Characters / Buffyverse: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

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

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

"Sorry. I think my sense of humor is trapped in a jar somewhere."

Played By: Alexis Denisof

Appearances: Buffy the Vampire Slayer | Angel

"You know, back in my days as a rogue demon hunter, I once used that very spear to pin down what I thought was a small Rodentius demon. Of course, the poodle's owners weren't very happy."

A replacement sent by the Watcher's Council following Giles' termination. Clean-cut, by the book, and not without an inflated sense of self, Wesley is immediately detested by both Buffy and Faith. Most of his decisions (though well-intentioned) fail spectacularly, such as his attempt to "rehabilitate" Faith when she goes rogue. Like Giles before him, the Council eventually tires of Wesley and lets him go. At a loose end, he becomes a "rogue demon hunter" himself, his travels eventually leading him to LA, where he joins Angel Investigations. As a former Watcher, Wesley is the resident demon expert. He's also a brilliant linguist and a fairly skilled sorcerer. As the series progresses, he slowly becomes more assertive and confident. In spite of the drastic changes he goes through over the course of both series, Wesley's most noteworthy personality traits remain the same—he is pragmatic, consistently focused on the greater good, learns from his mistakes, and will do what is right despite his loyalty to those he loves. At his core, as Angel tells him in Season 5, Wesley is a good man who is able to make the hard choices when no one else will.

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A-F

• Abusive Parents: His father used to lock him in the cellar and generally belittled his son in every single way one can imagine. In addition, the way Wesley is easily able to deduce a girl is being sexually abused implies that his own abuse was sexual.
• Adrenaline Makeover: He goes from an awkward clean-cut nerd to a rugged Marlboro Man type thanks to Character Development.
• The Alcoholic: Of the functioning variety after his betrayal in Season 3. He takes up drinking again in Season 5 after Fred's death and the restoration of his memories of Connor.
• Aloof Ally: After he's thrown out of Angel Investigations, he becomes this to them for the rest of Season 3 and the early part of Season 4. He rescues Angel from the bottom of the ocean, and even allows Angel to feed on him when he realizes that pig's blood is not enough for the severely malnourished vampire. Wesley's motive in all of this is not to earn Angel's forgiveness and get back on the team; he simply does it because he recognizes Angel's importance as a force for good in their ongoing struggle against evil. Angel actually does forgive him and offers to let him back on the team, but Wesley responds coldly and still stays the hell away for a while. When he does eventually rejoin Angel Investigations, it's more out of mutual necessity than anything else, and there's still a lot of tension between him and the rest of the group, especially Gunn. This tension, however, is undone after Wolfram & Hart has reality warped to give Connor a new life and is partially restored when Connor's and Wesley's memories are restored.
• An Arm and a Leg: His counterpart in the Skipverse is missing an arm, likely from the same demon who appeared in "Parting Gifts" (but without Angel to help him in this timeline). His fencing skills are still formidable.
  Wesley: Ah, Kungai demon. Couple of years ago.
• Authority in Name Only: When he first appears in Buffy Season 3, he's meant to replace Giles as Buffy and Faith's Watcher. Of course, Wesley also proves to be a bumbling, cowardly idiot who's no use in a real fight; thus, Buffy and Faith routinely overrule him, and when a Watcher's advice is needed, they ask Giles instead. He Takes a Level in Badass in Angel, even taking over leadership of Angel Investigations for a brief time; of course, even during that time of leadership, Angel himself is often in charge and leads several of their missions over him.
• Badass Biker: Only in his first episode. Those leather pants really chafe his... legs.
• Badass Boast: When Faith is about to torture him with fire.
  Faith: I think I wanna hear you scream.
  Wesley: You never will.
• Badass Bookworm: Book-smart and a total badass.
• Badass Normal: Due to the lifestyle he leads, Wesley develops above-average strength, reaction time and endurance and is somewhat athletic. Over time, Wesley develops exceptional physical abilities, as he leads his own demon hunting militia against string demonic creatures and has little trouble besting them. He is able to take on vampires with success and subdues Justine Cooper single-handedly on two occasions. Wesley gains experience during his time with Angel, and as his personality hardens, he becomes an incredibly skilled martial artist, as well as being proficient with weapons.
• Beard of Sorrow: Wesley seems to stop shaving regularly halfway through Angel Season 3, as he struggles with agonizing moral choices and his estrangement from the rest of the team. It might also be a way to hide the scar on his neck from when he had his throat slit.
• Better as Friends: He and Cordelia come to this conclusion after the Mother of All Awkward Kisses.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: He has a folding sword that pops out of his sleeve. He appears to hold it like a normal sword once its extended, though.
• Brains and Bondage: Eek.
  Angel: Who do we know that has handcuffs?
  Wes: Well, I — ! ...wouldn't know.
• Break Them by Talking: Wesley is very, very good at psychological warfare. Throughout Angel's entire five year run, there are only two people who are shown to be capable of matching his skill at it: Angelus and Lilah. And even against them he still holds his own. He's also not above using it on his friends if he thinks it's necessary. In fact, Wesley has engaged everyone in psychological warfare at one time or another—enemies, allies, enemies turned into allies, half-insane skittering bug-demons, cyborgs, innocent victims, evil lawyers, ancient demon kings... you name it, and Wesley has probably gone toe-to-toe with it in a war of words, and won.
• British Stuffiness: At first, although he loosens up a lot after joining Angel Investigations, mostly due to Cordelia's influence.
• Brits Love Tea: Like Giles, he likes his tea. He finds that brewed tea is something you can't replicate with a bag.
  Cordelia: I thought you were gonna be a man and talk to him about this!
  Wesley: I was a man! I said... things.
  Cordelia: Like what?
  Wesley: Like... did he prefer milk or sugar in his tea. (Pause) It's how men talk about things in England.
• Casanova Wannabe: The script for "Bad Girls" says that he, "Thinks he's Sean Connery when he's pretty much George Lazenby". By Season 5, particularly after Fred's death, he's probably more like Daniel Craig.
• Character Development: One of the best examples in the Buffyverse. Wesley goes from a totally useless and self-important Miles Gloriosus and general target for mockery to a sharpshooting, utterly ruthless Manipulative Bastard, Exalted Torturer and - to bad guys at least - a borderline Soft-Spoken Sadist. By Season 5 of Angel, it's almost hard to believe he's the same character.
• Chekhov's Skill: Specifically, darts.
• Clothing Reflects Personality: When he first appeared in Sunnydale, he most often dressed in prim suits, vests and overshirts, and had a manner of dress and attitude somewhat reminiscent of Giles. Upon joining Angel Investigations, he maintained his style and mannerisms; however, as his character progressed Wesley took on a more casual appearance, mostly wearing black or white t-shirts under a short sleeve button shirt, light colored pullovers, khaki pants and a wool pea coat. As he slowly regressed into darkness and depression his attire came to match (black t-shirts, darker ill fitting button shirts, jeans, work/cargo pants, sweaters and a stained brown leather coat); all his clothes were often stained or unwashed in appearance. He also left his hair unstyled, no longer wore glasses (despite his heavy use of firearms around that time) and even allowed himself some light stubble, which added to his air of melancholy. Even after he rejoined Angel and his friends at Wolfram & Hart, he retained his more casual clothing style, albeit with a more groomed appearance rather than his previously disheveled look and slightly more work place friendly clothing. He returned to his suit and tie when he became Angel's Liaison to the Senior Partners, but this was explicitly identified as part of their torment of him, forcing Wesley to regress back to an appearance and time that he had grown apart from.
• Combat Pragmatist: For a skilled but ultimately normal human fighting vampires and demons, it's a necessity. Wesley will take whatever advantage he can get in a fight and use whatever tactics he has to to win. He's also the only major character in the Buffyverse to regularly use firearms.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: He initially replaced Doyle. Whereas Doyle was a cynical and sardonic working-class Irish half-demon, Wesley was a bumbling and optimistic upper-class English human ex-Watcher. At first, anyway.
• Convenient Replacement Character: He first appears in Angel in the episode following Doyle's death. By the next episode he's replaced him as the third member of the Power Trio of Angel Investigations.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: When his actions result in baby Connor getting trapped in Quor'toth during Angel Season 3. After the damage is done, Fred flat-out tells him that if he had bothered to talk to the people he ostensibly loved and trusted before giving his trust to someone like Holtz, it never would have happened.
  • Subverted, however, in that given Team Angel's reaction to what happened, none of them would have listened if Wesley had tried to argue instead of simply taking Connor.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Wesley can be surprisingly ruthless, willingly sacrificing his allies or sending men to their deaths as part of a grand design. In his own words:
  Wesley: You try not to get anybody killed, you wind up getting everybody killed.
• Cunning Linguist: With mixed results. You try arguing prophecy with a giant hamburger.
• Daddy Issues: He has a strained relationship with his father, who had always been disappointed in him as a child, an attitude that was worsened when Wesley was fired from the Watchers Council.
• Dating Catwoman: Lilah Morgan, whom he later beheaded. Ah, love.
• Deadpan Snarker: Very Britishly so.
  Client: (upon learning she's not alone in having superpowers, turns to Cordelia) So what's wrong with you?
  Wesley: Where to begin?
• Death Seeker: Whenever he's required to make an impossible choice, Wesley is uncomfortably reckless with his own life. Triggered by the prophecy that Angel would kill Connor and partly because Fred chose Gunn over him, he apparently wishes to die, as the Loa points out. Interestingly, by the end of Season 5, after much more suffering, he nonetheless claims he intends to live through the final battle. His half-assed plan suggests otherwise, though, and he does in fact die. This could also be because others show a marked tendency to condemn him for hard choices he shoulders that they refuse to make themselves.
  Loa: You risk your life, human, calling on the Loa. Perhaps what you really seek is death. The pain in your heart begs for it.
  Wesley: Then do it and be done. Nothing else will stop me.
• Despair Event Horizon: He crosses it in late Season 5 after a continuous Trauma Conga Line, which included shooting someone he thought was his father to save Angel and Fred, Cordy's death, followed very shortly by Fred's death, and then the return of his memories of Connor, freely admitting as such to Illyria in a Despair Speech during the Grand Finale. At the climax of the After the Fall continuation, when he finds out that the Senior Partners hitting the Reset Button on the Fall of Los Angeles would not reverse his death, he's resigned to it, believing he has nothing to live for with Fred gone, and that all that matters is he's saved Angel and the rest of Los Angeles.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: In the final raid on the Senior Partners, Wesley is assigned to take out Vail, the sorcerer of the group. Vail runs him through with a knife, and Illyria is left to tearfully cradle his body.
• Dies Wide Open: His eyes remain open staring at "Fred" as he dies.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Starts drinking heavily to counter the melancholy of Fred's death. He is seldom entirely sober, as Spike sniffs out.
  • Maybe not drowning, but he certainly takes his sorrows for a swim after his split from AI.
• Embarrassing Nickname: He was "Head Boy" at Academy.
  • Wesley seems blissfully unaware of the connotations - which is understandable, as Head Boy (and Head Girl) is an extremely normal title in British schools. This is something that Spike, who mainly brings it up, is entirely aware of considering his background, but thinks it's funnier to pretend otherwise.
• Emergency Impersonation: In the episode "Guise Will Be Guise", where he is forced to impersonate Angel. Right down to quaffing a glass of blood.
• Ensign Newbie: Wesley's only encounters with vampires prior to appearing on Buffy were under "controlled circumstances"; basically, he's in over his head from the get-go.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Lampshaded by Angel.
  Lorne: You mean he actually says "Eureka"?
• Exalted Torturer: He's awfully handy with a knife. Or scalpel. Or arrowhead.
  Wesley: I avoided the major organs. He'll probably live.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: When he goes through his darker phases, he grows a layer of stubble. Seasons 1 and 2 Wes have no facial hair at all, while Seasons 3-5 have Wes with varying degrees of facial hair.
• Expy: Season 3 has him undergo a similar arc as Willow on the parent series. Both are considered the "brains" of their respective groups, have a season-long spiral of making bad decisions, and end up temporarily betraying their friends whose trust they have to work to earn back in the following season.
• Fanservice Pack: As noted under Adrenaline Makeover. While he was never a bad-looking guy to begin with, his experiences also cause him to undergo a major overhaul in appearance and wardrobe, to the point that he's become a Mr. Fanservice in his own right by late Season 3.
• Fatal Flaw: Wesley has two major ones.
  • Mistrust. This is, paradoxically, also his greatest strength as it allows him to be Crazy-Prepared in almost all situations. Cordelia is the only person he appears to trust absolutely, which leads to tragedy in Season 4, when even he fails to see that her personality change is due to demonic possession. It understandably makes his mistrust of Angel in late-Season 5, after he learns that Angel altered all their memories, all the more understandable.
  • Also, an ingrained belief in his own unworthiness, which is not uncommon in those with Abusive Parents. See especially his arrival at Angel Investigations. Angel had just exploded a bag of coffee beans, Wesley walks in with Cordelia and slips on them. He immediately says "My fault, I'm sure," and attempts to all-but grovel in order to not get rejected. See also, his refusal to accept Angel reaching out to him in 4x02, where Wes believes Angel came only to learn what he knew about Cordelia's disappearance, instead of also to get Wesley back. Particularly tragic, is his relationship with Lilah. His mistrust of her, combined with his belief that his love wasn't enough to help her start on the path to redemption, despite all evidence to the contrary, leads to tragic consequences for them both.
• Fate Worse than Death: His ghost is still stuck working for the Senior Partners in Hell, after death.
  • Subverted at the end of After the Fall. After Wesley helped Angel re-set the timeline, and Los Angeles was rid of Wolfram & Hart, it appears he was allowed to pass on to Heaven. Angel likes to imagine that Wes and Fred are together finally, in the afterlife, and he names a branch of the LA public library after them both.
• Fire-Forged Friends With Gunn. It makes their friendship later coming apart all the sadder.
• Foil: To Giles, especially when he first appeared on Buffy.
• Functional Addict: After being cast out of the team in Season 3, he starts drinking heavily, and again in Season 5 after Fred's death; in the latter case, Spike himself sniffs out that Wesley's been getting hammered constantly. Despite this, he's still able to keep fighting the good fight on both occasions.

G-M

• Game-Breaking Injury: During the episode "The Thin Dead Line," he's shot in the gut by a zombie cop and spends the next two episodes in a wheelchair. Though he's out of the chair by "Disharmony," any strenuous activity still causes him visible pain.
• Geek Physiques: Averted. He's quite Pierce Brosnan-y, after all.
• Genius Bruiser: An intelligent man who eventually becomes the show's biggest badass after Angel himself.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Ditches his glasses and gets contacts after the events of Angel Season 3.
• Good Is Dumb: The least trustworthy member on Angel's team is also the smartest. What are the odds?
  • Played with. For one thing he's only the smartest if you don't count Fred, for another the reason he's untrustworthy is because he follows his own moral compass even when it conflicts with his loyalty to the team. In some ways he's actually the most moral and selfless of anyone on the team, including Angel.
• Good Is Not Nice: This is one of his defining characteristics since his early days on Buffy, although it becomes a lot more noticeable after he takes a few levels in badass. When things are quiet, he is soft-spoken and even dorky, but when there's something bigger at stake, he's more interested in getting results than being nice, if that is what is required to save lives.
  • A prime example is the second season episode "Untouched", where Team Angel is attempting to help Bethany, a young woman who has telepathic powers she can't seem to control. Angel and Cordelia are both very gentle with Bethany, doing their best to help her keep calm and to make sure she feels safe with them. Wesley, on the other hand, after figuring out that her powers were the result of intense psychic trauma from her childhood, intentionally provokes her by mentioning the person who hurt her. She's extremely upset by it, and Angel and Cordelia both berate Wesley for being so harsh, but Angel later admits that it was a useful thing for them to know, because it allowed them to help Bethany in the long run.
• Good Is Not Soft: He was "one to make the hard decisions even if he has to make them alone". He would rather have allowed Willow to die than to give the Mayor back an object which would allow him to complete his Ascension. He is immediately dismissed by the Scoobies as lacking in compassion, though his logic is sound. Later examples include his plans to storm the Pylean Royal Palace, sending numbers of rebels to certain death to allow the rest to infiltrate the palace; taking baby Connor away from Angel; and shooting what he thought was his own father to protect Angel and Fred.
• The Gunslinger: Type C: The Woo. Wes is generally the guy with guns, though Gunn and Fred occasionally use them. The showy moves are strictly his department.
  • Lampshaded in "Lineage". We cut from slow-mo Wesley firing two pistols in mid-air to Fred, in real time, sarcastically sighing, "Yes, thank you, Wesley, I'd love a gun."
• Handicapped Badass: A zombified cop's bullet lands Wesley in a wheelchair for a while, but you don't need legs to load a shotgun! Then there's his Skipverse counterpart, who's a good fighter and formidable fencer with only one arm.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: Stealing Angel's baby, then going solo for a while.^note Also, being an accessory to murder and keeping Justine chained in his closet.
• Heartbroken Badass: Fred's death utterly breaks Wesley, and he spends the rest of the series as a walking, talking, drinking pile of heartache while still helping his team fight evil.
• Hero Packing Heat: He's one of the only major character in the Buffyverse to regularly use firearms in combat and is very good with them too.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Angel. Even after Angel tries to kill him at the end of Season 3, it doesn't stop Wes from spending months tracking Angel down and rescuing him from beneath the ocean.
  • It goes the other way too. Angel erases the team's memories partly for Connor, but partly so that he can get Wes back. As Angelus, Wesley is one of the few people the soulless vampire respects and even compliments. In After the Fall, Wolfram & Hart have this rejoinder when Wes tells them he's dead, and therefore irrelevant to their plans:
  Wes: I'm dead.
  Wolfram & Hart: Like that matters. Dead, sure. And also, his closest friend.
• Horrible Judge of Character: He trusts Holtz, Angel's old Arch-Enemy who is obsessed with getting revenge on Angel however he can, to help him take Connor away. As a result, Connor ends up trapped in a hell dimension, whereas Wesley gets a Slashed Throat from Holtz's right-hand and thrown out of Angel Investigations.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: Collapsible wrist-mounted swords.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: He kills Skip by shooting a bullet into a tiny hole in his armor, said hole having been created when Angel broke one of his horns.
• Insistent Terminology: In his first appearance on Angel, wants to make sure everyone knows that he's a rogue demon hunter.
  Cordelia: What's a rogue demon?
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Wesley has a tendency to separate himself from the rest of the group whenever he has to make hard choices. Sometimes it comes back to bite him. Sometimes it's what is necessary, such as when he hunts Angelus with Faith in Season 4.
• Irony: In "Disharmony," he tells Angel that he can't simply buy Cordelia's friendship back... only to be left Death Glaring at the end of the episode, when Angel has succeeded in doing exactly that by buying her a new wardrobe.
• Jacob Marley Apparel: In the comic, he is permanently bound to one of his old Buffy-era suits. Wesley surmises the Senior Partners are just finding new ways to torment him some more, since the suit and glasses are a reminder of his past self that he left behind.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Becomes fond of these after his Character Development sets in.
• Jaded Washout: In slow-motion. Wesley is basically the same guy from before the Watcher's Council fired him. On the other hand, he's not eager to rejoin those officious windbags, even when bribed. Over the course of years, he grows so detached from his old values that the demolition of the Council building doesn't even upset him.
• Klingon Promotion: Became Illyria's de facto consort after shooting the first one.
• The Klutz: In his early post-Buffy appearances. For the love of God, don't let him near an ax.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Life has not been kind to Wesley, but he continues to fight the good fight anyway.
• The Lancer: To Angel, being the most ruthless member of the team who even betrays them at one point and serves as an ex-Watcher Foil to his vampire boss.
• Like Brother and Sister: With Cordelia.
• Miles Gloriosus: During his time on Buffy. He gloats to Giles that he can handle himself in a fight, having managed to defeat vampires "under controlled circumstances." When he gets into a real fight, however, he proves totally useless and has to be bailed out by Giles. During his time on Angel, he gets steadily more and more dangerous, to the point where he's probably the most dangerous Badass Normal in the Buffyverse by the time of his death.
  • By the end, he becomes the Watcher he probably thought he was, when he was first assigned to Buffy and Faith.
• Mirror Character: While initially he and Giles were polar opposites, they began to mirror each other through their willingness to commit "lesser evils" for the greater good, like kidnapping Justine in order to find Angel. Both either attempted or succeeded in murdering people with the aims of saving the world. For instance, just as Giles killed Ben Wilkinson to prevent the eventual resurgence of Glory, Wesley tried to kill the newly arisen Illyria, without hesitation or attempting to find a way to separate her from her shell, Fred. Both were also willing to let innocents die (such as Dawn, Willow, and arguably Spike) for the same cause.
• Moral Myopia: In Season 4, he's bitter and angry after being booted from the team in Season 3; when asked what happened to him by Gunn, Wesley replies, matter-of-factly, "I had my throat cut and all my friends abandoned me". The reason his friends abandoned him is because when he was reading a prophecy of how Angel might end up killing Connor, he kept it from them and didn't discuss it with any of them - mainly because he was jealous of Fred and Gunn's relationship (having had a thing for Fred that she was oblivious to). Rather than getting help from his friends, Wesley made the poor decision to consult with Holtz, their enemy... who was the one that ended up kidnapping Connor to Quor'toth. In fact, when Lorne discovered Wesley's plan to steal the baby, Wesley merely knocked him unconscious rather than explain things.
  • Or perhaps Wesley, who has been shown to have deep psychological insight into what motivates others, realized that none of them would have listened to him regarding Angel's son, and so as Angel himself admitted to Wesley in Season 5, he did what had to be done. That it turned out to be a hoax and ended up failing is something that could only have been known in hindsight. With the information Wes had, he made the best choice available to him.
• Mr. Exposition: As an ex-Watcher, it seems to come with the territory.

N-Z

• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Played straight and subverted. Two big examples:
  • When Faith begins to go rogue after accidentally killing a man, Wesley calls in a special ops team and arrests her, unfortunately ruining Buffy's plan just as Angel was beginning to get through to her and kicking off a series of events which leads to Faith becoming Mayor Wilkins' second-in-command. Buffy and the Scoobies already disliked him before, and he only further cements their hatred of him with this screw-up.
  • Then, on Angel, he's fooled by a fake prophecy that claims that Angel will murder his own son, and makes a deal with Angel's enemy Holtz to take him to safety, only for Holtz's enforcer Justine to slit his throat and steal the baby herself, resulting in a sequence of events that led to Connor being trapped in the hell dimension Quor'toth, where he undergoes Training from Hell and emerges as an Ax-Crazy Antagonistic Offspring. Fake prophecy or not, Angel was understandably displeased with Wesley.
  • Angelus summed it up best:
  Angelus: Good old Wes. Always count on him to tackle a bad situation and make it worse.
  • In both instances, he learned from his mistakes instead of letting them cripple him, despite everyone around him blaming him for making the best choice he could in the moment, which takes a great deal of inner strength.
  • Subverted as of Season 4, particularly seen when Wes' plan to use Angelus to defeat The Beast and then have Faith help to re-ensoul Angelus works.
• Nothing Up My Sleeve: Again — Collapsible wrist-mounted swords.
  • He's even got room for a grappling hook under there.
• Omniglot: His proficiency with languages is expanded upon even further once he makes the transition from Buffy to Angel. It's extremely rare to come across a language (human or demon) that he doesn't know. Even when he encounters the most ancient and obscure texts, he's still capable of recognizing enough words to determine the context and decipher the meaning.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Brought back in After the Fall by the Senior Partners. This is doubly ironic, as Wesley is bound to a "standard perpetuity clause" in his contract, the same as Holland Manners and Lilah. Furthermore, he now serves as liaison to the Senior Partners, taking over from Hamilton (whom Angel killed in the series finale).
• The Paladin: A Good Is Not Nice, Knight in Sour Armor who jumps multiple Took a Level in Badass levels while going through a Trauma Conga Line that turns him into an Iron Woobie when it's not Break the Cutie.
  • His training by the Watcher's Council (The Order) never fully leaves him, as seen when he tag-teams Angelus with vampire slayer Faith in Season 4.
• Perma-Stubble: After he Took a Level in Badass.
  Willow: Oh, and it's the Marlboro man.
• Platonic Life-Partners:
  • With Cordelia. He loves her like a sister, their first - and last - awkward kiss notwithstanding, and she feels the same about him. They bicker and back each other up like siblings, and in Season 5's You're Welcome, Cordy refuses to die without saying good-bye to Wes, asking his forgiveness for killing Lilah, and telling him he "still works the best mojo in town" as Team Angel leaves in the elevator. Besides Angel, Wes is the only one she spends a lot of time with during her last day on Earth, and the only one she says good-bye to.
  • With Faith in Season 4. They immediately fall into a Watcher-Slayer dynamic that is a joy to behold and probably one of the best parts of the entire season.
• Pragmatic Hero: He is willing to delve into morally grey areas to get the job done, though he is firmly one of the good guys.
• Properly Paranoid: Wesley is never entirely at ease with a vampire boss, and is always preparing countermeasures against Angel's Face–Heel Turn. His background as a former Watcher ensures this kind of thinking.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In "Epiphany". When Angel returns to the team and starts acting like he knows what they've been going through without him, being skeptical of Cordelia being out working on a Friday night, Wesley promptly shuts him down calmly and quietly.
  Angel: Knowing her...
  Wesley: But you don't. You don't know her at all. For months now, you haven't cared to. Otherwise you might have realized that our Cordelia has become a very solitary girl. She's not the vain, carefree creature she once was. Well, certainly not carefree. It's the visions, you see. The visions that were meant to guide you. You could turn away from them. She doesn't have that luxury. She knows and experiences the pain in this city, and because of who she is, she feels compelled to do something about it. It's left her little time for anything else. You'd have known that, if you hadn't had your head firmly up your... place that isn't on top of your neck.
• Replacement Flat Character: Giles became steadily more relaxed, funny, confident, modern and so on, so in time, Wesley was brought in with the intention of being worse than Giles ever was. Interestingly, Wesley then underwent a similar transformation as he transitioned from Buffy to Angel, becoming a fully rounded character in time.
• Sacrificial Lion: He is the only official member of Team Angel to die in the finale.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Buffy even lampshades it:
  Buffy: If we need someone to scream like a woman, we'll give you a call.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: His trusty Mossberg 12-gauge. Manages to land only one hit with it, alas.
• Shipping Torpedo: Due to his own feelings for Fred, isn't particularly fond of her relationship with Gunn, and even less so of her semi-flirtation with Knox. He gets the girl in the end.
• Slashed Throat: By Justine on Holtz's orders in Angel Season 3. He survives, but adopts a sotto voice for the rest of the series.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He starts off as one, thinking himself a brave and experienced monster hunter when he's really a pompous jerk with limited field experience. This goes away after he's fired by the Watcher's Council which ironically allows him to actually become as tough as he imagined himself as being.
• The Smart Guy: The smartest member of Angel Investigations until Fred joins in Season 3.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Especially post-Season 3.
• Taught by Experience: He becomes a more proficient fighter against evil after joining Angel Investigations and gaining experience in the field, than he ever did during his early days training for the Watcher's Council.
• Together in Death: In her final scene with Wesley, Illyria allows one selfless gesture by taking Fred's shape, then consoling Wesley that they will be together in the afterlife. Given the non-existence nature of Fred at that moment, which both of them knew about, it slips into Let Them Die Happy. After the Fall shows that this is not the case for a different reason: Fred is in Heaven whereas Wesley is stuck working for the Senior Partners in Hell for all eternity.
• Took a Level in Badass: In his first appearances on Buffy, he was an arrogant, cowardly dork who has constantly ignored and mocked by the Scooby Gang. Over the course of Angel, he becomes a competent demon slayer who even manages to take over leadership of Angel Investigations for a time.
• Took a Level in Cynic: A significant change in his persona came about shortly after he kidnapped Connor and had his throat slit by Justine Cooper (as well as his looks, as he started going unshaven and without his glasses). While he ultimately still fought the good fight, his emotional attachment to the friends he once fought with was almost completely severed, the only exception being Fred, to a certain degree, and his non-stop search to find both Angel and Cordelia (who'd both gone missing). He developed a pessimistic views, a self-loathing view of himself and a more darker sense of humor. He also become much more serious and focused and lost a great deal of his former cowardice. He began to work on his own and form his own group, and showed little interest in rejoining Angel even after he forgave him for kidnapping Connor.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: On Buffy, he is a pompous, smug jerk that everybody finds to be a pain in the ass, but after he is fired from the Watcher's Council and moves over to Angel he takes a slice of Humble Pie and becomes far more sympathetic. Then Season 3 comes and puts him through the emotional wringer. After that, the same generally nice guy from the first two seasons ruthlessly stabs a harmless junkie at one point in order to make her reveal what she knows about Angelus. And tying in with Faith cooling down from her own Jerkass levels, she actually winds up being horrified at his actions.
• Took a Level in Kindness: He began as a "by-the-book" Watcher, characterized as an "annoying version of Giles," demonstrating an arrogance in his knowledge and an over-confidence in his lackluster combat skills, but he gradually matures to show a more caring, compassionate side through his friendships with Angel and Cordelia, his temporary position as team leader, and watching both Angel and Faith seek redemption.
• Torture Technician: As part of the ruthless edge he develops, he becomes equally merciless when it comes to interrogations and the like. He captures and psychologically (and potentially physically) tortures Justine to the point where all he has to do is make a threat of punishment to cow her into submission, not that she didn't have it coming considering her previous interactions with him involved her slicing his throat.
• Tragic Hero: The greatest in the Buffyverse. His noble actions and his failures alike lead only to him experiencing pain, loneliness, betrayal and finally death, with an eternity in Hell, serving the Senior Partners, to look forward to, but even that doesn't stop him from doing the right thing like saving Angel in After the Fall or helping his friends.
• Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: In Season 3 of Angel, Wesley is manipulated into kidnapping Angel's son, Connor, believing Angel was going to kill Connor. This act of betrayal causes a big schism between the two and other members of the team. Not even having Wesley being in the hospital with his throat slit stopped Angel in attacking him. In "The Price," Cordelia and Gunn state outright they don't care what Wesley's feelings are or his side of the story in regards to kidnapping Connor; he betrayed their trust, and that's all there is to it.
• The Unfettered: Wesley does what is right. It doesn't matter if he has to betray his friends, torture witnesses, sacrifice his chances with the woman he loves, shoot what he thought was his father dead in cold blood, resurrect his friend's evil alter ego or risk his life and sacrifice his chance at a career to protect a woman who was sadistically torturing him hours before. If Wesley thinks he knows what is needed for the greater good, there is no emotional attachment he won't sacrifice, no anguish he won't suffer, and almost no method he will not use to achieve it, though he always draws the line at evil.
  Angel: You do what you have to do to protect the people around you. To do what you know is right, regardless of the cost. You know, I never really understood that. You're the guy who makes all the hard decisions, even if you have to make 'em alone.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In "Consequences", he overhears that Faith accidentally killed someone. The rest of the team is already on board with helping her deal with her issues and giving her the support and acceptance she needs in order to not fall to The Dark Side. Wesley's response, on the other hand, is to call in some goons and try to ship her to England to be locked away forever. By the end of the episode, she doesn't trust any of them, resents all of them (because she thinks they aren't trustworthy), and has taken a job as the Mayor's number two.
• Vocal Evolution: Discussing the way his English accent softens over the course of Angel, Alexis Denisof says:
  [The modified accent] just sits on him better. As an actor, it just felt that organically the way he was changing, and it also seemed to be accurate when you consider the amount of time he's spent in Los Angeles that the accent could have softened. And since he isn't surrounded by upper-crust academics as he was as a young Watcher in the Academy in England, it's understandable that he is changing the way he speaks and changing his voice, his delivery, as a result of his environment.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: Of all the sidearms he uses, he shows a particular fondness for the M1911 pistol, usually using two at a time.
• Weak, but Skilled: A normal human, but Wesley's sharp mind, skill with weapons, and cold-blooded pragmatism make him an absolute nightmare for more than a few demons.
• We Used to Be Friends: After his betrayal in Season 3, Wesley's friendship with the rest of the Angel Investigations team is more or less dead. It's most deeply felt with Angel, who attempts to smother Wesley with a pillow while he's in the hospital and (according to Fred) is more or less willing to kill him on sight if they ever run into each other again. Subverted, however, in that Wesley can't quite shake the loyalty he has for his old team (in the quoted dialogue below, Wesley has actually been searching for Angel ever since his disappearance), rescuing Angel from the bottom of the ocean at the start of Season 4. Even then, tensions between him and Gunn are consistently high due to the Love Triangle between them and Fred. It takes until the end of the season for the wounds to heal more fully.
  Wesley: I have no idea where Angel is, Lilah, or what happened to him. And I really couldn't care.
  Lilah: Wow. That was cold. I think we're finally making progress. Come on. Doesn't it bother you just a little bit? The not knowing?
  Wesley: That part of my life is dead. Doesn't concern me now.
• Welcome Back, Traitor: After betraying Angel in Season 3, he's begrudgingly welcomed back into the team during Season 4.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: When he becomes the leader of Angel Investigations during Angel Season 2, he calls his father up in the hopes on getting his approval... only to discover that dear ol' Dad is more concerned with when, what, and how he'll screw up next.
• Well-Trained, but Inexperienced: When Giles is fired as Buffy's Watcher, he's less than impressed when his replacement, Wesley Wyndam-Price, boasts about his training.
  Wesley: I have, in fact, faced two vampires myself. Under controlled circumstances, of course.
  Giles: No danger of finding those here.
  Wesley: Vampires?
  Giles: Controlled circumstances.
• Zen Survivor: His new, grizzled look in Season 4 is a perfect fit for Los Angeles under permanent midnight. He gets even more philosophical when he's deep into the whiskey.