#4: Willow

The 'best friend'. You know how some people just naturally become other people's best friends? That's Willow. While by most standards over seven seasons on Buffy Willow evolved almost beyond recognition, one thing that remains constant about her is her loyalty as a friend. It's what made her and Xander such a tight unit, it's what kept her from destroying the world in season six, it's what made them (and, increasingly from season to season, her more than him) inseperable to Buffy. Something absolutely central to the story of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the importance of friends: how friends are the family we choose to have, the love we choose to give. It's made explicit on the show that what distinguishes Buffy from other slayers (the First Slayer, Kendra and Faith in particular) is the fact that she has friends, that she's a member of a team. It's a message that got lost in the shuffle of Season Seven, but still a powerful message, and Willow – science-nerd Willow and powerful-witch Willow in equal parts – was a powerful part of that message.

In the beginning, when we first meet her in Joss Whedon's “Welcome to the Hellmouth” and throughout the first season, she's shy and inarticulate. This is why Willow, second-overall character on Buffy and the only character to have a speaking role in all 144 episodes (in that Buffy, as opposed to the Buffybot, doesn't say a word in “Bargaining, Part One”), starts off with a rather dismal fourth-place and 4494 words. She never ranks above number four in a single episode, not even the 'Willow episode' “I, Robot... You, Jane”, where she somehow manages a mere number five and 453 words. Her highest word-count is in Xander's “The Pack”. Even at that it's a fairly unimpressive 562 words.

Willow slowly comes out of her shell in season two, though not enough to raise her above number four. 9238 words is a decent improvement, and she gets her first number one, though in a sense it's a technicality. In the possession-episode “I Only Have Eyes for You”, I give words spoken while under possession to the possessor, not the possessed – so James speaking through Buffy counts as words for James. Willow sneaks past Buffy with 687 words, but she would fall back to number two if I calculated differently. Her vital roles in “Halloween” (625 words) and “Phases” (841 words, her highest that season) still come in at number two.

In Season Three, Willow is a senior at high school. Her evolution as a character is in full effect, having performed her first spell at the end of season two. And while 9820 words does not represent a huge leap above last season's totals, it's enough to leapfrog Willow past Giles and Xander into the number-two position. And even more exciting, she finally, almost at the end of the third season, gets her first fully-deserved number one with “Doppelgängland”, with 1394 words in total, and 34.9% of the dialogue – a bravura performance in which she plays two characters: herself (1055 words) and the vampire version of herself from a dimension created a few episodes previously by Anya (339 words, good enough for a fourth-place finish if they were different characters). A highly significant episode that foreshadows many of Willow's future developments, it's her highest-ever word-count, but her only number-one this season.

So if you're wondering how, being three seasons in and still with only two number-ones, Willow amasses a total of 11 number-ones, well they start to come fast and furious from now on. Season Four is the first University Year, and it's Willow's pivotal year. Not only does she lose one love of her life and find a second, but she settles into her post-geek self and begins to devote herself more seriously to the magic. With Xander and Giles off campus, her role as Buffy's best friend becomes all the more crucial, and 12,176 words is not only an easy number-two but is by a large distance her highest word count, beating even 'her' Season Six. She gets a total of three number-ones this time out, to say nothing of six number-twos and seven number-threes. She gets only a single minor the whole season, and is a long way from her humble Season One beginnings. Those three number-ones include the largely symbolic “Hush”, which after all has to be somebody's number one. As most of the episode is wordless, she wins it with a paltry 246 words. And while the other two are 'Willow episodes', they are more accurately 'Oz episodes': their breakup episode “Wild at Heart” with 834 words, and the thwarted reunion “New Moon Rising”, with 771 words. Oddly enough, “Pangs” with 1046 words has a much higher word-count but a number-two finish.

Season Five is a bit topsy-turvy, and not just with Spike's unexpected predominance. Willow's 7923 words is just a few below Xander, but she still drops a massive amount compared to Season Four, and drops all the way to fourth. She gets no number-ones, and gets ten minors, including an all-time low of 26 words on “Fool for Love”, appropriately a Spike episode. She plays a significant role in each of her four number twos, peaking at 1009 words in the Anya/Willow episode “Triangle”.

Season Six definitely restores the balance, though, with Willow being absolutely central to the season, reviving Buffy, dealing with magic addiction, her break-up and reconciliation with Tara, Tara's death and Willow's subsequent descent into evil as 'dark Willow', the season's true 'big bad'. Back to number two with 10,575 words and a jaw-dropping five number-ones, unsurprisingly the largest number of number-ones in a season on Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a character whose name isn't in the show's title. What are they? Well, in order, “Bargaining, Part One”, where she leads the team in their efforts to revive Buffy, with 1020 words (her season high); “Afterlife” soon after, where Buffy's dazed readaptation to being alive keeps her lower on the list, with 851 words; “Wrecked”, where her magic addiction spirals completely out of control, with 821 words, and the final two episodes of the season, “Two to Go” with 681 words, and “Grave” with 695 words. If we were to treat 'dark Willlow' as her own character, she'd be good for 1817 words, which would put her just outside the top ten.

Season Six was a tough act for the character to follow, and Season Seven featured a drop-off for most of the principal non-blonde characters. Willow stays, somehow, as high as number three for the season, but at 7174 words puts in her lowest word-count for a 22-episode season. She gets ten minors, including, sadly, each of the final seven episodes. The extent of Willow's marginalisation (despite the crucial role she plays in “Chosen”) can be seen in “Empty Places”, where she's eleventh on the list. The writers gave her one last hurrah, “The Killer in Me”, where she gets 1065 words inhabiting both her own body and that of Warren. This confusing episode features 680 words spoken by Alyson Hannigan and 385 spoken by Adam Busch. Were I to treat them as different characters, this would be a number-one for Kennedy, of all people. Even “Same Time, Same Place”, a Willow episode, is a number-two, though at 785 words it's a decent total. Her highest in Season Seven after that is a paltry 422 words.

So while she survives “Chosen”, you can't help wondering if it was worth it, or if the true story of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that the reward for unwavering friendship and loyalty (barring a brief dalliance with evil) is increased irrelevance and marginalisation.

I have failed to mention Willow's three cameos in Angel. I needn't mention “There's No Place Like Plrtz Glrb”, where her cameo is completely silent, but I should mention “Disharmony” a few episodes before it, where she speaks 55 words over the telephone. And I should definitely mention the Season Four epic “Orpheus”, where 74.4% of the dialogue is spoken by characters who originated on Buffy and Willow comes in at number two with 566 words.

• Overall ranking: #4
• Ranking on Buffy: #2
• Ranking on Angel: #52
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 61,400
• Season 1: 4494
• Season 2: 9238
• Season 3: 9820
• Season 4: 12,176
• Season 5: 7923
• Season 6: 10,575
• Season 7: 7174
• Total words spoken on Angel: 621
• Season 2: 55
• Season 4: 566
• Total words spoken in the Buffyverse: 62,012
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 144
• Ranking #1: 11
• Ranking #2: 18
• Ranking #3: 20
• Ranking #4: 23
• Ranking #5: 31
• Minor: 41
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 2
• Ranking #2: 1
• Minor: 1
• Total speaking appearances in the Buffyverse: 146

#7: Spike

The sensitive poet William was hardly the obvious candidate for vampirehood that the lusty Irish ne'er-do-well Liam had been some 130 years previously. Though the extent to which the personality of a human affect the personality of the vampire he or she becomes is debated within the Buffyverse, it seems clear that differences that exist between Angel and Spike, the two principal vampires of the Buffyverse, have some connections to the differences that existed between their human predecessors.

A hundred years and change later, when Spike strutted into Sunnydale with his love and his sire Drusilla (who was sired in turn by Angelus), in David Greenwalt and Joss Whedon's “School Hard”, with 749 words and the first of 23 top-two appearances (number two), he was an arrogant, self-assured 'punk' bearing little relation to the man he used to be. It was this character that became Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 'breakout' character, progressing from a one-note villian designed in early Season Two to replace the rapidly-aging 'anointed one' through to comic relief as a desperate vampire neutered by a chip in his head to a more noble ally of Buffy's and protector of Dawn to a lover of Buffy's (her second and final 'big love', excluding Riley) to an ensouled teammate and, finally, after the termination of Buffy, as again a comic foil on Angel. That simplifies Spike's role on the shows, but does give an indication of the ways he's progressed from minor recurring bad guy to central figure in the Buffyverse.

Season Two seems to feature Spike and Drusilla as the 'big bad' until Angel loses his soul and turns Spike into a kind of ally for Buffy. His 3117 words that season are surprisingly few, but across twelve episodes he's mostly minor, excepting his first appearance and his final one that season, “Becoming, Part Two”, where he's again #2 with 454 words. He finishes number seven for that season.

In Season Three, Spike appears in only one episode, the great “Lovers Walk”, where he returns to Sunnydale a mess, having broken up with Drusilla but manages to break up two of the Scoobies' main couples. It's just one episode, but at 1098 words and a number one, Spike's left his fingerprints on this season too.

Season Four starts to feature Spike more regularly, in 18 of 22 b, and with a number six finish. The Initiative have implanted a chip in his head that makes him 'harmless', and he spends much of this season as a comic element – intended, apparently, to replace Cordelia, who had departed for Angel. “The Yoko Factor” is his sole number-one this season, where he uses his 'Yoko' status to break the Scoobies' friendships apart. He spends 1014 words doing so.

I should have said his sole number one that season on Buffy, as he also comes in at number one with 979 words during a one-off appearance on the début season of Angel, in “In the Dark”, where he has come to L.A. to torture the Gem of Amarra out of Angel.

No one would doubt that Spike has a significant role in Season Five, the season of Glory and Dawn. I'm not sure, though, how many people would correctly guess just how important. Somehow, this season, Spike manages to eke out an incredible number two finish: ahead of Willow, ahead of Xander. He does it by saying 8144 words in 21 of the season's 22 episodes (he's absent from the stark “The Body”), finishing number two twice: in “Out of My Head” with 678 words attempting to get a doctor to remove the chip from his head, and in “Intervention” with 546 words hilariously together with the Buffybot and less comically braving torture to protect Dawn. However, these pale next to his amazing contributions to two 'Spike episodes' revolving around his history and his love life. In “Crush”, he says an amazing 1322 words confronting a shocked Buffy with the fact of his love while Drusilla laughs in the background. Tough to see why Buffy's shocked, though, as it's obvious from seven episodes hence, “Fool for Love”, an amazing episode where we learn a lot about the character of Spike. He bests “Crush” by one word, with 1323 words being his highest word count on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and with 40.6% of the dialogue – not far off half of the whole script – being the highest percentage of dialogue in the entire 254-episode Buffyverse.

Progressing quickly from Buffy's confidante to her lover, Spike would appear to be just as crucial to Season Six as he was to Season Five, but in fact his significance drops off greatly, with 7238 words and a number five finish. There are no real 'Spike episodes' this season, and as such no number-one finishes, though he scores number two in “Smashed”, where he and Buffy violently consummate their relationship (645 words) and “Dead Things”, where he tries to prevent Buffy from turning herself into the police. He finishes number four in “Seeing Red”, the episode where Tara's death overshadows the other ugly event: his attempted rape of Buffy. This leads him to see the season out in Africa, attempting to regain his soul.

The final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer once again features 'soulful Spike' in a greatly expanded role: though 7279 words is barely any more than the previous season, it's enough to pole-vault him back to a number two finish. He has an impressive three number-one finishes: “Beneath You”, with 1143 words his peak that season, revealing to Buffy the fact of his newly-returned soul; “Sleeper”, with 746 words, killing humans again under the influence of the First; and “Lies My Parents Told Me”, a resolution to Spike's mother-fixated weakness which the First had been abusing, a resolution to Robin's mother-fixated vendetta on Spike, and incidentally a resolution to Buffy and Giles's father-daughter relationship. With 301 words, Spike finishes fourth in series finale “Chosen”, where an amulet given to Angel by Wolfram & Hart allows Spike to save the day but at the cost of his life. “Spike...” is the last word Buffy says, and he appears to join Anya as a sacrifice to the final battle with the First.

But... something so simple as burning up in the sunlight while destroying the whole town you're presently underneath isn't enough to get rid of Spike... not when his fans were so vocal. As Angel carried on for one final season after the termination of Buffy, Spike was sent to Wolfram & Hart as a non-corporeal ensouled vampire to play Angel's 'frenemy', engaging in constant bickering spats and for a second time 'replacing Cordelia' as Angel's funny man. In so doing, Spike had by a considerable distance his most talkative season, with 12,740 words, three number twos and five number ones (and a very obvious number two for the season).

Spike's number twos include “Underneath” and “Power Play”, but the most impressive one is “The Girl in Question”, a buddy comedy sending Spike and Angel to Rome in search of Buffy. Spike's 1155 words are less than Angel's 1444, but between them, the pair speak 51.8% of the episode. Spike's five number ones are all tucked into the first half of the season, starting with episode number two, “Just Rewards”, in which he comes to terms with the fact of his ghost-like existence within Wolfram & Hart over an amazing 1606 words, his highest ever. Two episodes later, Spike's back at number one with 1180 words in “Hellbound”, a bit of a continuation, in which he comes to believe that he is drifting permanently toward eternal damnation. Four episodes after that, Spike becomes corporeal, and we have “Destiny”, another buddy-movie episode where Spike finds out that his and Angel's destinies are intertwined in several ways. His 1175 words are only 15 more than Angel's 1160, and between them they get 52.8% of the whole episode. Two episodes after that, we get the impressive “Soul Purpose”, where Angel dreams about Spike stealing his destiny. Spike's 878 words give him a number one finish, while Angel ekes in at a mere number five – perhaps due to the fact that David Boreanaz was busier behind the camera than in front. Spike's final number one is the very next episode, “Damage”, a great follow-up to the legacy of “Chosen”, where Buffy's plan to activate all potential slayers has created in L.A. a psychotic slayer who blames Spike for the trauma she suffered as a child.

A character as important as Spike doesn't really die... well, not permanently, anyway. He is shoulder-to-shoulder with Angel in “Not Fade Away”, about to go into battle, and his character is all over the comic book series that have followed the Buffyverse's televisual demise. James Marsters might even appear in a made-for-TV movie in the role. There's just no killing Spike.

• Overall ranking: #7
• Ranking on Buffy: #5
• Ranking on Angel: #7
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 32,573
• Season 2: 3117
• Season 3: 1098
• Season 4: 5697
• Season 5: 8144
• Season 6: 7238
• Season 7: 7279
• Total words spoken on Angel: 13,780
• Season 1: 979
• Season 2: 61
• Season 5: 12,740
• Total words spoken in the Buffyverse: 46,353
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 95
• Ranking #1: 7
• Ranking #2: 7
• Ranking #3: 6
• Ranking #4: 10
• Ranking #5: 12
• Minor: 53
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 24
• Ranking #1: 6
• Ranking #2: 3
• Ranking #3: 1
• Ranking #4: 1
• Ranking #5: 7
• Minor: 6
• Total speaking appearances in the Buffyverse: 119

#8: Wesley

In Season Three of Buffy, in the wonderful Douglas Petrie-penned episode “Bad Girls”, Faith's slide into evil picks up pace as she accidentally kills the Mayor's deputy, after giving Buffy a taste of the excitement of living above the law. A great episode, it also happens to introduce a new character: Wesley Wyndham-Price, a new watcher, whose pompous demeanour immediately rubs everyone the wrong way. Described by Xander as 'Pierce Brosnan-y', Wesley is mostly a one-dimensional caricature, an arrogant but clueless authority figure, devoid of courage or grit, a butt of jokes, destined surely for the trashheap of annoying characters who get theirs by the end of the season.

Who would equate that character with the one who dies in Illyria's arms in the last episode of Angel, “Not Fade Away”, having been killed by Cyvus Vail? That world-weary character has lived a lot in his years on earth, a lot of difficult decisions, a lot of pain, a lot of down-and-dirty battles... those two characters would barely recognise each other.

Yet so masterful are the writers of these two series (well, Angel primarily) that at no step does the evolution seem forced or unrealistic. Wesley's role on Buffy is limited to that single season, Season Three, where he manages to come in tenth for the season. He appears in nine episodes, though he has a significant role only in one: that début “Bad Girls”, where he's good for 699 words and a number-two finish. His comic relief and embarrassing lusting after Cordelia carry him through to the end of the season, where he's never after seen on Buffy and, I can only presume, Alexis Denisof started looking for new work.

Wesley appears on Angel in the first episode after Doyle's death, and while the writers went to pains to underline the idea that Wesley was not Doyle's replacement, it's really tough to see it otherwise. Almost immediately, he's accepted as a member of the team, and he becomes a central character on Angel, remaining so until that final episode. He speaks in 98 of the show's 110 episodes (appearing in 100), a number second only to Angel himself. Additionally, only 28 of those 98 appearances are minor, with 70 peaturing Wesley in the top five. For all that, though, he ranks number one only four times, outlining his 'supporting' role.

Of his thirteen Season One appearances, only one, “War Zone” with 326 words, is minor. This impressive record gives him a number four finish for the season, with 7360 words just behind Doyle himself. Three number twos include the season finale “To Shanshu in L.A.”, but Wesley's sole number one this season is in “Expecting”, which is actually a Cordelia episode, though Wesley's babbling demeanour gives him 1002 words to Cordelia's 980. While still clearly the same blowhard he was in Buffy, Wesley has progressed to a character with a greater morality, a sense of duty and loyalty, and a valuable team member.

In Season Two, Wesley makes only four minor appearances among 22 episodes, bottoming out in “The Trial” with a mere 110 words. 10,411 words is his highest seasonal word-count, and number three is his highest seasonal ranking (he'll tie it once more). Yet while he gets four number-twos, including “The Shroud of Rahmon” where he serves as a kind of narrator and says 790 words, he gets only one number one. Yet “Guise Will be Guise”, a fabulous episode where he impersonates Angel, is most definitely a 'Wesley episode', and he says 1037 words throughout. This season, Wesley graduates to de facto 'leader' of Angel Investigations during Angel's estrangement, picking up traits of leadership and responsibility. Right from the first episode of this season, the 'new Wesley' is in evidence.

Season Three is a major turning-point for Wesley. Rejected by Fred in favour of Gunn, we start to see darkness in him for the first time, and his sense of responsibility (not to mention unwavering belief in prophecy) leads him to kidnap Angel's son and turn him over to Holtz, a shocking decision that puts his life in peril twice, first as his throat is slit and he is left for dead, and again as Angel tries to kill him. This rift between Wesley and the rest of the group lasts for quite some time and helps to explain why Wesley's role this season, with 7893 words and a number four finish, is somewhat diminished. In fact, though he appears in all 22 episodes, he speaks in only 20, having been left temorarily mute by the throat-slitting. Thus, while his two number-twos, “Loyalty” and “Sleep Tight”, feature the peak of his Connor-Angel-prophecy arc, it might be a surprise that his sole number-one, with 974 words, is in “Billy”, a monster-of-the-week episode featuring a man who can turn other men into misanthropic animals with a single touch. This episode, though, is our first real taste of the 'darkness' within Wesley, and his behaviour, under Billy's influence, is quite frightening.

Season four features Wesley's gradual reintroduction to the team. Yet it's an overcrowded season, one that gives Wesley very little to do except participate as a team member: he's of primary importance again when he takes the lead as Angel disappears into the Angelus character. Ultimately, then, his number five season ranking is his lowest ever on Angel, and his 7396 words almost the lowest. He has two number twos, 723 words questioning Angelus in “Soulless” and 917 words in “Spin the Bottle”, a delightful episode that gives us a sudden flashback to Buffy-era Wesley, a nice reminder by comparison of how far the character had come.

Once the team moves to Wolfram & Hart, Wesley would appear to be in a familiar role, heading up research into ancient prophecies in a central, yet still supportive capacity. Yet when his finally-blossoming romance with Fred is cut short by her untimely death, Wesley enters a downward spiral into nihilism and alcoholism, entering into a complex relationship with the 'old one' who killed her, Illyria. Ultimately a tragic figure by the time of his death, Wesley is much more central to Season Five than it might appear, coming in third overall after Angel and Spike with 9631 words. Two consecutive number-two finishes in “A Hole in the World” and “Shells” reveal his centrality to the Fred-Illyria storyline, and his only number-one of the season, at 1266 his highest-ever word-count, is in “Lineage”, where a cyborg in the form of Wesley's father comes to Wolfram & Hart intent on harming Angel. Wesley shoots this cyborg, believing that he is in fact shooting his father. His absence from the next episode is attributed to time off to recuperate from the trauma, while the real-world reality is that his actor, Alexis Denisof, needed time off to marry Alyson Hannigan, who played Willow.

• Overall ranking: #8
• Ranking on Buffy: #26
• Ranking on Angel: #3
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 2390
• Season 3: 2390
• Total words spoken on Angel: 42,691
• Season 1: 7360
• Season 2: 10,411
• Season 3: 7893
• Season 4: 7396
• Season 5: 9631
• Total words spoken in the Buffyverse: 45,081
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 9
• Ranking #2: 1
• Ranking #5: 2
• Minor: 6
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 98
• Ranking #1: 4
• Ranking #2: 13
• Ranking #3: 20
• Ranking #4: 21
• Ranking #5: 12
• Minor: 28
• Total speaking appearances in the Buffyverse: 107

#9: Gunn

It's probably Gunn's curse to be a bit overlooked. In Angel, he's often downplayed as merely 'the muscle', despite having an impressive background and a commitment to 'the good fight' that arguably dwarfs everyone else's on the show, including the 'champion' Angel. In addition, in looking at the series at a whole, his contribution, and that of his actor J. August Richards, feel often inadequately recognised. Who, if asked which four characters on Angel had spoken the most dialogue on the show, would correctly label Gunn for number four?

Even Gunn's entry to the show, late in season one, feels understated - oddly, since it occurs in an episode primarily devoted to him. While Gary Campbell's "War Zone" makes a rather heavy-handed contrast between the poor street-dwelling vampire fighter Gunn, engaged in the netherworld because he needs to be to protect those close to him, and the Bill Gates-modelled David Nabbit, a billionaire dabbling in the netherworld out of boredom, Gunn is clearly the more interesting character, and his #3 finish here with 460 words falls behind her sister Alonna and Angel himself, with whom Gunn has a complex relationship throughout the series. Gunn appears in every episode from then on, though with only two episodes left, he's hardly a major contributor to the season.

Gunn takes a much more significant role in Season Two, coming fifth for the season with 6417 words, becoming a regular member of Angel Investigations and a central part of it during Angel's estrangement. Still, he gets few opportunities this season to truly shine, topping 400 words only twice: once with 1035 words (his highest word-count ever) but only a #2 finish in "First Impressions", the episode where Gunn really becomes a permanent team member, with Cordy tailing him out of fear for his life (the two contribute 56.6% of the entire script). The other time is a #1 finish in the estrangement-era episode "The Thin Dead Line", a confused episode about zombie cops set in Gunn's former neighbourhood.

Season Three features more of Gunn than Season Two, though he still feels largely like a minor character for a good deal of it. He finishes fifth again, with 7501 words. His romantic involvement with Fred brings a much-needed non-work aspect to Gunn's character, and as he played a particular role in keeping the gang together during Angel's estrangement, so he does again during Wesley's. "That Old Gang of Mine", the third episode of the season is a much-needed 'Gunn episode', resolving certain aspects of the duality of his life, confronting his former 'gang' as a full member of his new 'gang' (Angel Investigations). His 948 words give him a number one finish. After that, we go all the way to the final stretch of the season for two consecutive number-two finishes, one, "Double or Nothing" is most definitely his episode, in which the bargain he'd made seven years previously exchanging his soul for a truck comes back to haunt him, but he finished number two behind Fred, with 754 words. The next episode, "The Price", in which the Hyperion is infested by slug-like creatures and we finally meet teenage Connor, has Gunn at 667 words, partly through his concern as Fred becomes infected by one of the creatures.

While Season Four is so thoroughly caught up in its main plot that it might appear characters would be pushed to the wayside, it is very much 'Gunn's season'. He and Fred break up and he finds himself constrained by his role in Angel Investigations, but he's given such a chance to shine that he actually winds up at #3 for the season, behind only those two people who appear on the DVD box cover - and even at that, he's little more than a sentence away from #2, with 9103 words to Cordelia's 9111 (and by 'Cordelia', I mean all aspects of the 'Cordelia/Jasmine' character not played by Gina Torres). This expanded role becomes immediately apparent, as he gets a #1 ranking with 744 words in the season opener, "Deep Down", playing the 'alpha male' at Angel Investigations in Angel's absence. In the third episode, "The House Always Wins", he speaks 692 words for a #2 finish behind main character Lorne, and in the fifth, "Supersymmetry", he speaks 686 words for a #2 behind main character Fred and ultimately joins the rather large club of Buffyverse characters who have killed humans. By far, Charles's biggest chance to shine in the season comes in "Players", where he teams up with Gwen, who finished ahead of his 1006-word number-two finish. The two are good for 54.4% of the dialogue in what is otherwise a crucial episode of the evil-Cordelia plotline.

Season Five sees all of the characters changing their roles, but perhaps none so much as Gunn, who is transformed into a cunning attorney with much more moral ambiguity that we have seen in him to date. 7841 words represents a drop in a character-filled season, but he still finishes a respectable fourth. Despite this, there are no real 'Gunn episodes' this season, as he in many ways returns to being a dependable but apparently inessential team member. The legal knowledge implanted into Gunn's head becomes the main aspect of his storyline, and when it starts to fade, his attempts to get it back lead indirectly to Fred's death. Much of the remainder of Gunn's season is spent atoning for that action. He gets no #1 finishes, finishing #2 only in season opener "Conviction" with 681 words and again, surprisingly, in "The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco" with 764 words, ahead of Numero Cinco himself.

His role in "Not Fade Away", the series finale, is understated: 285 words and number four. In the very final scene, Gunn is alive and kicking, about to go into the battle that Angel's team's actions have unleashed, but he has wounds that Illyria describes as mortal. More than any other character in the Buffyverse, his status as the series ends is unclear. It's resolved in the comic book series, where, unexpectedly, he dies and is turned into a vampire, but when Angel says "Let's go to work" and the credits role, Gunn is still alive, valiantly supporting Angel and selflessly fighting the good fight with no consideration for whether he lives or dies. Just as he always did.

• Overall ranking: #9
• Ranking on Angel: #4
• Total words spoken on Angel:31,598
• Season 1: 736
• Season 2: 6417
• Season 3: 7501
• Season 4: 9103
• Season 5: 7841
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 91
• Ranking #1: 3
• Ranking #2: 8
• Ranking #3: 10
• Ranking #4: 12
• Ranking #5: 14
• Minor: 44

#10: Fred

Anybody looking for proof that Angel was not just your average run-of-the-mill hour-long drama need look no further than the character of Fred. I can't imagine which other TV show would create such a unique character. Or alternately which actor, other than Amy Acker, could inhabit the character so completely and bring her to life so endearingly. Technically, her first appearance is in Shawn Ryan's “Belonging”, the last epsisode of Season Two to be set entirely in LA, though it's only in photos and flashbacks: she never says a word. It's easier, then, to see her début as occurring in Mere Smith's “Over the Rainbow”, where she says 176 words. From those early appearances as a half-insane vagabond on the run from the authorities in the hell dimension of Pylea, through her amazing evolution into the self-confident scientific mastermind of Wolfram & Hart in the first half of Season Five, the character inspires nothing so much as a kind of unconditional love. It's impossible not to love Fred, as becomes apparent in the Season Five episode “A Hole in the World”, where the essence of the 'Old One' Illyria, brought to Wolfram & Hart by Knox and through Gunn's accidental agency, enters her body and kills her. That episode and the ones that follow show a mourning for her loss unequalled in five death-filled seasons of Angel. Fred occupies a unique spot on the show as the single character whose loss affected the team greatest.

Fred says only 920 words in Season Two, since, as with Gunn a season before, she's introduced only at the tail-end of the season. She's in only three episodes, in Pylea, reaching the top five only with season finale “There's No Place Like Plrtz Glrb”, where her 495 words get her a number three finish.

She comes back to LA with the team, taking residence in the Hyperion Hotel while slowly readjusting to life in the human world. It's touch-and-go whether she'll become a regular member of the team, but by the end of the season, she's well entrenched in her new role, central to the team and dating Gunn as well. Rather shockingly, she jumps all the way up to number three for this season, meaning she speaks more words than everyone else on the show that season save two characters. The 8984 word-count is also as high as she ever got. Though that run contains 10 minors, three number-fives and six number-fours, it does also contain fully three number-one finishes, 1343 words (her largest count ever) in the eponymous “Fredless”, where we meet her family and she becomes a permanent member of the team, and two back-to-back number-ones, 754 words in “Forgiving” and 1022 words in “Double or Nothing”, a Gunn episode, where he still speaks almost three hundred words fewer than his girlfriend.

Season four features Fred and Gunn's breakup, but otherwise there's not that much for Fred to do until the Jasmine mini-arc at the end of the season. As with the Pylea mini-arc, Fred's character shines in the multi-episode format. She starts off well, with two number twos at the beginning of the season, 730 words in “Deep Down” as effectively half of the understaffed Angel Investigations and a surprising 669 words in 'Gwen episode' “Ground State”. Episode number five of the season is a 'Fred episode', “Supersymmetry”, where the story of her expulsion to Pylea is tied up and Fred and Gunn's revenge on the professor who sent her there puts a permanent wedge in their relationship. At 30.5% of the whole script, her 1138 words are well-earned.

Its mostly the shadows from then on until Jasmine. In “Shiny Happy People” she's second only to Jasmine herself (the two characters combine for 59% of the episode's dialogue) and in “The Magic Bullet”, she's second to none, albeit with a surprisingly low 557 words (the third-lowest number-one-ranking word count in the series). All in all, if the Jasmine 'epic' is considered as a single episode, Fred ranks #2, behind Jasmine herself but ahead of Angel himself. All in all, in Season Four, Fred finishes fourth with 8801 words.

Numerologists might be intrigued that Fred finished third in Season Three, fourth in Season Four and, you guessed it, fifth in Season Five. 6857 words is a drop, but one must remember that her character dies in this season. For the remainder of the series, Illyria walks around in Fred's 'shell', played of course also by Amy Acker. If we considered Fred and Illyria to be the same person, and we shouldn't, a total of 9453 words would only raise her to number four. “A Hole in the World” is the episode of her death; 33 words spoken in a dream of Wesley's are credited post-mortem to her, but none of Illyria's experiments with the body (colour) or voice of Fred count. “A Hole in the World” is a comfortable number-one finish, at 826 words, but her other number-one and number-two finishes this season are all in support of other people: “Unleashed”, at 907 words and number one, is a Nina episode. “Hellbound”, at 909 words and number two, is a Spike episode. And “Harm's Way”, at 700 words and number two, is Harmony's episode. Her willingness to play sidekick might explain that crowd around her deathbed, and might explain why not loving Fred is about as perverse a response to the TV show Angel as one could imagine.

• Overall ranking: #10
• Ranking on Angel: #5
• Total words spoken on Angel: 25,562
• Season 2: 920
• Season 3: 8984
• Season 4: 8801
• Season 5: 6857
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 63
• Ranking #1: 7
• Ranking #2: 5
• Ranking #3: 4
• Ranking #4: 11
• Ranking #5: 6
• Minor: 30

#11: Lorne

They say that the character Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan, known to friends as 'Lorne' (and known for almost a whole season merely as 'The Host'), was really just the late, great Andy Hallett in green make-up – meaning that the character was very closely modeled on the actor. If that's so, Andy Hallett, who died in 2009 at 33 years of age, must have been quite a loveable person.

Krevlornswath is a demon from the dimension of Pylea. Possessing few of the qualities usually associated with demons, Lorne gets along well with humans and is much more interested in good than in evil. In Los Angeles, he starts off as the host and owner of Caritas, a demon karaoke bar catering non-judgementally to both the good and the evil, but with time he is fully absorbed into Angel Investigations, becoming a key member of Wolfram & Hart once Angel's team joins the evil law firm.

Known for his loyalty and compassion in addition to great singing voice and natty dress sense, Lorne is given one of the most unpleasant departures of any character not killed in the Buffyverse. He survives Season Five, but with his faith and enthusiasm severely tested by the events of the season. Unexpectedly, Angel orders him to shoot Lindsey point-blank, and he leaves “Not Fade Away” promising to disappear from Angel's world and asking not be be sought out (though he does reappear in the canonical “After the Fall” comic book series).

Until that time, however, Lorne was a great scene-stealer, with a motormouth and an energy that placed him in the centre of a good many episodes. The flashy episode “Judgement”, which gets season two off to an exciting start, begins with Lorne's green face unexpectedly breaking into a Gloria Gaynor tune. The episode, by David Greenwalt and Joss Whedon, gives Lorne 532 words and a number-three finish. Lorne appears in a total of 15 episodes that season, finishing fourth, ahead, amazingly enough, of Gunn. He finishes #2 once, in “Reprise” with 427 words, but quite surprisingly, of the six number-one finished Lorne racks up across four seasons, fully half are in this season alone: “Happy Anniversary”, where his 1355 words are nearly a third of the whole script and are Lorne's second-highest word count ever, and two consecutive episodes in the Pylea arc at the end of the season: 972 words in “Belonging” and 1086 words in “Over the Rainbow”. Across the Pylean epic, Lorne actually says more words than Angel, though fewer than Cordelia.

Appearing in 17 season three episodes, Lorne steps back a bit: 5242 words to 6516 the previous season, and a number-six finish. No number-one finishes, and no word counts higher than 675, despite moving into the Hyperion with the rest of the gang and being Connor's main babysitter. Two number-two finishes during Connor's infancy: “Dad” with 498 words and “Provider” with 675.

Lorne appears in 21 of 22 episodes in season four, missing only episode two. He more than makes up for that in episode three, “The House Always Wins”, where he is trapped in Las Vegas. He has 1047 words this episode, 224 of them sung. The hilarious amnesia-episode “Spin the Bottle” might seem like a surprising number-one for Lorne, who spends much of the episode unconscious. But he narrates the entire episode with the framing device of a story told over a piano at some dive bar. 517 of his 945 words this episode are narration, and without it, Lorne would come in at number five. This episode starts the main 'Beast' storyline going, and after that Lorne takes a backseat, appearing no higher than number three in any episode, and again finishing number six for the season, though 6652 words is his highest seasonal word count.

Lorne again finished number six in Season Five, a second six-six-six finish like Dawn's that might set numerologists' teeth on edge. This is a bit of a strange season. In 21 of 22 episodes, he's very much a background character, never saying more than 386 words and getting only one number-four finish. The exception, though, is quite an exception: in the Lorne episode “Life of the Party”, Lorne says a jaw-dropping 1925 words, 39.2% of the whole episode. This is the single largest word-count in Angel, and indeed in the entire Buffyverse. If Lorne in this episode were a separate character, that character would still show up on this list at 47, ahead of Skip, Professor Walsh, Ben and the Groosalugg. 39.2% is not a record, bested once in Angel by Angelus and twice in Buffy by Angel and by Spike. It is still an incredible performance, by an incredible actor in an incredible role.

• Overall ranking: #11
• Ranking on Angel: #6
• Total words spoken on Angel: 23,901
• Season 2: 6516
• Season 3: 5242
• Season 4: 6652
• Season 5: 5491
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 75
• Ranking #1: 6
• Ranking #2: 3
• Ranking #3: 6
• Ranking #4: 6
• Ranking #5: 4
• Minor: 50

#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

#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

#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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#21: Harmony

With 37 words in Joss Whedon's “The Harvest”, the second episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 237 words in Joss Whedon's “Not Fade Away”, the finale of Angel more than seven years later, Mercedes McNab's Harmony has a Buffyverse longevity record surpassed only by Angel himself (appearing in the unaired pilot where David Boreanaz did not, she could arguably claim the overall record, but the pilot was never shown on TV, is not considered canon, and has been disowned by Joss Whedon). Of course, she has considerably less to show for it than he does, being a regularly recurring vapid 'frenemy' to Cordelia at Sunnydale High, being a regularly occurring vapid vampire and girlfriend to Spike on both shows thereafter, and becoming a regular cast member only on season five of Angel, where she works at Wolfram & Hart as Angel's vapid assistant.

Human Harmony manages only 538 words in only six minor appearances across three episodes of Buffy. After that, Harmony the vampire attempts in vain to terrorise Sunnydale in seasons four and five across nine episodes. She racks up a more impressive 2435 words here, including a 761-word, number-two finish in “Real Me”, where the episode's title refers in turn both to Dawn and to Harmony.

Before season five, Harmony makes only one appearance on Angel, but it's an impressive one: 1060 words and a number two finish in the partially-eponymous “Disharmony”. She's still primarily comic relief in Season Five, surviving the series to reappear in the comic books, but she becomes a much more regular presence (number seven in the season overall). Or perhaps not: appearing in 16 of the season's 22 episodes, her role is quite small in all but one of them: fourteen minors and one number five. Not much to show for. Except that that tally excludes episode nine, the partially-eponymous “Harm's Way”, a Harmony episode par excellence in which she says an amazing 1843 words, almost as much as the other 15 episodes combined, an amazing 38.8% of the total script, and the third highest word count for a single character in a single episode across 254 episodes of the Buffyverse. An impressive feat, and who saw it coming from chronic underachiever Harmony?

• Overall ranking: #21
• Ranking on Buffy: #23
• Ranking on Angel: #14
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 2973
• Season 1: 133
• Season 2: 186
• Season 3: 219
• Season 4: 796
• Season 5: 1639
• Total words spoken on Angel: 4936
• Season 2: 1060
• Season 5: 3876 (#7)
• Total words spoken in the Buffyverse: 7909
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 15
• Ranking #2: 1
• Ranking #3: 2
• Ranking #5: 1
• Minor: 11
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 17
• Ranking #1: 1
• Ranking #2: 1
• Ranking #5: 1
• Minor: 14
• Total speaking appearances in the Buffyverse: 32

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#22: Darla

Of all the characters on the two series, I would suggest that no single one has a story as convoluted as Darla's. Living in the Virginia colony in the early 17th century, she contract syphilis and dies at the hands of the Master, who sires her. Several hundred years as a vampire, during which she sires Angel, and in the first season of Buffy, she's in Sunnydale, before being dusted by Angel himself. She's then brought back to life as a human by Wolfram & Hart, and then killed and sired again by Drusilla before finally taking her own (un)life in order to let her unborn son Connor live.

Whew. Complicated or what? Four deaths, and the last one seems to have stuck... more or less. That gives Darla, played by Julie Benz, the distinction of most deaths on the Buffyverse. Another significant distinction would be that she is the very first character to speak any dialogue on the series, in the Joss Whedon-penned first episode “Welcome to the Hellmouth” - in a wonderful scene that immediately subverts Hollywood cliché and sets the tone for the twelve seasons to come (she's also the first to speak in the unaired pilot, in essentially the same scene). However, Darla is not really a 'Buffy character' at all. In fact, her total word count on Buffy alone is enough to put her merely at 47th place among Buffy characters, below Buffy's university roommate Kathy. She appears in only five episodes, only once (Season One's “Angel”, when she's dusted for the first time) ranking in the top five: #2 with 606 words. Of these five appearances, three are contemporaneous, as an overly enthusiastic disciple of the Master in Sunnydale in season one (where, surprisingly, she still says enough to rank as the tenth most prominent character on that truncated season). The other two are in flashbacks in episodes on seasons two and five, where we see the more sophisticated Darla we've come to know.

Come to know where? On Angel, where Darla's status as Angel's 'sire' and constant companion in the evil old days give her a more important role. Season One ends with Darla brought back to life by Wolfram & Hart – though her panting in that episode doesn't count as a spoken appearance. We'd already seen her in two flashbacks that season, though, and she becomes a much more important character in Season Two, appearing in ten episodes and finishing as the number-six character for the season. Interestingly, in this season Darla's role is eother minor or major. She's off the top five for six of the ten episodes, but the remaining four episodes each have her at either number one or number two in the word count. In “Dear Boy” and “The Trial”, Darla finishes as the number-two character with 828 and 865 words respectively, and she ranks #1 in “Redefinition”, in which Angel doesn't say a single word on camera, with 728 words, and in her eponymous episode “Darla”, where her 1223 words are over 30% of the dialogue. Like so many of Darla's appearances, this is a flashback-heavy episode.

Returning in season three pregnant with Angel's baby, Darla makes a further five appearances and comes in tenth for character word counts that season. Her fifth appearance is her last one, in a manner of speaking, the episode “Lullaby”, where she clocks in a number-three, 511-word appearance before dusting herself so that Connor may live.

A season and a half later, we see an apparition that may or may not be Darla in the rather messy episode “Inside Out”. Who- or whatever that character is, it says 438 words and finishes fourth. Having no other place to put them, I've given those words to Darla, though that might not be appropriate. A final appearance is a season later, in flashbacks only, in “The Girl in Question”.

As I've done with Drusilla, I'll take Darla's total word-count and itemise it by time and place. In this case, it'll also have to include by 'nature' (human, vampire, other). Are you ready? It's long...

• Virginia, 1609, as a human: 97 words
• Galway, 1753, as a vampire: 198 words
• London, 1760, as a vampire: 70 words
• York, 1764, as a vampire: 45 words
• France, 1765, as a vampire: 171 words
• Marseilles, 1767, as a vampire: 75 words
• Rome, 1771, as a vampire: 52 words
• London, 1860, as a vampire: 113 words
• London, 1880, as a vampire: 54 words
• Yorkshire, 1880, as a vampire: 30 words
• Italy, 1894, as a vampire: 110 words
• Borsa, Romania, 1898, as a vampire: 244 words
• China, 1900, as a vampire: 280 words
• Sunnydale, 1997, as a vampire: 763 words
• Los Angeles, 2000, as a human: 2120 words
• The location of 'the trial', 2000, as a human: 49 words
• Los Angeles, 2000, in Angel's dreams, 194 words
• Los Angeles, 2000-2001, as a vampire: 1361 words
• Puerto Cabazas, Nicaragua, 2001, as a pregnant vampire: 21 words
• Yoro Mountains, Honduras, 2001, as a pregnant vampire: 97 words
• Los Angeles, 2001, as a pregnant vampire: 1100 words
• Los Angeles, 2003, as an apparition: 438 words

Now that's an epic tale.

• Overall ranking: #22
• Ranking on Buffy: #47
• Ranking on Angel: #11
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 834
• Season 1: 763 (#10)
• Season 2: 35
• Season 5: 36
• Total words spoken on Angel: 6848
• Season 1: 301
• Season 2: 4609 (#6)
• Season 3: 1390 (#10)
• Season 4: 438
• Season 5: 110
• Total words spoken in the Buffyverse: 7682
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 5
• Ranking #2: 1
• Minor: 4
• Total speaking appearances on Angel: 19
• Ranking #1: 2
• Ranking #2: 2
• Ranking #3: 1
• Ranking #4: 1
• Ranking #5: 2
• Minor: 11
• Total speaking appearances in the Buffyverse: 24

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