#14: Faith

As regards the total word count, Faith is the character in the whole Buffyverse to have spoken the most words without ever appearing in the opening credits (or more precisely without the actor Eliza Dushku's name appearing in the credits) – and, though Tara and Joyce are the obvious main contenders here, arguably the most important.

Though originally a Buffy Season Three phenomenon, with her entire story seemingly wrapped up by the end of that particular season, Faith then became a recurring character thereafter, appearing in seasons four and seven of Buffy and seasons one, two and four of Angel. She speaks more words outside of Buffy season three than she does within that season, and appears in precisely as many episodes after as she does during.

So in other words, Faith is no one-season phenomenon. Buffy's clinical death in "Prophecy Girl" led to the creation of Kendra the Vampire Slayer. Her (permanent) death at Drusilla's hands created Faith, who rolls into town in the eponymous David Greenwalt-composed episode "Faith, Hope and Trick" (the only of those three characters of any long-term significance). Not only extremely talkative but possessing every inch of the charisma that the other characters perceive her to have, Faith stomps all over every scene she appears in from the very beginning, with 732 words and a number-two ranking in this first episode. Though there are two 76-word episodes among eight minor parts, Faith is still no backgound character: there is also a number-five finish, a number-three finish ("Bad Girls", by far the highlight of people who enjoy the Faith-Buffy dynamic but also the episode where Faith accidentally kills a human) and two number-ones in this season alone, as her arc begins to turn darker and darker: "Consequences", examining the, well, consequences of her stabbing of a human, with 1016 words, and "Enemies", where Buffy and Angel put their relationship uner extreme tension in order to trick Faith into giving up important secrets, with 1127 words (her highest word-count ever).

In 'her season', Faith has enough dialogue to be the fifth most-spoken character for the season. Her touching father-daughter relationship with the season's Big Bad, the Mayor, has turned her towards evil, and ultimately Buffy puts her into a coma, which is why her only (still pivotal) words in the season finale "Graduation Day, Part Two" are spoken in Buffy's dream (or however you interpret that event). Her coma lasts well into the next year, where you then get an impressive mini-arc across both series, as follows: in Buffy Season Four's "This Year's Girl", Faith speaks 756 words for a number two finish. This word-count includes 17 words in Buffy's body, which sets up the following episode, "Who are You?" The Mayor had left Faith a device that could let people switch bodies, and Faith switched her and Buffy's body. The amazing episode that follows gives Faith 1011 words of dialogue, and easy number-one finish with almost twice as many words as anyone else, but all 1011 of those words are spoken by Sarah Michelle Gellar. Eliza Dushku speaks only 332 words this episode. No matter, as it's the 1011 that I include in Faith's word-count, whoever's body she's in. Amazingly, these mere two episodes still put Faith at number two for most words spoken in Season Four.

After this, Faith runs to Los Angeles for a further two episodes on Angel, "Five by Five", where she ranks number one with 814 words (her highest word-count on Angel) operating as an assassin hired by Wolfram & Hart to kill Angel, and "Sanctuary", where she ranks number four with 442 words in an incredible episode featuring eight characters that originated on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This episode ends with her 'redemption' as she turns herself into the police (though this remarkable arc still continues without her back on Buffy), and this two-episode run remarkably lets her finish number eight in Season One overall.

134 words in a conversation with Angel in "Judgement" (Faith's only minor appearance on that show as a whole) is all we see of Faith between Buffy Season Four/Angel Season One and Buffy Season Seven/Angel Season Four, where something remarkably similar happens: Wesley gets Faith out of jail (she lets herself out in fact) to help their little Angelus problem, and in a three-episode series, Faith ranks number two with 605 words in "Salvage", number five with 308 words in "Release", and number four with 421 words (290 of which are in the headspace she shares with Angelus) in "Orpheus". This run unfortunately leaves Faith outside the top ten for the season.

At the end of "Orpheus", Willow takes Faith back to Sunnydale, where she appears as a (mostly) reconciled part of Buffy's team in the final five episodes of the series. Though her final two episodes are minor, the first three are, in typical fashion, larger than life (Faith is not a character willing to resign herself to a bit part). In "Dirty Girls" she says 762 words for a number two finish, in "Empty Places" 673 words and a number two, and in "Touched", her sole episode as 'leader' of the Scoobies, she finishes at number one with 778 words. "Chosen" features her alive and kicking on the bus out of town, and she carries on the good fight in Season Eight. Still, she falls outside of the top ten for Season Seven.

A final stat about Faith: at 469 words, her per-episode average word-count is higher than any character in the top fifteen excepting Buffy, Angel and Cordelia.

• Overall ranking: #14
• Ranking on Buffy: #12
• Ranking on Angel: #19
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 9480
• Season 3: 5058
• Season 4: 1767
• Season 7: 2655
• Total words spoken on Angel: 2724
• Season 1: 1256
• Season 2: 134
• Season 4: 1334
• Total words spoken in the Buffyverse: 12,204
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 20
• Ranking #1: 4
• Ranking #2: 4
• Ranking #3: 1
• Ranking #5: 1
• Minor: 10
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 6
• Ranking #1: 1
• Ranking #2: 1
• Ranking #4: 2
• Ranking #5: 1
• Minor: 1
• Total speaking appearances in the Buffyverse: 26

#15: Riley

Poor, misunderstood Riley Finn. Chronologically falling between Angel and Spike, Riley was one of Buffy's three main love interests on the show, but the endless debate 'who was Buffy meant to be with?' tends to be a binary discussion, with Buffy's sole major non-vampire love interest cast by the wayside.

There are many reasons why this should be the case: all in all, Riley is not an especially loveable character, in Season Four being unnervingly clean-cut and goody-goody, and in Season Five being excessively whiny and needy. Riley was well-written, but ultimately spoke to a real truth that exists in the real world all the time: that no matter how much someone can try, how much someone can adapt, some people are just not meant to be together, however much you might 'will' it to be different. In that, I mean not only Riley and Buffy as love interests but Riley and the rest of the Scoobies as confidantes, comrades and team-members. Riley might get a harder time than he deserves, but even at that it's tough to view his exit from Sunnydale with anything but relief.

Anyway, getting his start with 185 words in Joss Whedon's “The Freshman”, Riley manages to appear in an amazing 20 of 22 episodes in his first season – the two he misses are episodes two and three, “Living Conditions” and “The Harsh Light of Day”. Marc Blucas is a regular member of the cast from episode ten on, by the time he's not merely a TA but Buffy's love interest and a member of the secret quasi-military organisation that serves as a major part of the season. Number five on the list of characters for season four, he's important enough to the season to break 1000 words on two occasions (“The Initiative”, 1038 words and a #1, and “Doomed”, 1007 words and a number two), rank number five twice, number four five times, number three twice (“A New Man”, 516 words, and “This Year's Girl”, 453 words), number two twice (the other being “Goodbye Iowa”, 813 words) and number one once. At the other end, though, he gets only 22 words in “Wild at Heart”

Riley is so very central to the story of season four that (a) he says 7538 words in that one season alone, which is by itself more than Oz's total word count across the seasons but that (b) he seems woefully out of place in Season Five. To the writers' credit, they made that awkwardness the main thrust of Riley's role in Season Five, allowing his inability to connect with Buffy to drive his character into darker and darker places. This occurs across the first ten episodes of the season, in which he gets two number fives, one number four and three number threes, but nothing higher than that, not even “Into the Woods”, his finale, where his 624 words are a season high but are still lower than Buffy's or Xander's. He barely scrapes into the top ten this time, coming in at number nine.

While the last we see of Riley in Season Five is his flying away in a helicopter, as with several other characters, this is not the last we see of him in total. In Season Six, he gets a chance to return to town for a single episode in order to tie up loose ends. That episode, “As You Were”, is actually his third wordiest appearance, at 960 words and with a number two finish. Riley doesn't die this time either, so as he flies away a second time, this time with wife in two, we can say that he survives the end of the series, appearing in the Season Eight comic book as well.

• Overall ranking: #15
• Ranking on Buffy: #9
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 11,916
• Season 4: 7538
• Season 5: 3418
• Season 6: 960
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 31
• Ranking #1: 1
• Ranking #2: 3
• Ranking #3: 5
• Ranking #4: 6
• Ranking #5: 4
• Minor: 12

#16: Joyce

With an amazing 56 episodes across each of the first six seasons (she doesn't appear in Season Seven; the First appears in her body on two occasions), Buffy's mother Joyce is a comforting and familiar presence, going all the way back to the second scene of Joss Whedon's series début “Welcome to the Hellmouth”, speaking her first word before even Buffy does), so much so that her premature death (from a brain aneurysm; one of only two natural deaths in the whole show) signals the main shift in the whole series, and in Buffy's character, from child to adult. Being that Joyce was such a regular presence, it's perhaps a surprise that Kristine Sutherland was never a member of the main cast.

Or perhaps not: for such a regular presence, Joyce very rarely had much significance to the plot, appearing mostly in a few brief scenes per episode. Of those 56 episodes, fully 46 are minor. There are only ten episodes where this character makes it onto the top five. At number five, there's “Becoming, Part Two”, where Joyce learns Buffy is the slayer, “No Place Like Home”, where Buffy enters into a trance expecting to find magic affecting Joyce's health, and “I Was Made to Love You”, the episode in which Joyce dies. Joyce's only number fours are “School Hard”, where she is trapped in the school and threatens Spike with an axe, and “Ted”, where her relationship with the titular character still brings her no higher than number four on the list. “Bad Eggs”, where she is possessed by the same creature that possesses much of the rest of the cast, and “Band Candy”, where she reverts to being a teenager and has a relationship with Giles, are her number-three appearances. Her only number-two appearances are in Season Three, “Dead Man's Party”, one of the only episodes to really qualify as a 'Joyce episode', where she deals with Buffy's absence over the summer (at 789, her largest word count), and “Gingerbread”, where she witnesses the apparent murder of two children and is moved to form 'MOO', cracking down on witches and slayers. Joyce's sole number one is “Listening to Fear”, where a significant percentage of her 776 words consists of rambling monologues caused by her brain tumour.

Joyce is the sixth highest-ranking character in season one, where she appears in seven of twelve episodes and says 1304 words. While she's dropped to eight place in season two, she says more than twice as many words: 2748 in 12 episodes. Season three sees her at ninth place, with 3297 words in an amazing fifteen episodes. Season four is set largely at the University of California Sunnydale, where Buffy is living in a dorm, so we see much less of Joyce: a mere 620 words across five episodes. Obviously she's not in the top ten for that season, but surprisingly nor is she in the top ten for season four, where she speaks 2731 words across 16 episodes.

As noted above, The First takes Joyce's form twice in Season Seven, once to Dawn and once to Buffy. Those are not included in Joyce's word-count, but there are three posthumous appearances which are: one, 52 words in “The Body”, the groundbreaking and brutal episode devoted to the aftermath of Joyce's death, in a Christmas flashback and in a fantasy in Buffy's mind (her lifeless body is also never far from the camera). Two, 48 words in Buffy's mindspace in “Weight of the World”. Three, 231 words in “Normal Again”, where an alternate reality in Buffy's addled mind has both of her parents visiting her in an asylum.

• Overall ranking: #16
• Ranking on Buffy: #11
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 10,931
• Season 1: 1304
• Season 2: 2748
• Season 3: 3297
• Season 4: 620
• Season 5: 2731
• Season 6: 231
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 56
• Ranking #1: 1
• Ranking #2: 2
• Ranking #3: 2
• Ranking #4: 2
• Ranking #5: 3
• Minor: 46

#17: Lilah

Lilah is the first character on our list to have spoken a total of 10,000 words or more. An incredibly ambitious and opportunistic lawyer for Wolfram & Hart, the character of Lilah Morgan is all but defined by 'tenacity' – so all the more appropriate that she holds the record on Angel for most appearances for a non-cast member. Stephanie Romanov's name appeared in the 'guest starring' list for 34 episodes, almost one in three of the total number of episodes. Those 34 appearances span the first four seasons of the show, during which time she averts death at the hands of Darla and Drusilla, beheads her boss, enters into a don't-call-it-relationship relationship with Wesley, averts death at the hands of the Beast, finally dies from an icepick to the neck courtesy of Codelia/Jasmine, and yet still comes back as what we might call Angel's 'spirit guide' in dealing with Wolfram & Hart.

None of this was apparent in Howard Gordon's “The Ring”, her inauspicious début. She seems to be just another bit-player in the vast Wolfram & Hart employee roster, though she appears in most of the rest of the season, alongside Lindsey McDonald and Lee Mercer, a troika who for some reason all have the same initials. Five episodes but all minor appearances with just 648 words, Lilah in Season One is hardly a significant character.

Lilah tends to grow from season to season, registering 1879 words across seven episodes in Season Two. This gets her in the top ten, at number eight just below Lindsey but just above Holland. Her seven appearances include three number fours, “Untouched”, where she acts as Bethany's so-called 'friend', working to bring her into the Wolfram & Hart fold, “Redefinition”, the first episode after Darla and Drusilla spare her life, and “Blood Money”, where Angel hatches a plan to publically humiliate Lindsey and her. The others, however, are minor.

In Season Three, Lilah has an important role in the Darla/Connor saga. Additionally, she starts her relationship with Wesley by the end of the season. 12 appearances in a 22-episode season is her all time high, as is #7 on the top-ten list, with 3798 words. The talkative Lilah makes it into the top five in more than half of those appearances: seven, in fact. That's two fives, three fours and two threes: “Quickening” and “Tomorrow” (if that latter surprises, it's not a huge role at 311 words, but almost half the dialogue os spoken by its two principal characters, so the remainder of the top five is a bit of a crapshoot). “Carpe Noctem”, the episode where she almost has sex with Angel, or rather with an old man in Angel's body, is sadly a minor entry.

Season Four is by far Lilah's pinnacle. Not only does she speak the most words, 4209 (a number-eight finish), but her ten appearances include six in the top five and, remarkably, two number-ones. “Habeas Corpses”, where the Beast destroys Wolfram & Hart, gives Lilah 652 words, more than anyone else. 581 words gets her a #2 finish in “Calvary”, where she is on the run from the Beast. Of great significance to the season is both the fact that Lilah has a book containing information on the Beast, and the fact of her death reveals to the audience for certain that Cordelia is, indeed, evil. Lilah's death is hardly the death of her, though. In the very next episode, a vision of her in Wesley's imagination speaks 298 words for a #5 finish, and the season ends with Lilah returned from hell in the eternal service of Wolfram & Hart: she ends “Peace Out” with a mere eleven words (her lowest, obviously) but speaks an amazing 1279 words, by far her highest and 30.8% of the whole episode, in the season finale “Home”. This is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the largest number of words in the Buffyverse spoken by a dead person, excluding vampires.

• Overall ranking: #17
• Ranking on Angel: #8
• Total words spoken on Angel: 10,534
• Season 1: 648
• Season 2: 1879
• Season 3: 3798
• Season 4: 4209
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 34
• Ranking #1: 2
• Ranking #2: 1
• Ranking #3: 2
• Ranking #4: 6
• Ranking #5: 5
• Minor: 18

#18: Andrew

It seems positively perverse to be encountering Andrew so high up on the list: higher than Tara, than Darla, than Oz... much higher than his two accomplices Jonathan (#29) and Warren (#31) – which is interesting, in that uniquely among the three, he had had no prior appearances before being launched as one-third of the season's 'big bad' (apparently, the character of Tucker from “The Prom” was to take the role, but when that actor was unavailable, the character of Tucker's brother was created). However, Andrew is more of a Season 7 character than a Season 6 one, where his partial rehabilitation and semi-involvement with the Scoobies brings him right into the heart of the season. Tom Lenk's impeccable comic timing might, of course, have had much to do with that.

Andrew says 2084 words in season 6, fewer than Jonathan or Warren and too few to show up in the top ten. Of eleven screen credits that season, ten are minor, with Andrew showing up in the top five only in “Two to Go”, whose title obliquely references Andrew (and Jonathan). He spoke 506 words that episode for a #5 finish. In his first appearace, Jane Espenson and Douglas Petrie's “Flooded”, he says 241 words.

By comparison, however, after coming back to Sunnydale in order to stab Jonathan and being taken hostage by the Scoobies, the quite talkative Andrew really comes into his own. Appearing in 15 episodes, saying more than twice as many words as in season six, 5443, Andrew is the seventh highest-ranking character for the season. While he gets two number-five finishes, two number-four finishes and one number three, “Showtime” at 408 words, Andrew's tour de force is the episode “Storyteller”. Andrew's episode from start to finish, it shows him speaking an amazing 1891 words of dialogue, fully 40.1% of the entire script. This word-count, divided between narration, flashbacks, fantasies and real-time dialogue, is in fact the single largest across 144 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the percentage is second to Spike's 40.6% in “Fool for Love”). It's an impressive feat, almost as impressive as the writers deciding to devote an entire episode to a relatively minor character so late in the season (some speculate it was to gauge audience reaction to potentially an Andrew-led spinoff).

Andrew is on that bus driving out of Sunnydale at the end of “Chosen”, so we know he survives. Uniquely among the passengers on that bus, with Andrew the story doesn't end there, as we have two appearances from Andrew on season five of Angel, both charting. In a sense the liaison between Buffy's camp and Angel's, Andrew has a significant role in “Damage”, 778 words and a number three ranking, and a smaller role in “The Girl in Question”, 283 words and a number four. This isn't enough to get him on the top ten for a character-heavy season.

• Overall ranking: #18
• Ranking on Buffy: #14
• Ranking on Angel: #35
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 7527
• Season 6: 2084
• Season 7: 5443
• Total words spoken on Angel: 1061
• Season 5: 1061
• Total words spoken in the Buffyverse: 8588
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 26
• Ranking #1: 1
• Ranking #3: 1
• Ranking #4: 2
• Ranking #5: 3
• Minor: 19
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 2
• Ranking #3: 1
• Ranking #4: 1
• Total speaking appearances in the Buffyverse: 28

#19: Tara

There is only one actor in the whole Buffyverse to have appeared in more episodes than Amber Benson, in the role of Tara, without ever appearing in the title credits. And in the case of Tara, Amber Benson did appear once – rather cruelly when her character died, in the credits for “Seeing Red”, having been accidentally shot by Warren. Yet until that point, she was certainly a major part of the 'Scoobies' and of the show as a whole, whatever the title credits said, with a total of 46 episodes to her name (six more than Oz): 12 episodes in season four, 18 in season five and 16 in season six.

As Willow's second major romantic partner after Oz, Tara was in a sense a groundbreaking character – Tara and Willow set many firsts for the depiction of same-sex couples on television, but the overwhelming impression the couple leaves is how little that matters. Making the transition from 'a gay couple' to 'a couple who is gay' very quickly, Tara and Willow were a great example on TV of 'how gay couples behave' – in that they behaved just like any other couple. The most unfortunate thing about Tara (apart from her shocking and premature death, the major catalyst for the events that end Season Six) is that her character is too rarely given the opportunity to be anything other than 'Willow's girlfriend'; much like Oz before her, Tara tends to exist only in relation to Willow, with little in the way of storylines of her own.

Stumbling, stuttering and painfully shy, Tara is nonetheless perhaps the best communicator in Joss Whedon's groundbreaking “Hush”, her début in which she speaks a mere 82 words. Underutilised throughout, Tara appears in the top five only three times in season 4: a number four in “Who are You”, and a number five in each of “New Moon Rising” (where Willow 'comes out' to Buffy, and where the love triangle with Willow at its centre comes to a head) and “Restless” (the highly experimental season-concluding 'dream episode', in which Tara has a particular 'narrator' role). So underutilised is she, in fact, that she doesn't even appear on the top ten of characters for that season, even though Oz does.

Season five features the closest we get to a 'Tara episode' in “Family”. While this episode revolves around the character of Tara and gives her 552 words, the most she speaks in a single episode (italics intentional), it still doesn't give her a #1 finish, as she says fewer words than Buffy. This #2 finish is as high as Tara gets, and in fact is the only time she ranks higher than #4. Despite appearing in 18 of 22 episodes in season five, Tara has a 'minor' role in fully 16 of them, appearing otherwise in the top five only in “Tough Love”, where she loses her sanity to Glory. She is the tenth highest-ranking character in terms of words spoken throughout the season.

Tara ranks seventh in season six, a big improvement, but season six remains the season where she breaks up with Willow and ultimately dies. She shows up in the top five on both “Bargaining, Part One” and “Bargaining, Part Two” (though I have my suspicions about the transcripts for those two episodes) at numbers four and five, respectively. She shows up at number five on “Dead Things”, and at number four on the musical episode “Once More, With Feeling” - at 669 words her highest overall word count, though only 212 of those words are spoken, the other 457 sung. After that, though, it's all minor roles for Tara, sinking as low as “Normal Again”, where despite actually having a role in the plot manages to say precisely eight words. Even “Seeing Red” itself, with 226 words, is a minor role.

And one thing that makes Tara quite rare in the Buffyverse: when she's dead, she's really dead. The finality of Tara's death is what drives Willow to a grief-driven rampage, and so far the writers have stuck to it, despite several apparent story ideas in season seven. One of the deaths in the Buffyverse hardest for fans to accept, Tara's is grossly unfair and random – just like real life. And after she says her final words, 'Your shirt', and tumbles lifelessly to the ground, there is no coming back at all – just like real life.

• Overall ranking: #19
• Ranking on Buffy: #13
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 8370
• Season 4: 1533
• Season 5: 2855 (#10)
• Season 6: 3982 (#7)
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 46
• Ranking #2: 1
• Ranking #4: 4
• Ranking #5: 4
• Minor: 37

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#20: Doyle

It's amazing how quickly someone can get under your skin. Someone you haven't even met. Someone who doesn't even exist. Doyle appeared in only nine episodes of Angel, but he left such an impression in that brief time, and Glenn Quinn suffered such an unfortunate early death, that I find it tough watching those initial episodes. An everyman half-demon, equal parts loser and hero, Doyle is simply one of the best characters created for television.

Based on the character of Whistler from “Becoming, Part One” and “Becoming, Part Two”, Doyle first appears in Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt's series début “City Of”, with 856 words coming in at number one, saying even more than Angel on the first episode of his own show. This is little surprise: being talkative on a show with a small cast, Doyle's nine episodes include not a single minor appearance and only one below number three. Fully three of those nine episodes, “City Of”, “The Bachelor Party” and swansong “Hero” (with an amazing 1558 words) are number one finishes. He actually averages 801 words per episode.

In fact, across those first nine episodes, Doyle says more words than anyone else on the show, star included: 7940 words to Angel's 7779 and Cordelia's 7274. Despite being absent for the remaining 13 episodes, Doyle is still the character with the third highest word count for season one. Somewhere between 'Joss Whedon deliberately introduced an endearing character just to kill him off early' and 'Glenn Quinn's drug habits forced Mutant Enemy to write him out of the show' must certainly lie the truth; we'll never know where, though. The fact remains that this early sacrifice dealt the show a huge blow, while forever enshrining those first nine episodes as something entirely special. No disrespect to Wesley, of course. Doyle sacrifices himself in order to save a group of half-breed demons from a Nazi-like group of demons called 'the Scourge', but not before first kissing Cordelia, transferring his visions to her, and sending her along the marathon journey of character development she takes. That final episode, “Hero”, is bookended with footage of Doyle awkwardly trying to promote Angel Investigations. That video shows up again twice: once, silently, on “Birthday” and again on 100th episode “You're Welcome”. This video explains why there is a posthumous tenth appearance in the records here. Be it merely a video, Doyle does show up on Season Five. Would that he had been there the whole time.

• Overall ranking: #20
• Ranking on Angel: #9
• Total words spoken on Angel: 8014
• Season 1: 7940 (#3)
• Season 5: 74
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 10
• Ranking #1: 3
• Ranking #2: 3
• Ranking #3: 2
• Ranking #5: 1
• Minor: 1

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