10 Most Badass Buffy The Vampire Slayer Baddies

Naturally, Buffy The Vampire Slayer focusses primarily on a set of characters with remarkable powers. Whether these are used for good or evil, the story is driven in the main by otherworldly actions from monsters, slayers, magicians, or whoever. But what of the normal people? What of Xander Harris, Scooby Gang tagalong and thoroughly ordinary guy?

That's what season three episode The Zeppo sets out to examine, as we witness Xander suffer a dark night of the soul as a wheelman for Jack O'Toole, zombie hoodlum, and his undead cohorts. Jack serves as the ultimate reminder that, in high school terms, Xander will always be an outsider – O'Toole is a reanimated corpse, and he's still cooler than Xander.

Jack may not seem much more exciting than your average on screen zombie, but it's the deft manner in which Whedon contrasts the everyday struggle of high school with supernatural elements that sets the character apart. Xander may run with a crowd that regularly battles creatures of darkness (which, amusingly, they are in the middle of doing while Xander drives around, none the wiser), but he still suffers through much the same difficulties of the average high school senior. Jack, renowned tough guy even prior to his death and resurrection, wants Xander to join his crew. As if a carload of zombies wasn't bad enough, he has to fight peer pressure as well.