Ben was the mortal prison for deposed hell-goddess Glorificus. Over time, she learned to free herself from Ben for periods of time in order to search for the key. A spell prevented any human witnessing or hearing of this transformation from remembering it.
Dealing with Glory
As a junior physician at Sunnydale Memorial, Ben met and befriended Buffy Summers after her mother Joyce fainted and he let Buffy's sister Dawn play with his stethoscope, after assuring the girls their mother was going be fine.[1]
It apparently was not the case, as Joyce kept coming to Memorial weeks later; her condition became worse, leading to Buffy having more encounters with Ben, the second being when she used her Slayer strength to help dispatch one of the growing number of mental patients. Buffy recognized the patient early on as a watchman who lacked any mental problems prior to his hospitalization.[2] Even as things started to get worse for Joyce as she was now diagnosed with a tumor, Ben advised Buffy to give herself a break.[3] As the amount of mental patients grew to a notable number, Ben summoned a Queller demon to Sunnydale in order to kill off the mental patients and "clean up Glory's mess". However, this almost got Joyce killed, since her tumor started to affect her mental health.[4]
Ben eventually discovered Dawn's identity as the Key shortly after she became so overwhelmed she abandoned her sister. Bumping into her at the hospital, Ben tried to cheer her up by making her hot chocolates before she revealed her true nature. Shocked at the realization, Ben warned Dawn to leave before he transformed into Glory. Luckily, Glory was unable to find out Dawn's nature at that time though because she did not share Ben's memories.[5]
Recovering from her break-up with Riley Finn, Buffy sought an interest in Ben when they found each other at a college party which was disrupted by the presence of an out-of-control robot named April. After seeing the lengths taken by April to procure and satisfy her boyfriend and creator Warren Mears, Buffy decided to focus on her family issues and not pursue him, not wanting to define herself by her lack of a relationship.[6] Being constantly harassed by Glory's minion Jinx, Ben accidentally let it slip that the Key was an innocent human and tried to save Dawn by stabbing Jinx with a knife in hopes of killing him. However, Jinx managed to survive long enough to inform Glory of this new found information.[7]
After spending two weeks away from work due to Glory seizing control, Ben was relieved from his job at Memorial.[8] When Buffy and her friends were forced into hiding after Glory found out Dawn was the Key, Ben was called all the way out of Sunnydale to treat an injured Rupert Giles. It was then that he turned back into Glory, who took Dawn then and there. Because of Spike, a vampire who was immune to Glory's spell, the gang now learned that Glory and Ben shared the same body.[9]
As their personalities began to merge and the two were able to communicate directly, Ben agreed, due to now possessing Glory's ruthlessness and selfishness, to help Glory kill Dawn for the upcoming "Big Day".[10] However, Buffy defeated Glory by using a wrecking ball and beating her to a pulp with the Hammer of Olaf. After being beaten to a bloody pulp, Glory transformed to Ben one final time, and because he was human, Buffy spared his life. She told him to warn Glory not to come near her and her family again, to which he willingly agreed. Shortly afterward, Ben announced to Glory that it would just be the two of them before Giles came. After confirming to Giles that it would take some time for him to recover from his and Glory's bloody injuries, Giles, knowing Glory would eventually resurface and wreak havoc, smothered Ben to death with his bare hands, killing both Ben and Glory. Ben was 25 years old at the time.[11]
Giles was originally supposed to reveal to Buffy that he had killed Ben in "Lies My Parents Told Me", but his on-screen confession was cut due to time constraints.
