Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was a former Watcher, a member of Angel Investigations, and later an executive at Wolfram & Hart.

Early Life
"All those hours locked under the stairs and you still weren't good enough. Not good enough for daddy, not good enough for the Council."

- an unidentified Ethros demon to Wesley

Wesley's childhood was a largely unhappy one. At the age of six or seven, Wesley attempted to resurrect a dead bird using a mystical scroll stolen from his father's library. As a teenager he attended an all-boys preparatory school run by the Watchers Council where he became Head Boy while training to become a Watcher and wage war on the forces of darkness and train the Slayer. Shortly after graduating from the Academy, Wesley had a run-in with Spike, during which "blood was spilt" and "vendettas were sworn."

Watcher to Buffy and Faith


Wesley comes to Sunnydale as a replacement Watcher for Slayers Faith Lehane and Buffy Summers after Rupert Giles is fired after he interferes in Buffy's Cruciamentum. Clean-cut, pompous, and bossy, he is immediately disliked by the girls under his watch. He is inexperienced and handles himself poorly in combat; prior to his assignment to Buffy and Faith, his only encounters with vampires had been brief and "under controlled circumstances." Giles, his predecessor and fellow Englishman, does not take him seriously, and tends to support Buffy's predilection for ignoring Wesley's counsel.

Wesley develops a crush on Cordelia Chase, a high school student and reluctant member of Buffy's Scooby Gang. Their flirtation culminates in a dance at the high school prom, followed a few days later by an awkward kiss, after which both realize that the attraction had been illusory and they lacked any sort of chemistry. When Faith begins to go rogue and kills the Deputy Mayor, the Scooby Gang neglect to inform Wesley, and when he discovers this by eavesdropping on Buffy and Giles, he interferes with Angel's attempts to get through to her and ends up driving Faith into the arms of Mayor Wilkins, which only earns him further disdain from Buffy and the other Scoobies.

After Wesley fails to convince the Council to aid Angel after he is poisoned by Faith, an enraged and disgusted Buffy decides to stop following the Council's orders and severs all ties with them. Nonetheless, Wesley chooses to help them fight the Mayor after his Ascension to the demon Olvikan, only to be knocked out almost immediately. Because of Faith's turn to darkness and Buffy's refusal to follow their orders, the Watchers' Council were forced to recognize Wesley as the incompetent man he was and fired him.

Joining Angel Investigations


After being fired by the Watcher's Council, Wesley becomes a rogue demon hunter and makes his way to Los Angeles. He meets Angel and Cordelia, and becomes a member of their supernatural detective agency Angel Investigations, serving as a partial replacement for the recently lost Doyle and providing the two with his detailed knowledge of demons. Arriving in Los Angeles, he claimed to now be a lone wolf and "rogue demon hunter" (although it was obvious this was just an image he had created for himself and he was the same bumbling idiot he was in Sunnydale), he at first refused to tell Angel that he had been fired by the Council, merely stating that he had "no opportunity to function as Watcher" due to Buffy's flat refusal to follow the Council's orders, though he eventually came clean when Cordelia was kidnapped. Upon rescuing Cordelia, Wesley wanted to keep working with Angel and Cordelia and offered his services, which led to him assisting Angel when he dealt with Penn (a vampire to whom Angelus had acted as sire and mentor to in the past) and Cordelia's mystical pregnancy.



Soon afterwards, when Angel realized that Wesley was low on money, he decided to make Wesley an official member of the team by giving him a job with Angel Investigations. Wesley proves his loyalty to Team Angel when, after being tempted with the offer of being reinstated to the Watcher's Council, he betrays his former colleagues in order to help Angel protect Faith, despite the fact that Faith had brutally tortured him. Wesley states that, at this point, he trusts Angel completely.

Wesley eventually finds himself running the organization in Angel's absence during his friend's descent into darkness and shows himself to be highly capable; he also develops a strong brothers-in-arms relationship with streetwise vampire-hunter Charles Gunn. No longer the bumbling coward he once was, Wesley is shot trying to protect Gunn and his friends from a zombie police officer and remains in a wheelchair for several weeks afterward. After becoming the official leader to the group, Wesley seeks his father's approval for being made leader of Angel Investigations, but instead finds his father is more concerned about his next failure following his being fired from the Watchers Council. This, in combination with the unconscious challenge to Wesley's leadership by Angel upon Angel's return to the agency (even if he is not officially in charge, Angel remains the group's strongest fighter as well as their "official" champion) results in a crisis of confidence for Wesley, who nevertheless re-asserts his leadership when he is placed in charge of a rebellion in the demon dimension Pylea, exhibiting a ruthless pragmatism when he explains his decisions to sacrifice some rebels' lives and risk Angel's life as well: "If you try not to get anybody killed, you end up getting everybody killed."

Betrayal


Wesley's path soon becomes filled with tragedies and difficult choices. Just as he is beginning to have romantic feelings for teammate Fred Burkle, he is supernaturally influenced to attempt to kill her, ending his immediate opportunity for love. After the birth of Angel's son Connor, Wesley becomes convinced by a prophecy that Angel will eventually kill the baby. With the intention of taking him to safety, Wesley betrays his friends by conspiring with Angel's old enemy Daniel Holtz and kidnapping Connor. Wesley's plan goes terribly wrong, resulting in his throat being cut and the baby being taken to a hell dimension. As it turned out, the prophecy had been faked by Sahjhan, a time-warping demon who had learned that Connor was destined to kill him.

Angel is nonetheless furious at Wesley for conspiring with Holtz behind his back and kidnapping his son, and attempts to kill him while at the hospital. Though Angel is stopped, Wesley is nonetheless alienated from Angel Investigations while Angel takes over the agency once again. Wesley continues his descent into self-loathing when he begins a sexual relationship with Lilah Morgan, an employee of evil law firm Wolfram & Hart and Angel's long-time enemy. He forms his own team to continue fighting the good fight (though his team is more of a paramilitary mercenary group than a detective agency), but maintains an interest in the affairs of Angel Investigations. Wesley rescues Angel from the bottom of the ocean, reviving him with his own blood. Wesley eventually returns to the team full time during the gang's first confrontation with The Beast and Jasmine's manifestation.



Now deeply serious, humorless, and pessimistic, he takes command and makes the difficult decisions of bringing back Angel's evil alter ego Angelus when information is uncovered suggesting that Angelus had previously faced the Beast, subsequently helping Faith escape from jail in order to stop the Beast and capture Angelus. Wesley also has to face the trauma of Lilah's death, particularly when he is forced to decapitate her corpse when it appears she was killed and possibly sired by Angelus (In reality she was stabbed in the neck by a possessed Cordelia and Angelus was simply found holding the body). In an attempt to save Connor, Angel performs a powerful mind-wipe which removes certain events from the collective memories of the world at large, causing Wesley to forget Connor had ever existed, and subsequently, his betrayal.

Wolfram & Hart
After Angel and his team decided to take Wolfram & Hart up on their offer to take over the Los Angeles branch, just as Wesley adjusts to working for the firm, his father arrives to try and convince him to join the new Watcher's Council. Roger Wyndam-Pryce was soon revealed to have sinister intentions when he attempts to steal Angel's free will. When his father threatens to kill Fred, Wesley shoots and kills him without a moment's hesitation, and continues to fire his gun until the magazine is empty. Although it turned out that the being he had killed wasn't his real father, but a convincing cyborg copy, Wesley is still understandably traumatised.



Afterward, Wesley and Fred finally begin a relationship. However, it was short lived; Fred became infected with some sort of mystical illness that turned out to be the Old One known as Illyria shelling her out to occupy her body. Wesley is forced to feel the woman he loves die in his arms as Illyria is ressurected. In turn, Wesley stabbed Gunn who inadvertently was responsible for Fred coming into contact with the virus, and then shoots Knox, the man responsible for choosing Fred as Illyria's vessel.



This tragedy leaves Wesley a broken man who turned to alcohol to ease his pain. Descending into alcoholism, Wesley began to hold onto Illyria as the only thing he had left of Fred, helping her understand the human world she is unfamiliar with. He inadvertently restored his and his friends' memories of Connor when he smashes the Orlon Window which held said memories, upon learning that Angel magically altered history when he accepted Wolfram & Hart's offer, thinking that Fred was the price for doing so. Expecting Fred to return, he instead was gifted with the painful memories of stealing Connor and betraying Angel Upon discussing the returned memories with Illyria who regained Fred's lost memories, Wesley, obviously downtrodden, tells her to forget reality and focus on the fake memories as they were made for a reason.



He later sends Illyria into the hell dimension to rescue Gunn whom he later awkwardly somewhat apologizes to for stabbing. When Angel proposes to attack the Circle of the Black Thorn, the secret arm of the Senior Partners, Wesley agrees to challenge a demon sorcerer named Cyvus Vail, who knows of Wesley's growing instability and believes him to be a wild card who could betray Angel. Vail proves too powerful for Wesley, and he is overpowered and mortally wounded. Despite his wounds, Wesley manages to temporarily knock Vail out with an energy sphere, which allows him to spend his final minutes of life with Illyria at his side. Wesley finally agreed to let the demon take the form of Fred so that, in some way, he could spend his last moments with the woman he loved. After Wesley passed away, Illyria avenges his death by shattering Vail's skull with a single punch. Illyria is truly angered and grief-stricken by his death, wishing to "do more violence" as a result.

Afterlife


Following his death, Wesley returned due to the standard perpetuity clause in his Wolfram & Hart contract keeping him working for the company even after death. He was made the the liaison between the Senior Partners and the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart, which was sent to hell by the Senior Partners along with the rest of Los Angeles, being permanently trapped in the form of the pompous and cowardly Watcher he once was; however, knowing that they would not be able to control him as they had Lilah or Holland Manners, the Senior Partners revived Wesley as a ghost and rendered him unable to make contact with anything. For the first few weeks in Hell, Wesley cared for Angel who had been rendered human by the Senior Partners and was badly injured. Upon recovering, Wesley helped him mystically keep up the guise that he was still a vampire and assisted in healing his wounds. Wesley tried to contact Cordelia, who had become a higher power, for assistance; but she and the other Powers That Be were unable to exert any influence in Wolfram & Hart's domain.

He was apparently destroyed when Gunn, who had become a vampire, destroyed the Wolfram & Hart building. He then convinced the bodiless voices in the White Room to let him return with Angel. As he returns during the battle against the Demon Lords of Los Angeles, he is seen by Illyria who, as a result, transforms into Fred. Spike subsequently tries to keep Illyria from Wesley, because as Fred she is vulnerable. Illyria however, was protective both over Wesley and his deceased body, which remained in her possession.

When Angel was brought near death by Gunn, the Partners take him there to deliver their message: that Gunn's visions were sent by them and not by the Powers, and that Angel is still entitled to the Shanshu Prophecy should he survive to become a vampire again. Wesley transfers the Partners' vision of a post-apocalyptic Angel, fulfilling the Shanshu, to the dying Angel.

After Connor dies, Angel, in a fit of rage, begins slaughtering Wolfram & Hart's army. After questioning the army, Wesley realizes that the Senior Partners cannot allow Angel to die, thus giving them an opportunity to undo the death and chaos caused by the Partners sending Los Angeles to Hell, as they reveresed time to before the Fall. However, because Wesley died before the Fall, he would remain dead. Nonetheless, Wesley is resigned to his fate, believing that he had nothing more to live for with Fred gone (he reminds Angel that "she" is dead as well), and walks away, but not before asking Spike to take care of Illyria in his stead.

In the new timeline, Angel uses his new status as a public hero to rename a wing of the public library in honor of Fred and Wesley. Wesley's position as the team's research and intelligence specialist was eventually taken over by Laura Weathermill.

Personality and Traits
"You try not to get anybody killed, you wind up getting everybody killed."

- Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

Wesley's most notable personality trait was his ruthlessness; he was "one to make the hard decisions even if he has to make them alone." He would rather have allowed Willow to die than to give the Mayor back an object which would allow him to complete his Ascension. He is immediately dismissed by the Scoobies as lacking in compassion, though his logic is sound. Later examples include his plans to storm the Pylean Royal Palace, sending numbers of rebels to certain death to allow the rest to infiltrate the palace; taking baby Connor away from Angel; and shooting what he thought was his own father to protect Angel and Fred. Despite this, Wesley has allowed his emotions to get the better of him, such as stabbing Gunn and killing Knox after Fred died. Wesley began as a "by-the-book" Watcher, characterized as an "annoying version of Giles," demonstrating an arrogance in his knowledge and an over-confidence in his lackluster combat skills, but gradually matures to show a more caring, compassionate side through his friendship with Angel and his temporary position as team leader, as well as becoming a skilled independent combatant capable of standing up to such powerful foes as Angelus, The Beast, and magician Cyvus Vail. An example of his early arrogance is when he proudly tells an annoyed Giles that he killed two vampires under controlled circumstances and in a later battle is completely useless, forcing Giles to save him. While initially by the book, he ends up deferring to Giles a lot and eventually comes to aid Buffy on his own when she's quit the Council and thus no longer needs his help.

While initially Wesley and Giles were polar opposites, they began to mirror each other through their willingness to commit "lesser evils" for the greater good. Both either attempted or succeeded in murdering people with the aims of saving the world. For instance, just as Giles killed Ben Wilkinson to prevent the eventual resurgence of Glory, Wesley tried to kill the newly arisen Illyria, without hesitation or attempting to find a way to separate her from her shell, Fred. Both were also willing to let innocents die (such as Dawn, Willow, and arguably Spike) for the same cause.

Wesley has a strained relationship with his father Roger Wyndam-Pryce. His father had always been disappointed in him as a child, an attitude that was worsened when Wesley was fired from the Watchers Council.

As Wesley's experiences progressed, his appearance changed as well. Initially notable by the glasses, suit, clean face, and trim haircut ,he eventually left behind the glasses and began to wear jackets and casual shirts as well as changing his haircut and sporting a five o'clock beard. Although he reverted to his original appearance of suits and glasses when he became the new liaison for the Senior Partners in maintaining contact with Angel, this was only as part of their continued attempts to torment him, the writers describing it as the Partners forcing Wesley to unwillingly 'regress' to a point in his life that he has long moved on from.

Powers and Abilities
Wesley had average strength for a man his height and weight, although he was somewhat athletic due to the lifestyle he led. Although trained in the skills of a Watcher, his overwhelming fear initially prevented him from gaining experience in real-life combat, and rendered him useless in fights. In one example, Giles was forced to save him during a vampire fight soon after he became Buffy's Watcher, and in another, he was knocked out nearly immediately in the final battle with the evil Mayor. In yet another instance, he proved extremely bumbling at rescuing Cordelia while a "rogue demon hunter" and is easily bested by the sadistic empath demon Barney and is only saved when Cordelia kills Barney herself. However, Wesley gained experience during his time with Angel, as his personality hardened, and he became an incredibly skilled martial artist, as well as being proficient with weapons. He was able to take on vampires with success and subdued Justine Cooper single-handedly on two occasions. The best marksman with firearms in the Buffyverse, he is able to hit a tiny target while performing acrobatics (e.g., when he killed the demon Skip by shooting a bullet into the small hole in his armor created when Angel broke a horn off in a previous confrontation ).

His superior and detailed knowledge of demons and sorcery aided Angel and the team regularly. He had a wide range of knowledge in both academic and occult fields, was a brilliant strategist, and possessed incredible talent in both human and non-human languages. Wesley's superior arcane knowledge lent towards a minor talent for sorcery on occasion; at his time of death, Wesley could conjure fireballs to his palm by force of will.

In his state as liaison to the Senior Partners, Wesley possessed a link to the Partners that allowed him to communicate with them, but was trapped in an intangible state that prevented him from making contact with anything, while having the bonus of rendering him completely immune to physical attacks. It was never revealed whether he, like Spike, would have been able to make contact with the world around him if he wanted to badly enough (although given Spike's example, it is possible that he would not have been of that much use even if this had been the case).

Romantic

 * Cordelia Chase — Wesley's romantic relationship with Cordelia was limited to flirting and infatuation that eventually ended after the two shared a pair of incredibly awkward kisses. However, this infatuation developed into a meaningful platonic friendship.
 * Virginia Bryce — The two met and slept together under the false pretense that Wesley was in fact Angel (Virginia's father had been attempting to hire Angel as a bodyguard for her, with Wesley posing as Angel due to the real Angel currently being away on a 'spiritual retreat' due to his recent obsession with Darla). However, the two continued a fairly serious relationship, but Virginia left because she didn't feel capable of coping with Wesley's lifestyle.
 * Lilah Morgan — Lilah and Wesley's relationship initially began as simply physical but eventually grew into something more. Wesley broke off the relationship after realizing that he could no longer bring himself to ride the line of good and evil. While he didn't truly love Lilah, he held a great deal of care for her and when she was murdered by The Beast, Wesley was saddened and felt responsible for her death, even seeing her ghost when she died. He took the liberty of cutting off her head, believing her to have been bitten by Angelus, which was undoubtedly hard for him. When she arrived to the Hyperion weeks after she died to offer Team Angel run of Wolfram & Hart, Wesley attempted to burn her contract, stating that he wanted her to be free. A visibly touched Lilah revealed that the contract could not be destroyed.
 * Fred Burkle — Wesley was quite clearly madly in love with Fred. This set him at odds with Charles Gunn who also had romantic interest in her. Even after the others broke ties with him, Wesley continued to help Fred when she needed it. Wesley shot to death who he thought was his father in order to protect Fred. Fred began pursuing him (though he was completely clueless to her hints), and their relationship would last about a week. Wesley was the only one with her when she died. Alexis Denisof described Wesley as being obsessed with Fred and stated that he viewed her as his soulmate.
 * Illyria — Though not a true romantic relationship, Wesley felt drawn to Illyria as she was all that remained of Fred. Although they were mostly at each other's throats for a long period, Wesley took a keen interest in helping Illyria navigate Earth, and was easily the person who understood her eccentricities the most. Wesley himself admitted to Angel that he was not in love with Illyria, but for some reason he felt he needed her. For her part, Illyria treated Wesley as a trusted guide and adviser. At the moment of his death, Illyria took Fred's appearance and gave him a moment of comfort before he died, shedding tears at his passing. Illyria had also grown to like him enough that she admitted concern for him and came to aid him out of concern for his well-being. Illyria was enraged by his death and avenged him, and wanted to do more violence as a result of her rage. After his death, Illyria kept his body in her presence for months.

Parental

 * Roger Wyndam-Pryce — Wesley had a strained relationship with his father who had always been dissapointed in him as a child, an attitude that was worsened when Wesley was fired from the Council. Wesley's father always made him feel as though he were never good enough and Wesley constantly sought approval in his father's eyes. When a cyborg posing as his father threatened Fred's life, Wesley, believing it to be his actual father, shot him without hesitation multiple times; a feat that affected him greatly

Friendship

 * Angel  — During his time as Buffy's Watcher, Wesley had a distrust for Angel who was a vampire, though cursed with a soul. Months after being fired by the Council, Wesley, who had been trying take up the mantle of rogue demon hunter, came into contact with Angel and Cordelia in Los Angeles. A few weeks after beginning employment at Angel Investigations, Wesley betrayed the Watchers' Special Ops Team for Angel, revealing he had complete trust in him and his actions, thankful to him for doing more good under his employ than he ever did with the Council. Angel and Wesley's relationship dissolved when Wes took baby Connor away after unconvering a prophecy that foretold that Angel would kill his son, though it proved to be false. As retribution, Angel tried to suffocate Wesley whose throat had just recently been slit. However, Wesley returned to Angel's team when the circumstances called for it. Despite various moments that caused rifts between the two, and Wesley questioning Angel's tactics at times, Wes seemed to always place full trust and faith into Angel. They seemed to more or less reconcile and be friends again, but they were never the same as before.
 *  Gunn  — Wesley and Gunn formed a brotherly relationship after the former took a bullet for the latter, even creating a personal handshake. However, their relationship took a turn for the worse when both men took romantic interests in Fred upon her arrival. Wesley was hurt when Fred and Gunn began a relationship, and even attempted to coerce Fred into giving into her desire for him after he returned to the team following his betrayal, which caused him to get into a hand-to-hand fight with Gunn. Upon discovering that Gunn was inadvertantly responsible for Fred coming into contact with Illyria, Wesley stabbed him though he later awkwardly (somewhat) apologized, and the two seemingly made peace.

Behind the Scenes

 * He was portrayed by Alexis Denisof.


 * Along with Angel and Cordelia, he is one of only three characters to appear the 50th episodes of both Buffy and Angel: "Doppelgängland" and "Billy".


 * Wesley appears in a total of 109 episodes of the Buffyverse, all of which also featured Angel. The only characters to appear in more episodes are Angel (167), Willow (147), Buffy (146), Xander (143), Cordelia (140), Giles (121) and Spike (120).

Concept and Creation
"Young, not bad looking, but a bit full of himself. Thinks he's Sean Connery when he's pretty much George Lazenby."

- The description of Wesley in the script for his first episode, "Bad Girls".

Wesley was initially designed to be a foil for the character of Rupert Giles. Actor Alexis Denisof comments that Wesley and Giles come from very similar backgrounds, but have gone in different directions "with the tools that they had;" he was conceived as a "nemesis" for Giles and Buffy. Co-executive producer Doug Petrie, who wrote Wesley's first episode "Bad Girls," explains "the way Faith is a reflection of Buffy, Wesley takes up a lot of the space that Giles traditionally occupies." He elaborates that, because Giles is usually the "stuffy guy from England who tells you to sit up straight and obey the rules," introducing Wesley, who embodies those traits "to the nth degree," allows Giles to become "subversive" and "cool." Writer Jane Espenson claims that the character was intended for viewers to have antipathy towards, since he was trying to undermine Giles.

Alexis Denisof, who had been living in England before coming to Los Angeles, was unaware of Buffy the Vampire Slayer since it had not yet aired in Britain. When actor Tony Head found out that Mutant Enemy were looking for an actor to play Wesley, Head contacted Denisof, an old friend from England, to ask whether he would be interested in the role. Denisof claims that Wesley was originally supposed to "come in, irritate Giles and Buffy for a couple shows, and then be gloriously terminated." However, the writers became fond of the character's "curious humour" and found themselves unable to kill him off. Joss Whedon struggled to find a place for Wesley in the series where he wouldn't clash with Giles, and eventually approached Denisof with the offer of appearing in spin-off show Angel. For Wesley to work as a long-term character, Denisof claimed they had to re-shape the character to be more sympathetic.

Characterization
Wesley matures significantly over the course of both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel; in his early appearances he was largely cowardly and incompetent. Alexis Denisof claims that his initial goal in playing the character was to be as annoying as possible for the other characters. He explains, "I thought that an irritating version of Giles would be annoying for Giles and also for Buffy. Wesley's purpose was to come there and point the finger and get things shipshape. He's a "by-the-book school teacher." Considering what kind of person it would be who would have dedicated his life to this peculiar task of being a Watcher, and what would be the unique characteristics of somebody who had made those decisions, and then was taken out of that environment and put into Sunnydale. To Wesley that was a completely new and bizarre place." During this time, Denisof came up with a background story for Wesley regarding his father to explain "why he was so repressed." The writers used this story in the show, alluding to it in early Angel episodes such as "I've Got You Under My Skin," and "Belonging." While discussing Wesley's character development over the course of Angel, Denisof explains: "I decided that Wesley was internally confronting his father and that released him a little bit and made him less repressed."

When Wesley is introduced in Angel, having been fired from the Watcher's Council, Denisof says this experience gave the character "a little shake". He elaborates, "When he arrived in Sunnydale, he was straight out of Watcher grad school; he lacked practical experience. He was living in the ideal of the perfect way to execute his duties. I think that losing his job and going out alone roughened him up a little, lopped off some of his sharper corners. It made him more approachable and more personable, less sure of himself all the time." Coming into the show immediately following the death of Doyle, Wesley serves as a partial replacement for that character. Comparing the two characters, Denisof states, "Wesley is a clearer counterpart to Angel, whereas Doyle had more street smarts. Although [Doyle] was struggling with his demon nature, he had seen a lot more of the world in the same way Angel had." Nonetheless Denisof believes that in this period, his character "was so anxious to be a tough rogue demon hunter but was clearly a kind of soft puppy dog."

Denisof complimented the season three Angel episode "Billy," in which Wesley tries to murder Fred after becoming supernaturally misogynous, "because it was the first real dark change in Wesley to experiment with." Discussing Wesley's betrayal of his friends to protect Angel's baby, Denisof explains, "it isn't that he's purely bad or purely good, we're discovering a deeper and more complicated area of the character where good and bad aren't as clear, where Wesley does something motivated, he thinks, for the good of all - i.e. saving Connor and relieving Angel of the responsibility of murdering his son - and in doing so creates the situation in which the baby could be kidnapped, Angel loses his son and Wesley has his throat slit for the trouble. So it's grey rather than black or white." Science fiction magazine Starburst said that "somber, subdued, bearded Wesley is worlds away from the foolish, pompous Wesley." Denisof says of the period, "it was a great opportunity to explore some of the character's darker layers. You couldn't have predicted it when he arrived in Sunnydale. This was an important element to introduce and explore, to be consistent with the show and to continue the organic exploration of all the characters." Whilst the character spent less time with his old friends, Denisof was "more or less isolated from the [main cast], barring one or two scenes of mild confrontation when they would come to visit me and we'd chew each other out. There's definitely a cold war going on with Wesley versus the world." Wesley's dark attitude is alleviated somewhat when the gang decide to take over Wolfram & Hart. The tension between Wesley and his co-workers did not go away because of the mind-wipe but because "we decided we were better off as a team than as separate entities. And we had to put our differences behind us and build our trust again as a group." Discussing the way Wesley's English accent softens over the course of Angel, Denisof says, "[The modified accent] just sits on him better. As an actor, it just felt that organically the way he was changing, and it also seemed to be accurate when you consider the amount of time he's spent in Los Angeles that the accent could have softened. And since he isn't surrounded by upper-crust academics as he was as a young Watcher in the Academy in England, it's understandable that he is changing the way he speaks and changing his voice, his delivery, as a result of his environment."

Denisof had earlier stated that he thought "it's better for the father [of Wesley] to be kept in the background and not become part of the story." When Wesley's father finally did appear in Angel season five, he said, "I had mixed feelings [at first]. It was a lot of pressure to have to define something that had been speculated about for many years. I was worried that by making it specific, it would lose its power, both in the mind of the character and in the minds of the audience. All my concerns disappeared as soon as I read it. There are responses to powerful figures in your life, like your parents, that you can't necessarily control. Wesley's a very controlled person on the exterior and presents a very collected persona to the people around him, being with his father he would no longer be able to control his responses. That's one of the things I wanted to explore with this, the subtle ways in which you respond to the conditioning of your parents. Wesley has difficulty around his father on a physical level, on an emotional scale, and on an intellectual scale. He is extremely intimidated by his father, and at the same time, still seeking the approval that we all essentially want from our parents when we're children. The shooting [of the cyborg Wesley believed to be his father] was an exhilarating moment in which there was the most dangerous person in his life on every level, and there is a woman he is obsessed with. And to have the woman jeopardized by something as dangerous as his father - I played that moment as a moment of pure instinct. Wesley is centered in his intellect and is more uncertain in his emotional life, but in that moment, he becomes pure instinct because he has to choose between the woman he loves and his father."

Wesley undergoes yet another drastic personality change in Angel's fifth season following the death of his love, Fred. Denisof believes that the loss of Fred caused Wesley to become understandably "unbalanced." "By the time we get to the last few episodes, he's got a handle on the grief and is functioning in a more level-headed way," says Denisof. "But underlying it is a huge hole in his heart and it makes it possible for the decision that they make in the final episode. For him emotionally, the stage is set for a life or death battle, possibly for the last time, because at this point, there's nothing more for him to lose." Denisof talked with Whedon about what storylines would have been in place had the television series received another season; Wesley would not have died, and he and Illyria would have featured in an arc in which the transformation of Illyria to Fred would have been extended over many episodes and taken to a "much deeper, darker place" than it briefly was in the late fifth season episode, "The Girl in Question." Denisof continues, "They would have progressed the relationship between Wesley and Illyria in such a way it would conflict with his own feelings for Fred, in a much more profound way. And then we would have gone into the switching of Fred and Illyria and having these two people that he was having these strong feelings about. That was going to be a fairly long journey in the following season, all of which got abbreviated tremendously when [the WB] decided to cancel the show." The cancellation of the show was the inspiration for Wesley's death; Whedon gave Denisof the option of keeping the character alive, but Denisof believed killing the character was right for the story, "It was very upsetting to read. It's too good a story because it hurts."

Canonical

 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer
 * "Bad Girls"
 * "Consequences"
 * "Doppelgängland"
 * "Enemies"
 * "Earshot"
 * "Choices"
 * "The Prom"
 * "Graduation Day, Part One"
 * "Graduation Day, Part Two"


 * Angel
 * Wesley was a regular character, technically starting with the episode "Somnambulist," though he first appeared in the previous episode, "Parting Gifts". He appears in every episode after, with the exception of the episode "Destiny" (due to Alexis Denisof's real-life wedding to Alyson Hannigan, although in the continuity of the series, he took time off to recover from the trauma of shooting the cyborg duplicate of his father). He appears in exactly 100 episodes of Angel.


 * Angel: After the Fall
 * Wesley has appeared in all of the issues thus far


 * Angel After the Fall

Other

 * Wesley appears in a number of expanded-universe comics/novels including Wesley especially featured in Wesley: Spotlight, Stranger to the Sun, and Book of the Dead.