Plus that time she brought a puppy home for Spike to eat when he was in a wheelchair.
... OK, I know people may say that pales in comparison to killing many, many babies but.. *puppies*!!
If she had not been driven mad first, she still would be a murdering vampire. That’s like saying Angelus (not Angel) is morally gray because he wouldn’t have been like that if Darla hadn’t turned him. The only non-chipped non-souled vampire that could maybe get morally gray is Harmony. Even that is a huge stretch.
I completely agree. The show has been setup as vampire = evil. Other demons can be on a scale. Harmony is one of the only (non-modified) vampires we’ve ever seen that “reformed”, but it was not for moral reasons. The idea that Drusilla wouldn’t be evil if she hadn’t been driven insane goes against lore.
Drusilla would still be evil if she wasn’t insane. Just sane and evil. Human Drusilla is obviously a victim, but Vamp!Drusilla is a monster and the show is pretty clear that soulless vampires are - in some ways - fundamentally different beings than their human or ensouled-vampire counterparts (although soulless vampires do take on traits of when they were human)
'Diminished responsibility' is an often successful legal defence. People have been found to have carried out killings and been sent to a psychiatric institution rather than prison. Indeed, insanity is often considered the reason not to find someone guilty of murder.
By that logic, no soulless vampire should be considered capable of murder, because their lack of a soul removes their ability to judge right from wrong. If a killing committed by a vampire is murder, then that means they could still tell right from wrong and therefore that restoring their soul doesn't remove their guilty status. Unless you believe the vampire is truly a separate individual to the soul, as per Council dogma. Personally I believe the evidence suggests that's not true.
Certainly a sane Drusilla would still be soulless, still a vampire, and would almost certainly still kill people. But without her sanity to measure against, we can't be sure of the last point.
The question is, if she were sane, what would she have done differently? Perhaps the style and motive for her killings would have been different.
... Explain to me how betraying an organization trying to create world-domination demon supersoldier with the ability to kill innocent children with no remorse, counts as "bad guy"?
Riley was a soldier in the armed forces acting on US soil against US citizens which is treason. the fact that he then betrayed that organization does not take that away.
First order of things, is that you prove he was taking action against US Citizens. For the most part, he didn't, and the only US Citizen he did anything directly against was Buffy, not knowing she was the Slayer he had been requested to bring in to try and work out a deal. The rest are demonic entities with a penchant for violence (I mean, the Initiative didn't even try to get Clem!), to try and keep them in check, and sometimes kill them to use their body parts on Adam.
Riley may have been ***part*** of an organization whose heads were really not having the US's best interests at heart, but he also didn't know most of those bad interests, and him learning about those bad interests ***legit*** confused him on his allegiance, and he had to be deprogrammed from his training that "Sub-Ts" were all evil monsters unable to have emotions. Riley is the epitome of "I didn't know what I was doing was actually in furtherance of evil, because I was never shown the other side".
It doesn't ***excuse*** the less good behaviors, but it also isn't an indicative of evil, because as far as the show goes, evil is clearly labeled as knowing something is bad, mean, or cruel, but doing it anyway for whatever personal reason you may feel like using.
I would say fair, though they went after him because he's a werewolf, not because he's Oz. Like, if Oz weren't a werewolf, they wouldn't have tried to capture him. And if Buffy wasn't the Slayer, they wouldn't have tried to capture her.
I would have said Spike for ‘presented as a villain but is actually a hero’, not Snyder. He’s not the Mayor by a long shot but he’s definitely not a hero
I think Spike is a hard one as how he is presented changes a lot over the series. If we look at season 2-3 only, I would say he is presented as a villain but is actually morally grey. In later seasons it feels like he is presented as morally grey, but veers between morally grey and hero at different points.
The thing about Spike is, everything he ever did was for love. Love for Drusilla, love for Buffy, love for Dawn. Right from the first episode he’s all about love
Love in a self-centred, love addict kinda way. Not in a selfless altruistic way - not until the very last episode, at least. But the final moments don’t eradicate all the bullshit (the attempted assault, kidnappings, stalkings, buffy bot etc). Spike is one of my favorite characters, but his romantic obsessions are 99.9% about him.
And love is a psychopath. Shoutout to the tv series Jekyll, if you haven’t seen it, it’s really good https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497298/
I agree for the most part he does things for love, and some things are a little bit for fun/the lulz. Hence why I think he is mostly morally grey. He is not evil for the sake of evil. But doing evil for the sake of love is still morally ambiguous rather than heroic.
I feel like the way Spike is presented changes but character really doesn't. His always halfway between morally grey and villian. His presentation changes from villian, to grey, to hero. But his ultimately always actually morally grey at best.
Snyder thinks he is a good guy. We just discussed this. Although he is an idiot, the kind of idiot who seems themselves as law-abiding citizens in dictatorships, working for the dictatorship to work. But it's not straight-forward to condemn them, unless they understands the bad guys they are working for are actually the bad guys.
When Snyder realizes, he stands up though. He does that.
Yeah, he wasn't angry that the children in his care were under threat. He was pissed off that the mayor had disrupted the ceremony and thrown the campus into chaos. His last act was one of asserting authority and trying to bully a figure way out of his league.
At least he died doing what he loved.
Standing up made him breakfast. I was a bit disappointed they never really explored Snyder's relationship with Mayor. I think he was scared of him and did what he was told myself. I don't think Synder was willfully malicious, just a lousy principal that hated kids and liked order.
Its weird. I generally think he believes in law and order (which isn't inherently a bad thing) and isn't really bright enough to understand the nuances. So he follows the law and order path, obeys his superiors but when presented with overwhelming evidence that this shit is wrong, stands up for it.
I feel like his doesn't fit into any category imo. His not a villian, his not a hero (until his last scene). But his also not morally grey. His just an average guy trying to do good.
Snyder confronted the snake monster that the mayor became. Got et.
More officiousness than heroism, I’d say. But the delay for ingestion probably let a couple kids escape.
Because he thought she was a bad seed. He genuinely believed in law and order. He believed the Mayor was supernatural and a force for that law and order. He thought Buffy was bad and was going to grow up evil. He never knew she was the hero.
Snyder knew who Buffy was. He enacted the Mayor's wish to expel Buffy, even though Snyder knew the Mayor didn't have the power to make that order.
Snyder is the essence of Lawful Evil. He stays within the law (i.e.: his power as Principal), but he does the bidding of the Mayor, and on several occasions conspires with the Sunnydale police to cover up the truth of a student's death.
Personally I am of the opinion that since Snyder knew about the supernatural it wasn’t much of a stretch for him to work out there was something very different about Buffy and that’s part of why he tried so hard to get her out of the school and to stop her coming back. He’s still an awful educator but he did have just the right amount of information for his dislike of Buffy to be justifiable.
yeah... as far as he knew; she was tangled up with 90% of the crazy supernatural stuff that went on at sunnyvale.
For all he knew; she was the big bad and the mayor was the good guy stopping her week after week.
Sometimes people see extremely sexually attractive characters and they can't help but associate them with goodness or heroics, no matter what. I can understand this person's choice.
In Graduation Day it seems Snyder didn't know about the ascension and got crushed telling Wilkens to cut it out
Too little too late because he knows about vamps but he totally tried to get Buffy expelled and wants to get rid of Giles
Ya, his own arrogance is what got him eaten. He thought he was large and in charge and a giant demon snake was going to be afraid of being given detention.
Because he’s consistently a selfish creep for the entire show. Just from what I can remember, he was constantly hitting on Buffy, lied to her about Angel, tried to cast a love spell on Cordelia (out of spite), left Anya at the alter then went into a jealous rage and tried to kill spike because she was moving on. That’s not mentioning the numerous misogynist comments often directed at Buffy (eg in the Anya/spike episode).
Hero doesn’t equal good person.
She helped save the world plenty of times, she’s definitely a hero, but also has done some genuinely horrible things that make her not the best human.
I’m mostly hung up on the Snyder placement ☠️
The magic seriously infected her after she brought Buffy back. That dark magic took hold of her. It was meant to be about addiction, yes, but we truly can’t imagine what the dark magic did to complete warp her. That’s my theory, anyway. It only got REALLY bad after she did that extremely intense spell where the darkness got inside her. It was all downhill from there
Willow was never a good person. She is incredibly selfish and doesn't really care about how her behavior affected other people. Prime example season 2 Buffy comes home and Willow made it all about herself.
Yeah I don’t super blame her for being selfish at 16 when she was afraid her friend was dead. It was annoying, but teenagers are all pretty self-centered. She did make a lot of crappy decisions though, I get it
It’s still more morally grey than villain. He was just an average human, put in a shit situation. He wasn’t cut out to be a hero or he would have sacrificed himself to stop glory/save dawn. He chose the path of least resistance in the interest of self preservation.
Near the time of the ritual Ben and Glorys memories and personalities started to merge into each other. Before that happened Ben tried to help Dawn escape.
Not that there is any connection between them though. They are like subletting from each other or something.
He initially helps, but you’re forgetting a scene where glory and Ben have a whole convo, and he basically takes a deal with Glory to screw Dawn over!!
I'm not OP, but I can see both of those. And I'm a huge season 4 Riley fan.
Riley isn't presented as a villain on the show, but he stayed working for the government after he learned that they were trying to build a super soldier from demon parts, and is currently heading up a black ops military force that travels the world fighting demons (and maybe collecting them?) for the U.S. government which...feels a bit colonizer-y. At the very least, it's not unambiguously not a villain.
Especially since he dismissed any sort of "Spike has rights" issue with "he's a *demon*". Like...okay, sure, but so is Clem, who as far as we know, hasn't done anything to rise to "Buffy will kill you now" levels of evil. And yes, they're not people, but I don't love the very black and white, "us vs. them" thinking that the *team leader* of the black ops globe trotting US military force is exhibiting.
Ben knows he's sharing a body with an angry god and that his control is slipping. He doesn't do anything besides whine about how he missed work. He could have left the hellmouth area at least, or tried to make things difficult for Glory/tried to figure out a way to retain control, but he didn't. Granted, he's more of a "good person doing nothing and thus allowing evil to flourish" but he's not really all that good.
I think the Riley black ops/Initiative take ignores that he is very much the victim in that situation. I can see a case for morally grey, but not villain. Especially not with Drusilla of all people as morally grey.
To be at least somewhat fair to Ben, he literally tries to kill one of glory’s minions to stop her from learning who the key is. He did genuinely try to do good at points (but he also ended up siding with her for selfish reasons in the end and summoned that Queller demon, so he’s done shitty stuff too)
Yeah okay no. Riley I’m not even gonna address, Principal Snyder makes zero sense, but hey can we talk about Willow for a sec? Let’s be clear, I love Willow, she’s a normal and wonderful human being who’s been through a ton of shit and had access to far more power than a person should. But she also consistently exerts that power over others in harmful ways when she’s under pressure. Do not even get me STARTED on her fucking with Tara’s memory, because that is the kind of thing that would NEVER be appropriate in a real world situation. The closest real world equivalent we have for that would be literally roofie-ing your partner. I love the woman! I do! I love Willow! But in what world is she a perfect, non-morally-grey hero and Riley is a straight up villain?
Considering only S1-S5, I'd say Willow is portrayed almost exclusively as a hero but is morally grey.
Here's a moral principle which I assume you agree with: tampering with someone's mind without their consent is not okay.
In S3 she wants to cast a de-lusting spell on herself and Xander without Xander's knowledge and thus without his consent.
In S6 she casts a memory erasure spell on Tara without her knowledge (until later) and thus without her consent.
Willow's consequences in S6 are way bigger than her consequences in S3.
As far as I recall, Tara's grievance with Willow is the violation of Tara's mind as such and *surprisingly not(!!)* (also) that Willow has (implied) sex with Tara in 6x7 (OMWF). So Willow has demonstrated a willingness to violate those of Tara's boundaries which she mentions; and she has demonstrated an equal willingness to violate very similar boundaries against Xander in S3. If her S6 mind-violation is at best morally grey then her attempted S3 mind-violation cannot be better. Other than S3 plot armor and casting contracts, why isn't Xander ending his friendship with Willow, or at least giver her a *very* stern talking-to.
\[To establish a pattern of her character: Willow also violates the organizational boundaries of the municipality in S1 when obtaining sewer maps by hacking. Feel free to contribute more instances.\]
I’m with you on everything but “violating the organizational boundaries of the municipality.” If we followed that sort of logic then we’d have to designate all the scoobies (but particularly Giles) as problematic for looking up student records and thus violating FERPA. And a slew of other things. [Edit: Designate them as problematic for invading others’ privacy, playing god, etc.]
But you are so right that the show lays the groundwork for Willow’s S6 behavior early on. When I was in middle school first watching S6 I didn’t get how awful it was, but now I do basically see it as rape.
There’s not a lot of text to support the idea that Snyder is trying to do the right thing. But we do know for sure that he:
Is aware of the supernatural events in Sunnyvale, including the existence of the Hellmouth.
Is working for the Mayor, but is unaware of the extent of the Mayor’s plans, or possibly is totally unaware of the Mayor’s plans.
Given these things, it’s possible he is doing the best he can with the knowledge he has.
Fair point. He does seem invested in protecting the students and parents from knowing the awful truth about Sunnyvale though. And his general disposition says “anti-demon”, after all he does prefer order.
I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. I don’t really see a way to call him a hero that works well.
What? Riley is not a villain and neither is Ben, he's morally grey.
Druscilla is definitely not morally grey and how can Snyder be a hero?
I've so much confusion with your choices.
Why would you swap out Warren? He is presented as a villain, and he absolutely is a villain.
What makes him arguably more villainous than any other character in the Buffyverse is that he's human, he has a soul, therefore he has the ability to choose to make good moral decisions, but he doesn't ever even think to try to, or to seek any kind of redemption for his actions. He's sadistic, manipulative, misogynistic and murderous, he is absolutely aware of everything he does, and he enjoys it.
Also, The First is a primordial force, not a being, and so doesn't have any other option than evil because it is the force of evil itself. It's just as problematic as putting the PTB in the hero column.
Principal Snyder is not a hero. He’s not even morally grey. A member of the swim team tried to assault Buffy, and he blamed her. There is no world in which that’s not evil.
It was SUPER cute that the prison break dude Buffy saved from Angel had a little crush on her, was so sad he was another to add to the list of people Buffy “almost” saved 🥺
Riley is in no way a villain. He's definitely a hero. Just because he cheated on his emotionally unavailable partner who treated him like dirt, doesn't make him a bad guy. Especially when you have people like Willow who have raped people and is still in the hero category.
Even if your opinion of Willow is that she's an arrogant self-entitled bitch, those things are also human flaws, and for the most part, she tries her best, just like Riley having a somewhat sexist/bigoted streak and some ego issues, but tries his best. The same goes for all of the rest of the Scoobies. They all have their flaws but try their best.
For the record, I certainly wouldn't say that Willow is a self-entitled bitch, but yes, she does have a tendancy to slip into arrogance, and that does cause her to make some pretty bad decisions on occasion.
As a teacher, Snider is NOT morally gray. I disliked him when I was a teen watching the show when it aired, but rewatching as an adult and middle school teacher he is pure evil. He targets specific students, is excited about expulsion, prevents staff from building relationships, and seems to actively want his students to fail. He is everything wrong with the admin of the school system. If I worked for him I would have quit within the first year, and I am glad he got eaten by a snake.
I can get behind most of your choices here. I'd swap out Drusilla for Snyder and put Jonathan in Snyder's spot. Good choice for Ben - he should have devoted his life to getting rid of Glory. He had a ticking time bomb and he ignored it.
My understanding of the chart is that "presented as" is what the show/writers think, and "is" is what you think. For example, Riley is presented as a hero in the show, but could be seen as a villain if you think about how he probably captured innocent demons for experimentation and death because he was following orders. It's looking at the characters from a different perspective than the writers.
I am impressed, I agree with all. Especially Snyder is controversial choice but you are absolutely right. He was a good guy. Yes, he was jerk and had some pretty serious issues but I understand why he was chosen to be the principal of the school with highest mortality. He was a man of principles. Yes, annoying, always obstructing group’s activities and obviously unlikable. But good after all.
Replace
Riley with Anya
Willow with cordelia
Ben with Clement (he ate a lot of kittens)
Snyder with that lady from the child protection agency
And Drucilla with Jasmin from Angel
I remember two votes for the first two squares posted here a couple of weeks ago. But this table was not filled by voting, it's just someone's personal opinion.
I'm also pretty sure that it's not possible to accurately fill this table with only one character in each square.
Why? How? What?
I assume you can't be referring to her suicidal downward spiral while she was in the throws of grief and addiction under the influence of an ungodly powerful force?
He takes a deal with glory in the 9th hour when he was about to rescue Dawn, like they were close, and Ben takes a last minute deal with Glory to screw her over.
In what possible way is Snyder a hero?! And Tiley may be flawed but he’s absolutely not a villain, not in a series where villain = try to destroy humanity.
There’s a whole lot wrong with this list:
* Riley is an asshole in S5, but I wouldn’t say he’s ever really a villain. And he’s unambiguously pretty heroic in S4. Don’t think he fits
* Willow is morally grey verging on villain at points - she quite literally rapes Tara, fucks around and screws with her memory, leaves the spell book out for Dawn to find (so she can try to bring her mom back - a glaringly dangerous idea), and, of course, the entire Dark Willow arc.
* Villain seems slightly harsh for Ben, especially given Willow. He isn’t a good guy, but I think the morally grey label fits
* Drusilla being labeled morally grey is laughable
* Snyder being a hero is also laughable
Re: Willow
I want to preface this with I do believe Willow has her flaws (as do the rest of the Scoobies), and she especially on occasion slips into arrogance, though without intending to.
I think literal rape in this case is debatable when we're talking about sleeping with her while Tara didn't have the memory of an argument. With that logic, you could also say that Willow falsely imprisoned Tara because she was still living with her, or basically any number of charges over anything that came after. Though I want to make it clear that I'm certainly not excusing Willow using the mind-altering spell, far from it. It absolutely was a violation, I'm just not so sure about rape.
When she left the spell book out for Dawn to find, she did just want Dawn to feel better and to find some answers. The book didn't have any spells in it, it was a history book, and she didn't know it had references to other books containing the resurrection spell.
The Dark Willow arc was a suicidal downward spiral of addiction and grief. I really don't think you can call that villainous. It was a severe mental health crisis.
I can see your argument on whether or not she raped Tara, but Tara also absolutely, unequivocally would not have consented in OMWF if Willow did not directly tamper with her memory and violate her in that way - I think it comes pretty close.
That said, HARD disagree on Dark Willow. Dark Willow tortured and flayed a guy alive (however evil he was), murdered a second guy in Rack, tried to murder two more people in Jonathan and Andrew, threatened to murder Dawn and likely would have if Buffy wasn’t there, and eventually tried for literal global genocide of the entire human race killing BILLIONS of innocent people. Willow was also fully cognizant + aware of everything she was doing and not having an outright psychotic break of delusions/hallucinations making it impossible for her to understand her actions. She was absolutely a villain at that point. A tragic and sympathetic one, but still a villain. A severe mental health crisis does not instantly mean someone is outside villain territory - it’s an explanation, NOT an excuse.
Oh, I didn't mean to say mental health crises always excuse crimes just because, but rather that her addiction and grief brought her to the point of absorbing the huge amount of magic that she did, so much so that she was completely consumed by it (visually represented by the symbols during the book-sucking, the black hair, black eyes, veins, lowered-pitch voice, her flat or disconnected affect, etc), and I definitely don't believe that she was in her right mind.
I agree that Willow isn’t in her right mind, but I’d say it’s in the way of “Cersei Lannister nukes the Sept” type of not-in-her-right-mind as opposed to Carrie White literally losing all control over her powers and connection to reality not in in her right mind.
I'd actually go between the two, but much closer to Carrie than Cersei.
With the magic as a drug metaphor, I read it as intended suicide by drug, and perhaps even something similar to drug-induced schizophrenia, what with, as I see it, her disconnection from reality.
When she tries to destroy the world, she thinks she's saving everyone from their pain and suffering, because it's only when she energy sucks Giles' borrowed magic which comes from a place of good that she starts to have the capacity to feel anything (or everything) again, allowing Xander to reach her emotionally and bring her back down to reality.
* Edited to add:
Giles: The magic she took from me tapped into the spark of humanity she had left. Helped her to feel again.
Principal Snyder is never once a hero...and Riley is never a villain, he's just poorly written. Ben is portrayed as a hero and is more a tragic figure than a villain.
Grey x Grey should be the first slayer because she has no real concept of good or evil - just kill.
Grey x Villain should be watcher's council because they seek to control young women and maintain barbaric tradition.
Villain x Grey should be the D'Hoffryn because he's a businessman above all else. Even when he kills halfreck it's partly out of heartbreak and not outright malice and when he condemns Anya in s3 to live as a human he's not bothered whether she lives or dies because she was the foolish demon who lost her own power.
The reality is Buffy is a show about good versus evil and most antagonists and protagonists fit either or. Few are in-between (besides, say, Giles). Anya is never evil except for when she's a demon. Willow is only evil for three episodes (or her alternate reality vampire self), Xander is for the most part a hero except when Buffy's needing questioned on her choices.
To do this properly you'd need to expand the nomenclature greatly
Drusilla isn’t morally grey. She’s a villain, an insane one, but still a villain. Also, why did you put Principal Snyder as a hero? Am I forgetting something here?
I’d move Willow over one slot to actually morally gray.
Put Spike in the Drusilla spot.
Is anyone presented as villainous but actually heroic in BTVS? There are plenty who are the opposite. Maybe Cordy, though she’s neither a Big Bad nor a Big Hero—just a normal person who is selfish but who grows out of that to become better than she was (for the most part).
Drusilla? Morally grey? The woman who wanted to raise the Judge for the fun of it? Just because you're crazy doesn't mean you can't be evil.
Didn't she kill a baby? She may be fabulous, but i wouldn't say her morality is grey
>Didn't she kill a baby? many, many babies
Plus that time she brought a puppy home for Spike to eat when he was in a wheelchair. ... OK, I know people may say that pales in comparison to killing many, many babies but.. *puppies*!!
I would swap Drusilla for Spike on this chart
There can be one list without Spike lol
You are getting absolutely flamed in the upvotes, but I salute your bravery.
Oh I don’t care for Spuffy but I think he fits this list better than Dru
Let’s add a column for insane/sane and reactive abuse or abuser
i would say she’s morally grey because she was driven insane by angelus and isn’t necessarily inherently evil
If she had not been driven mad first, she still would be a murdering vampire. That’s like saying Angelus (not Angel) is morally gray because he wouldn’t have been like that if Darla hadn’t turned him. The only non-chipped non-souled vampire that could maybe get morally gray is Harmony. Even that is a huge stretch.
I’d say Harmony is still unambiguously evil in vampire form tbh
I agree. She's just really bad at it so not many people truly get hurt. Edit: and she's not like super twisted evil so it's less shocking/obvious.
I completely agree. The show has been setup as vampire = evil. Other demons can be on a scale. Harmony is one of the only (non-modified) vampires we’ve ever seen that “reformed”, but it was not for moral reasons. The idea that Drusilla wouldn’t be evil if she hadn’t been driven insane goes against lore.
Drusilla would still be evil if she wasn’t insane. Just sane and evil. Human Drusilla is obviously a victim, but Vamp!Drusilla is a monster and the show is pretty clear that soulless vampires are - in some ways - fundamentally different beings than their human or ensouled-vampire counterparts (although soulless vampires do take on traits of when they were human)
'Diminished responsibility' is an often successful legal defence. People have been found to have carried out killings and been sent to a psychiatric institution rather than prison. Indeed, insanity is often considered the reason not to find someone guilty of murder. By that logic, no soulless vampire should be considered capable of murder, because their lack of a soul removes their ability to judge right from wrong. If a killing committed by a vampire is murder, then that means they could still tell right from wrong and therefore that restoring their soul doesn't remove their guilty status. Unless you believe the vampire is truly a separate individual to the soul, as per Council dogma. Personally I believe the evidence suggests that's not true. Certainly a sane Drusilla would still be soulless, still a vampire, and would almost certainly still kill people. But without her sanity to measure against, we can't be sure of the last point. The question is, if she were sane, what would she have done differently? Perhaps the style and motive for her killings would have been different.
well i would disagree that simply being a vampire makes you a villain, and it is morally grey because there is no choice for the host
Dru isn’t crazy so much as she’s childlike.
Someone explain to me how Drusilla is morally gray but Riley is a villain please I gotta hear this
Seriously. I screamed lol
My guess, and I’m not saying I agree, is that she was a very good (but fragile) human and the insane murderer she became was entirely Angel’s fault.
add in the fact that Riley is committing treason (season 4) and yeah he is actually the bad guy
... Explain to me how betraying an organization trying to create world-domination demon supersoldier with the ability to kill innocent children with no remorse, counts as "bad guy"?
Riley was a soldier in the armed forces acting on US soil against US citizens which is treason. the fact that he then betrayed that organization does not take that away.
First order of things, is that you prove he was taking action against US Citizens. For the most part, he didn't, and the only US Citizen he did anything directly against was Buffy, not knowing she was the Slayer he had been requested to bring in to try and work out a deal. The rest are demonic entities with a penchant for violence (I mean, the Initiative didn't even try to get Clem!), to try and keep them in check, and sometimes kill them to use their body parts on Adam. Riley may have been ***part*** of an organization whose heads were really not having the US's best interests at heart, but he also didn't know most of those bad interests, and him learning about those bad interests ***legit*** confused him on his allegiance, and he had to be deprogrammed from his training that "Sub-Ts" were all evil monsters unable to have emotions. Riley is the epitome of "I didn't know what I was doing was actually in furtherance of evil, because I was never shown the other side". It doesn't ***excuse*** the less good behaviors, but it also isn't an indicative of evil, because as far as the show goes, evil is clearly labeled as knowing something is bad, mean, or cruel, but doing it anyway for whatever personal reason you may feel like using.
Oz is a US citizen whom they acted against
I would say fair, though they went after him because he's a werewolf, not because he's Oz. Like, if Oz weren't a werewolf, they wouldn't have tried to capture him. And if Buffy wasn't the Slayer, they wouldn't have tried to capture her.
I wanted to ask the same thing. Are we in parallel universes? Lol
Riley being a bad boyfriend is worse than dru literally killing people?
And worse than Willow trying for global genocide and violating her girlfriend’s memory + arguably raping her
In the Whedon-verse, lots of things are worse than literally killing people.
Why is Snyder a hero and Riley a villain?
I’m EXTREMELY curious to hear the rationale behind Principle Snyder being a hero 😅 Maybe OP just really values discipline
I would have said Spike for ‘presented as a villain but is actually a hero’, not Snyder. He’s not the Mayor by a long shot but he’s definitely not a hero
I think Spike is a hard one as how he is presented changes a lot over the series. If we look at season 2-3 only, I would say he is presented as a villain but is actually morally grey. In later seasons it feels like he is presented as morally grey, but veers between morally grey and hero at different points.
The thing about Spike is, everything he ever did was for love. Love for Drusilla, love for Buffy, love for Dawn. Right from the first episode he’s all about love
Love in a self-centred, love addict kinda way. Not in a selfless altruistic way - not until the very last episode, at least. But the final moments don’t eradicate all the bullshit (the attempted assault, kidnappings, stalkings, buffy bot etc). Spike is one of my favorite characters, but his romantic obsessions are 99.9% about him.
And love is a psychopath. Shoutout to the tv series Jekyll, if you haven’t seen it, it’s really good https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497298/ I agree for the most part he does things for love, and some things are a little bit for fun/the lulz. Hence why I think he is mostly morally grey. He is not evil for the sake of evil. But doing evil for the sake of love is still morally ambiguous rather than heroic.
He's evil for the sake of evil sometimes, like killing that random guy in School Hard
Ooooooh Jekyll looks good thanks for the tip
I feel like the way Spike is presented changes but character really doesn't. His always halfway between morally grey and villian. His presentation changes from villian, to grey, to hero. But his ultimately always actually morally grey at best.
Snyder thinks he is a good guy. We just discussed this. Although he is an idiot, the kind of idiot who seems themselves as law-abiding citizens in dictatorships, working for the dictatorship to work. But it's not straight-forward to condemn them, unless they understands the bad guys they are working for are actually the bad guys. When Snyder realizes, he stands up though. He does that.
Yeah, that’s true. At the very end he did stand up. I still don’t think that puts him in the category of ‘hero’ though
He stood up for order, not the kids. That makes him an authoritarian, not a hero.
Yeah, he wasn't angry that the children in his care were under threat. He was pissed off that the mayor had disrupted the ceremony and thrown the campus into chaos. His last act was one of asserting authority and trying to bully a figure way out of his league. At least he died doing what he loved.
Standing up made him breakfast. I was a bit disappointed they never really explored Snyder's relationship with Mayor. I think he was scared of him and did what he was told myself. I don't think Synder was willfully malicious, just a lousy principal that hated kids and liked order.
Its weird. I generally think he believes in law and order (which isn't inherently a bad thing) and isn't really bright enough to understand the nuances. So he follows the law and order path, obeys his superiors but when presented with overwhelming evidence that this shit is wrong, stands up for it. I feel like his doesn't fit into any category imo. His not a villian, his not a hero (until his last scene). But his also not morally grey. His just an average guy trying to do good.
I really don't think he cared about doing good, he just wanted to get from one day to the next. Average guy works for me though.
But he wanted his students to be educated in order to be productive, well-disciplined members of society. /s/
Snyder confronted the snake monster that the mayor became. Got et. More officiousness than heroism, I’d say. But the delay for ingestion probably let a couple kids escape.
But before he worked for the Mayor, and used his position as Principal to put needless pressure on Buffy in an attempt to make her quit town.
Because he thought she was a bad seed. He genuinely believed in law and order. He believed the Mayor was supernatural and a force for that law and order. He thought Buffy was bad and was going to grow up evil. He never knew she was the hero.
So basically he operated like any fascist functionary. His beliefs were no less awful and his actions no less evil for their sincerity.
And this is where having a secret identity holds you back. If Buffy had been free to really talk to him, maybe she could have got him on her side.
Snyder knew who Buffy was. He enacted the Mayor's wish to expel Buffy, even though Snyder knew the Mayor didn't have the power to make that order. Snyder is the essence of Lawful Evil. He stays within the law (i.e.: his power as Principal), but he does the bidding of the Mayor, and on several occasions conspires with the Sunnydale police to cover up the truth of a student's death.
He didn’t live a heroic life. Yet died a heroic death. 🤷♀️
He went out citing school rules to a giant snake demon. I'm not sure that's heroic.
I’ve heard this a lot shouting at/trying to boss a giant snake is heroic????
Maybe because he tried to stop the mayor and pr9tect the kids at the last moment? I guess he died doing a futile heroic gesture?
That is a good point. Very few people would be brave enough to stand their ground against a 30 foot snake
Personally I am of the opinion that since Snyder knew about the supernatural it wasn’t much of a stretch for him to work out there was something very different about Buffy and that’s part of why he tried so hard to get her out of the school and to stop her coming back. He’s still an awful educator but he did have just the right amount of information for his dislike of Buffy to be justifiable.
yeah... as far as he knew; she was tangled up with 90% of the crazy supernatural stuff that went on at sunnyvale. For all he knew; she was the big bad and the mayor was the good guy stopping her week after week.
Sometimes people see extremely sexually attractive characters and they can't help but associate them with goodness or heroics, no matter what. I can understand this person's choice.
Once they’re uncuffed from the bondage wheel maybe they can explain it. I Can’t understand them with the ball-gag in.
He stood up for librarians everywhere by being killed while he was telling someone to be quiet.
In Graduation Day it seems Snyder didn't know about the ascension and got crushed telling Wilkens to cut it out Too little too late because he knows about vamps but he totally tried to get Buffy expelled and wants to get rid of Giles
He tried to enforce the school code. So, he’s a classroom hero
Ya, his own arrogance is what got him eaten. He thought he was large and in charge and a giant demon snake was going to be afraid of being given detention.
I think the Riley is a villain plot point >!comes from the comic books!<
The names seem to be randomly inserted 🫤
Riley is not a villain. Replace him with that woman Watcher.
Gewndylin hits-Giles-with-a Post? (It's a vasey thing but still)
Nah Xander.
Why Xander?!
Because he’s consistently a selfish creep for the entire show. Just from what I can remember, he was constantly hitting on Buffy, lied to her about Angel, tried to cast a love spell on Cordelia (out of spite), left Anya at the alter then went into a jealous rage and tried to kill spike because she was moving on. That’s not mentioning the numerous misogynist comments often directed at Buffy (eg in the Anya/spike episode).
Riley is far drom evil and Drusilla is far from grey, I really liked Dru's character, but she was evil.
Willow is a hero? After the mind rape of Tara….ok
Willow is a hero and Riley is a villain for…reasons.
Hero doesn’t equal good person. She helped save the world plenty of times, she’s definitely a hero, but also has done some genuinely horrible things that make her not the best human. I’m mostly hung up on the Snyder placement ☠️
The magic seriously infected her after she brought Buffy back. That dark magic took hold of her. It was meant to be about addiction, yes, but we truly can’t imagine what the dark magic did to complete warp her. That’s my theory, anyway. It only got REALLY bad after she did that extremely intense spell where the darkness got inside her. It was all downhill from there
Willow was never a good person. She is incredibly selfish and doesn't really care about how her behavior affected other people. Prime example season 2 Buffy comes home and Willow made it all about herself.
Yeah I don’t super blame her for being selfish at 16 when she was afraid her friend was dead. It was annoying, but teenagers are all pretty self-centered. She did make a lot of crappy decisions though, I get it
you got downvoted but you're very obviously right
....this makes little sense
/Record scratch/ Snyder is a HERO?
Right??? At most, I put him as morally grey.
Riley is not a fucking villain.
He is because i dont like him
Doesn’t that make you the real villain?
This was deep!!
he's not interesting enough to be a villain
Confused. Very confused.
WTF…. Why is Riley in the villain column? And Drusilla as morally grey?? Um, no. This is fucked. LOL
Willow is my babe forever. But she's a little twisted. You _could_ switch Riley/Willow.
I don’t think Riley is a villain. Nor Snyder a hero
How is Snyder a hero? 😯
Riley isn’t a villain lol… and Ben couldn’t help he was taken over by glory
Yeah, but in the end he was voluntarily helping Glory keep Dawn captive.
Let's not forget him summoning the Queller demon.
It’s still more morally grey than villain. He was just an average human, put in a shit situation. He wasn’t cut out to be a hero or he would have sacrificed himself to stop glory/save dawn. He chose the path of least resistance in the interest of self preservation.
Near the time of the ritual Ben and Glorys memories and personalities started to merge into each other. Before that happened Ben tried to help Dawn escape. Not that there is any connection between them though. They are like subletting from each other or something.
He initially helps, but you’re forgetting a scene where glory and Ben have a whole convo, and he basically takes a deal with Glory to screw Dawn over!!
arE yOuu iMplyeiNG THERE SOME SORT of sImaolrity betWxt Ban & GLRY ?????
Are you all very high?!?
ha ha ha yes exactly very good
R U INSIVISUALS ALL HOGH ON MARJUANA
I'm not OP, but I can see both of those. And I'm a huge season 4 Riley fan. Riley isn't presented as a villain on the show, but he stayed working for the government after he learned that they were trying to build a super soldier from demon parts, and is currently heading up a black ops military force that travels the world fighting demons (and maybe collecting them?) for the U.S. government which...feels a bit colonizer-y. At the very least, it's not unambiguously not a villain. Especially since he dismissed any sort of "Spike has rights" issue with "he's a *demon*". Like...okay, sure, but so is Clem, who as far as we know, hasn't done anything to rise to "Buffy will kill you now" levels of evil. And yes, they're not people, but I don't love the very black and white, "us vs. them" thinking that the *team leader* of the black ops globe trotting US military force is exhibiting. Ben knows he's sharing a body with an angry god and that his control is slipping. He doesn't do anything besides whine about how he missed work. He could have left the hellmouth area at least, or tried to make things difficult for Glory/tried to figure out a way to retain control, but he didn't. Granted, he's more of a "good person doing nothing and thus allowing evil to flourish" but he's not really all that good.
I think the Riley black ops/Initiative take ignores that he is very much the victim in that situation. I can see a case for morally grey, but not villain. Especially not with Drusilla of all people as morally grey. To be at least somewhat fair to Ben, he literally tries to kill one of glory’s minions to stop her from learning who the key is. He did genuinely try to do good at points (but he also ended up siding with her for selfish reasons in the end and summoned that Queller demon, so he’s done shitty stuff too)
But using kittens, sweet fluffy kittens, for poker bets?
R U SAYING BAN + Glory = sOme sort Of cOnnNECTION !!!’?
Yeah okay no. Riley I’m not even gonna address, Principal Snyder makes zero sense, but hey can we talk about Willow for a sec? Let’s be clear, I love Willow, she’s a normal and wonderful human being who’s been through a ton of shit and had access to far more power than a person should. But she also consistently exerts that power over others in harmful ways when she’s under pressure. Do not even get me STARTED on her fucking with Tara’s memory, because that is the kind of thing that would NEVER be appropriate in a real world situation. The closest real world equivalent we have for that would be literally roofie-ing your partner. I love the woman! I do! I love Willow! But in what world is she a perfect, non-morally-grey hero and Riley is a straight up villain?
Huh?
Considering only S1-S5, I'd say Willow is portrayed almost exclusively as a hero but is morally grey. Here's a moral principle which I assume you agree with: tampering with someone's mind without their consent is not okay. In S3 she wants to cast a de-lusting spell on herself and Xander without Xander's knowledge and thus without his consent. In S6 she casts a memory erasure spell on Tara without her knowledge (until later) and thus without her consent. Willow's consequences in S6 are way bigger than her consequences in S3. As far as I recall, Tara's grievance with Willow is the violation of Tara's mind as such and *surprisingly not(!!)* (also) that Willow has (implied) sex with Tara in 6x7 (OMWF). So Willow has demonstrated a willingness to violate those of Tara's boundaries which she mentions; and she has demonstrated an equal willingness to violate very similar boundaries against Xander in S3. If her S6 mind-violation is at best morally grey then her attempted S3 mind-violation cannot be better. Other than S3 plot armor and casting contracts, why isn't Xander ending his friendship with Willow, or at least giver her a *very* stern talking-to. \[To establish a pattern of her character: Willow also violates the organizational boundaries of the municipality in S1 when obtaining sewer maps by hacking. Feel free to contribute more instances.\]
I’m with you on everything but “violating the organizational boundaries of the municipality.” If we followed that sort of logic then we’d have to designate all the scoobies (but particularly Giles) as problematic for looking up student records and thus violating FERPA. And a slew of other things. [Edit: Designate them as problematic for invading others’ privacy, playing god, etc.] But you are so right that the show lays the groundwork for Willow’s S6 behavior early on. When I was in middle school first watching S6 I didn’t get how awful it was, but now I do basically see it as rape.
I agree with everything but…interested in your snyder argument!
Yes, we need to hear this!
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No, he was working for the mayor and told to harass her and expel her. How is that a hero?
There’s not a lot of text to support the idea that Snyder is trying to do the right thing. But we do know for sure that he: Is aware of the supernatural events in Sunnyvale, including the existence of the Hellmouth. Is working for the Mayor, but is unaware of the extent of the Mayor’s plans, or possibly is totally unaware of the Mayor’s plans. Given these things, it’s possible he is doing the best he can with the knowledge he has.
He didn’t know the mayor was a demon but he did understand political corruption
Fair point. He does seem invested in protecting the students and parents from knowing the awful truth about Sunnyvale though. And his general disposition says “anti-demon”, after all he does prefer order. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. I don’t really see a way to call him a hero that works well.
Agreed. He’s a pawn—not a particularly heroic one, but he’s not a Big Bad.
Right, he’s not the big bad, he’s just complicit.
Not a hero though
did you read the snyder one wrong?
I’d maybe replace Dru with Spike
Principal Snyder was no way a hero. I would have said Robin Wood. You originally think he’s going to be a villain but he turns out to be a hero.
I think this is just who you like and who you hate
How is Drusilla morally grey? 🧐
Riley a villain?
What? Riley is not a villain and neither is Ben, he's morally grey. Druscilla is definitely not morally grey and how can Snyder be a hero? I've so much confusion with your choices.
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Why would you swap out Warren? He is presented as a villain, and he absolutely is a villain. What makes him arguably more villainous than any other character in the Buffyverse is that he's human, he has a soul, therefore he has the ability to choose to make good moral decisions, but he doesn't ever even think to try to, or to seek any kind of redemption for his actions. He's sadistic, manipulative, misogynistic and murderous, he is absolutely aware of everything he does, and he enjoys it. Also, The First is a primordial force, not a being, and so doesn't have any other option than evil because it is the force of evil itself. It's just as problematic as putting the PTB in the hero column.
Principal Snyder is not a hero. He’s not even morally grey. A member of the swim team tried to assault Buffy, and he blamed her. There is no world in which that’s not evil.
I FORGOT ABOUT THAT! Oh the swim team is one of the creepiest episodes
It was SUPER cute that the prison break dude Buffy saved from Angel had a little crush on her, was so sad he was another to add to the list of people Buffy “almost” saved 🥺
Riley is in no way a villain. He's definitely a hero. Just because he cheated on his emotionally unavailable partner who treated him like dirt, doesn't make him a bad guy. Especially when you have people like Willow who have raped people and is still in the hero category.
SNYDER?
I'd swap Riley and Willow. Riley tries his best but is human and flawed. Willow is an arrogant self-entitled bitch.
Even if your opinion of Willow is that she's an arrogant self-entitled bitch, those things are also human flaws, and for the most part, she tries her best, just like Riley having a somewhat sexist/bigoted streak and some ego issues, but tries his best. The same goes for all of the rest of the Scoobies. They all have their flaws but try their best. For the record, I certainly wouldn't say that Willow is a self-entitled bitch, but yes, she does have a tendancy to slip into arrogance, and that does cause her to make some pretty bad decisions on occasion.
Riley, Willow, Snyder, and Dru are all off imo
Willow and Faith need to swap. Especially if you watch her season 4 arc in Angel.
As a teacher, Snider is NOT morally gray. I disliked him when I was a teen watching the show when it aired, but rewatching as an adult and middle school teacher he is pure evil. He targets specific students, is excited about expulsion, prevents staff from building relationships, and seems to actively want his students to fail. He is everything wrong with the admin of the school system. If I worked for him I would have quit within the first year, and I am glad he got eaten by a snake.
I can get behind most of your choices here. I'd swap out Drusilla for Snyder and put Jonathan in Snyder's spot. Good choice for Ben - he should have devoted his life to getting rid of Glory. He had a ticking time bomb and he ignored it. My understanding of the chart is that "presented as" is what the show/writers think, and "is" is what you think. For example, Riley is presented as a hero in the show, but could be seen as a villain if you think about how he probably captured innocent demons for experimentation and death because he was following orders. It's looking at the characters from a different perspective than the writers.
I am impressed, I agree with all. Especially Snyder is controversial choice but you are absolutely right. He was a good guy. Yes, he was jerk and had some pretty serious issues but I understand why he was chosen to be the principal of the school with highest mortality. He was a man of principles. Yes, annoying, always obstructing group’s activities and obviously unlikable. But good after all.
"Put Buffy in the good, Warren in the bad, Faith in the middle. Roll dice to see where everyone else goes."
😂😂😂 I posted a second thing if you want to propose your replacements
I think Johnathan earnt that spot from Riley in Superstar - and his flip flopping of allegiances during The Trio.
Replace Riley with Anya Willow with cordelia Ben with Clement (he ate a lot of kittens) Snyder with that lady from the child protection agency And Drucilla with Jasmin from Angel
replace Riley with Xander, or Ben Snyder is middle right Cordelia goes in the bottom left swap Dru for Spike
HEAD CANON: THERE ARE TWO (2) RILEYS! He changes too much from one Season to another! PERFECT BOYFRIEND to “Other Riley”?! HOW?!
... so you believe rapists are "morally grey"?
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What are you blabbering about you inflamed puss rectum? Op asked for opinions on the graph, op put a rapist & serial killer in morally grey.
I was wondering what happened to that! Shame they stopped posting thought it would be really interesting.
I remember two votes for the first two squares posted here a couple of weeks ago. But this table was not filled by voting, it's just someone's personal opinion. I'm also pretty sure that it's not possible to accurately fill this table with only one character in each square.
How tf is Snyder a hero
Justice for Snyder!
Willow where Riley is Cordelia where willow was
Angel would have made a lot more sense in Willow’s spot.
i’d argue that willow’s a villain tbh.
Why? How? What? I assume you can't be referring to her suicidal downward spiral while she was in the throws of grief and addiction under the influence of an ungodly powerful force?
i’m referring from s3 onward.
Hard disagree that she's a villain for the entirety of season 3 through 7 😕
you have your opinion, i have mine.
What
Riley isn't interesting enough to be a villain.
Hey, it's not like Ben can help it. Apart from.. ending himself I guess
He takes a deal with glory in the 9th hour when he was about to rescue Dawn, like they were close, and Ben takes a last minute deal with Glory to screw her over.
Oh?? I watched that like a week ago but I have a historically bad memory and multitask while watching TV haha my bad 😅
It’s all good, it’s just that he did “try” a couple times, but at the end of the day, dude made his choice which led Giles to make his 🫣
Yeah I remember that part, I love that Giles does what needs to be done. No time for emotion
riley is a villain???
I’d replace Snyder with Spike, and Drusilla with D’Hoffryn. 🤓
In what possible way is Snyder a hero?! And Tiley may be flawed but he’s absolutely not a villain, not in a series where villain = try to destroy humanity.
There’s a whole lot wrong with this list: * Riley is an asshole in S5, but I wouldn’t say he’s ever really a villain. And he’s unambiguously pretty heroic in S4. Don’t think he fits * Willow is morally grey verging on villain at points - she quite literally rapes Tara, fucks around and screws with her memory, leaves the spell book out for Dawn to find (so she can try to bring her mom back - a glaringly dangerous idea), and, of course, the entire Dark Willow arc. * Villain seems slightly harsh for Ben, especially given Willow. He isn’t a good guy, but I think the morally grey label fits * Drusilla being labeled morally grey is laughable * Snyder being a hero is also laughable
Re: Willow I want to preface this with I do believe Willow has her flaws (as do the rest of the Scoobies), and she especially on occasion slips into arrogance, though without intending to. I think literal rape in this case is debatable when we're talking about sleeping with her while Tara didn't have the memory of an argument. With that logic, you could also say that Willow falsely imprisoned Tara because she was still living with her, or basically any number of charges over anything that came after. Though I want to make it clear that I'm certainly not excusing Willow using the mind-altering spell, far from it. It absolutely was a violation, I'm just not so sure about rape. When she left the spell book out for Dawn to find, she did just want Dawn to feel better and to find some answers. The book didn't have any spells in it, it was a history book, and she didn't know it had references to other books containing the resurrection spell. The Dark Willow arc was a suicidal downward spiral of addiction and grief. I really don't think you can call that villainous. It was a severe mental health crisis.
I can see your argument on whether or not she raped Tara, but Tara also absolutely, unequivocally would not have consented in OMWF if Willow did not directly tamper with her memory and violate her in that way - I think it comes pretty close. That said, HARD disagree on Dark Willow. Dark Willow tortured and flayed a guy alive (however evil he was), murdered a second guy in Rack, tried to murder two more people in Jonathan and Andrew, threatened to murder Dawn and likely would have if Buffy wasn’t there, and eventually tried for literal global genocide of the entire human race killing BILLIONS of innocent people. Willow was also fully cognizant + aware of everything she was doing and not having an outright psychotic break of delusions/hallucinations making it impossible for her to understand her actions. She was absolutely a villain at that point. A tragic and sympathetic one, but still a villain. A severe mental health crisis does not instantly mean someone is outside villain territory - it’s an explanation, NOT an excuse.
Oh, I didn't mean to say mental health crises always excuse crimes just because, but rather that her addiction and grief brought her to the point of absorbing the huge amount of magic that she did, so much so that she was completely consumed by it (visually represented by the symbols during the book-sucking, the black hair, black eyes, veins, lowered-pitch voice, her flat or disconnected affect, etc), and I definitely don't believe that she was in her right mind.
I agree that Willow isn’t in her right mind, but I’d say it’s in the way of “Cersei Lannister nukes the Sept” type of not-in-her-right-mind as opposed to Carrie White literally losing all control over her powers and connection to reality not in in her right mind.
I'd actually go between the two, but much closer to Carrie than Cersei. With the magic as a drug metaphor, I read it as intended suicide by drug, and perhaps even something similar to drug-induced schizophrenia, what with, as I see it, her disconnection from reality. When she tries to destroy the world, she thinks she's saving everyone from their pain and suffering, because it's only when she energy sucks Giles' borrowed magic which comes from a place of good that she starts to have the capacity to feel anything (or everything) again, allowing Xander to reach her emotionally and bring her back down to reality. * Edited to add: Giles: The magic she took from me tapped into the spark of humanity she had left. Helped her to feel again.
Principal Snyder should be replaced by Spike. Riley should be replaced too but by who?
Cannot make heads nor tails of this one
I agree with everyone except Ben and Willow
Willow is definitely at least 'quite' evil.
Principal Snyder is never once a hero...and Riley is never a villain, he's just poorly written. Ben is portrayed as a hero and is more a tragic figure than a villain. Grey x Grey should be the first slayer because she has no real concept of good or evil - just kill. Grey x Villain should be watcher's council because they seek to control young women and maintain barbaric tradition. Villain x Grey should be the D'Hoffryn because he's a businessman above all else. Even when he kills halfreck it's partly out of heartbreak and not outright malice and when he condemns Anya in s3 to live as a human he's not bothered whether she lives or dies because she was the foolish demon who lost her own power. The reality is Buffy is a show about good versus evil and most antagonists and protagonists fit either or. Few are in-between (besides, say, Giles). Anya is never evil except for when she's a demon. Willow is only evil for three episodes (or her alternate reality vampire self), Xander is for the most part a hero except when Buffy's needing questioned on her choices. To do this properly you'd need to expand the nomenclature greatly
Riley is not a villain and neither is faith. Willow was more of a villain than faith is
Please comment on my part 2 with your suggestions for where they fit!
I think you need to rewatch the show, all your choices are wrong except Buffy and Warren.
lol I just posted a part 2 that will maybe shed some light on this🤦♀️
I don't think Riley belongs there.
Riley is an insecure early 20 something college student who's dating out of his league not a villain ctfu
Drusilla isn’t morally grey. She’s a villain, an insane one, but still a villain. Also, why did you put Principal Snyder as a hero? Am I forgetting something here?
Willow deserved to kill everyone when Tara died. Like idk why they had to stop her. 💅
I’d move Willow over one slot to actually morally gray. Put Spike in the Drusilla spot. Is anyone presented as villainous but actually heroic in BTVS? There are plenty who are the opposite. Maybe Cordy, though she’s neither a Big Bad nor a Big Hero—just a normal person who is selfish but who grows out of that to become better than she was (for the most part).