10 Most Badass Buffy The Vampire Slayer Baddies

The casting department of Buffy must be TV hall of famers. Indeed, many actors were so perfect for their roles that, through association, they’ve struggled ever since to find similarly meaningful work. Perhaps the cake-taker in this regard, however, is James Marsters, whose performance as Spike led to many of Buffy’s all time greatest moments.

Spike and Dru (respectively: peroxided Billy Idol lookalike and daydreaming soothsayer) provide the primary vampire villainy for the majority of season two. The Sid and Nancy of the Hellmouth set, they proceed to spend the next six seasons in love and at war, in tandem and opposition.

Spike, the ambitious young (100 or so years old) go-getter, is perhaps Whedon’s magnum opus for snarky quipsters, while Drusilla provides the wild card cutting edge. Together they push Buffy and the gang to their limits. They make what should be a weakness into a strength – dismissed by other vampires at times for displaying the “human” emotions of love and affection, they understand people better than many of their disheveled older colleagues, and use this insight to their fiendish advantage.

The two experience a parting of the ways after season two, and the arcs of each only develop further (particularly in the case of Spike, one of the series’ best rounded characters). But as far as outright villainy goes, they never got better than their work as a unit.