On Friday, news broke of the passing of actor Anthony Head at 72, best known for his portrayal of Watcher/father figure Rupert Giles on the supernatural drama Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fans and former costars alike flooded social media with outpourings of appreciation for his talent and grief at his death.
Head certainly had a thriving career after Buffy: he played Uther Pendragon ins the series Merlin; the Prime Minister in Little Britain; a sinister headmaster in the Doctor Who episode “School Reunion”; and of course, the wealthy, entitled Rupert Mannion in Ted Lasso. But Giles remains his definitive role; there was even talk of a spinoff series, Ripper, although it was never made.
There are actually very few Giles-centric episodes, which belies the central importance of the character in the series. He definitely had some of the best, most cleverly cutting lines. But Head’s true genius—and that of his character—lay in quietly filling in the gaps in every scene, working with his fellow castmates to weave a complete tapestry. Remove him, and it diminishes everything.
(Spoilers for Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series below.)
What better time to spend a few hours watching Buffy in Head’s honor? Should you want some suggestions, here are 10 of our favorite Giles moments, in chronological order. Feel free to weigh in with your own favorites in the comments.
Lie To Me (S2)
An old Los Angeles classmate of Buffy’s, Ford (Billy Fordham) transfers to Sunnydale High for his senior year, and reveals that he knows she is the Slayer. We soon learn Ford has an ulterior motive for seeking her out. He has joined a secret “Sunset Club” whose members have read too much Anne Rice and romanticized vampires, ignorant of the demonic vicious nature. Ford is not deluded, but he still approaches Spike (James Marsters) with a deal: Ford will deliver Buffy to Spike, and Spike in turn will turn Ford into a vampire. All the other club members will be killed.
When Buffy confronts Ford at the club, she learns he has a terminal brain tumor; his desperation to live is what drove him to betray her. This doesn’t excuse his choices, but it does make it harder for her to view him as a pure villain. After staking the newly sired Ford in the cemetery, Buffy asks Giles, “Does it get any easier?” Giles responds, “What do you want me to say?” Buffy asks him to lie to her. “Yes, it’s terribly simple,” Giles says. “The good guys are always stalwart and true. The bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats. And we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies and everybody lives happily ever after.”
Buffy’s cheeky response? “Liar.”
The Dark Age (S2)
Earlier in the season we met Ethan Rayne (Robin Sachs), an old associate of Giles who traffics in the dark arts to sow chaos—such as casting a spell on Halloween to turn everyone into their costumes. His nickname for Giles is “Ripper,” our first hint that the stuffy librarian might have a wilder past. In “The Dark Age,” that past catches up to Giles and Ethan, as they discover that two other former friends are dead. All four have matching tattoos, the “mark of Eyghon.” Eyghon is a demon the quartet had conjured for amusement in their youth. Now Eyghon is out for revenge.
Initially, Giles doesn’t tell Buffy and the Scoobies about any of this, preferring to conceal his rebellious youth from the impressionable youngsters. But he is forced to do so when Eyghon possesses an unconscious Jenny Calendar (Robia LaMorte Scott), Sunnydale’s computer teacher and Giles’ budding love interest. Eyghon is ultimately defeated, but a traumatized Jenny understandably decides to put the brakes on her romance with Giles, at least temporarily. It’s a recurring theme in the series: bad, reckless decisions can have nasty consequences that can follow us for years.
Passion (S2)
This is one of the most emotionally devastating episodes of the series—the first time fans suffered the loss of a major supporting character. Angel (David Boreanaz) has lost his soul and reverted to his demonically sadistic Angelus persona after experiencing a moment of “perfect happiness” when he and Buffy have sex for the first time. Jenny Calendar has been revealed to be of gypsy descent, the same clan that cursed Angel with a soul, and she was sent to Sunnydale to monitor Angel—a secret that served as another wedge in her relationship with Giles, although the pair were moving toward reconciliation.
Eager to earn back Giles’ trust, Jenny purchases a mystical orb and translates an ancient text to perform the ritual to restore Angel’s soul. Unfortunately, Angelus finds out and ruthlessly snaps her neck, smashing the orb for good measure. Jenny had made plans to meet Giles at his house later that evening. Giles arrives to find rose petals scattered around the living room and a note directing him upstairs. Expecting a romantic interlude, he is horrified to find Jenny’s lifeless body artfully arranged on the bed.
Giles responds how you’d expect to the brutal murder of the woman he loved: he heads out with a few weapons to hunt down Angelus in revenge. Buffy saves him in the nick of time, but Angelus escapes. “Why did you come here? This wasn’t your fight,” a grief-stricken Giles tells Buffy, who embraces him, sobbing, and insists she needs him: “You can’t leave me. I can’t do this alone.” It’s a turning point both in their relationship and in the season arc: Buffy has been reluctant to kill Angelus up to this point. Jenny’s murder strengthens her resolve.
Band Candy (S3)
High schoolers tend to forget that their parents (and teachers) were once hormonally challenged teenagers too. So when all the adults in Sunnydale suddenly start acting like irresponsible adolescents again, it holds up an uncomfortable mirror to Buffy and the Scoobies. Those affected include Giles, who reverts to his younger, darker Ripper persona, and Buffy’s mother, Joyce (Kristine Sutherland). They have a wild night out on the town until a grossed-out Buffy interrupts them necking on the street.
It’s another Ethan Rayne spell, of course, this time delivered via the candy Sunnydale’s students were required to seek to buy new uniforms for the marching band. When Buffy confronts Ethan, he admits—after a blood-thirsty Ripper repeatedly urges Buffy to hit him—that he was hired to distract all the grown-ups so that Mayor Wilkins (Henry Groener) could pay a tribute of newborn babies to a demon, one of many supernatural beings to whom said mayor owes his august position.
Once that plot is foiled and the adults return to their usual selves, Buffy tells her mother and Giles that it was a good thing she came along before their whirlwind romance went too far. Giles and Joyce look distinctly uncomfortable. We learn in subsequent episodes that they had sex on the hood of a police car. The two never became an item, but when Joyce dies suddenly in S5, we see a grieving Giles listening to Cream’s “Tales of Brave Ulysses”—the music he shared with Joyce during their teen interlude.
The Wish (S3)
“The Wish” is one of the best episodes of the series, featuring an alternate dystopian reality in which Buffy never came to Sunnydale, the Master rose, and vampires took over and terrorized the town. A jilted Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) makes the titular wish without realizing she is talking to a vengeance demon in disguise: Anyanka (Emma Caulfield Ford), who targets scorned and wronged women. But vengeance demons don’t grant wishes to be helpful and Cordelia soon realizes she’s made a dreadful mistake. She seeks Giles’ help—only for the vampire versions of Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Xander (Nicholas Brendon) to track her down and drain her blood as a helpless Giles looks on.
A hardened and callous Buffy does eventually show up and take on the Master and his minions. Meanwhile, Giles summons Anyanka with a spell, having learned he must destroy her power center for reality to revert to its original form. He doesn’t remember that alternate reality, but reasons that it has to be better than this. As each of our favorites dies by each other’s hands—since they are not friends in this world—and the Master snaps Buffy’s neck, Giles smashes Anyanka’s necklace, correctly guessing it is the source of her power. Anyanka is rendered human and the original reality is restored.
Helpless (S3)
It’s a trope running throughout the series that something bad always happens on Buffy’s birthday, and in “Helpless” she turns 18—a rite of passage into adulthood. But it’s also a milestone for any Slayer lucky enough to make it to that age. The Watcher’s Council requires said Slayer to undergo a ritual known as the “Cruciamentum,” in which her Watcher drains her of her Slayer powers. She is then forced to fight a vampire as a mere mortal. Giles does this by putting Buffy into a trance with a crystal and then injecting her with muscle relaxants and adrenaline suppressors.
This is all done without Buffy’s knowledge, so it’s a significant betrayal from her perspective when Giles confesses that he’s responsible for her loss of power—an admission that invalidates the test. Things get complicated when the vampire captured for the ritual kills several Council members and escapes, kidnapping Buffy’s mother to lure the Slayer to the Sunnydale Arms building.
Buffy defeats the vampire using her wits and tells the Watcher’s Council to “bite me.” While Buffy passes, Giles does not: Council leader Quentin (Harris Yulin) fires him. “Your affection for your charge has rendered you incapable of clear and impartial judgement,” he tells Giles. “You have a father’s love for the child and that is useless to the cause.” The episode firmly establishes the father/daughter dynamic between the two, and as Buffy philosophically observes, “The important thing is that I kept up my special birthday tradition of gut-wrenching misery and horror.”
A New Man (S4)
It’s Buffy’s birthday again but this time the terrible thing happens to Giles, not to the Slayer. Giles has been feeling a bit left out and at loose ends. The S3 finale destroyed the school, so he’s no longer the librarian. And Buffy is enrolled in Sunnydale’s local college, preoccupied with a hot new (human) boyfriend and her brilliant psychology professor. He’s no longer a member of the Watcher’s Council. So when he bumps into Ethan Rayne, the two end up getting plastered together to drown their respective sorrows.
Giles should have known better than to trust his old adversary. Ethan spikes Giles’ drink and Giles wakes up the next morning as a giant Fyorl demon—a handy metaphor for his midlife crisis, per producer Douglas Petrie. He has trouble controlling his much larger body and can only speak in Fyorl, so none of the Scoobies recognize him; they think he killed or kidnapped Giles. Spike does recognize Giles, since he happens to speak Fyorl, and he finds the whole predicament hilarious. But he agrees to help in exchange for cash, and tells Giles about his demony powers (“you’ve got the mucus thing…”).
It all leads up to a showdown in Ethan’s hotel room. Buffy is about to kill Giles in his Fyorl demon form when she suddenly recognizes him and stops the attack. Ethan grudgingly reverses the spell. When Giles asks how she knew it was him, she says it was his eyes: “You’re the only person in the world that can look that annoyed with me.”
Hush (S4)
“Hush” is one of my favorite Buffy episodes. A group of fairytale ghouls called the Gentlemen come to Sunnydale and steal the voices of all the residents, including Buffy and her Scoobies. That’s to ensure that nobody can scream when the Gentlemen cut out their hearts; they need seven hearts in all for vague ritualistic purposes. It’s just bad luck that the Gentlemen arrive the same weekend Giles has an “orgasm friend” (in Anya’s words) named Olivia (Phina Oruche) staying with him.
The premise means that almost the entire episode is free of dialogue, with the characters communicating by writing on chalkboards and gesturing. Giles gives his usual exposition of the threat they face using transparencies and an overhead projector, as Saint-Saens’ “Danse Macabre” plays in the background. In the original fairy tale, the Gentlemen can only be killed when the “princess’ (i.e., Buffy) screams—so to vanquish them, Buffy must get her voice back. And so she does, but the incident pretty much kills Giles’ budding relationship Olivia.
The Gift (S5)
“The Gift” is the S5 finale, marking the end of Buffy’s tenure at The WB network; the series subsequently moved to The CW. The season arc features a banished, narcissistic god named Glory (Clare Kramer) who seeks a mystical Key that monks have transformed into human form: Buffy’s younger sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg). Dawn’s blood will open an interdimensional portal so Glory can get back to her hell dimension. The catch: all the dimensions will bleed into one another and the universe will essentially be destroyed. But hey, at least Glory gets to go home.
Killing Dawn would solve the problem, but Buffy understandably refuses to do so. Glory has a human alter-ego, Ben (Charlie Weber), who can be killed. In the inevitable showdown, Buffy beats Glory until she’s weak enough for Ben to emerge, but Buffy can’t bring herself to take a human life. So Giles steps up and does the dirty deed by suffocating Ben. “Sooner or later, Glory will reemerge and make Buffy pay for that mercy,” Giles tells Ben just before. “And the world with her. Buffy even knows that, and still she couldn’t take human life. She’s a hero, you see. She’s not like us.”
Once More With Feeling (S6)
Buffy‘s sixth season was admittedly a low point in the series. But the standalone musical episode, “Once More With Feeling,” was the shining exception. There’s even a plot-centric reason for all the Scoobies to suddenly break into song: someone has summoned a demon named Sweet (Hinton Battle) who compels people to sing out all the secrets they’ve been trying to hide from each other, working them into a frenzy until they spontaneously combust. Part of the charm is that not all the cast members were equally gifted musically. But Head was a very good singer, and the series had already revealed Giles shared the actor’s skills.
The musical numbers suit the characters: Spike gets a rock song, Tara (Amber Benson) croons a lilting romantic ballad, while Xander and Anya have a showtune-inspired duet in which they each reveal their misgivings about their impending wedding. Giles is struggling with the fact that the resurrected Buffy is leaning too much on him instead of finding her new path. She’s stuck in a holding pattern because, as he sings in his solo ballad, “I’m standing in the way.” It’s a fitting farewell. Giles leaves Sunnydale once Sweet’s influence is lifted, for both better and worse. And while he returns later in the season, and for a good chunk of S7, his role is never quite the same.
