his gadgets to good use to keep up with the gang on patrols and demon hunts, including goggles that can see levels of magical wardings and UV-ray guns to fight vampires with. When it comes time for the final battle he brings the team a ton of experimental weapons to use.
• Transparent Closet: The only person who was surprised by Andrew coming out of the closet was Andrew himself. It is played for drama in that Andrew later admits that he wonders what it says about himself that everyone else knew and he didn't, and so he appreciates Xander's over-the-top acceptance because it feels like a big deal to him even if everyone else already knew.
• Ungrateful Bastard; Tried to convince Jonathan to conspire with him against the scoobies when they were the only ones trying to keep him safe from Willow.
• Unreliable Narrator: "Storyteller", which involves his tendency to change the narrative of events to make himself appear more guiltless or cooler in general. It crops up again when he appears on Angel.
  • Does this for the other characters in the comics sometimes when telling other people about them. When explaining Spike's status as a good, souled vampire to two rescuees, he uses such romantic terms that the two women and he end up sighing.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In Season 9, Buffy and Spike give him complete and total hell after he swaps Buffy's mind into a robot after roofieing her at a party, in order to protect her from an unknown Big Bad that is after her. He did this without telling anyone else what he did. This leads to Buffy thinking she is pregnant due to limitations of the robot body, but discovers that she is a robot when her arm gets chopped off. Spike even threatens to kill Andrew if he doesn't fix the situation.