10 Buffy The Vampire Slayer Episodes Everyone Remembers For ONE Awesome Scene
3. Fool For Love - Spike Kills Nikki Wood
For all his bragging, it is five seasons into the show before we actually see Spike take down a slayer.
In an ultra-cool 1970s New York subway fight scene, Spike (with a punk rock look influenced by the likes of the Sex Pistols and Generation X) faces Nikki Wood - and wins. This victory, we discover, is where his iconic black duster came from, which he prises from the limp body of his latest victim.
His obsession with the Chosen Ones was well-known but, until this point, Spike's slayer slayings had been either the stuff of legend or locker room talk, depending on how convincing one found Captain Peroxide's swagger, bluster and boastings.
This pacey and stone-cold, drop-dead awesome scene is also intercut with a present-day tête-à-tête with Buffy, which adds a satisfying dual layer and cinematic sensibility to proceedings, as the pair play out the sequence blow for blow. But this time the shoe is on the other foot (or perhaps the coat is on the other back) and Buffy leaves Spike on the ground, echoing his former love by denouncing him as 'beneath her'. Ouch.