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Slayers

In General

Always Female: The Slayer is always a girl, no exceptions.
Cast from Calories: Hinted at on occasion. Faith casually admits that slaying always makes her "hungry and horny", and Dawn remarks at one point that Buffy is "such a pig after killing things", often going to the fridge first thing after patrolling. Writer Douglas Petrie at one point planned for a scene where Buffy ate a lunch that contained three times the normal amount of food.
The Chosen Many: Initially, there was Buffy the Chosen One, the "one girl in all the world who had the strength...". However, after a temporarily clinical death, it turns out that she isn't the Slayer anymore (first Kendra, then with her death, Faith) and the line no longer goes through her. Then, in the series finale, Buffy has Willow cast a spell that would activate the powers of all potential Slayers, making an army of thousands.
The Chosen One: Described as such. Initially, there was only one Slayer active at a time, with a Potential Slayer being activated at random once the current one died. Subverted when Buffy is drowned by the Master in Season 1; though she was only dead for a few moments before being resuscitated, it proved sufficient for the next Slayer, Kendra, to be called. At the end of Season 7, Buffy has Willow cast a spell to activate all Potential Slayers worldwide, turning them into The Chosen Many.
Death Seeker: According to Spike in "Fool for Love", this is why most Slayers tend to die young. They work alone, and this self-imposed isolation cuts them off from family and friends, therefore making them lose their will to live.
The Dreaded: Most supernatural creatures are terrified of the Slayer. Even powerful vampires like Angelus and Darla preferred to avoid confronting Slayers and kept a low profile to avoid attracting their attention; Buffy even brags at one point that she's "the thing monsters have nightmares about". In demon society, succeeding in killing a Slayer is a major source of Villain Cred.
Hunter of Monsters: Though usually referred to exclusively as Vampire Slayers, the Slayer in fact fights against supernatural creatures in general, such as demons and witches. Buffy has gone beyond that by taking on robots and even human crooks.
It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Being a Slayer is far from an ideal gig. When they aren't dealing with danger and world-ending threats, they have to build their entire lives around their duty and usually end up with no close relationships or isolating the ones they do have and most are lucky if they even make it out of their teens.
I Work Alone: The Slayer is pressured, both by the Watchers and the circumstances of their Chosen One destiny, to forgo attachments of any kind and fight the forces of darkness by themselves. This has been as old as the first slayer Sineya, who was outcasted from her tribe for her abilities. This is deconstructed however, since this isolation is one of the reasons why they have such short life-spans; as being a one-woman army against all of the evil in the world will eventually lead to them being outnumbered by escalating threats, and eventually leaves them Resigned to the Call with no personal reasons for continuing the fight. Buffy is the exception to this, her circle of friends having helped her save the world and her life more times than she could count.
Logical Weakness: In "Fool for Love", Spike points out a crucial disadvantage Slayers have versus vampires. For all their Super-Strength and Super-Reflexes, a Slayer still needs a weapon to kill a vampire, whereas vampires always have their teeth. He gains the upper hand over the Chinese Slayer (and Buffy, while relating the event) by taking advantage of their instinctive grab for the weapon at hand.
Men of Sherwood: The Potential Slayers from the final season need a lot of training and lose some of their prominent members, but their numbers and combat abilities are a big asset and far more of them survive than not. This is reinforced in their cameo during the final season of Angel, where they're operating with more military precision.
Resigned to the Call: In "Fool for Love", Spike argues this trope is what truly kills them; the Slayers may start out fighting for survival, then fight to protect other people, but eventually they accept their destiny (and the extremely short life-span involved) and become Death Seekers. Once that happens, it's only a matter of time until some vampire or demon gets in a lucky shot.
Superpower Lottery: Slayer powers include superhuman strength, speed, reflexes, durability, a mild Healing Factor, and a degree of Psychic Powers, including precognitive dreams and a Spider-Sense that lets them fight while blindfolded and sense the presence of vampires and demons.
Your Days Are Numbered: Due to the dangerous nature of their profession, most Slayers aren't expected to live long; in "Helpless", it's outright stated that several of them didn't even make it to age 18. Buffy is stated to be the longest-lived Slayer because unlike the others, she has friends and family that love her and help her, thus actually giving her something to live for.

Slayers (pre-Season 7)

Sineya, The First Slayer

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"No friends! Just the kill."

Played By: Sharon Ferguson

"I have no speech, no name. I live in the action of death. The blood cry, the penetrating wound. I am destruction, absolute, alone."

Sineya, the First of the Ones. The first girl to ever become a Vampire Slayer, she had the "honor" forced upon her by the Shadow Men. She was an outcast from her village, who feared her even more than the demons she fought.

The Chosen One: The First of the Ones.
Does This Remind You of Anything?: Merging with the shadowy demon that turns her into the Slayer borders on rape. Buffy even refers to it as a violation.
Dying Alone: Sineya, being the First Slayer, adhered to a life of duty and isolation. She was an outcast from her home village, suffering a short and lonely life.
In the End, You Are on Your Own: A firm believer in this, to the point where, in season 4 when Buffy does a Fusion Dance with the Scoobies to beat Adam, she's so offended that she returns from the afterlife to try and kill them all.
Pintsized Powerhouse: She's at most, about the same size as Buffy, maybe even smaller, but she's stronger than Buffy.
Took a Level in Kindness: When Buffy uses a ritual with the help of her friends to invoke the full power of the Slayer bloodline...well, she didn't take it very well. Cue one defeat at Buffy's hands, and it looks like the original Slayer changed her tune about The Power of Friendship. Half a season later, she tells Buffy that her self sacrifice out of love for her sister will save the world. In the comics, we see that activating every potential Slayer and turning them from a lone warrior into a sisterhood was met with zero consequences. She even allows a boy with absolutely no connection to the slayers into their collective memory.

Xin Rong

"Tell my mother I’m sorry."

Played By: Ming Liu

Appears In: "Fool for Love"

A Chinese Slayer active during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. She is the first Slayer killed by Spike.

Action Girl: Like all Slayers.
Cool Sword: Her sword is magic, which allows it to give Spike a permanent scar.
Heroes Prefer Swords: Her weapon of choice is a Chinese sword.
Last Request: Her last words were asking Spike to tell her mother she was sorry for something. Unfortunately for her Spike doesn't understand what she said due to the language barrier.
No Name Given: She is only credited as "Chinese Slayer" in the TV show and named in the comics.
Noodle Incident: Her last words to Spike are "Tell my mother I'm sorry". We never find out what her dispute with her mother is.
Super-Strength: Like all Slayers.

Nikki

Nikki Wood

"The mission's what matters."

Played By: April Weeden Washington (Season 5), KD Aubert (Season 7)

A Slayer in the 1970's, and the mother of Robin Wood. Appears several times in flashbacks, where Spike kills her, and as a disguise of The First.

Action Girl: She was definitely a good fight for Spike, even if she was on the losing end.
Action Mom: An active Slayer and a mother to Robin.
Badass Longcoat: Which Spike took.
Blessed with Suck: One of the many Slayers to die an early death, despite having been one of the few to make a life for herself.
Married to the Job: She apparently prioritized it over being a mother.
Neck Snap: How Spike took her out.
Pregnant Badass: She continued Slaying even when she was pregnant.

Kendra

Kendra Young

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"You talk about slaying like it's a job. It's not. It's who you are."

Played By: Bianca Lawson

"In case the curse does not succeed, this is my lucky stake. I have killed many vampires with it. I call it Mr. Pointy."

A Slayer from Jamaica who was activated in 1997 by Buffy Summers' temporary death. Trained since birth to be the Slayer by her Watcher Sam Zabuto, Kendra was completely dedicated to her calling — which did not stop her from getting killed mere months after being chosen.

Action Girl: Due to being the Slayer...or a Slayer.
Cannot Talk to Men: She has trouble talking to men who aren't her Watcher or a vampire, presumably because she grew up being forbidden to do so. Her obvious attraction to Xander, and the fact that she literally cannot voice her interest in him, only makes her eventual fate that much more painful.
Classical Elements Ensemble: In The Book of Fours, she is described as being the "Slayer of Earth" alongside India's Water, Buffy's Air and Faith's Fire, probably due to her being considered dependable, strong and protective but also stubborn and stuck in her ways.
Fantastic Racism: She had an initial distrust of all vampires, wanting to let Angel die even though he had a soul and had turned to the side of good.
Fatal Flaw: Buffy noted her lack of emotion and improvisation as a weakness. This would later become her downfall as she had trouble dealing with group battles and swiftly changing situations, struggling with Drusilla's goons during a group fight until Drusilla fought her one on one. Drusilla proceeded to kill Kenrda with little trouble.
Finger Poke of Doom: Hypnotized and rendered helpless during her duel with Drusilla, who casually slits her throat with one fingernail.
I Call It "Vera": She has a stake named "Mr. Pointy".
Irony: In response to Buffy's insistence that she do things her own way rather than follow orders, Kendra cynically retorted, "No wonder you died". In the Season 2 finale, her complete adherence to protocol and inability to not follow orders makes it all the easier for Drusilla to hypnotize and kill her.
Limited Wardrobe: Lampshaded in her debut episode.
"That's me favorite shirt! That's me only shirt!"
Mauve Shirt: Since she died in her third appearance.
No Last Name Given: Kendra specifically says she has no last name. An unproduced Watcher supplement would have revealed it to be "Young", though. Presumably she didn't know it because she was raised by her Watcher instead of her parents.
No Social Skills: Kendra was raised in a bubble and so she lacks any social skills whatsoever. She's abrupt, rude, cold and has no idea how to interact with the opposite sex.
#1 Dime: Her lucky stake, "Mr. Pointy". Though the stake itself is lost for good, Buffy borrows her nickname for it.
Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Supposedly the accent was a last-minute addition, and the dialect coach taught Lawson an accent from a very specific, obscure area of Jamaica. To both viewers and crew it just sounded like a lame Jamaican accent.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: She seems to be blue to Buffy's red because she's a more classically trained by-the-book slayer yet her lack of experience and gung-ho attitude puts her on the red.
Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Kendra spent her whole life training as a potential Slayer, and when she's finally chosen, doesn't last a year. She dies trying, and failing, to protect Buffy's friends as Drusilla easily kills her.
Shrinking Violet: Oh man. When a young boy — say, Xander — goes anywhere near her, she goes way into this trope.
Slashed Throat: By Drusilla.
Straw Vulcan: Buffy eventually taught Kendra that human emotion wasn’t necessarily a hindrance to being a Slayer.
There Is Another: Another Slayer, to be exact, which causes massive confusion among the Scoobies until Buffy figures out what really happened.
Tomboy and Girly Girl: Buffy is the chosen Vampire Slayer who cares about boys, clothes, and cheerleading. When the other Slayer Kendra shows up she is seen as the perfect Slayer: solemn, respectful, and efficient. The fact that this "perfect Slayer" ends up dead and forgotten in record time while Buffy goes on to be one of the greatest Slayers in history says a lot.
Weak-Willed: Effortlessly hypnotized by Drusilla while they were actually fighting; it's implied that her training and upbringing has left her with little ability to resist orders.
We Hardly Knew Ye: Appears in one two-parter, and then dies in the first episode of another, giving her a grand total of three appearances.
Why Are You Not My Son?: She and Giles hit it off straight away, much to Buffy's annoyance.
The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): It's specifically stated that Kendra's fighting technique is slightly superior to Buffy's due to the fact that training and studying demonology are literally all she's ever done since childhood. But as the above entry notes, while a Buffy vs Angelus or Buffy vs Spike fight is sure to be an epic brawl, Kendra vs. Drusilla was a disappointing defeat for the forces of good. Kendra goes down like a Red Shirt.

Faith

See Faith Lehane

Season 7 Potential Slayers

Not all of these Potentials survived to become Slayers, but they are all grouped here by association.

Kennedy

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"I've always sort of gotten my way. So you're going to make it through this no matter how dark it gets. Because now, you're my way."

Played By: Iyari Limon

Potential Slayer, self-professed brat from a rich family, and love interest for Willow in Season 7. Also noteworthy as being part of the first lesbian sex scene on network television (with Willow). Willow breaks up with her at the end of Season 8, and in Season 9 Kennedy starts a company which employs Slayers as bodyguards.

Action Girl: If her being one of the most capable Slayers does not give a hint the comics have her dressing in combat gear that wouldn't look out of place in BattleField,◊ Rainbow Six◊ or Modern Warfare.◊
Back from the Dead: Sometime before Season 8, Kennedy was killed. While the details are unknown, Willow specifies that it was a mystical death and only lasted a month before she was able to bring her back.
Badass Normal: She's one of the few Potential Slayers that's actually experienced in combat and demonology, so she stands out among the other girls, most of whom went from having normal lives to being thrust into training with little warning.
Buffy: (hands her a crossbow) You know how to use it?
Kennedy: (cranks the crossbow) Since I was nine.
Brutal Honesty: Immediately stands up to Buffy on fighting the First Evil, later calls her out during her bitch out to end all bitch outs and again when the group turns on her. She calls out Buffy again on trying to put the moves on her girlfriend, Willow for still being upset about Tara, Satsu for thinking she could turn Buffy gay, Buffy again for trying to be The Hero instead of doing her job, and for being afraid of being only good at acting like she's the One True Slayer.
The Bully: Not only does she force Willow into a relationship, but while instructing the other Potentials, she insults and demeans Chloe in front of everyone and taking pride in doing so. This leads to the poor girl killing herself and Kennedy doesn't seem to care.
Character Development: She goes from being a pushy, spoiled brat who wanted to be in charge in Season 7 to a much more mature person who actually was able to handle a leadership position well in the post-television comics. She herself acknowledges how difficult she could be early on, and says that Willow breaking up with her was the best thing that could have happened to her as a person.
Clingy Jealous Girl: She get's upset that Willow acts like she's ashamed of people knowing she's her girlfriend, and that she still thinks about Tara. She later threatens Buffy after she looks like she is into Willow, and goes after Satsu who experimented with Buffy leading to the altercation where Kennedy thinks she's a threat to her and Willow.
The Complainer Is Always Wrong: She openly questions the authority of Buffy, Giles and Faith. It takes nearly getting killed in an explosion for her to realise that listening to experience pays off.
Contrasting Replacement Character: To quote Joss Whedon:
Kennedy is, as she herself said, a bit of a brat. What I wanted was an anti-Tara. I wanted somebody who was as different from Tara as possible. Tara was very reticent, and she was somebody that Willow caused to blossom. What I wanted was somebody who was further on down in dealing with her sexuality than Willow ever was. Somebody who was totally confident, who was totally not earthy-crunchy, who was a completely different person.
Deadpan Snarker: Played for Laughs such as when she quickly figures out Buffy and Spike were an item and asks just how she found out his crypt was comfy when it's brought up, and Played for Drama when she snides about Willow not being over Tara.
Death Is Cheap: Died for a month before being brought back by Willow, pre-Season 8.
Drill Sergeant Nasty: In "Get It Done", she takes up this role with the others, due to her being the most experienced of the Potentials. She berates Chloe and calls her a "maggot" when she does her steps wrong, then as an aside she jokes to Buffy how cool it was that she got to call somebody a "maggot". The First drives Chloe to suicide that night, and then taunts Kennedy by implying that the "maggot" insult led to the suicide.
Enraged by Idiocy: Some of her behavior can come across as this: facing the evil the other potentials didn't seem to have much of a clue and the regular cast seemed to be carrying the Idiot Ball.
Establishing Character Moment: Upon arriving at the Summers house, she has a dismissive reaction to meeting Buffy, demands to be given weapons and hits on Willow.
Good Counterpart: To Simone in season nine. One of the reasons why Simone has an ax to grind is over Buffy keeping them defenseless. Rather than killing her and turning Slayers into vampires, Kennedy loads them up with guns and gives them real world training to defend themselves and others.
Hypocrite:
- She called Buffy out of line for insulting the late Chloe. It was her verbal abuse that indirectly led to the poor girl's suicide. Unlike Buffy, Kennedy is never shown to feel any regret about this.
- She was instrumental in getting Buffy ousted as leader and Faith put in charge, yet she questioned Faith's leadership as well. Faith tells her to put up or shut up.
- She yearns to lead but shows little to no respect for the actual chain of command.
Jerkass: Ramped up when she felt she was Surrounded by Idiots, see below, and somewhat flanderized. Exhibit A from the motion comics when Willow discusses Tara's death.
"You know when I said I was open to a threesome I had something more fun in mind." Nice.
Jerkass Has a Point: Questions the leadership qualities of Stalin!Buffy and the psychotic Faith. In the comics much of her pissy attitude revolves around the idea of trying to turn someone who is straight (Buffy) gay, as opposed to genuinely being that way, something of a sticking point for LGBTs.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's generally nice unless someone is being a cocky dumbass, and once she stopped trying to emulate Buffy's style of leadership mellowed considerably.
Jumped at the Call: Very eager to step up and be a leader, even taking cues from Buffy, which was probably not the smartest move she made.
Karma Houdini: Her Drill Sergeant Nasty attitude indirectly led to Chloe's death. She is never called out on this, nor does she express any regret. Buffy may have posthumously insulted Chloe, but she at least acknowledged that she was too hard on the group.
Kick the Dog: In Season 9, she gives Buffy a What the Hell, Hero? after for leaving Theo Daniels behind despite Theo urging her to do it so they could regroup, ranting that Buffy gets so caught up in saving the world that she forgets about the "little guy" and lets other people die, just like she did with Giles at the end of Season 8. Buffy promptly decks her in the face and gives her a black eye, and Kennedy admits later that she was out of line.
Leader Wannabe: She enjoys bossing people around and possibly questions Buffy's leadership because she thinks she can do a better job. She does the same with Faith, only to get shot down. When she is put in charge it's between Faith being incapacitated and Buffy coming to the rescue.
Military Brat: Showed clear signs of this in the series with her...enthusiasm for the Drill Sergeant Nasty trope and in the comics is full commando.
Moment Killer: Jealous!Kennedy when Buffy hugs Willow, after just getting back from the future having had to kill her dark self.
Noodle Incident: The above mentioned death.
Reasonable Authority Figure: When in charge of Slayer bodyguards she was nice enough to offer Buffy a job, and was quite tolerant of her, given she screwed up royally in her training, was going to abandon working for her, and later punched her. Later Faith screws up just as bad and tries to leave, instead she gives her a important assignment involving Riley going missing.
Replacement Flat Character: With her blunt outspokenness, privileged background and sense of entitlement, she's a lot like Cordelia and Anya in their early appearances, only minus any traits that made those characters likeable.
Rich Bitch: She used to be this, as she comes from a wealthy background and is used to getting her own way.
Royal Brat: Lampshaded by Kennedy herself, as she comes from a rich family with multiple mansions. Wait, is she one of those Kennedys?
Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Ignores the idea of not being allowed to engage in corporate warfare to take down a company ran by Wolfram & Hart. Given at this stage she thinks she's MacMillian it makes sense.
Small Name, Big Ego: Bratty, entitled, arrogant, ungrateful, self-important and dismissive, she yearns to be the Slayer without putting the work in, preferring to throw her weight around rather than learning and questioning the authority of people with way more experience and seniority than her, like Buffy, Giles and Faith.
Spoiled Brat: Pushy, privileged, entitled, is used to getting her own way and has zero respect for anyone's seniority.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: She's very similar to Cordelia - rich, bratty, outspoken, tactless and self-centred, only minus the Character Development and Hidden Depths.
Super-Strength: A given being a Slayer.
Took a Level in Kindness: Willow dumping her was, in Kennedy's own words, the best thing to happen to her. Much of her Jerkass behavior revolved around Willow and having split up she mellows considerably and acts much nicer.
Tyke-Bomb: Knew how to use a crossbow since she was eight years old.
Ungrateful Bitch: She acts very rude and dismissive to Buffy, even after having her life saved.

Annabelle

"You must learn to control your fear."

Played By: Courtnee Draper

Appears In: "Bring on the Night"

One of the Potential Slayers who arrived in Sunnydale, and the first to die at the hands of the Turok-Han.

Dirty Coward: After telling the other Potentials about "controlling" their fear, she loses her cool and makes a break for it...and gets torn to shreds by the Turok-Han.
Hypocrite: She repeatedly tells the other Potentials that they have to stay calm and not let their fear control her...only to freak out and try to run away.

Vi / Violet

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"My Watcher once showed me a photograph of [a vampire]. A blurry photograph."

Played By: Felicia Day

One of the potential Slayers who arrived in Sunnydale, Violet survived the final battle there and became a leading member in the Slayer organization, heading up the New York base.

Bad "Bad Acting": Her Slayer recruitment commercial in Season 8, where she plays a typical suburban housewife-type who tells her husband (played by Andrew) about her sudden super strength and mystical Slayer dreams.
Big Sister Instinct: In the alternate future of The Next Generation novel trilogy, she constantly protects her much younger half-sister and chews her out in an Anger Born of Worry way for voluntarily adopting the dangerous life of a member in the new Scooby Gang, with Vi citing all the deaths or injuries original members suffered.
Captain Obvious: Upon arriving at a demon bar: "They're demons! It's a demon bar! It's like a gay bar, only with demons".
Cute Bruiser: A cute, somewhat demure girl whose a gifted fighter.
Naïve Newcomer: She has a sense of innocence and confusion about the whole affair at first.
Only Known by Their Nickname: Vi, in the TV series. In the comics they had her go by her full name, Violet, because comics are written in all-caps and they didn't want readers thinking her name was VI ("6").
Replacement Flat Character: She's a lot like how Willow used to be - shy, awkward and polite. Like Willow, she grows more confident.
Shrinking Violet: Stops being one after becoming a Slayer.

Rona

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"You sayin' I'm gonna get attacked again?"

Played By: Indigo

Another of the potential Slayers who joined the growing army in Sunnydale, Rona was a reluctant Slayer, but became a squad leader in Chicago. She was more frustrated and resistant to the whole slayer-thing than many of the others.

Action Girl: She's fairly competent by the finale and goes not to become a senior Slayer.
Black Dude Dies First: She was terrified of this being the case, and thinks it is why Spike went after her first on a training exercise. Luckily for her, she's Wrong Genre Savvy.
The Complainer Is Always Wrong: She often doubted that she or any of the other Potential Slayers could make a difference, and even stated that there was no point in the Potentials fighting. She doubted that Buffy could defeat the Uber-Vamp. Like Kennedy, she challenges Buffy a lot and is ultimately proven wrong.
The Eeyore: Whenever she speaks, she's either grumbling or complaining about something.
Hypocrite: She states that she only came to Sunnydale for protection, yet was reluctant to put the work in and openly resented Buffy for providing said protection.
I Just Want to Be Normal: She's very frusturated with her duties and situation as a slayer;
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: There's no two ways about it: Rona is an asshole. But when the chips are down, she shows her bravery and spirit.
The Load: She spends most of her time bitching and complaining, all the while contributing very little.
Only Sane Woman: Part of what makes her such a jerk is that she considered herself this, when she was far from it.
Refusal of the Call: She hated being called, but ultimately learned to embrace it.
Sassy Black Woman: Blunt, sarcastic, outspoken and somewhat tactless.
Ungrateful Bitch: Doesn't matter how many times Buffy saves her life, Rona will still treat her with nothing less than pure hatred and disrespect; it's to the extent that when the Scoobies force Buffy out of the house in "Empty Places", Rona goes so far as to quip, "Ding dong, the witch is dead", prompting Dawn to threateningly shut her up.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In season 8, she reassigned Simone Doffler to Andrew's squad in Italy, hoping that a less urban setting would soften her "rough edges" (though Buffy saw it more as just Rona sick of dealing with Simone and "passing the buck" on to Andrew). Instead, Simone found Andrew so annoying that it cemented her decision to go rogue.

Molly

"Crossbow! Gotta love it. Feels like I'm storming a castle."

Played By: Clara Bryant

One of the three original Potentials that Giles brings to Sunnydale with him. She speaks with a cockney accent and is pretty excited at the idea of becoming a Slayer. However she's killed by Caleb just before the Final Battle. Her death is one of many reasons people start questioning Buffy's leadership.

Big Eater: In the first two episodes, she mentions how "peckish" she is.
Big "NO!": Sadly for her, it's her last words
Genki Girl: She's notably bright and chipper despite the situation.
Girlish Pigtails: In more than one eater.
Heroic BSoD: Has one after she sees fellow Potential Diane killed. This is what then allows Caleb to kill her too.
Lower-Class Lout: Averted. She's a Cockney in contrast to the posher Annabelle - but she's presented as the more heroic of the two.
Mauve Shirt: She's one of the first three Potentials brought into Sunnydale by Giles. She's given plenty of lines and screen time, all so her death in "Dirty Girls" has some meaning.
Plucky Girl: While not as gun-ho as Kennedy, she's a lot more willing to be a Slayer. Notably when Buffy's about to fight the Turok-Han in "Showtime", she wants to help.

Amanda

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"If we don't save the world, then... nothing matters."

Played By: Sarah Hagan

A student at Sunnydale High with Dawn, Amanda was discovered to be a Potential Slayer and joined the growing army at Buffy's house. She was killed during the battle in the Hellmouth.

Action Girl: Due to being a slayer. Even before joining Buffy, she showed a good deal more ability than the other Potentials who were actually receiving training. As pointed out by none other than Kennedy the rest of them had trouble fighting a vamp, Amanda took one out by herself.
Ascended Extra: First appeared as a girl getting advice from Buffy while she worked as a school counselor, but later revealed to be a Potential Slayer.
Bully Hunter: Oh yeah. She thought a boy liked her because he picked on her, so she ambushed him in the parking lot and attacked him to show that she liked him back.
Chekhov's Skill: Right before The Reveal that she's a slayer, she mentions that she's in Swing Chori, which involves choreography and is a bit in lien with the kind of combat skills Slayers practice.
Closet Geek: Amanda's a Bully Hunter in swing choir, but the finale shows her to be a knowledgeable Dungeons & Dragons player.
Disproportionate Retribution: She suggested letting a vampire attack the marching band because they picked on the swing choir (of which she was a member).
Dropped a Bridge on Him: Has her neck broken and is apparently killed with little fanfare during the climatic battle. Joss Whedon stated he deliberately gave her more screen time then killed her off when he learned she was by far the most popular of the Potentials with fans (Vi coming second).
Jumped at the Call: Amanda was cautious but still pretty excited to be called as a Potential.
Les Yay: many fans shipped her and Dawn Summers ("Damanda"), the pair seeming to remain close after their initial adventure together with Amanda appearing to be her favourite amongst the Potentials.
Neck Snap: A Turok-Han apparently snaps her neck in the battle at the Hellmouth.
Only Sane Woman: Amanda accepts her destiny easier than most of the Slayers and calls out some of Andrew's revisionist description of past episodes.
Super-Strength: After being made a Slayer.
Uncertain Doom: Amanda falls to the ground a moment after a snapping sound is heard in the background, but it isn't clear whether that sound is her neck snapping or if she's only been momentarily knocked out (some blood on her face could indicate the latter).

Chao-Ahn

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"I don't understand a word any of you are saying."

Played By: Kirsty Wu

Comically Missing the Point: Due to the language barrier, she's constantly out of the loop.
Death by Adaptation: In the non-canon timeline established in the novel Queen of the Slayers, Chao-ahn dies during the Battle of the Hellmouth, even though she survives in the show.
Ordinary High-School Student: She's never had a Watcher before and has no clue about the world of magic and demons, although she's not a major character.

Chloe

"Chloe loved Winnie the Pooh."

Played By: Lalaine

Break the Cutie: Between verbal abuse from Kennedy and psychological torture from the First, she can't take it and ends her own life.
Driven to Suicide: By the First.
Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Averted by Buffy, who refers to her as 'weak' after her death.
Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Nothing but sweet and gentle, which made her a particularly unfortunate person to be chosen as a Potential, and an extremely easy target for The First.

Shannon

Played By: Mary Wilcher

One of the last Potential Slayers to reach Sunnydale.

Ain't Too Proud to Beg: She begs for her life when she ends up Alone with the Psycho. It works, but only because he needs to Spare a Messenger.
Mauve Shirt: She almost gets killed right after appearing, like the Frankfurt and Istanbul Potential Slayers, but survives her first (and only important) scene and appears several times in the remaining episodes, albeit with little dialogue or further characterization.
Ms. Fanservice: She wears a cutoff top beneath her jacket, and her navel and lower back get a bit of focus in multiple shots.
Nice Girl: She is polite and grateful to Caleb for giving her a ride prior to learning of his evil nature.
Pursued Protagonist: She's introduced running through the woods from the Bringers.
Spare a Messenger: Caleb lures her into a trap and stabs her multiple times, but lets her live so she can give a warning to Buffy.

Caridad

Played By: Dania Ramirez

One of the less seen Potentials.

Action Girl: She is an effective combatant who, under Faith's leadership, helps fight the Bringers.
Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Bomb fragments hit her head, but she only gets a scar and swelling on the very edge of her face.
Mauve Shirt: She has little focus, characterization or plot relevance across the three episodes she appears in (her most notable scenes are nervously retreating in the aftermath of a bomb blast and showing up in an erotic dream Xander has) but survives some tough fighting.
What Happened to the Mouse?: She is never shown onscreen after the third-to-last episode, although Word of God says she participated in the final battle and survived the fighting.

The Istanbul and Frankfurt Potential Slayers

The Frankfurt and Istanbul Potential Slayers

Played By: Uncredited stuntwoman and Tess Hall

The first two victims of The Purge against the Slayer Line.

Action Girl: They both show some good climbing abilities and put up struggles against their killers, with the girl in Frankfurt blocking one attempt to stab her before being less lucky a second time.
Nonconformist Dyed Hair: The girl in Frankfurt has her hair dyed pink and black.
Pursued Protagonist: The first two episodes of season seven begin with one of them running from The Bringers and being caught and stabbed, emphasizing the new danger to all Potential Slayers.
Sacrificial Lamb: Neither girl is named, and each dies in her first scene as a way of showing off the new villains.

The Watcher's Council

In General

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Armchair Military: They believe themselves to be the ones actually fighting the good fight, and the Slayer just a tool.
Black-and-Grey Morality: They stand against the forces of evil and are certainly morally straighter than their foes, but employ harsh methods and their own conduct leaves a lot to be desired.
Black-and-White Insanity: They say all demons are evil. Of course, this is first disproved by the vampire with a soul Angel, and then the soulless vampire Spike, who actually goes and gets a soul for love. Not to mention Clem, a demon so non-evil that not only does Buffy trust him with Dawn, but Dawn is able to push him around (and he comes to Buffy's birthday party). Not to mention that the Slayers themselves have powers that are demonic in origin.
Obstructive Bureaucrat: What a good chunk of their power is. While the Watchers are versed in at least theoretical self-defense and magic, and have a good amount of resources regarding demonology, they have seemingly limitless pull within governments (Giles mentions that they could easily have him deported) and presumably vast sums of money, and they use all of the above to keep the Slayer and her Watcher in line. It takes Buffy making it abundantly clear that she has the actual power in the relationship to make them quit getting in her way.
The Remnant: After Caleb blows up the Watchers' Council on the First's orders, only a few scant survivors, like Giles, Wesley, and Wesley's parents, are left alive, with Giles also training Andrew as a Watcher; come the Season 8 comics, Giles states outright that for all intents and purposes, he is the Watchers' Council. By the time of the Fray comics 200 years later, all that's left of the Council is a few insane zealots, one of whom immolates himself in front of Fray after revealing her destiny. During Season 12, when the Scoobies briefly travel to the future and see how far the Council has fallen by that point, Giles and Andrew dedicate themselves to rebuilding it.
Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Near the end of Season 3, when Angel was poisoned by Faith, the Council flat-out refused to help Buffy cure him despite Angel possessing a soul on the grounds that he was a vampire, and helping vampires is against their policy; this is the final straw that leads Buffy to sever all ties with the Council.
We Have Reserves: Their attitude towards the Slayer. This is best shown with the Cruciamentum, a test every Slayer faces come their 18th birthday which involves them being Brought Down to Normal and facing a particularly dangerous vampire to see if they can defeat them using their wits. In fact, it's eventually revealed earlier that the Council prefers to lose Slayers at a relatively young age, as Slayers get more powerful the longer they are active, and they prefer young and naïve girls they can control, rather than strong and independent Slayers that may strain against their authority; in "Checkpoint", Buffy does exactly that once she realizes that the Council needs her more than she needs them, and thus, she can make them make them answer to her rather than the other way around.
Travers: The Council fights evil. The Slayer is the instrument with which we fight. The Council remains. The Slayers... change. It's been that way from the beginning.

Travers

Quentin Travers

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/buffy_quentin.png

"The Council fights evil. The Slayer is the instrument with which we fight. The Council remains. The Slayers... change. It's been that way from the beginning."

Played By: Harris Yulin

A senior Watcher and later one of the last Directors of the Watcher's Council.

Armchair Military: Travers is so self-satisfied that he considers himself and the Watchers Council to be the ones fighting the war against evil, with the Slayer just being a tool. The reality is that the Watchers provide guidance and nothing more; they stay in their towers, often far from the fight, and let some poor girl do their fighting for them.
Asshole Victim: He's killed by Caleb's bomb; he was such an arse in every one of his appearances that it's hard to feel much sympathy.
Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Quentin rallies the Watcher's Council to fight the First Evil, seconds before a bomb goes off and kills off the entire Watchers Council.
Big Good: The closest thing the series has to one, for better or worse. For all their flaws, the Watcher's Council are a force for good in the world and he is treated as their face and highest authority; the critical guidance Buffy received from Giles would never have occurred without the council. He steps up in the seventh season to rally the council against the most threatening Big Bad in the series... and, if you've read to here, probably know how that turns out...
Good Is Not Nice: He's ostensibly on the side of good, but he's callous, manipulative and trapped in the past.
I Need a Freaking Drink: After Buffy makes it clear that she holds the power, not the Watcher's Council, he requests a glass from Giles' office bottle.
Jerkass: Stoical, callous and so mired in tradition that he has no consideration for the feelings of others. His dickery really cannot be underestimated; he looks down on Buffy and considers her little more than a tool that he wields from the comfort of his armchair, berating her while also being entirely out of touch with the realities she faces on the ground.
Lack of Empathy: Travers has very little regard for the father/daughter relationship between Buffy and Giles, describing it as "useless to the cause". He considers the emotional attachment to be a distraction and weakness. When his test goes wrong and Kralik kills his two men, Travers doesn't seem to care and simply states that the test can go ahead as planned.
Obstructive Bureaucrat: Pretty much the way he is to Buffy and Giles until Season 7, where he was about to help them in the war against the First, before being killed. Prior to that, he was obstructive to the point of withholding vital information
Pet the Dog: A mild one, but after Buffy gives her "I have the power" speech, underlining that the Watchers exist to serve the Slayer, rather than the Slayer existing to serve the Council, because without the Slayer the Council has no meaning, he gives up the information that Buffy was looking for about Glory without complaint and reinstates Giles at her request.
Sedgwick Speech: He gives a rather impressive Rousing Speech to his fellow Watchers in the few seconds before he's killed.
"Ladies and gentlemen, our fears have been confirmed. The First Evil has declared all-out war on this institution. Their first volleys proved most effective. I, for one, think it's time we struck back. Give me confirmations on all remaining operatives. Visuals and tacticals. Highest alert. Get them here as soon as possible. Begin preparations for mobilization. Once we're accounted for, I want to be ready to move. We'll be paying a visit to the Hellmouth. My friends, these are the times that define us. Proverbs 24:6. O, by wise council, you shall make your war".
Virtue Is Weakness: He considers Giles' parental love for Buffy to be a distraction and weakness, and fires him from the Watchers' Council for it.
We Have Reserves: His view on Slayers. The 'test' each Slayer is given that strips them of their powers shows just how expendable he considers them.

The Shadow Men

"We cannot give you knowledge. Only power."

Played By: Geoffrey Kasule, Karara Muhoro, Daniel Wilson

Appear In: "Get It Done"

A trio of African shamans who created the first Slayer to combat the forces of evil and were the precursors to the Watchers Council.

Intelligible Unintelligible: When Buffy meets them, they only speak an unknown African language (subtitled, of course), but Buffy is somehow able to understand them perfectly.
Neglectful Precursors: Their descendants and apprentices would go on to form the Watchers Council. Good job on that one, guys.
Omniscient Morality License: They assume to have this, but Buffy isn't having any of it and calls them out.
Buffy: I can't fight this. I know that now. But you guys? You're just men. Just the men who did this to her. Whoever that girl was before she was the First Slayer.
Shadow Men: You don't understand.
Buffy: No, you don't understand! You violated that girl, made her kill for you because you're weak, you're pathetic, and you obviously have nothing to show me.
Scary Black Man: African Wizards with a bit of creepiness and intimidation to them.
Squishy Wizard: It doesn't take much for Buffy to knock them on their keisters.

Special Operations Team

Weatherby, Collins & Smith

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/buffy_weatherby_collins_council.jpg

"We go on a job we always put our affairs in order first. In case of accident."

Played By: Jeff Ricketts, Alastair Duncan, Kevin Owers

Blood Knight: Going after Faith is one thing, but Weatherby was all too willing to kill Angel, Wesley, and even Buffy as well. Unfortunately for him, all four are willing to fight back and are much better at it than his team.
Evil Wears Black: All three wear dark clothing, although Weatherby is the only truly evil one.
The Fundamentalist: Weatherby.
Hell-Bent for Leather: They all wear leather jackets.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Wesley incapacitates Weatherby with the syringe that the Special Ops Team had given him to subdue Faith.
Knight Templar: Weatherby, the most sadistic, is a true believer who is disgusted by the likes of Faith and Wesley who he believes have 'perverted' the Council.
Not-So-Harmless Villain: These three might not be the most threatening enemies in the world, but they're no push-overs either due to their determination. They're a far cry from the bumbling, bookish and out-of-touch Watchers often seen.
Professional Killers: They handle 'wetworks' for the Council and are perfectly willing to kill Faith.
Punch-Clock Villain: Collins, who just wants to do his job and doesn't hold anything personal against Faith, the Scoobies or Angel Investigations.
Reading Your Rights: Attempted by Weatherby.
Weatherby: By order of the Watcher's Council, you are being taken into custody until such time—
Collins: Skip the speech.
Spiteful Spit: Weatherby spits in Faith/Buffy's face.
Token Good Teammate: While Weatherby is a creepy sadist and Collins is a ruthless professional, Smith is much more reluctant to get violent.
Trespassing to Talk: They break into Giles' home and lie in wait for him so they can have a chat.
What Happened to the Mouse?: They disappear form the franchise after the end of the Faith-manhunt arc, and their fate later on, after much of the Council is defeated is less clear.
What the Hell, Hero?: They chew out Wesley for working with Angel, despite his unique circumstances.

Lydia

"I... wrote my thesis on you."

Played By: Cynthia Lamontagne

A high-ranking Watcher who usually accompanies Travers on high-profile missions.

Fangirl: Of Spike: she wrote her dissertation on him, and when she gets the chance to meet him in the flesh, she's noticeably excited. Spike himself is flattered.
Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Downplayed, but she comes across as more down-to-earth than Travers and is shown up-to-date on reports from around the world and reporting them to him during the First Evil crisis.
Reasonable Authority Figure: She is much friendlier than the other Watchers, and voices legitimate concerns about Buffy's methodologies without being condescending or arrogant.
She Cleans Up Nicely: Looks noticeably cuter in her second appearance without her coat and a better hairstyle.
Token Good Teammate: Unlike Travers or the rest of the Watchers, she seems to have genuinely good intentions beyond putting Buffy under her thumb, and asks fair questions to Buffy, such as why a Slayer is letting her friends (who, in her eyes, are just normal young adults without knowing about Xander's experience, Anya's former demonhood, or Willow and Tara's magic) help with patrols while seeming to pay attention to and consider what the Scooby Gang says.
Uncertain Doom: She's present during Travers Let's Get Dangerous! speech, right before the Watcher Council's headquarters explodes, which (assuming the explosion took place immediately after Travers speech and before anyone had time to leave) would have almost certainly killed her. She was standing the closet to the door, but given the scope of the explosion that probably wouldn't have made a difference.

Gwendolyn Post

Mrs. Gwendolyn Post

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/buffy_gwendolyn.jpg

"Faith, word of advice: you're an idiot."

Played By: Serena Scott Thomas

Appears In: "Revelations"

A former Watcher supposedly sent by the Watchers Council to train Faith Lehane and also report on the performance of Rupert Giles.

Consummate Liar: From the second she appears, she lies with fluid ease and fools absolutely everyone.
Evil Brit: After she shows her true colors.
Evil Mentor: To Faith, who she manipulates by providing a harsh mother figure.
False Friend: To the Scoobies, in particular Giles and Faith.
Ice Queen: Strangely, she's this until she shows her true colours. Then she becomes very hammy and emotional.
Insufferable Genius: She's very assured of her own intelligence.
Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: When Post appears, she's over-critical, needlessly sarcastic and treats everyone around her like a particularly distasteful crumpet covered in urine. Then she seems to bond a little with Faith, and shows a softer side to Giles in a moment bordering on Ship Tease. It's entirely possible that she's just a Sink or Swim Mentor and Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Then it turns out she's evil.
Manipulative Bitch: Tricks Faith into helping her with her objective, while pretending it's all a sanctioned mission.
Psycho Electro: When she gets the magic glove she's after.
Small Role, Big Impact: She only appears in one episode, but she drives a huge wedge between Faith and the Scoobies, re-enforcing her isolation from anyone who could help her.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Her betrayal of Faith was a contributing factor in the latter's journey to the Dark Side. Granted, Wesley attempting to have Faith turned over to the Watcher's Council was the last straw, but Post earning Faith's trust and then calling her an idiot still helped influence Faith's decision to become evil.
Wicked Cultured: Due to being a Watcher.

Merrick

Merrick Jamison-Smythe

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ab9fd24965b2c86bc42a436515654364.JPG

"Your destiny awaits."

Played By: Donald Sutherland & Richard Riehle

A member of the Watchers Council and the first Watcher of the Slayer Buffy Summers. Merrick died in 1996 shortly after meeting Buffy when he committed suicide to protect her from the vampire Lothos.

Adaptational Nationality: In the movie, he's British. In the TV series, he's American.
Badass Longcoat: In the movie.
Cool Old Guy: The movie version, which makes it much more sad that he dies in Buffy's arms.
Dark and Troubled Past: He trained five Slayers in his lifetime, all of whom he saw "ripped apart" by the dark forces they were destined to combat. Two of them were killed by the powerful vampire Lothos.
Demoted to Extra: His movie counterpart is practically the Big Good, and Buffy's main mentor, while Giles gets those roles in the show and Merrick is a bit character.
Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the movie, he was killed by Lothos. In the series and The Origin comic, he killed himself to prevent himself from becoming a vampire.
Disappeared Dad: According the the Slayer novel duology by Kiersten White, Merrick has twin daughters who are eight when he dies and feel his loss keenly.
Driven to Suicide: In the comic, he kills himself before Lothos can turn him and force him into giving out Buffy's location.
Forgotten Fallen Friend: Despite his sacrifice affecting Buffy in both the film and the prequel comic, he's never mentionned again in the series. Interestingly, this was averted in the unaired pilot where Buffy does bring her former Watcher to Giles.
Buffy:Yeah, well, the last guy they sent to guide me... you see what happened to him.
Giles: Yes, I know all about it.
Heroic Sacrifice: In both versions, he dies to protect Buffy.
I Did What I Had to Do: Merrick's justification for throwing a knife at Buffy to reveal her as The Chosen One (Buffy easily catches the weapon, but she's still mad)
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In the movie, Lothos stabs him with his own stake.
Reincarnation: In the movie he is reincarnated every time he dies and has to live the same life and train a new Slayer. This is not the case in the show.
Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: In the show, his father (a Watcher himself) taught him "a lot of subtleties the Council never bothered with" regarding training, legends, and research. In the movie, as he's dying he tells Buffy to do things her own way rather than live by others' rules.

Robson

Played By: Rob Nagle

An old friend of Giles and the Watcher for a potential Slayer in London.

Failure Hero: His charge is killed, and he fails to stop her assassins.
Made of Iron: He survives several stab wounds.
Token Good Teammate: One of the better watchers, although a fairly low-ranking one. He doesn't hesitate to trade blows with an assassin who just killed his Slayer and is friendly with Giles.
Unluckily Lucky: His being injured by the First Evil's Bringer likely saves his life, due to many of the other watchers stationed in London being blown up at a meeting in the next episode.
Vagueness Is Coming: Warns this after being found wounded by Giles he warns of the need to prepare the Slayers for the coming war.
Robson: It's started. Gather them.

Nigel

Played By: Kris Iyer

One of Travers' senior Watchers.

Armchair Military: Takes after Travers a fair bit in being arrogant but unskilled.
British Stuffiness: He has an upper-class British accent and declares Buffy's attempt to assert herself as "Beyond insolence" before shutting up when she throws a sword in his direction.
Butt-Monkey: A practice dummy gets knocked over onto him during Buffy's training session, she throws a sword into the wall next to him when he's interrupting her and his patience is clearly tried a bit while sitting through an interview with Willow and Tara.
Jerkass: He's better than Travers but has an air of condescension to him.
Killed Offscreen: He's blown up along with the others at the Watchers headquarters.
Mistaken for Racist: Willow and Tara think he's inquisitively asking about their romantic attachment with each other when really he means their friendships with Buffy.
Oh, Crap!: He says a nervous, "Sir?" when Travers announces that they're heading to the Hellmouth in Season 7.
Token Minority: He's Indian, and the only prominent non-white Watcher to physically appear in the show.

Phillip

Played By: Oliver Muirhead

A high-ranking Watcher often found accompanying Travers.

Bearer of Bad News: In season 7, he's seen urgently reporting the various attacks of the First Evil to Travers.
The Comically Serious: He provides some humor he interviews the whacky Xander and Anya with a deadpan expression.
Drill Sergeant Nasty: He attacks a blindfolded Buffy with a practice axe while Travers barks her orders in languages she can't understand. Once Buffy adjusts herself though and starts attacking through instincts, Phillip ends up knocked to the ground with a broken rib.
Uncertain Doom: He presumably dies in the explosion of the Watchers headquarters.
Would Hit a Girl: He doesn't hesitate to strike Buffy in the face during the combat testing.

Mr. Zabuto

Kendra's Watcher.

Ascended Extra: He is The Ghost in the show but gets to appear in person during the Reboot comic.
Drowning My Sorrows: According to the possibly non-canon novel The Book of Fours, Zabuto has been drinking steadily (although not to the point of intoxication) since Kendra died and (in one of her last missions) the two of them failed to save the woman Zabuto loved from having her spirit stolen by an evil sorcerer. His feelings of guilt about raising Kendra to be a weapon further encourage his drinking.
Foil: To Giles, taking a more direct, and arguably tyrannical role in the life of his slayer practically since she was born.
The Ghost: Kendra talks about him a lot and Giles talks to him on the phone a few times but he never actually appears.
The Handler: Acts this way, providing logistics for Kendra and sending her to Sunnydale in the first place.
In the Blood: Apparently comes from a long line of Watchers.
Pet the Dog: He did give Kendra a picture of her parents despite seperating her from her family.
Retcon: The Book of Fours claims that Zabuto is childless and his only relative is a gay cousin who will probably never pass down the family name unless he adopts, but several other Zabutos appear in the Slayer duology (which is written by a different author). Which, if either, version is accurate in the main canon is unclear.
Training from Hell: Took Kendra away from her family and had her spend all her time studying demon hunting since she was a baby, while denying her a social life.
What Happened to the Mouse?: His reaction to Kendra's death, future activities, and exact fate during the Watcher Council's war with the First Evil aren't shown in unambiguously canon sources.

Bernard Crowley

Nikki Wood's Watcher, who also trained her son.

The Ghost: He is only mentioned in a single episode of the show, although he appears in , two ambiguously canon novels and a flashback of the comic sequel.
Good Parents: By all accounts, he took good care of Robin in Nikki's stead, as Robin grows up to be a successful and well-mannered educator (and talented vampire hunter) who's mostly even-natured, barring his murderous revenge plot against Spike.
Parental Substitute: He resigned from the Watcher's Council to raise Robin after the death of the boy's mother.
Reasonable Authority Figure: He tried to talk Nikki out of undergoing a dangerous training ceremony while she was pregnant and offered her a chance to quit being the Slayer and stay alive, telling her that she'd already done her duty by saving thousands of lives and couldn't stay lucky forever.
What Happened to the Mouse?: His status in the present day is unknown.

Micaela Tomassi

A Watcher who has a close bond with Giles and doesn't get along well with the directors of the Watchers' Council.

Adventure Archaeologist: By the time of her final appearance (the post-season 7 novel Dark Congress), she is exploring the tombs of demons and deities on behalf of the remnants of the Watcher's Council.
Becoming the Mask: She initially infiltrates the Watchers' Council as a spy, but ultimately turns on her spymaster/adoptive father and becomes a Watcher for real once the group's leaders finally give her a second chance.
Belligerent Sexual Tension: In Dark Congress, she finds one of her colleagues both insufferable and strikingly handsome, and alternately wants to punch or kiss him as they argue about a course of action.
Canon Immigrant: Her first several appearances are in novels that some fans argue are non-canon, but she later appears in one of the officially canonical Buffy the Vampire Slayer Classic comics.
Conflicting Loyalty: In her debut, The Gatekeeper Trilogy of novels, Micaela is working as a Double Agent for her adopted father (an evil sorcerer who had her infiltrate the Watchers' Council in the first place), but wavers between helping him or the Scooby Gang, especially as she spends more time working with the heroes (while having Dating Catwoman dynamics with Giles) and realizes how many people her father may hurt. She ultimately helps defeat her father, although she isn't Easily Forgiven by the Watchers' Council directors.
Cult Defector: The Gatekeeper Trilogy features an Apocalypse Cult that wants to break down dimensional barriers so that monsters can access Earth and all of the cult members can live like kings. Micaela, was raised to beleive in that vision, but gradually begins undermining their plans after realizing how much death these plans will cause.
High-Heel–Face Turn: Micaela is the only woman in her father's large Apocalypse Cult and is one of the few to turn good, with her feelings for Giles playing a role in her decision even if they aren’t the main reason for her Heel–Face Turn.
Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Micaela helps Giles investigate the murder of his former mentor against Travers' orders, even though her own status with the Council is sketchy and uncertain.

Dormer

Professor Diana "The Prof" Dormer

Faith's first Watcher, a Harvard professor. She is briefly mentioned in the show and is named and given an expanded role in the prequel novel Go Ask Malice.

Alliterative Name: Diana Dormer.
Cruel and Unusual Death: The demon Kakitos tears her apart so brutally that Faith later comments, "They don't have a word for what he did to her".
Parental Substitute: She lets Faith move into her house after finding the girl has been living in a foster home.
Smoking Is Not Cool: She is a heavy smoker who has trouble keeping up with Faith in combat training due to the nicotine's effect on her lungs.

Slayers, Potential Slayers, and Watchers in Ambiguously Canon^note novels and comics

Slayers

Ejuk (ca. 2700 BCE)

Heartbroken Badass: She is a fierce fighter, but spends most of her pagetime crying over her murdered Watcher and Parental Substitute even as she continues fighting.
Hidden in Plain Sight: While being the Slayer is an invitation to be attacked by various undead threats, Ejuk lives in a period with many Badass Normal Monster Hunters who are recognized and supported by the court. This lets Ejuk pretend she is one of those other hunters and operate openly in her fight against evil forces.
Living Legend: Her exploits are widely known during her own time, whether by restaurant patrons or her monarch, and she later becomes one of the most extensively documented Slayers in history.

Thessily Thessilonikki (ca. 490 BCE)

Alliterative Name: Both of her names begin with T.
Bring Help Back: She is sent to run hundreds of miles to Sparta to guard a messenger who is getting help to defend Athens against Persia and makes the journey even after being wounded with a poisoned arrow, although the Spartans refuse to help.
The Fettered: Despite living longer than any other recorded Slayer before Buffy, Thessily grows more and more worn-out from the knowledge that more monsters will keep on coming As Long as There Is Evil, no matter what she does. Her exhaustion and injuries during her last mission add to this. Nonetheless, she does her duty and does it well for her whole tenure as the Slayer.
Screw Destiny: The Oracle of Delphi has a vision of her dying against a vampiric horde, but she survives the battle and continues to be the Slayer for another decade.

Incinii (ca. 60)

Big Sister Instinct: She takes a break from her duties as the Slayer to protect her brother when he joins an army that is trying to repel Roman invaders.
Blood Knight: She smiles on the eve of a battle with Romans.
Hell-Bent for Leather: She is a passionate warrior who wears armor made of leather.

Kishi Minomoto (980)

Born in the Wrong Century: She is a brave daughter of a samurai clan, but is born in an era where girls are expected to be ladies in waiting. Even when she becomes a Slayer, she has to do it discreetly.
Human Sacrifice: She is nearly sacrificed to a dragon, but slays the man doing the sacrificing instead.
MacGyvering: Since carrying weapons in the Imperial Court (where she undergoes her training) is treasonous, Kishi has to make her own covert weapons out of things like a whalebone that she turns into a bow shaft and hair sticks that she sharpens into stakes.
Tomboy: Kishi hates courtly etiquette and tries to enter a martial contest while pretending to be a boy.

Dark of the Moon (ca. 1250)

Failure Hero: Due to not understanding her status as a Slayer, she fails to defeat the vampires plaguing her tribe.
Old Maid: Her tribe views her as past marriage age when she turns twenty-one and remains unattached.

Eliane de Shaundee (ca. 1320)

Action Mom: She is married with two children by the time she is chosen as a Slayer. She thought she had been Refused by the Call and her life takes a downward spiral when she becomes the Slayer, but she is still a dedicated mother and competent fighter.
Refusal of the Call: In an effort to bargain for the release of her imprisoned husband, she initially refuses to do her duty as the Slayer even while her village is being slaughtered.
Someone to Remember Him By: Gender Flipped, as her infant daughter survives after her death.
Teacher/Student Romance: She marries her Watcher, who is only three years older than her. His superiors take this poorly.

Esperanza De la Vega (ca. 1470)

Daddy's Girl: Espernanza is close to her widowed father and likes to humor him.
Fire-Forged Friends: She forms an alliance with an imprisoned demon in an effort to escape from the Inquisition's cells and comes to view him as more of a person than their captors.
Hiding Your Heritage: She and her father are Jewish but hide this from The Inquisition.
Rules Lawyer: She knows the regulations of the Inquisition and tries on multiple occasions after being arrested to invoke what passes for due process at the time. Unfortunately, the Inquisitors are believers in Screw the Rules, I Make Them!
Silk Hiding Steel: Espernanza is a kind-hearted girl whose Watcher thinks she is too kind to survive the cruciamentum. However, she is a Defiant Captive when being questioned and tortured by Inquisitors (even biting one when they put her on the rack) and her temporary lack of powers doesn't keep her from escaping from the dungeon's guards and some vampiric and demonic prisoners.
Torture Is Ineffective: When she is put on the rack by torturers, she refuses to confess to any real or imagined wrongdoings.

Unnamed English Slayer (ca. 1600)

Blessed with Suck: She views being made a Hunter of Monsters as a curse, and only comes to peace with it after deciding to view it as a way to repay Jesus Christ for letting himself be crucified.
Burn the Witch!: Near the end of her one appearance (in the graphic novel Tales of the Slayers), she is burned as a witch due to a Rabble Rouser priest. Her Slayer endurance means the the fire takes longer than normal to kill her.
Chaste Hero: She is a virginal girl who rejects various suitors, mainly due to her fixation on religion.

Ildikó Géllert (ca. 1609)

Blood Knight: She enjoys fighting evil creatures as the Slayer.
Cruel and Unusual Death: She dies by being pressed against sharp stakes in an iron maiden.
Failed a Spot Check: She has more difficulty telling humans and vampires apart than most Slayers.
The Infiltration: She infiltrates the home of Elizabeth Báthory while investigating whether the evil noblewoman is a vampire. After seeing signs of Elizabeth's depravity, Ildikó plans to kill Elizabeth regardless of her vampiric status.
Tomboy: She has always hated bathing and stereotypically womanly chores. She takes a lot of training to convincingly pass as a maid.

Virginia Dare/White Doe (ca. 1610)

Forced Transformation: A spurned suitor who is Not Good with Rejection turns her into a deer.
Historical Domain Character: She is a real life child from the lost colony of Roanoke.
Scars Are Forever: She has a cross banded on her forehead.

Robin Whitby (1661)

Hook Hand: At the end of her story, she loses a hand at the end of her story and replaces it with a prosthetic weapon.
Pay Evil unto Evil: Robin cheerfully leads her crew in plundering Spanish vessels and considers it payback for Spain slaughtering Native Americans, waging war against her native England, and harming Slayers and Watchers during The Spanish Inquisition.
Sweet Polly Oliver: She poses as a man to be a ship captain.
Turn the Other Cheek: She tries to save members her crew from a vampire even after they mutiny against her, and the survivors are suitably grateful and chagrined
Young and in Charge: She is a young woman in her twenties and the captain of a ship.

Samantha Kane (ca. 1692)

Heroic Sacrifice: She sacrifices herself to drag an evil demon through a portal back to his own dimension.
Superhero Packing Heat: Unlike most Slayers, she favors using a pistol over a crossbow, sword, or stake.
The Witch Hunter: Samantha operates openly as a witch hunter in addition to slaying vampires. However, she is no Knight Templar and interrupts a Kangaroo Court to ask reasonable questions about how much evidence there is against the accused, with the judge reluctantly respecting her authority.

Marie-Christine Du Lac (ca. 1789)

Sadistic Choice: She has a choice between helping the royal family and her Watcher escape Paris during the Reign of Terror or killing the vampire responsible for stirring up the lower masses (and whose death she hopes will stop the violence). She reluctantly chooses the latter choice, but winning that battle accomplishes less than she hopes.
Took a Level in Kindness: She starts out as just a superpowered enforcer for a Deadly Decadent Court, but gradually stars protecting innocent people from all walks of life.
You Are What You Hate: She is disdainful of France's peasantry, but is a peasant by birth who was adopted by royals.

Claudine (ca. 1789)

Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Her hair is quite dark and her skin is fairly pale.
These Hands Have Killed: She is horrified and traumatized after her Watcher and lover tricks her into killing a human aristocrat during the French Revolution by claiming the man is a vampire.

Marguerite Allard (ca. 1792)

Damsel in Distress: When she first appears, she is a prisoner of Darla and Angelus and needs to be rescued by Buffy.
White Shirt of Death: She is introduced wearing a white dress stained with blood from several wounds she has taken, although she survives.

Elizabeth Weston (ca. 1813)

Butch Lesbian: She makes herself look like a man (albeit at least partially to avoid being identified as the Slayer) and is implied to be a lesbian or bisexual, as she dances with a female vampire and muses that she shouldn't let herself be attracted to someone she plans to destroy.
Recurring Character: She appears in several comics (mostly in visions and flashbacks) and one short story in the Tales of the Slayer book series.
Sweet Polly Oliver: She cuts her hair and wears trousers to disguise herself as a man to keep her actions as the Slayer from drawing attention in the sexist society in which she operates.

Catherine Hogarth (ca. 1843)

Bodycount Competition: Catherine keeps track of her weekly vampire kills and wonders whether past Slayers have done better.
Culture Clash: She is a poor girl from the East End of London, while her Watcher is a haughty upper-class man. They don't get along at all and even wish for each other's death.

Xiaoquin (ca. 1856)

Conveniently an Orphan: Her parents died when she was young, allowing her to be trained in martial arts at a monastery by a Parental Substitute.
King of the Homeless: She takes in orphaned girls and helps them eke out an existence on the streets without selling their bodies.
Martial Pacifist: She beats up a crowd of thugs who are hurting a young girl, leaving them with scars and broken bones, but she holds back from killing any of them due to having been taught to revere all human life.
Sweet Polly Oliver: She impersonates a male dockworker to get around the restrictions women of her time suffer.

Agatha Primrose (ca. 1862)

Category Traitor: In a sympathetic example, although her home state is part of the Confederacy, she does some spying for the Union due to loyalty to her real country and a desire to reduce battlefield casualties.
Minor Living Alone: She is a teenaged Slayer who lives alone on the Tennessee farm where she was born. Her mother has been dead for some time and her father is fighting in The American Civil War.
Southern Belle: She is a young woman from Tennessee who wears a Pimped-Out Dress and jewelry when she isn't riding across the countryside fighting vampires.

Pauline Francis Barnard (ca. 1862)

Nom de Mom: While posing as a man she uses her mother's surname, Massey.
Rogue Agent: After the death of her Watcher, she keeps fighting vampires but deliberately avoids the Watchers’ Council and instead operates under her commanding officer in the Union Army.
Southern Belle: She used to be a demure and well-groomed girl from the Southern United States of America before cutting her hair, assuming a male identity, and joining the Union Army during The American Civil War.
Staking the Loved One; She has to kill her Watcher, who she views as the only person who understands her, after he becomes a vampire.
Sweet Polly Oliver: She poses as a man to join the military.

Lucy Hanover (ca. 1865)

A Slayer active at the end of the Civil War.

Dating Catwoman: She had a relationship with the cruel leader of the otherworld Wild Hunt, leading to the birth of their son.
Recurring Character: Her ghost is a recurring presence in the novels of Nancy Holder.
Spirit Advisor: Her ghost sometimes encounters Buffy and Willow to give them advice, information, or material aid whenever her spirit is able to temporarily enter the mortal world.

Angela Martignetti (ca. 1872)

The Alcoholic: It's an Informed Flaw, but her Watcher notes that she's addicted to the drink absinthe.
The Cassandra: When she lures the vampire Veronique (who can resurrect herself in new bodies after being staked) to a Greek island to entomb her, Angela tries to warn the locals to leave and is disbelieved until after many of them fall victim to Veronique and her progeny.
Death Seeker: Her final flashbacks in the novel Immortal show that she plans to either die fighting Veronique or to stay in seclusion guarding Veronique's tomb until she dies. She spends many years wishing that she'd suffered one of those fates after she has to go on living once her quest is over.
Inappropriately Close Comrades: She idolizes her Watcher, Peter, and is having sex with him. She is heartbroken when the Watchers' Council kills him to punish this transgression and, before dying, he admits that he loved Angela's cousin first.
It's Personal: She is determined to kill Veronique for killing and possessing her cousin Lucia.
Rogue Agent: She spends years refusing to aid the Watchers; Council (although it is unclear if she gives up slaying altogether) to punish them for murdering her Watcher due to his affair with her, although she does bother to defeat her Arch-Enemy first.

Catherine Callan (ca. 1876)

Alliterative Name: Both of her names begin with C.
Fake Relationship: She pretends to be in a relationship with her Watcher mainly to Troll the rest of the Watchers' Council, who have a lot of anti-Irish bigotry against her.

Naayéé'neizgháni (ca. late nineteenth century)

Category Traitor: She wears a western hat and her last vampire enemy (another Native American) notes that she served a white Watcher despite the grief white men have brought to their land, although this is mitigated by the bigger fight against demonic forces.
Famed In-Story: The story of her last fight, near the Hellmouth, is well known several years after her death.
Mutual Kill: She and the vampire who killed her Watcher kill each other in a duel.

Mollie Prater (ca. 1886)

Did Not Get the Girl: She is engaged to be married, but her betrothed calls off the wedding after seeing her fight a demon.
Dreaming of Things to Come: She has prophetic dreams about a demon menacing her community.
Little Miss Badass: She is a fifteen-year-old country girl when she gains Slayer powers.
One-Steve Limit: Her Watcher has trouble finding her because several local girls share her name.
Violently Protective Girlfriend: Before Mollie even fully understands what a Slayer is, she uses a scythe to kill a demon attacking her fiancé.

Elizabeth (ca. 1888)

Being Good Sucks: She is very nervous and erratic about her duties as the Slayer (vomiting after at least one kill) and thinks that she is a coward who should have never been chosen, an opinion which her callous and snooty Watcher superiors cruellly reinforce at every oppurtunity. She wants to help the city's poor, but feels unable to do enough. She drinks because of her job. She has to work undercover as a prostitute. She is ultimately mauled and killed by hellhounds.
Cowardly Lion: She sees herself as a coward who is unfit to be a Slayer, but she carries out bold and dangerous Slayer duties regardless of her fears and is good at her job.
Enemy Mine: She forms an alliance with Angelus and his "family", despite their status as sworn enemies of the Watchers Council, because neither she nor they feel comfortable taking on the demonic Jack the Ripper alone.
I Need a Freaking Drink: She uses alcohol and laundanum in an unsuccessful effort to calm herself before slaying vampires.
Only One Name: Her surname is never mentioned.
One-Steve Limit: She has the same name as another previous Slayer from the comics.
Promotion to Parent: She helped her mother raise her younger siblings after her father died.
Smarter Than They Look: Despite being viewed as a stupid urchin by her Watchers, she has read Charles Dickens books and has some knowledge of British politics.

Angelique Hawthorne (ca. 1897)

Shoo the Dog: She tries to maintain normal friendships after becoming the Slayer, but after one of her friends is turned into a vampire, she sends the others away for their own safety.
You Killed My Father: Her first act as the Slayer is to kill the vampire who killed her whole family (except for her Disappeared Dad father) while she was out doing odd jobs to pay the rent.

Millicent Rose "Millie" Gresham (ca. 1910)

Circus of Fear: Downplayed, but the traveling carnival she's part of has many demonic and vampire members the audiences think are costumed performers. While some are people Millie and her carnie friends apparently gave jobs out of kindness, there is also a vampire they have spent some time forcibly restrained and force to eat live chickens as the carnival "geek".
Knight Errant: Millie fights evil wherever she finds it and then leaves with her carnival within a few days, allowing her to do good in a large number of areas. Her Watcher and several others in the carnival know about her activities but she mainly works alone.
Lovely Assistant: She is the young female assistant in a carnival magic act between heroic missions.

Dorothy "Dot" Singers (ca. 1919)

Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Her Watcher is a Shell-Shocked Veteran whose condition she hides so he won't be replaced.
Shoe Slap: She stakes a vampire with a high-heeled shoe.
The World Is Just Awesome: She loves taking in the sights of Chicago to remind herself what she fights for.

Ardita O'Reilly (ca. 1922)

The Ace: She seems completely confident, successful and popular, at least in terms of her normal life that regular people see.
The Flapper: She seems to be the archetypal early 1920s casually-dressed and socially liberated dancer.

Britta Kessler (ca. 1923)

And Then John Was a Zombie: She is turned into a vampire while saving a room full of people from vampires.
Dying Alone: Her greatest fear is be be killed or infected without anyone around to comfort her, something which does indeed happen.
Head-Turning Beauty: Her watcher observes her make boys turn their heads to watch her walk.
Spoiled Sweet: Britta is the eldest child of a very affluent family and doesn't want for affection or material possessions. However, she is a polite and considerate girl who wants to do good as the Slayer despite knowing it will mean her early death. She is also contemplative and sympathetic toward what her late predecessors went through.
Teens Love Shopping: Britta is a teenager who enjoys doing the shopping for her family and picking up the latest clothes for herself.
Un-person: The later short story "Undeadsville" implies that the Watchers' Council leadership have done an effective job of pretending that Britta was never chosen as the Slayer (which is easier than it sounds, since she lasted less than forty-eight hours), due to the In-Universe Nightmare Fuel behind the idea of a Slayer-turned-vampire.

Rachel O'Connor (ca. 1937)

A Slayer who poses as a New York street person.

Badass Longcoat: Rachel is a clever and tough Slayer who wears a trench coat while posing as a street person to lure in vampires to kill.
Foster Kid: Like many Slayers, she has had a troubled early life and she lives in a foster home, although she seems fine with it.
Improbable Weapon User: Rachel is strong enough to stake vampires with pencils.
Obfuscating Disability: She fakes being blind to make a vampire who thinks she'll be an easy target show himself.
Oral Fixation: Her gum chewing habit helps establish her as a street-smart American. This habit blows her cover when she's undercover, but also gives her something thick and tough to shove into a bottle and trap a d'jinn.

Anni (ca. 1938)

Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Anni is blonde while her two best school friends (who are both antisemitic bad influences) have red and brown hair.
Girlish Pigtails: She is a particularly young, short, and impressionable Slayer who wears her hair in pigtails.
Improbable Weapon User: She stakes a vampire with a rolling pin.
Innocent Bigot: Like many German children, she is indoctrinated to hate Jews, but she snaps out of it during the Night of Broken Glass and decides to help her Jewish neighbors and fight the Nazis.

Sophie Carstensen (ca. 1940)

Ancestral Weapon: She fights vampires with a cavalry saber that has been in her family for generations.
Big Damn Heroes: Whenever her Watcher or any of the potential Slayers are in danger, then if Sophie can do anything to try to rescue them, she will.
Conflicting Loyalties: Sophie is a patriotic Dane who feels conflicted when her duties as the Slayer keep her from protecting her country against Hitler.
Retcon: She falls in battle against Spike, but the show retroactively establishes Nikki and Xin Ring as the two slayers Spike killed.
Statuesque Stunner: Sophie is a pretty and powerful young woman who is noticeably taller than the Travers ancestor running the Watchers’sCouncil in 1940.
Stealth Expert: Sophie stealthily slips past many sentries undetected while infiltrating the Danish Royal Palace to set a trap for vampires on their way to rob it. This gives her a brief My Greatest Failure moment when the vampires simply kill the guards rather than sneak past them like she did, and wishes she had planned for that instead of sneaking inside.
You Killed My Father: A vampire targets and kills her parents because they are the parents of the Slayer, and she kills him in turn.

Isabel Cortés (ca. 1940)

Informed Attribute: She apparently can't speak much English, but this is only mentioned secondhand since she gets little dialogue and has improved her language skills by the final chapters.
Religious Bruiser: She is a skilled fighter even before her Slayer gene is activated, and she also says a prayer mid-battle at one point.
Resigned to the Call: She has no real desire to become the Slayer, but feels that if she does, then it would be ignoble not to help others with her gifts.
Unskilled, but Strong: Her fighting skills increase once she becomes the Slayer, but she doesn't have much combat training and dies within a few minutes.

Eleanor Bodreau (ca. 1940)

America Saves the Day: Eleanor is American, and ends up as the Slayer and Hero Antagonist at the end of Spike and Dry: Pretty Maids All in a Row when most of the other Watchers and Slayers in that book are European.
Ascended Fangirl: She deeply admires Sophie and ends up succeeding her as the Slayer (technically there is another girl between them, but she has a case of We Hardly Knew Ye).
The Bus Came Back: She debuts in a novel and later reappears in one of the Tales of the Slayer short stories.
Country Mouse: Eleanor comes from rural Louisiana, has difficulty moving around in fancy dresses and feels uncomfortable around sophisticated people, although she usually manages to hide this unease.
Do Not Call Me "Paul": Her grandmother was the only person to ever call her Ellie and she dislikes the nickname.
Guile Hero: By the time of the short story "Voodoo Lounge", she has become good at quick deductions and judgment calls when people try to trap her or she is questioning prisoners. At the end of the story, she frames a seemingly untouchable celebrity Serial Killer for a murder that he is innocent of but did incite. His actual victims are demons and there is no way to convict him of those murders, but the ex-Watcher whose murder Eleanor frames him for is a human celebrity whose murder will be prosecuted.
Took a Level in Badass: She goes from a nervous young girl who feels certain she is too weak to be chosen to a skilled Slayer who serves in the role through part of World War II, facing greater dangers than some of her recent predecessors.

Elizabeth Winters (ca. 1942)

Happily Married: She married her husband Bobby despite the tradition against Slayers having families, and never thinks about him with anything but affection.
Hard Boiled Detective: She works as a detective while her husband Bobby (who funded the agency) is deployed overseas and is a bold woman who has a lot of knowledge about gangsters.
The Missus and the Ex: Her secretary (who has been working at the detective agency since her husband ran it) used to date Bobby, but there is no friction between the two women.

Zoë Kuryakin (ca. 1952)

Beatnik: She is a casually-dressed 1950s Beat poet whose Bohemian lifestyle infuriates her stodgy Watcher so much that he plots to have her killed.
Conveniently an Orphan: Her parents died in a car accident long before she became the Slayer and had the Watchers enter her life. Her only relative is a cousin who plans to return to Ukraine.
The Dog Bites Back: Her Watcher sets her up to be turned into a vampire, and the only thing she does before committing Suicide by Sunlight is get revenge for her murder.
Dying as Yourself: After being turned into a vampire, she is able to resist and kill her sire and then commits Suicide by Sunlight right as the transformation sets in, dying right before her soul can vanish.
I Call It "Vera": Zoe fights with a switchblade knife that she calls Mack the Knife.
Talk to the Fist: Zoe is the daughter of Russian Jews and knocked out the teeth of a high-ranking Watcher who made antisemitic comments in front of her.

Asha Sayre (ca. 1956)

Entertainingly Wrong: She believes that only girls of African descent can be Slayers, an assumption that many characters (including Buffy) prove wrong.
Heroic Sacrifice: She is blown up along with a church full of racist vampires while saving a congregation of people from them.
Obfuscating Stupidity: Asha poses as a foolish and naive girl to make a vampiric malt shop clerk feel safe stalking her, at which point she kills him.
Orphan's Ordeal: She grew up in the Louisiana bayou, being raised by her Watcher after her mother died when she was born and The Klan lynched her father.
Unknown Rival: As the Slayer, Asha spends years training herself to fight the local rural vampires, and develops It's Personal feelings toward fighting them once she realizes that they compose the local Ku Klux Klan cell and that You Killed My Father. The vampires have never even heard of the Slayer line and have killed so many people that there is almost no chance that they remember one specific murder of a black man who they viewed as subhuman twelve years earlier.
The World Is Just Awesome: She is awestruck by the animals, plants, and weather of the swamp where she lives and has little imagination about the world outside of the town she's never left.

Beryl McKenzie (ca. 1969)

Cynicism Catalyst: A friend of hers died in her arms after being fatally injured during an anti-war rally, and she has little faith in the human race as a result.
Disappeared Dad: Her parents gave her to the Watchers' Council to raise when she was five.
Refusal of the Call: She is a pacifist and initially refuses to assume the duties of the Slayer, instead trying to find a way to magically separate herself from the powers of the Slayer.

Peri Bohr (ca. 1986)

Combat Pragmatist: During her cruciamentum, a powerless Peri tricks her stronger vampire opponent into calling a truce, offering to try to find a way to cure her, then stakes her once the other girl lowers her guard. However, she did want to help her opponent, but just knew there was no way to do so, and she is deeply traumatized about that kill.
Hero Antagonist: She is a heroic Slayer, but the short story she appears in is from the point-of-view of a friend of hers who was turned into a vampire and is fighting her.
It's All My Fault: Peri is deeply upset to learn that a vampiric former classmate she is fighting got turned right after they parted ways outside the movie theater, feeling that means she failed in her duty to protect people around her.
Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: She seems like an average teenaged mallrat who does a good job of hiding her job from people, not unlike Buffy herself.

India Cohen (ca. 1995)

The Slayer that directly preceded Buffy Summers.

Classical Elements Ensemble: In The Book of Fours, she is described as being the "Slayer of Water" alongside Kendra's Earth, Buffy's Air and Faith's Fire.
The Fatalist: India recalls that she worked hard at being the Slayer but that she also knew that the job would kill her in a few years and then another Slayer would replace her. This knowledge made it harder to fight to survive one battle when there would always be another one.
First-Person Smartass: She narrates a bit of the novel The Book of Fours, and makes quips like "As the old saying goes, 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' Yeah, but they get the best seats".
Grand Theft Me: A sympathetic version occurs when India's spirit possesses Willow Rosenberg during a climactic struggle.
Heroes Love Dogs: India has a pet dog, Mariposa, who she cares about deeply.
Heroic Sacrifice: She recalls how her last fight was against a mummy that she knew outmatched her, but she was buying time for her Watcher/boyfriend and dog to get away.
Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: She isn't entirely convinced that her legal father is her biological father.
Military Brat: Before being chosen, she travels the world to live with her submarine commander father.
Present Absence: She is never directly mentioned in the show itself, but it is clear that someone directly preceded Buffy as the Slayer and Buffy probably wouldn't have become the Slayer if India had lasted longer at the job and Buffy had reached adulthood in the meantime.
Saved by Canon: Her final battle in 1996 is recounted in a novel, and she later reappears in a chronologically earlier of the Tales of the Slayer short story, guaranteeing she will survive the latter work.
Superior Successor: She is the Slayer for three years while her predecessor only lasted for one.
Teacher/Student Romance: She and her watcher, a young man about her age, have strong chemistry.

August (ca. Alternate Universe 2004)

August

A teenaged girl who succeeds Faith in The Lost Slayer tetralogy, where Buffy is temporarily transported to a Bad Future during her college days.

Decoy Protagonist: Or rather decoy deuteragonist. August is introduced at the end of the first book and seems like she is being set up to be Buffy's main ally, but she dies at the beginning of the next book.
Hero of Another Story: She spends several months as the lone Slayer fighting a vampire army that has taken over most of California, but she only appears in a few scenes after being captured by her enemies.
The Needs of the Many: After she and Buffy are both captured by their enemies, she tries to kill Buffy so that someone else will become a Slayer in her place and their cause won't be doomed without a Slayer on their side.
Neck Snap: Buffy accidentally breaks her neck during their fight.

Anna Kuei (ca. Alternate Universe 2004)

Anna Kuei

August's successor in The Lost Slayer timeline.

Bash Brothers: She spends a lot of time fighting closely alongside a Future Badass version of Wesley who she is close friends with.
Non Conformist Dyed Hair: In a mostly rigid and militarized environment, she dyes her hair pink.
Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She is initially reluctant to work with Buffy due to Buffy killing August and being williing to Speak Ill of the Dead, but she is willing to accept that Buffy can help save the day, and her hostility softens as time goes by.
When All You Have Is a Hammer…: She mostly uses traditional Slayer weapons, but when she loses them during a pivotal moment of a fight, she tears a vampire's head off with her bare hands.

Potential Slayers ^note

Ariana de la Croix

Action Girl: She is never chosen to be the Slayer, but is still a brave and tough combatant with an axe or a stake.
Ambiguously Related: Her love interest is a Travers, making it possible that Quentin Travers is meant to be her son.
Character Development: She is initially overconfident in her abilities and certain she will become the Slayer (although she means well and her overenthusiastic Watcher is partially to blame), looking forward to that day. Ariana feels guilty once it finally dawns on her that another girl will have to die for her to fulfill her dream of becoming the Slayer, admits that she has arrogantly overestimated her abilities, and accepts that there are other ways for her to fight evil.
Jumped at the Call: Ariana is so eager to fight evil and save people that she and her Watcher try to slay a vampire while she is still in training.
Refused by the Call: Despite her combat skills and willingness to assume the Slayer's duties, Ariana is passed over twice in a row and watches other people get the power. She is disappointed, but chooses to become a Watcher instead and acknowledges that Eleanor will make a good Slayer.
Younger Than They Look: She is only sixteen, but but looks old enough that people think she and her adult Watcher are a couple on a date.

Collette Boisvert

Fangirl: She is a fan of The Three Musketeers and has a crush on D'Artagnan.
Killed Offscreen: She is last seen cornered by Spike and Drusilla at the beginning of a montage where they kill several Potential Slayers, and it is later mentioned that one of their victims was in her home city, so it feels safe to write off poor Collette as dead.
Nice to the Waiter: She secretly dislikes her Watcher's haughty butler, but is polite to his face and doesn't insult him behind his back.
Wise Beyond Their Years: She is thirteen, but is well-trained in combat and demon knowledge and is a good judge of character who recognizes that Spike is a cruel and untrustworthy person when her Watcher fails to notice this.

Rita Gnecco

Cassandra Truth: She tries to warn a Heroic Bystander policeman who sees a vampire chasing her that her pursuer is too dangerous for him to fight, but the cop doesn't know about vampires and marches off to his death.
It's All My Fault: She blames herself for the deaths of her parents and kindly (at least until he's turned into a vampire) Watcher because she accidentally invited their killer into her house.
Say Your Prayers: She desperately prays to make it to a nearby church and find weapons there as Spike chases her. Only the first prayer is answered, and Holy Ground isn't enough to keep out her recently-sired Watcher, who quickly sinks his teeth into her neck.

Ilse Skovgard

Dance Battler: She is a ballerina trained in combat, although she doesn't live long enough to show her skills.
Hidden Backup Prince: Her potential powers aren't hereditary, but otherwise she fits the bill, as the Council leaves her name off their list of identified Potential Slayers so that she'll be more likely to survive in the event of a purge. Their worries are Properly Paranoid, but Ilse still dies.
Informed Judaism: Her Jewish heritage is only mentioned to give a reason for why her peers assume she merely fled from Denmark after Hitler invaded.
Tears of Fear: In her second and final scene, she is crying in fright after being kidnapped by vampires.

Beatrice Lizotte

Living Prop: She is among the interchangeable background Potential Slayers in London and only gets named one page before being injured and incapacitated. Her most notable trait is being the only Potential Slayer in London besides Eleanor, Ariana, and Isobel to actually get a name in Spike and Dru: Pretty Maids All In a Row.
Shrinking Violet: She is described as sweet and shy, and while she does fight during the climatic battle, she looks as terrified as she does formidable.
Staircase Tumble: Demonic Big Bad Skrymir breaks her arm and throws her down a staircase, although it's implied that she survives and this act keeps her from getting hurt worse in the crossfire of the battle.

Haley

Heel–Face Turn: She joins an army of newly activated Slayers who oppose Buffy in Queen of the Slayers, but ultimately loses faith in her cause and saves the heroes from being poisoned.
Military Brat: Haley was living on a military base in Germany when her powers activated.
The Mole: She spends some time spying on Buffy due to being convinced Buffy wants to use the new Slayers as cannon fodder.

Belle

Cool Teacher: She instructs the new Slayers in martial arts and imparts some good knowledge without being a Drill Sergeant Nasty.
Heterosexual Life-Partners: In the Queen of the Slayers timeline, she and Dawn become fast friends who spend the rest of the book (which is set across a year) doing almost everything together.
The Nicknamer: She gives Buffy the nickname “Queen Buffy”.

Marie

Gratuitous French: She is a French Slayer who only gets one line of dialogue, yelling out in her native language during a fight.
Mauve Shirt: She is a survivor of the battle in the a series finale who recurs throughout the first 150 or so pages of Queen of the Slayers before being killed abruptly during a minor fight.

Sandra

Dead Guy on Display: She is killed and her body is left hanging to intimidate newly activated Potential Slayers into leaving Buffy's side.
Refusal of the Call: She refuses to join the new Slayer army, saying she would rather use her increased agility to improve her ballet career.

Ngaio

A new Slayer who appears in the post-season 7 novel Dark Congress.

Country Mouse: She never left her Maori village for the first seventeen years of her life and is a bit overwhelmed at the number of big cities she has been to in the last few months after her Slayer gene was activated.
Spare a Messenger: She and her friends are injured when an infamous group of demons run their car off the road, but the demons spare the girls' lives so they can tell their fellow Slayers not to interfere with the eponymous Dark Congress.
True Companions: She views the other four Slayers she works with as being like sisters to her.

Athena "Nina" Jamison-Smythe

One of the daughter's of Buffy's first Watcher, a Potential Slayer, and the narrator of the Slayer novel duology by Kiersten White.

Badass Bookworm: She trains as a Watcher before becoming a Slayer and wants to combine that training and knowledge with her new combat skills to become the first Watcher-Slayer.
Badass Family: Her parents are both impressive Watchers, her grandmother was a Slayer, and Nina is an Action Girl with or without Slayer powers.
Empowered Badass Normal: She stakes a vampire as a little girl years before becoming a Slayer, and kills a hellhound after seconds of combat during her first battle as a Slayer.
Fiery Redhead: She has red hair and can get pretty angry.
Handicapped Badass: She is a tough Action Girl and is also asthmatic after her lungs were damaged by smoke from a house fire.
The Resenter: Nina initially loathes Buffy, blaming her for Merrick, the downfall of the Watchers Council, and everything else that is wrong with her life.
Weaker Twin Saves the Day: Growing up, Nina is a sickly medic who finds comfort in wearing bright clothing, while Artemis is an Action Girl who wears dark, utilitarian clothing. However, Nina is the one who becomes a Slayer and main protagonist.

Cosmina Enescu

The first other Slayer that Nina Smythe-Jameson encounters.

I Work Alone: She got a scar from a fight with another Slayer, is convinced they are meant to be lone operators, and avoids being part of the network Buffy set up.
Pragmatic Hero: She cooperates with the host of a monster fighting tournament to get him new fighters because the tournament takes more monsters off the street than she can and she is reluctant to pick a fight with someone that powerful. Nonetheless, she is dedicated to fighting evil, even if she is a complete Jerkass about it.
Rugged Scar: Being a Hunter of Monsters has left her with a battle scar on her ear and neck.
Ungrateful Bitch: She leaves Nina to fare for herself and then taunts her about her Trauma Button (which she knows through the shared Slayer memories), even after Nina goes to a lot of trouble to save her life.

Maricruz and Taylor

Two American Slayers who serve under Buffy and end up traveling with Chao-ahn after the Slayer army dissolves. They appear in the second book of the Slayer duology.

Caring Gardener: One sign that they are fully settling in with the castle inhabitants is when they start growing a garden together.
Shell-Shocked Veteran: The trauma of several battles has left them with mental damage and childlike personalities.

Indira

Indira Nunnally

Voiced by: Laya Deleon Hayes

A young, newly activated Slayer who goes on an interdimensional adventure with Spike, Giles, and Clem in Slayers: A Buffyverse Story.

Braids of Action: She is an energetic and able young Slayer who has a couple strands of her hair done in braids (other parts hang loosely or are in a ponytail).
Raised by Grandparents: She lives with her octogenarian grandfather (who has dementia) after the death of her parents.
New Meat: She is a freshly activated Slayer who idolizes those who came before her and charges into adventure to prove herself.
Shipper on Deck: She doesn't hesitate to hide how she thinks that Spike and Buffy should be together after reading about their relationship while growing up.

Frankie

Frankie Rosenberg

The daughter of Willow in the alternate timeline of the The Next Generation novel trilogy.

Alternate Self: A second Alternate Universe work that began development around the same time but debuted earlier, Buffy the Last Vampire Slayer also features a daughter of Willow who is both a witch and potential Slayer, Thesally Maclay Rosenberg, who shares some of Frankie's personality quirks.
Heroic Lineage: In addition to being the daughter of a powerful light witch, her sperm donor father is an astronaut. That is a lie, though, and she was really conceived by Willow harnessing the energy and life force of the very first Slayer.
Generation Xerox: Like her mother, she is a kind redheaded witch who runs with a a gang that includes a werewolf, a talkative demon, and a powerful, brooding, tortured, immortal man of mystery.
Kung-Fu Wizard: She is both a witch and a Slayer and can use both powers equally well.
Soapbox Sadie: She cares a lot about the environment and recycling.

The Darkness

A group of renegade Slayers in The Next Generation trilogy. They come into conflict with Frankie Rosenberg. Their leader is Aspen, while other members include Sonia, Gabby, Neha, Kate, and initially Vi.

Bullying a Dragon: In addition to the whole mutiny, Kate thinks it is a good idea to nastily mock Frankie about how she sees her as an abomination whose magic is nothing special. And she does it in front of Willow. After being blasted across the room by a magic spell, she seems mildly humbled after climbing to her feet.
Broken Bird: Years of brutal war against demonic forces, the loss of friends, and feelings of resentment have robbed them of their innocence and some but not all of their moral compasses.
Dating Catwoman: Aspen has a long and passionate relationship with her new enemy Frankie's close ally Grimloch, the Hunter of Thrace.
Good Scars, Evil Scars: One of their more prominent enforcers has a scar from forehead to chin that left her partially blinded and likely is part of the reason she wanted to mutiny and quit being a Slayer.
Kung-Fu Wizard: Aspen is a Slayer who also uses demon magic.
Mouth of Sauron: Sonia sometimes speaks on Aspen's behalf while hiding in another dimension and getting reports and requests from allies through portal messages (during which time she is mocked for wearing an ominous "Sith Lord cloak" while doing so due to her cold surroundings).
The Mutiny: Due to I Just Want to Be Normal angst, feelings of mistreatment, and most of them being too young to have taken part in the events of season 7 (where they would have seen the forces of evil at their most dangerous and Buffy in a more relatable position than she subsequently was), they revolt against the other Slayers and banish them to another dimension (accidentally killing a few in the process, to most of their distress) and find a magical artifact that will absorb their Slayer powers and let them start over. While not unsympathetic to them, the heroes call them out for not even trying to request permission to leave peacefully (due to their hatred of Buffy, Willow, Kennedy, and Rona being a blind spot that convinced them it would be pointless) that they probably would have received, and for putting the people of New Sunnydale at risk of more demon attacks.
Only Sane Woman: Vi, their eldest member, understands the risks and consequences of many of their actions better than her friends and eventually defects.
Yank the Dog's Chain: The others finally get to get rid of their powers and also get out from under Aspen upon seeing how unstable she really is, only for her to track down and kill most of them soon afterward.

Hailey

Hailey Larsson

Vi's sister and a recruit to Frankie's new Scooby Gang.

Badass Native: She is an Action Girl who is 1/4th First Nations and looks it.
Empowered Badass Normal: Hailey goes undercover in the group as a Badass Normal but a magic spell turns her into an actual Potential.
In Love with the Mark: A friendship version comes when Hailey goes undercover in the Darkness for the new Scooby Gang but comes to genuinely befriend Aspen and argue that there is good in her for much of Against the Darkness, until Aspen finally crosses the Moral Event Horizon.
Perky Goth: She takes her Goth look seriously and is interested in the supernatural, but is a level-headed and has a decent sense of humor.
Practically Different Generations: Hailey is about 15 years younger than her half-sister Vi.
Ring of Power: Hailey eventually starts using a mundane version by wearing normal rings with crucifix symbols that deliver a supernaturally powered punch whenever they hit a vampire.

Sadie

One of Kennedy's subordinates in the The Next Generation timeline. She is the only Slayer found alive in the rubble after a mysterious explositon at a gathering of activated Potential Slayers seventeen years after season 7 (although it eventually turns out that many others are alive).

Badass in Distress: Despite the endurance of the Slayers and her years of experience fighting evil, her injuries are bad enough to leave her hospitalized for months.
Big Eater: Oz describes her as having a "good appetite."
The Ghost: She is repeatedly mentioned but never seen throughout the first two books of the trilogy.

Watchers

Lady Anne

One of the leaders of the Watchers' Council in 1874, who makes a cameo appearence in a flashback in Immortal.

Spear Carrier: She attends a short meeting where she has one line of dialogue, and is then never mentioned again.
Women Are Wiser: She is the only woman at a meeting where the Watchers' leaders decide to set a fire to kill a Watcher who is sleeping with his Slayer. Anne is the lone voice of protest, saying they could kill Angela, the Slayer, by mistake and she has been a competent and loyal operative. Her male colleagues make a dismissive We Have Reserves comment. Anne turns out to be Right for the Wrong Reasons, as Angela doesn't die in the fire but does become a Rogue Agent to punish the Council.

Kurt Rendor

Ildikó Gellért's Watcher, an elderly Hungarian farmer who has seen better times but has enough status to be a village elder.

Ignored Expert: He repeatedly tells Ildikó that she hasn't developed her skills enough to infiltrate Countess Bathory's mansion and expect to survive. She eventually admits he may be right, but her Chronic Hero Syndrome makes her do it anyway.
What Happened to the Mouse?: His reaction to Ildikó's death and his subsequent actions are unrevealed.

Edmund de Voison

Marie-Christine Du Lac's Watcher and Parental Substitute, who views the Slayer's duties as being to do whatever the French nobility tells her.

Alchemy Is Magic: He works for an order that practices both magic and science, and his hobby is alchemy.
Aristocrats Are Evil: He is a nobleman who shows a complete Lack of Empathy for the miserable and oppressed lower classes, saying that people without jobs should just stop breeding so that they will die out and prevent the next generation from suffering that way.
Off with His Head!: He is sent to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror.

Master Wang

A Shaolin monk and Xiaoqin's late first Watcher.

Badass Bookworm: He was a talented scholar and a skilled martial arts teacher.
Caring Gardener: He devoted much time and affection to a garden few people ever saw, but hoped that those few people would be inspired to make their own gardens and inspire more people in turn.
Cool Old Guy: He died at the age of ninety-eight, and right up until the end of his life, he was a fine storyteller, scholar, gardener, and martial arts trainer who got along well with both his peers and women who most people treated as Beneath Notice. He was fond of joking to his best pupils that they showed promise but needed another thirty years of training.
Posthumous Character: He died of natural causes nine months before the short story “Ch'ing Shih”, which Xiaoqin narrates.
Trickster Mentor: He instructed the Potential Slayer Xiaoqin about the Slayer and vampires while pretending to just be a storyteller of fables. He never mentioned the Watchers' Council, presumably due to suspecting it would ruin the romantic image of a lone magical warrior that would make Xioaqin listen to his stories.

Sean Connelly

A well-traveled Irish Watcher who becomes Xiaoqin's second Watcher.

Mr. Exposition: He tells Xiaoqin about the duties of the Watchers' Council, various pieces of supernatural lore, and the history of a village where an evil vampire dwells.
My Greatest Second Chance: He was previously a Watcher for a Slayer who died soon after being chosen, and he is determined not to have Xiaoqin suffer the same fate.
Nice Guy: He is a polite man who tries to protect a thirteen-year-old thief from a pedophile's retaliation and lust.
Walking Armory: Connelly carries a sword, a shotgun, two pistols he keeps in shoulder holsters, and a stake in his boot.

Reed

The late Watcher of Pauline Barnard.

Badass Bookworm: Reed described himself as a historian, but Pauline recalls how he sometimes helped her with the fighting.
Fighting from the Inside: He was bitten by a vampire and attacked Pauline, but she wonders if a part of his old self was fighting against his new soulless, vampiric personality, as he smiled and complimented her after she staked him.
Posthumous Character: He has been dead for months by the beginning of the short story Pauline narrates, but she often thinks of him.

Friedrich Lichtermann

Britta Kessler's tutor and Watcher.

All Germans Are Nazis: Averted. He is a German World War I veteran who loathes Hitler and his burgeoning Nazi Party.
Apocalyptic Log: The short story Silent Screams is told in the format of a journal he writes after being locked in a mausoleum with a now vampiric Britta, who will try to kill him once she wakes up.
Badass Teacher: Downplayed. He is a primary school teacher who served as a motorcycle courier in World War I and survived some intense action and a run-in with a vampire (inspiring him to become both the tutor and Watcher of a Potential Slayer). However, he only survived against that vampire by luck, and when faced with a horde of vampires after the war, he panics.

The 1940 Watchers Council

Yanna Narvik, Marie-Christine Fontaine, Harold and John Travers, Charles Rochemont, Kenneth Haversham, Mr. Rubie, Trevor Kensington, Monsieur Arno, Sir Nigel Rathbone, Arthur Cabot, Mrs. Giles etc.

The Watcher's Council members in the retroactively non-canon (at least in some parts)^note novel Spike & Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row, set in 1940 during the period where Sophie Cartensen is the Slayer. They initially seek to use the chaos of World War II to amp up their vampire-hunting activities, but quickly find themselves preoccupied trying to stop Spike, Drusilla, and the demon Skrymir from killing all of the potential Slayers.

Anyone Can Die: Several members appear and get sympathetic characterization, but since the Potential Slayers they are defending are in the line of fire, the Watchers have a high attrition rate throughout the book. The only named ones to survive the novel are Yanna, John Travers, Marie-Christine Fontaine, Sir Nigel, and Bit Characters Gillian Partington, Mrs. Giles, Abram Levin, Jozef Strakus^note, and possibly Williams. By the final scene, their board of directors is reduced to Sir Nigel, Marie-Christine Fontaine, Mrs. Giles-who was on an assignment in South America during the main events of the book, two men hastily brought out of retirement to replace dead members, and a recently promoted John Travers.
Hold the Line: When Skrymir attacks their headquarters, they fight him with bullets, arrows, magical spells and anything else they have to weaken him and buy time for the girls, although most of them die in the process.
Let's Get Dangerous!: They start out seeming like the same bunch of stuffy Armchair Military types they are during the main series, but when Spike and Dru start killing Potentials, they send operatives after the duo (with little success) and fortify their headquarters to protect the Potentials.
Sir Trevor Kensington: They're hunting our girls and slaughtering the Watchers assigned to them. That is not what the Council of Watchers is used to. We are the hunters. The tables must be turned on these damned leeches straight away.

Yanna Narvik

Blessed with Suck: She has Seer powers which mainly bring her grief and stress.
Sanity Slippage: She goes insane after Sophie is killed in front of her.

Marie-Christine Fontaine

Badass Bureaucrat: She is an experienced bookkeeper who also has tracked down and identified many Potential Slayers, tries to fight Spike after he kills Harold, and steps down from her duties as a board member to serve as the personal Watcher of Sophie's replacement.
My God, What Have I Done?: She is disgusted with herself for agreeing to send Sophie on a likely suicidal mission.
Wanted a Son Instead: Her father raised her to join him as a Watchers Council member, but made it clear this was a last resort and he only gave her that consideration because he had no sons.
Spare a Messenger: She and John Travers are injured but left alive to deliver a mocking warning to the Council after Spike and Dru kill Harold Travers.

Harold and John Travers

Jerkass to One: Harold aloofly sends Sophie on a Suicide Mission and is abrasive toward her Watcher, but is pleasant (albeit not to the point of friendship) toward his fellow councilors.
Like Father, Unlike Son: Harold is a callous Armchair Military type, while his son John is polite, kind and doesn't view the Slayers as expendable. They are implied to be Quentin Travers' father and grandfather, in which case Quentin takes more after Harold than John.

Kenneth Haversham and Mr. Rubie

Badass Bureaucrat: Haversham and Rubie mainly arrange safe houses and expedited official documents to help the Slayer, but also do a fair amount of field work and put their lives on the line more than many Watchers and save Arianna de la Croix and Charles Rochemont from two vampires by using crossbows.
Cold-Blooded Torture: Spike captures Haversham and tortures him into revealing which Potential Slayers have been evacuated to London.
Drives Like Crazy: Haversham is a reckless enough driver that Yanna initially thinks Rubie's grieving expression after hearing about the beginnings of Spike's purge is queasiness about being the other man's passenger.
Reasonable Authority Figure: They chew out Charles Rochemont for taking his charge on a hunt when the Slayer gene inside her remains unactivated, but agree not to report his actions to the board of directors after being satisfied that he is properly repentant.
Those Two Guys: Haversham and Rubie share all their scenes and are opposites in size and wardrobe choice.

Sir Nigel Rathbone

Anger Born of Worry: He is rather terse and stern in his first scene, but this is clearly largely due to grief over the recently murdered Watchers and Potential Slayers.
Cool Old Guy: He is an elderly man who cares about his colleagues and makes self-deprecating comments about his poor skills at chess, although his Non-Action Guy moments can downplay this.
Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: He is an upper-class old man who has a knighthood and smokes a pipe that he never even removes from his mouth, even while speaking. All that smoking also gives him a rather raspy voice, though.
Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: He is shocked and appalled by the suggestion that Spike and Drusilla's murders are rarely done to serve a higher purpose but are mainly For the Evulz.
Non-Action Guy: He shows no fighting skills and spends the climax hovering in the background, trying to talk the Potential Slayers out of risking their lives.

Trevor Kensington

Classy Cane: He is an elderly gentleman with a brass wolf's head cane that he often taps on the floor to make people yield a conversation to him.
Cool Old Guy: He is "by far the eldest member of the board", knows how to use defensive magic, and makes bold and thoughtful suggestions about the fight against Spike and Drusilla while cursing the murderous vampires. He is also a skilled chess player whose every move makes his opponent, Sir Nigel, despair.
Half the Man He Used to Be: Skrymir slices him in half.
Hero of Another Story: Ariana describes him as "the oldest man she had ever seen" as well as "the most powerful". He has magical talents unmatched by most characters and Skrymir knows him by sight and asks "Will you ever die?" during their duel. All of this implies that he has had his share of heroic exploits that the readers never learn about.

Charles Rochemont

Annoying Arrows: He faces Skrymir with a longbow that Skyrmir mocks as ineffective, before realizing Charles is armed with a powerful runic arrow that can injure him.
Disney Villain Death: Skrymir impales Charles and then throws him out a three-story window to his death.
My God, What Have I Done?: He is deeply ashamed and introspective after nearly getting himself and his charge Arianna killed by having them hunt a vampire while she is still only an un-powered Potential Slayer.

Arthur Cabot

And Then John Was a Zombie: He is turned into a vampire and his former protectee becomes his first victim.
Going Native: He only moves to the North End of Boston because his Potential Slayer's family refuse to be separated from her or their community, but he makes many friends in the neighborhood and is like a member of the family.

Monsieur Arno

Upper-Class Twit: His family own a big mansion with many servants, and Arno is a heavy drinker, womanizer, and somewhat neglectful Watcher who dooms himself and his charge by drunkenly inviting two vampires into the house.

Abram Levin

Eye Scream: He is left blind but alive after a fight with Skrymir.

Laurent

A Cajun woman who acts as Asha Sayre's Watcher and guardian.

Go Out with a Smile: The last thing she does before dying is to smile reassuringly at Asha.
The Quiet One: Asha thinks that Laurent "used up whatever quota of words had been given to her by God" when she let Asha in on her destiny and The Masquerade, as since that day, Laurent has rarely spoken a sentence at a time.
Trickster Mentor: Laurent took Asha in at a young age but, unlike many Watchers, she never told Asha that she was being trained as a Potential Slayer and let her think she was only learning combat for defense against bullies. If Asha hadn't been chosen as a Slayer, Laurent would have probably never told her the truth about the Watchers Council and the Slayers.

Kobo-Sensei

Kobo

A retired Watcher from Japan and contemporary of Giles's grandmother. Giles seeks information from him in the novel Blooded and he is targeted by the antagonists in The Gatekeeper Trilogy.

Back for the Dead: He appears in two novels set and published about a year apart and dies in the second one.
Caring Gardener: Kobo maintains a fine garden and hopes to die in it. He does, but he ruefully notes that he always imagined having a sudden stroke as he nurtured plants rather than being violently murdered while coincidentally being in the garden.
Cynicism Catalyst: His Slayer died younger than some and Kobo eventually admits that made him more judgmental and bitter.
Passive-Aggressive Kombat: He and Giles spend a lot of time addressing each other in openly civil but ultimately hostile language. Notable moments include Kobo saying that he really would like to help Giles with a piece of lore but just can’t remember, or congratulating Giles about what Buffy has been up to while adding that, naturally, he would have done things differently if it was his choice.
Torture Is Ineffective: He refuses to reveal any information that his killers want or give them the satisfaction of hearing him scream as they skin him alive.

Liam Folsworthy

The Watcher of a Slayer who is called in Buffy's place in an alternate universe where Buffy died before being chosen.

Badass Bookworm: He is an Oxford graduate who is well-trained in martial arts and pyrotechnics and blew up the Master's lair rather than face him directly.
The Ghost: He is mentioned in the novel Portal Through Time, but doesn't appear.

Kit

Christopher “Kit” Bothwell

The Watcher of India Cohen, who appears in the Nancy Holder stories that feature India.

More than Mind Control: He is brainwashed into serving Cecile Lafayette, who makes him do things he abhors. However, after being freed, he believes that a part of him willingly served Cecile out of a desire to use her magic to resurrect India.
The Mourning After: He loved India, and has been a drunken beachfront hippie since she died.

Neema Mfune-Hays

A Watcher researcher who appears in the novel The Book of Fours.

Almighty Janitor: Her job of gathering the diaries of dead Slayers may not sound glamorous, but it gives her an insight into the Slayers that no other Watcher can match.
Passed-Over Promotion: She almost became Kendra's Watcher several years earlier and was mad enough to file an official complaint after being rejected for the job. She is in a relationship with Mr. Zabuto, who got the job in her place, though.
Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: She helps a prisoner of the Watchers Council escape due to 1) feeling sympathy for the cruel conditions of the other woman’s imprisonment and 2) needing her to help save Giles, Buffy, and Faith.

Alternate Universe 2004 Watchers

Ellen Haversham, Fr. Christopher Lonergan, Alan Fontaine, Fuchs, Hotchkiss, Yancy, Quinnones, Bianchi, etc.

A group of Watchers who have been trying to fight back against an army of vampires led by Giles in a Bad Future where he turned into a vampire.

Men of Sherwood: Desperate times have made the Sunnydale expeditionary force more militant than the Watchers from the main show, and most of their members accompany the main characters in intense commando raids, with several Mauve Shirts surviving fights against overwhelming odds even when more important characters die.

Ellen Haversham

Ambiguously Related: She may be meant to be a relative of the Watchers Mr. Haversham from Spike & Dru: Pretty Maids All In A Row and Daniel Haversham from The Wisdom of War, other Buffy novels written by the same author as The Lost Slayer tetralogy.
Minor Major Character: She is in charge of the Watchers’ group facing a nearly unstoppable vampire army during a Bad Future, but she only appears a few times at briefings and memorial services while her subordinates Willow, Xander, Oz, Wesley, and Lonergan get far more focus and interactions with Buffy.

Christopher Lonergan

Badass Preacher: He is a burly man who is compared to a pugilist, has a paramilitary look, and takes part in dangerous commando raids. It's eventually revealed that he's an ordained priest, which comes in handy when he blesses a bunch of water to turn it into vampire-killing holy water.
Face of a Thug: His nose is flat and smeared across his face after being broken several times, but he is the noble leader of a bunch of Men of Sherwood soldiers and is also a priest.
Sacrificial Lion: He survives lots of intense fighting across the last two books in the tetralogy before dying in the final battle, to the grief of the other characters.

Alexa Landry

A renowned field operative for the Watchers Council who has a family vendetta against Angel and tries to act on it in the comic storyline Past Lives.

Anti-Villain: She is a Blood Knight who is uncompromising in seeking revenge against Angel and going through any other heroes who try to protect him, but she has a Dark and Troubled Past, has done a lot to fight the forces of evil, and is sad and conflicted after injuring her mentor Travers.
Chest Insignia: Her battlesuit has a Cleavage Window in the shape of a cross, and she is quite a Knight Templar about hunting monsters.
Dark Action Girl: She earned the trust of Travers and his colleagues by being almost as good of a fighter as the Slayers, and became several times more formidable after being given a magic arsenal, which she uses to try to kill Angel despite his Heel–Face Turn.
Hell-Bent for Leather: Alexa is a fierce Hunter of Monsters with an array of leather outfits.
Put on a Prison Bus: She is last seen being imprisoned for punishment and/or rehabilitation by her superiors.
Wolverine Claws: One of her primary weapons is a bunch of magical daggers that stick out of a glove.
You Killed My Father: Angelus caused the death of one of her ancestors and made another spend fifteen years in an asylum while murdering his friends, and she is disinclined to draw the distinction between Angel and Angelus.

Helen Fontaine

A part-time author, part-time Watcher who appears in The Wisdom of War.

Ambiguously Related: It is implied that she is the granddaughter or great-granddaughter of Marie-Christine Fontaine from Spike & Dru: Pretty Maids All In a Row and she may also be a relative of Bit Character Alan Fontaine from The Lost Slayer tetralogy.
Armchair Military: She has never done anything for the Council besides attend board meetings prior to the novel. She is initially eager to meet the Slayers and get into the field, but quickly becomes disillusioned with the work, helps thwart Travers' unscrupulous plan, and then apparently quits the Council.
Happily Married: She and her husband spend a lot of time together despite their busy respective careers and still have a definite spark between them after six years of marriage.

Lord Nigel Ambrose-Bellairs

The leader of the surviving Watchers featured in the non-canon season 7 sequel novel Queen of the Slayers.

Bearer of Bad News: He has the unenviable task of telling Buffy that destroying the First Evil has not visibly improved the fight between good and evil.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: He is described as being a younger version of the late Quentin Travers and leads the Watchers' Council in much the same manner as Travers.

Ruth Zabuto

An elderly magic user and caretaker for the younger children (including her great-grandniece and formerly her grandson) at the Watcher Academy in the novel Slayer.

Needlework Is for Old People: Ruth is a very old woman who knits for her fellow Watchers to pass time.
Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Nina the narrator descibes her as being "old as sin and far less pleasant".

Artemis Jamison-Smythe

The twin sister of Nina.

Action Girl: She trains in combat for most of her life and goes into the field with Nina after her sister becomes a Slayer.
Anti-Hero: Her regimented view about focusing on the mission during field work means she has difficulties with concepts like letting demons tell their side of the story or pausing to helped injured vampire victims rather than pursuing their attackers.
Big Sister Instinct: She is protective of Nina before her sister gets powers and has a hard time accepting that Nina is now tougher than her.
Tomboy with a Girly Streak: She may act like a spartan Action Girl at times, but enjoys things like giving and getting manicures during girl time with her sister.

Rhys Zabuto

Ruth's grandson and a Watcher trainee.

Badass Bookworm: He is a studious Watcher who shoots a crossbow at an evil god while making a Badass Boast about how even if a Slayer has never killed a god, Watchers have.
Straight Gay: He comes across as a focused bookworm, but is in a long-term relationship with another boy.
Token Minority Couple: He and his boyfriend are both black.
Took a Level in Jerkass: While still a well-meaning Watcher and good friend in Chosen, he is more suspicious and quick to anger than he was in the last book.

Honora Wyndam-Pryce

A cousin of Wesley's and Watcher in the Slayer novel duology.

Battle Couple: She and her girlfriend Artemis fight alongside each other against enemies.
Blade Enthusiast: She specializes in using knives as weapons.
Blood Knight: When she picks a fight with Nina and learns that Nina has the super strength of a Slayer, Honora is delighted by the challenge and presses on with the fight.
The Bully: Honoa constantly humiliates Nina when they are growing up, such as by reminding her about her asthma.
Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Honora has fond memories of getting drunk at covert parties during her training days.
Locked Out of the Loop: She toys with the idea of going to L.A., taking over Angel Investigations, and letting Wesley stick around. Since she says that about a year after Angel season 5, either no one told her about Wesley dying or the Slayer duology is set in an Alternate Universe where Wesley was Spared by the Adaptation.
Pet the Dog: Despite being The Bully toward Nina, she did sneak her and two other kids into a concert once.
Reassigned to Antarctica: Honora recalls how Helen assigned her all kinds of crummy undercover work due to being rivals with her mother, although this turned into a Life Saving Misfortune when it meant she was in the field and not at the London headquarters when Caleb blew it up.
Screw the Rules, They're Not Real!: She carries a pistol rather than the standard crossbow due to feeling that those rules died with the leadership of the council.

Imogen Post

Gwendolyn Post's daughter and a teacher at the Watcher Academy.

Beneath the Mask: Imogen acts like a content nanny who just wants to belong to the Watcher community and no one ever thinks otherwise until she drops the act. She is really a calculating woman who has spent years trying to find a way to kill one of the Jamison-Smythe twins to thwart an apocalyptic prophecy. Then, a case of Motive Decay makes her turn to nihilism and decide that the world deserves to end and that if You Can't Fight Fate, it might be fun helping the prophecy come true.
Feminine Women Can Cook: Imogen acts like a proper British nanny and bakes tasty cookies.
Sins of the Father: Her mother's betrayal means that Imogen will never become a full Watcher, no matter how useful and loyal she is to her superiors.

Wanda Wyndham-Pryce

The aunt of Wesley and mother of Honora.

Abusive Parents: Artemis reveals that whenever Honora did poorly in training as a teenager, Wanda would whip her wrists.
Alliterative Name: Like her nephew, her first and last names begin with w’s.
Obstructive Bureaucrat: She embodies every flaw Wesley had before his Character Development and lectures her bare handful of other surviving Watchers about rule violations, regardless of whether anyone is left to enforce those rules. This attitude and lots of other bad behavior eventually get her fired.
Once Done, Never Forgotten: A proxy version, as Wesley, the "golden boy" of her family, getting fired by the council and ending up working for a vampire is apparently a source of lasting embarrassment for her.
Pet the Dog: She is distraught when her colleague Bradford Smythe dies of an apparent heart attack.
Skewed Priorities: During an attack on the castle the remaining Watchers live in, her main concern is protecting their money rather than their lives.

Helen Jamison-Smythe

The widow of Merrick and mother of Nina and Artemis.

Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: She treats her daughters horribly and largely ignores them for field work, but this is largely out of a desperate desire to alter their upbringing so that a prophecy about Nina becoming a Slayer will never come to pass.
The Mourning After: She has never been involved with another man in the nine years since her husband Merrick died, and the experience turned her into such a sad and angry person that her daughters have That Man Is Dead feelings about the woman and mother she was before his death.

Leo Silvera

A longtime friend of Nina Jamison-Smythe who becomes her Watcher and boyfriend, but hides Dark Secrets.

Half-Human Hybrid: His late father was human but it turns out that his mother is a succubus. This requires him to drain varying amounts of life energy to survive. Initially, his mother gives him the leftovers of her victims, but later he fatally drains murderous demons Artemis and Honora identify and capture.
Left for Dead: The heroes are reluctantly forced to abandon him in a burning cellar during his first appearance but he returns alive afterward.

Eve Silvera

The mother and field partner of Leo. She is secretly a sucubus.

Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She acts like an experienced and caring Reasonable Authority Figure but is plotting to open a Hellmouth and kill Nina.
Visionary Villain: She wants to open a hellmouth and then drain a tithe from every demon that exits the portal to keep herself and Leo fed. She also plans to protect the world from these demons by draining every Slayer left and absorbing their power.

Jade Weatherby

The much stabler daughter of Special Operations Team leader Weatherby, and one of Nina's fellow trainees.

Demolitions Expert: She is the bomb maker for the protagonists.
Heavy Sleeper: She is constantly sleeping at odd hours of the day, which is part of why she and Nina rarely interact until the second book of the Slayer duology.
Hero of Another Story: She spent several months undercover in a coven of witches, spying on Buffy, in the months before the End of Magic.

Bradford Smythe

The great-uncle of Artemis and Nina, or so they think.

Cool Old Guy: His body shows the signs of heavy age but he is fairly polite, smart, and kind. Also, despite his advanced age, he is one of the only Watchers at the castle (along with Honora and the Silveras) who was working in the field during the war with the First Evil, while Artemis and the others were non-combatants who went on a vacation to tour the castle and discuss its proud Watcher heritage on the same day that Caleb blew up the Watchers Council HQ and most if not all of the Watchers present there.
Parental Substitute: He adopted Helen after her mother, his Slayer, died.
Passed in Their Sleep: He dies of a heart attack in his sleep after Eve drains too much energy from him.

Characters / Buffyverse: Watchers and Slayers

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Slayers

Slayers (pre-Season 7)

Sineya, The First Slayer

Played By: Sharon Ferguson

Xin Rong

Played By: Ming Liu

Appears In: "Fool for Love"

Nikki Wood

Played By: April Weeden Washington (Season 5), KD Aubert (Season 7)

Kendra Young

Played By: Bianca Lawson

See Faith Lehane

Season 7 Potential Slayers

Kennedy

Played By: Iyari Limon

Annabelle

Played By: Courtnee Draper

Appears In: "Bring on the Night"

Vi / Violet

Played By: Felicia Day

Rona

Played By: Indigo

Molly

Played By: Clara Bryant

Amanda

Played By: Sarah Hagan

Chao-Ahn

Played By: Kirsty Wu

Chloe

Played By: Lalaine

Shannon

Played By: Mary Wilcher

Caridad

Played By: Dania Ramirez

The Frankfurt and Istanbul Potential Slayers

Played By: Uncredited stuntwoman and Tess Hall

The Watcher's Council

Quentin Travers

Played By: Harris Yulin

The Shadow Men

Played By: Geoffrey Kasule, Karara Muhoro, Daniel Wilson

Appear In: "Get It Done"

Weatherby, Collins & Smith

Played By: Jeff Ricketts, Alastair Duncan, Kevin Owers

Lydia

Played By: Cynthia Lamontagne

Mrs. Gwendolyn Post

Played By: Serena Scott Thomas

Appears In: "Revelations"

Merrick Jamison-Smythe

Played By: Donald Sutherland & Richard Riehle

Robson

Played By: Rob Nagle

Nigel

Played By: Kris Iyer

Phillip

Played By: Oliver Muirhead

Mr. Zabuto

Micaela Tomassi

Professor Diana "The Prof" Dormer

Slayers, Potential Slayers, and Watchers in Ambiguously Canonnote Books that were approved of by Joss Whedon but were sometimes contradicted by later episodes of the show and/or each other novels and comics

Slayers

August

Anna Kuei

Marie

Sandra

Ngaio

Cosmina Enescu

Maricruz and Taylor

Indira Nunnally

Frankie Rosenberg

Hailey Larsson

Watchers

Lady Anne

Yanna Narvik, Marie-Christine Fontaine, Harold and John Travers, Charles Rochemont, Kenneth Haversham, Mr. Rubie, Trevor Kensington, Monsieur Arno, Sir Nigel Rathbone, Arthur Cabot, Mrs. Giles etc.

Yanna Narvik

Marie-Christine Fontaine

Harold and John Travers

Slayers, Potential Slayers, and Watchers in Ambiguously Canon^note novels and comics