"Buffy" And "Angel" Characters

 "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" Characters

"Buffy Summers"

 Buffy returned in Joss Whedon's television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this time played by Sarah Michelle Gellar for all of the show's 144 episodes. In season one (1997), Buffy begins to accept the responsibilities and dangers of her calling as the Slayer after moving to the small California town of Sunnydale. She becomes best friends with Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) and Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), and meets her new Watcher, Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head).^[12] Together, they form the Scooby Gang, and work together to battle various supernatural occurrences which plague Sunnydale High. In the season finale, Buffy battles the villain known as the Master (Mark Metcalf), and is drowned in the process. She is resuscitated by Xander and rises to defeat the vampire.^[13] In the show's second season (1997–1998), Buffy continues to come to terms with her destiny, finds forbidden love with benevolent vampire Angel (David Boreanaz), and clashes with new villains Spike (James Marsters) and Drusilla (Juliet Landau). In the episode "Surprise", Buffy loses her virginity to Angel, an event which triggers the loss of his soul and unleashes his sadistic alter-ego, Angelus.^[14] Angelus proceeds to subject the characters to mental and physical torture for the remainder of the season. In the final episode of season two, Buffy is forced to reveal her identity as the Slayer to her mother (Kristine Sutherland), and send the newly-good Angel to hell in order to save the world. She then leaves Sunnydale for Los Angeles in the hopes of escaping her life as the Slayer.^[15] Season three (1998–1999) sees Buffy reconnect to her calling, her friends, and her family after her departure, as well as make difficult life decisions regarding her relationship with the resurrected Angel. She must also deal with the introduction of rebellious new Slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku), who becomes increasingly destructive and disloyal over the course of the season. In the season finale, Buffy stabbed Faith in an attempt to save Angel's life, and lead her classmates into a climactic battle against the demonic Mayor of Sunnydale (Harry Groener). Angel then leaves Sunnydale in hopes Buffy can have a more normal life without him.^[16]
In the fourth season (1999–2000), Buffy balances her Slayer duties with her new life as a college student at UC Sunnydale. She experiences some difficulty adjusting to college life, and becomes increasingly disconnected from her friends, who all seem to be moving in different directions. Buffy eventually finds a new love interest in the form of Riley Finn (Marc Blucas), a soldier in the demon-hunting government task force known as the Initiative. She briefly joins forces with Riley's team, until they discover one of the Initiative's experiments, Adam (George Hertzberg), is creating an army of demon-human hybrids.^[17] Buffy literally unites with her friends to defeat Adam in a spell which invokes the power of the First Slayer.^[17] During Buffy season four, Buffy also appears in the first season of spin-off series Angel (1999–2000), guest starring in the episodes "I Will Remember You" and "Sanctuary". In season five (2000–2001), Buffy battles the hell-goddess Glory (Clare Kramer), and fully embraces her destiny for the first time. A younger sister named Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) mysteriously appears in Buffy's household, her existence having been seamlessly integrated with memories of the other characters. Buffy suffers emotional turmoil throughout this season, including the realization Dawn is not actually her sister,^[18] the deterioration of her relationship with Riley,^[19] the discovery that Spike has become obsessed with her,^[20] and her mother's death from a brain aneurysm.^[21] While on a quest to learn more about her nature as the Slayer, Buffy is told "death is her gift,^[22] a message she has difficulty understanding until the episode "The Gift", in which she sacrifices her own life to save Dawn's by diving into Glory's interdimensional portal and closing it.^[23]
Season six (2001–2002) depicts Buffy's struggle with depression and loss after being ripped out of a place like Heaven by her friends, who thinking she is trapped in a Hell dimension, perform a spell to bring her back from the dead. Forced to take a mundane and degrading job slinging burgers at the Doublemeat Palace, she begins suffering from extreme depression and self-loathing, embarking on a violent sexual relationship with the vampire Spike which leaves neither satisfied and spawns dire consequences for the both of them. As the season draws to a close, Buffy is forced to battle her best friend when Willow becomes psychotic with dark magics after the human, Warren (Adam Busch) shoots and kills Willow's girlfriend Tara (Amber Benson) and wounds Buffy in the process. Willow then tries to destroy the world to end all suffering, although Xander gets through to her in the end. Buffy then promises to change her self-destructive behavior in order to be there for her sister. In the final season of the show (2002–2003), things start to come around for Buffy when Principal Robin Wood hires her as a school counselor for the newly-rebuilt Sunnydale High School and has repaired her relationships with Dawn and her friends. However, she is also confronted with the threat of the First Evil and becomes a reluctant leader to the Potential Slayers, who are initially respectful of her, but become increasingly more alienated by her tactics and decisions throughout the season. She unexpectedly becomes emotionally close with Spike, who has sought out his soul in an effort to prove himself to her. In the show's final episode "Chosen", Buffy shares her power with her fellow Slayers before leading them into an epic battle against an army of Turok-Han vampires. She also confesses her love to a disbelieving Spike before he sacrifices himself to save the world; as he dies, Buffy escapes Sunnydale's destruction with the surviving characters.^[24] Following the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the character maintains a presence in the fifth season of Angel (2003–2004), but does not appear onscreen. In the episode "The Girl in Question", Angel and a resurrected Spike travel to Rome to find her, where they learn she is apparently now dating the Immortal.^[25] Sarah Michelle Gellar was approached to appear as Buffy in Angel's one hundredth episode, but declined, so the character of Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) was used instead. She was asked to appear in the second to last episode of the series, "Power Play", but had to decline because of conflicts.^[26]
Between 2001 and 2004, Joss Whedon and Jeph Loeb developed a 4-minute pilot episode for Buffy the Animated Series, which was set during the show's first season. Had the series been picked up by a network, the series would have focused upon Buffy (voiced by Giselle Loren) in more high-school adventures. Following a 2008 leak of the pilot to YouTube, Loeb expressed some hope the series may be resurrected in some form.^[27]

^{"Willow Rosenburg"}

Willow Danielle Rosenberg is a fictional character created for the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003). She was developed by Joss Whedon and portrayed throughout the TV series by Alyson Hannigan. Willow plays an integral role within the inner circle of friends—later called the Scooby Gang—who support Buffy Summers, a teenager gifted with superhuman powers to defeat vampires, demons, and other evil in the fictional town of Sunnydale. The series begins as Buffy, Willow, and their friend Xander are in 10th grade and Willow is a shy and nerdy girl with little confidence. She has inherent magical abilities and begins to study witchcraft; as the series progresses, Willow becomes more sure of herself and her magical powers become significant if inconsistent. Her dependence on magic becomes so consuming that it develops into a dark force that takes her on a redemptive journey in a major story arc when she becomes the sixth season's main villain, threatening to destroy the world in a fit of grief and rage.

The Buffy series became extremely popular and earned a devoted fanbase; Willow's intelligence, shy nature, and vulnerability often resounded strongly with viewers in early seasons. Of the core characters, Willow changes the most, becoming a complex portrayal of a woman whose powers force her to seek balance between what is best for the people she loves and what she is capable of doing. Her character stood out as a positive portrayal of a Jewish woman and at the height of her popularity, she fell in love with another woman, a witch named Tara Maclay. They became one of the first lesbian couples on U.S. television and one of the most positive relationships of the series. In addition to being the only character other than Buffy herself to appear in every episode, Willow is featured in three episodes of the spinoff Angel, an animated series and video game (both of which use Hannigan's voice), and the comic Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight (2007–2011), which uses Hannigan's likeness and continues Willow's storyline following the television series. Willow was included in AfterEllen.com's Top 50 Lesbian and Bisexual Characters, ranking at No. 7.^[1] She was also ranked No. 12 in their Top 50 Favorite Female TV Characters.^[2] UGO.com named her one of the best TV nerds.^[3] AOL also listed her as the #1 TV witch of all time, and one of the 100 Most Memorable Female TV Characters.^[4]