Warren Mears

Warren Mears
Name	Warren Mears
Status	Undead
Classif.	Human
Affiliation	The Trio Amy Madison
Appearances
Debut	I Was Made to Love You
Portrayed by	Adam Busch

Warren Mears was former Sunnydale High student and member of The Trio. He was portrayed by Adam Busch.

Biography

Warren began on the show as a seemingly one-off character, involved in the main storylines of two Season 5 episodes. The character was reintroduced in Season 6 as part of the Nerd Trio, where he progressed from a comic annoyance to a misogynistic killer driven by an urge to dominate and his growing mental instability, and one of the show's major villains, though not a Big Bad.

Warren first appeared in "I Was Made to Love You," as a former Sunnydale High School student who built a robot girlfriend for sex and company. In the episode, the robot April searches for Warren, who has abandoned her for a human girlfriend, Katrina. April's batteries eventually run down, but not before she attacks Katrina. As Warren is about to leave town to try and reconcile with Katrina, Spike approaches him with a request. In "Intervention," Warren fulfills Spike's request - the Buffybot. Warren then dissapears until Season 6.

Warren resurfaces in the Season 6 episode "Flooded" as part of the Nerd Trio, along with Jonathan and Andrew. During the first half of the season, the Trio appears as a comic nuisance to Buffy, who gets in the way of their plans to rob banks and so forth.

From the beginning, it is clear that Warren (unlike his more passive portrayal in Season 5) is the leader of the Trio, dominant over Jonathan and Andrew, as well as more willing than the other two nerds to take real risks and possibly do real harm to people.

Starting with the episode "Dead Things," Warren shows his true colors as a dangerous, misogynistic, and possibly psychopathic individual. When Katrina reappears, Warren uses an enslavement device to make her obey his will. When she resists the device, Warren attacks her and accidentally kills her. Unmoved, he hatches a scheme using demons that cause temporal disturbances to confuse Buffy into thinking she was responsible for Katrina's death. Buffy eventually figures it out, but Warren and the Trio evade her for the time being.

After Katrina's death, Jonathan becomes increasingly unhappy with Warren's lack of conscience. Warren plots with Andrew, who is enamored with him, to ditch Jonathan in the near future.

In "Seeing Red," Warren makes his bid for major villain status when he steals a pair of magical orbs which give him strength and invulnerability. He, Jonathan and Andrew attempt to rob an armored car, but Buffy (aided by Jonathan, who surreptitiously tells her to destroy the orbs) stops him. However, Warren escapes with a jetpack. Andrew has one too, but he blasts off into an overhang, and he and Jonathan (who received no jetpack as part of Warren and Andrew's plan to abandon him) are jailed. In prison, Andrew laments being left behind by Warren.

File:WarrenSkinned.jpg

Warren skinned.

The next day, Warren, upset at his plans being foiled, appears in Buffy's back yard with a gun. He shoots, wounding Buffy and accidentally killing Tara. This action creates the season's true Big Bad, as Willow is pushed by grief into dark magics and becomes Dark Willow. She hunts Warren down and flays him in retribution for Tara's death, ending Warren's life and his villainy.

Post-death

The First Evil appears as Warren a few times in Season 7 - including as Season 6's representative in the parade of villains at the end of "Lessons" using his appearance mainly as a means of bending Andrew to its will. Using this method, the First Evil gets Andrew to murder Jonathan (in "Conversations with Dead People"), in order to open the seal in the basement of the new Sunnydale High.

Warren in Buffy Season 8

Warren's final major appearance occurs when a spell (cast by Amy) causes Willow, feeling guilty over moving on after Tara's death, to manifest her feelings by making her outwardly assume the appearance of her former victim. Later it appears that Willow's mind starts to become replaced by Warren's.

The real Warren, however, returns months after the destruction of Sunnydale. Having been saved from death by Amy, seconds before he could have been killed by Willow. He was the one who gave Amy the idea of cursing Willow in order to become him, and he bears a considerable grudge against both Willow (for flaying him) and Buffy (for ruining all of his criminal plans).

Amy and Warren remained in the remnants of Sunnydale after the massive exodus and were present during the town's destruction. They remained for months in the crater, feeding on whatever edible substance they could find, until they were found by General Voll. In exchange for their aid against Buffy and the Slayers, Warren asked for a chance to exact revenge on Willow. In Part Four of "The Long Way Home", he reveals the means of his survival as he lobotomizes a captive Willow. When Buffy and Satsu arrive on a rescue mission, Amy teleports away, taking Warren with her. Willow heals instantaneously.

In Part 1 of "Time of Your Life", Twilight is seen with Warren and Amy in some sort of military base, where Warren shows him something that will help get Twilight's job done: a missile, which targets and destroys the Scotland castle headquarters, with Xander looking on nearby, helplessly. It seems Warren is still a technological genius.

On the letters page of Buffy Season Eight #6, Released September 2007, Whedon responds to a question by Kaylee Pansieri of Montreal, Quebec asking how the First could have impersonated Warren, to trick Andrew, if he'd never died, by saying, "He was legally dead for like a second. Amy didn't tell him 'cause she didn't want to upset him. I forgot, okay?!"

Powers and abilities

Although Warren displays no independent supernatural powers, he does possess a genius-level intellect, especially in the fields of technology and robotics. He is capable of building highly advanced robots which can easily pass for ordinary humans. The Buffybot he built successfully masqueraded as Buffy Summers for several weeks while the real Slayer was dead, and a robot duplicate of himself was convincing enough to actually fool Willow, even with her magical tracking abilities, into thinking it was the real deal. Some of his other creations, which fuse magic and technology, include an Invisibility Ray (cf. "Gone"); a Freeze Ray (cf. "Smashed"); a small microchip capable of slowing time (cf. "Life Serial"); a Cerebral Dampener, which strips the will of any female within its range, rendering her a slave (cf. "Dead Things"); and at least two jetpacks (cf. "Seeing Red"). In Season Eight, he also displays enough knowledge of biology to perform a lobotomy (cf. "The Long Way Home, Part Four").

In Season Six's "Seeing Red", Warren gains the power of the Orbs of Nezzla'khan, two orbs which grant him superhuman strength and invulnerability, respectively. In this state, he is more than a physical match for Buffy, until Jonathan betrays him by telling her to destroy his orbs.

Gallery

Appearances

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Season 5 (2000, 2001)

• "I Was Made to Love You"
• "Intervention"

Season 6 (2001, 2002)

• "Flooded"
• "Life Serial"
• "Smashed"
• "Gone"
• "Dead Things"
• "Normal Again"
• "Entropy"
• "Seeing Red"
• "Villains"

Season 7 (2002, 2003)

• "Conversations with Dead People" (manifestation of The First)
• "Never Leave Me" (manifestation of The First)
• "The Killer in Me" (a spell cast by Amy started turning Willow into Warren)
• "Storyteller" (in Andrew's fantasy)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight

• "The Long Way Home"
• "Time of Your Life"