#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

#5: Xander

Xander himself says it best in “Potential” - watching his friends become more and more powerful, while he's the guy who fixes the windows. The progress we see in Xander across the seven series is not really one of him ivercoming his faults so much as learning to accept who he is despite – and to a certain extent – because of his limitations. In a series filled with superheroes, Xander's the 'everyman', and to keep on the good fight despite having nothing in the way of 'abilities' requites a certain heroism that, as he's come to understand by Season Seven, the others will never comprehend.

Mind you, that doesn't excuse how the writers treated Xander as the series was coming to a close. Xander's tale was a good one, one of a person taking halting steps toward maturity in an adult world, but once he left Anya at the altar (a missed opportunity, perhaps, to underscore Xander's development into responsible adulthood), the writers appear to have decided thay had nothing more to say about Xander, and though he's still all over Season Seven, he's not really doing much of anything.

Which is something you can't say about Xander early on. Oddly, while Nicholas Brendon was the inexperienced one next to child stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan and experienced thespian Anthony Stewart Head, in those initial episodes he seems to carry a lot of the action. It might be that paling Xander was not much of a stretch for him, character-wise, but Nicholas Brendon fit into Xander's shoes way more quickly than the rest of the cast did in to their respective characters, and the difference is plain to see. Xander comes in third in the short first season, with 6392 words, and remarkably turns in only one minor performance. Revealing that Xander gets only a single number one in this season would leave the curious fan to wonder whether it was “Teacher's Pet”, in which Xander falls for a substitute teacher-cum-praying mantis, or “The Pack”, in which he becomes possessed by a hyena (it's a peculiar season, this one). In fact, it's neither: Xander comes in number two in each behind Buffy, with 774 words (his season high) and 651 words, respectively. Xander's number-one, surprisingly, is in “Prophecy Girl”, where he gets 758 words in around the season-concluding events of the episode.

Xander comes in #2 for Season Two (whatever its red-toned DVD box cover might otherwise imply), with a remarkable 12,265 words by far his largest single-season word-count. It's hard to believe, really, that Xander would ever come in at number two – but he really is all over this season, not only with three number-ones, but with 18 top-five apprearances: Xander is just always around, earning that title of the 'heart' of the Scoobies that we'll see at the end of Season Four. Anyway, Xander's three number-ones include the surprising “Innocence”, the episode where we first meet Angelus and where he shatters the fragile Buffy with his cruelty, but where these two still lag behind Xander's 614 words. The other two are less surprising, being very clear 'Xander episodes': “Inca Mummy Girl” at 1034 words a great leap forward for Xander the character, and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” at 1314 words (his peak this season) a hilarious episode with Xander having messed up a spell and causing the women of Sunnydale to fall in love with him, from a time when Buffy wasn't afraid to be laugh-out-loud silly from time to time.

Things change a lot for Xander in Season Three, and the reason is, frankly, Willow. As the series progresses, the character of Willow evolves greatly and becomes more and more important. Though it would seem that Season Four is where we see this come to fruition, it's happened by Season Three, really, as Xander drops down bwhind Willow to third place for the season, with 8451 words a big step down from the previous season. Seven minors this season and, excluding his one-and-only centric episode, no more than 572 words in an episode. He might be the 'key' for the fight at the end of the season, but he's not very important to the season as a whole, something his sole number-one, the excellent “The Zeppo” plays on. A great episode that reveals a lot about what being Xander means in the evolving Buffyverse, “The Zeppo” barely ever takes the camera off of him, and gives him 1441 words of dialogue, an impressive 35.2%. But it's very much a one-time thing; without this episode, he'd have only 7010 words this season, barely higher than his worst-ever full season.

This, while the decline continues in Season Four, with 8059 words though still number three, Xander appears to appear more often: more to the point, with Xander not living on campus and attending university with Buffy and Willow, the writers need to consciously find ways to include Xander. Thus three number-ones, though none are in any way 'Xander episodes'. “Fear, Itself”, a Halowe'en episode, has Xander feeling like a 'townie' outsider, in 849 words and 21.3%. The next episode, the much-reviled “Beer Bad” defaults to Xander as the bartender at number one, since Buffy spends much of the episode grunting. 664 words but exactly 21.3% again. With 803 words and an almost-identical 21.5%, Xander's third and final number one of the season is “Where the Wild Things Are”, like “Beer Bad” also written by Tracey Forbes but in my personal opinion even worse. At the risk of being rude, I could recycle the previous sentence about the number one defaulting to Xander 'since Buffy spends much of the episode grunting'.

In any case, though, by now Xander's descent as a major character is inexorable. Season Five features even less of him. He still finishes at number three (detecting a pattern here?), but with 7986 words this time. And as with Season Three, without his single standout episode of the season, Xander would finish at 6206 words, which would drop him down to fifth. That standout is “The Replacement”, a great episode featuring two Xanders, 'ScruffyXander' who speaks 853 words, 'SuaveXander' with 486 words, and normal Xander at the beginning and end of the episode with 441 words. In total, this is 1780 words: Xander's highest word-count ever by 300 words, Season Five's highest by 400 words, and the second-highest in 144 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (losing out only to Andrew). Apart from that, though, it's mostly bad news for Xander.

Xander's sole number-one in Season Six is in the atypical episode “Bargaining, Part Two”, which is more of an ensemble episode. That he gets no other times in the sin this season might lead one to see it as a further step in Xander's downward trajectory, but it is in fact a respite: with a thwarted wedding and with his role as the best friend to the season's 'big bad', Xander has more to do, and say, this season: 9077 words being his second-best season. He may have had only one number one, but he had an impressive six number-twos, including unsurprisingly “Hell's Bells” and more surprisingly “Once More, With Feeling”, where he sings his way to his season best of 768 words.

Yet Season Seven reverses the trend again, his worst-ever season with a number-four finish, an all-time low of 6980 words (more than Season One, yes, but with ten more episodes), the sole Buffy episode in which he doesn't appear (“Conversations With Dead People”), the almost-as-bad 23-word episode “Lies My Parents Told Me”, no number-ones at all, no Xander-centric episodes, and no character development across 22 episodes. His highest word-count this season, surprisingly, is “Him” at 658 words (and still only #3). One of the 'core four' and at one time the most important character on the show after the titular character, Xander was reduced to a mere 199 words in “Chosen”, a minor role for what had at one time been a major character. He survived, of course, one-eyed and about to take a far greater role in Season Eight. I should mention, in passing, that Xander is, like everyone else in the top six, introduced in Joss Whedon's “Welcome to the Hellmouth”, and that he's the highest-ranking character never to have appeared on Angel.

• Overall ranking: #5
• Ranking on Buffy: #3
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 59,210
• Season 1: 6392
• Season 2: 12,265
• Season 3: 8451
• Season 4: 8059
• Season 5: 7986
• Season 6: 9077
• Season 7: 6980
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 121
• Ranking #1: 10
• Ranking #2: 18
• Ranking #3: 18
• Ranking #4: 29
• Ranking #5: 20
• Minor: 48

#6: Giles

'For real this time?', a frustrated Anya cries out in “Tabula Rasa”, right before the spell that gives everyone amnesia, 'a young shopkeeper's heart can only take so much.' Giles has announced his intention to leave, once again. It's not tough to understand Anya's frustration: for all of his talk about 'standing in the way', for all of his departures, Giles never goes away very far. His decreased involvement in the final seasons of Buffy give the impression that he's less central a character to the show than perhaps other characters. But in fact, Giles appears in 121 of 144 Buffy episodes: however you look at it, he has a well-earned place in the so-called 'core four'.

The fact is that Giles was absolutely essential to the show in the early episodes. To rewatch season one and season two is to see just how great a watcher's role in an immature slayer's life can be. To the extent that Buffy is also a show about growing up, leaving childhood things behind, accepting responsibility and getting by as an independant adult in an adult's world, it makes sense that gather-figure Giles would drop down the list of important characters as the show progressed. But the extent to which that's true is quite amazing. Looking at the total words spoken per character per season, Giles in season one is the second most verbose character. As the seasons progress, though, he falls steadily: from #2 to #3, then to #4 and #4 again, then #5 and then, as a special guest, #8 and #10.

But Giles in the beginning – stuttering, stuffy, over-dramatic Giles – is truly a force of nature. Introduced, like every single remaining character in our top 50, in Joss Whedon's series opener “Welcome to the Hellmouth”, Giles finishes every episode of Season One in either second or third place. His lowest word count that season is still 541 words (his highest being 1007 in “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date”). As the cast was gelling and settling in, Anthony Stewart Head, the most seasoned actor, was so significant to the season that his word-count of 8372 words is his second highest ever – even though Season One was barely half the length of the other seasons.

In the full 22-episode season two, Giles still gets only two minor counts. Otherwise it's six number-fives, five number-fours, five number-threes and four number twos. This is his highest overall word-count – 10,410 words – but already there is a much more rounded cast this season, and more of an contribution from other characters. And perhaps there's a trend we can notice here concerning Giles: a very strong supporting role, but very few lead roles. His highest word count this season, 916 words, is in “The Dark Age”, very clearly a 'Giles episode' yet still with a higher word count from Buffy than from Giles. The fact is that on Buffy, despite the importance of the character, 'Giles episodes' are rare and Giles number-ones are rarer still, with only three across seven seasons.

Thus it is in season three, where Giles's word count drops to 8183 words and still no number-ones. As a consolation, there are four number twos, including “Helpless” at 580 words (his season highest) and “Band Candy”, perhaps the most enjoyable performance we see in the series from Anthony Stewart Head returned to his thuggish adolescence across 542 words. Yet as much as this episode and “The Dark Age” called out for an exploration of Giles's 'Ripper' teenage years, we never got one.

Season three ended with the destruction of Sunnydale High School and the graduation of it most important students. Without a job and with Buffy on the other side of town, Giles spent much of this season in search of purpose. And while the numbers do in a sense bear that out, with a further drop to 7948 words, the fact remains that this is the season where Giles gets two in three of his number-one finishes. With 1231 words, his highest ever word count by far, and 25.9% of the dialogue, “A New Man” is a classic example of an episode centred around a single character. With Ethan Rayne turning Giles into a demon, it's a pretty run-of-the-mill slapstick episode, but it gives Giles a chance to hog the limelight, and to shine doing it, buried under all that make-up. It's also, oddly, the only of the three Giles number-ones that can in any way be construed as a 'Giles episode'. The other episode this season where Giles comes in number one, for example, would be rather hard to guess: it is in fact season finale “Restless”, the surrealistic 'dream episode', where Giles squeezes in a mere seven words more than Buffy (sung, no less).

Season Five starts with Buffy begging Giles to take a more active role in her life, and while it would appear that the Dawn/Glory plotline features him in a more central role than, say, the Riley/Adam plotline, Season Five shows another significant drop-off in Giles's word count – almost 1300 words, to 6665 words. Fully 14 of the season's 22 appearances are minor. He never gets higher than number two and never gets more than 696 words in the Watchers' Council episode “Checkpoint” (a number three finish). The season finale, “The Gift”, is a number-two finish and could concievably have been Giles's final episode. It was, in fact, his last episode as a series regular.

Giles appears in eight episodes in Season Six: the first episode, a stretch of five from episodes number four to eight, and the final two. This includes “Two to Go”, at six words ('I'd like to test that theory') his smallest-ever word-count. Giles's final number-one occurs in this season, again at 582 (a small amount for a number one) only a few words more than Buffy, and again in an episode few could have predicted: the abovementioned amnesia-episode “Tabula Rasa”, which ends with him leaving on an airplane. At a total of 3637 words, Season Six represents Giles's smallest overall word count.

Season Seven features a slight increase, at 3778 words, but over 13 episodes (well over half the season). In this overcrowded season, Giles only makes it onto the top five on five occasions, with two number twos in “Bring on the Night”, where he brings the first group of Potentials to Buffy's house, and “Lies My Parents Told Me”, which is by no means a 'Giles episode' yet still features Giles in a significant role as one of the three 'parents' who have been telling lies. Joss Whedon said he knew he couldn't kill off any of the 'core four' in season finale “Chosen”, so on that bus is Giles, ending the series by leaving Sunnydale. As he had already done so many times.

• Overall ranking: #6
• Ranking on Buffy: #4
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 48,993
• Season 1: 8372
• Season 2: 10,410
• Season 3: 8183
• Season 4: 7948
• Season 5: 6665
• Season 6: 3637
• Season 7: 3778
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 121
• Ranking #1: 3
• Ranking #2: 23
• Ranking #3: 23
• Ranking #4: 15
• Ranking #5: 15
• Minor: 42

#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

#12: Anya

The rumour goes that Emma Caulfield was brought in for a single appearance in Marti Noxon's “The Wish”, playing a 'vengeance demon' named Anya who grants Cordelia's wish that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, with the writers having no plans to bring her back. If that's true, she can probably thank Alyson Hannigan, whose performance as Vampire Willow was strong enough to suggest a sequel, “Doppelgängland”. After that, Anya slowly became a regular, entering into a relationship with Xander and getting used to, and involved in, human life.

Human life? Well, up there with Darla and Dawn for complex back-stories, the character was actually born human in 860 AD in Scandinavia as Aud. Wreaking vengeance on her lover Olaf leads her to D'Hoffryn, a demon who transforms Aud into Anyanka, a 'vengeance demon' who spends a thousand years wreaking vengeance on behalf of scorned women. The wish she grants Cordelia backfires, leaving her returned to human form in Sunnydale, a high school girl with the name Anya. As the series progresses, she falls in love and gets engaged to Xander. His decision to leave her at the altar makes her return to the vengeance fold, until she becomes human once again, regretting an act of vengeance she's committed against a group of frat boys (the manner in which D'Hoffryn appears able to transform Anya from human to demon and back again is never explained). Finally, she participates in the battle in series finale “Chosen”, only to die a particularly brutal death at the hands of one of the Turok-Han.

Anya appears in 81 episodes across five seasons. Her per-season word count arcs, starting at a mere 1265 words in season three, climbing to 2692 words (and a number seven finish) in season four and 4998 words (number seven again) in season five, reaching a high of 8502 words in season six (and remarkably a number four finish) before dropping down to 5836 words in (the character-heavy) season seven (where she still finished number five).

Of Anya's 81 appearances, 52 are minor (and interestingly for a casted character, there are several episodes, including three in the final season, where she appears only in the opening credits). However, she ranks #2 three times and #1 four times. Never ranking above number three in seasons three or four, Anya gets her first number one in “Triangle”, a humorous, if slightly out-of-character, episode revolving around the aggression that exists between Anya and Willow. She speaks 1056 words of this very wordy episode (its 5116 words are the highest in the whole series).

Season six, definitely Anya's peak, features three number-twos and two number-ones. Her number-two in “Bargaining, Part Two” is suspect, in that my word-count for that episode is problematically low. Though not at all an 'Anya episode', “Doublemeat Palace” features Anya preparing for her wedding and in dialogue with Halfrek, giving her a #2 finish of 547 words (tied exactly with Willow). Her significant role in the Dawn episode “Older and Far Away” gives her 598 words and a #2 finish, yet Anya reaches her absolute peak soon after that, with two number-one finishes separated only by “Normal Again”, an episode she intriguingly doesn't appear in at all. “Hell's Bells” is the episode of her would-be wedding, where Xander leaves her. Her excellent performance is good for 818 words and a number-one finish. “Entropy” features Anya seeking someone to allow her to grant vengeance on Xander, and ends up with her sleeping with Spike. Her 1101 words, almost 25% of the whole episode, is her highest word count, higher even than season seven's “Selfless”, an Anya episode par excellence, where she speaks 1020 words, including 206 words in Old Norse as Aud, 137 words in revolutionary St. Petersburg, and 254 words spoken and sung during a flashback to the circumstances of “Once More With Feeling”.

• Overall ranking: #12
• Ranking on Buffy: #6
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 23,293
• Season 3: 1265
• Season 4: 2692
• Season 5: 4998
• Season 6: 8502
• Season 7: 5836
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 81
• Ranking #1: 4
• Ranking #2: 3
• Ranking #3: 8
• Ranking #4: 6
• Ranking #5: 8
• Minor: 52

#13: Dawn

Poor, misunderstood Dawnie. An amazingly complex storyline, wherein she is in fact a bundle of ancient energy capable of opening a portal between dimensions, turned into human flesh using Buffy's blood by a group of monks and inserted into Buffy's family, and into the memories of everyone involved with Buffy, as her little sister in order to keep 'The Beast', a banished god from a hell dimension, from finding her and using her in order to return home to her own dimension, slowly gels across Season Five, but initially, when she is introduced with a word-count of one ('Mom!') in Marti Noxon's "Buffy vs. Dracula" (Michelle Trachtenberg's sole appearance outside of the main cast), she is thrust into the story with no explanation whatsoever, appearing for all the world like an example of the Hollywood cliché of sticking a previously-unknown family member into a tired franchise to give it some new life.

In all probability, the writers intended to play with that hackneyed device, before introducing the elements of the storyline by which Dawn becomes a central part of the season's storyline. "Real Me", the following episode, is the proper introduction to the character, though her 637 words (147 on-screen and 490 in a voice-over to her diary) are merely enough to get her a number three ranking. This presents the single most amazing stat about Dawn: in 66 episodes, every episode of the final three seasons, Dawn never on a single occasion gets a number-one ranking. There is no episode of Buffy in which Dawn says more dialogue than any other character. Three number threes, seven number twos, but no number ones. Always a bridesmaid... Unsurprisingly, number-thirteen Dawn is the highest-ranking character in the Buffyverse never to have had a single number-one episode (she's the highest-ranking character to have had less than three).

This might have to do with the fact that, while Dawn is a constant presence, she's all too infrequently given much to do in the Buffyverse. An average word-count of 243 words belies the fact that, outside of the occasions where she features in the plot, her word-count is frequently much lower than that. There are in fact sixteen episodes in which she speaks fewer than a hundred words.

In 'her season', Season Five, Dawn says the sixth-largest number of words of anyone in the season. She ranks number three in the aforementioned "Real Me" and also in "The Body", where she speaks a mere 352 words mourning the death of her mother. The following episode, "Forever", is more properly a Dawn episode, and the 644 words she speaks gives her a number-two ranking. Her highest word count in the season is 868, in "Blood Ties", the episode where she discovers the truth about herself. This is still a number two, however, lagging behind Buffy's 950 words.

A sense of arrested development mars Dawn's contribution to Season Six, where she appears all too frequently to be gratingly petulant. While petulance is excusable given the circumstances of her life and upbringing, Dawn's character could have benefited greatly from a greater sense of balance, if some of the growth she exhibits in Season Seven were more apparent in this season. Nonetheless, she ranks number six once again this season, with one number three, "Wrecked", where Willow's magicoholism threatens Dawn's life, and two number twos, "All the Way", a definite "Dawn episode" where her meagre 472 word count belies the fact that she's on-screen for most of the episode and is a mere three words less than Buffy's number-one ranking 475 words, and "Afterlife", rather surprisingly her highest performance of the season with 539 words despite not being in any way a 'Dawn episode'.

In Season Seven, a more grown-up Dawn begins to make tangible contributions to the Scoobies, even though she's all but a non-entity in as many as half of the season's episodes. Once again, for a third and final time, she ranks number six, her three consecutive number-six finished perhaps fodder for those who see her as the Devil. In fact, her word-count per season is remarkably consistent: 5225 words, 5556 words, and 5467 words. She ranks number two on three distinct episodes in which she plays a crucial role: “Lessons”, where she receives lessons on fighting from Buffy and settles into her new high school with a bump or two, the excellent “Potential”, by far Michelle Trachtenberg's best performance in the role, with 787 words, and “Him”, where Dawn (and three other Scoobies) fall under a love spell. In this performance, Dawn says 1030 words, her most by far, and still doesn't capture the number-one spot, far behind Buffy's 1405 words.

“Yeah, Buffy, what are we gonna do now?” With this words, spoken by Dawn, the seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer came to an end. The fact that Dawn says the final words in the whole series certainly suggests that she came out of it alive, and she has a greatly increased role in the comic book Season Eight.

• Overall ranking: #13
• Ranking on Buffy: #7
• Total words spoken on Buffy: 16,262
• Season 5: 5225
• Season 6: 5556
• Season 7: 5467
• Total speaking appearances on Buffy: 66
• Ranking #2: 7
• Ranking #3: 3
• Ranking #4: 5
• Ranking #5: 3
• Minor: 49

#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

#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