Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon and introduced by Douglas Petrie for the cult television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. The character is portrayed by Alexis Denisof. For the duration of Buffy and until Season 2 of Angel, he is portrayed as an incompetent but intelligent buffoon. On Angel, Wesley grows from being Angel's comic-relief sidekick into a mature and capable partner; the brains, and later the leader of, Angel Investigations.

Biography

Character history

Little is known about Wesley's childhood, only that it was a largely unhappy one. In the episode "Lineage", it is revealed that, 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 English all-boys preparatory school where he trained to become a Watcher; members of a secret organisation who battle evil and train Vampire Slayers. In order to improve his performance, Alexis Denisof came up with a background story for Wesley regarding his father. 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". In "I've Got You Under My Skin" viewers are led to believe that Wesley may have been psychologically abused as a child, and that his various insecurities may be in part a result of his father's unrealistic expectations of him. 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",

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 a 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."

Watcher's Council

Wesley's first appearance is in the Buffy Season Three episode "Bad Girls". Wesley is introduced as a replacement Watcher for Slayers Faith Lehane and Buffy Summers, following the discharge of Rupert Giles by the Council. 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. Originally Wesley was intended to be killed off after just a few episodes, but the writers grew fond of his character and decided to keep him alive. Wesley develops an inappropriate crush on Cordelia Chase, a high school student and ex-girlfriend of Xander Harris. Their flirtation culminates in a dance at the high school prom, followed a few days later by an awkward kiss, after which both characters realize that the attraction had been illusory and they lacked any sort of chemistry. When Faith goes rogue and Buffy turns her back on the Council, Wesley is subsequently fired for his failure.

Angel Investigations

Wesley reappears in the first season of Angel, becoming a cast regular in his second episode "Somnambulist". Introduced as a self-proclaimed "rogue demon hunter", Wesley works with Angel and Cordelia as a member of supernatural detective agency Angel Investigations, serving as a partial replacement for the recently lost Doyle. 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." Wesley proves his loyalty to Team Angel in the episode "Sanctuary", when, after being tempted with the offer of returning 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 in the previous episode.

In Season Two, Wesley finds himself running the organization in Angel's absence during his friend's descent into darkness and shows himself to be highly capable, as well as developing a strong brothers-in-arms relationship with streetwise vampire-hunter Charles Gunn. No longer the coward he once was, Wesley is shot trying to protect Gunn and his friends from a zombie police officer in the episode "The Thin Dead Line", and remains in a wheelchair for the following two episodes. In "Belonging", he seeks his father's approval over 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. Wesley displays the extent of his ruthlessness when, during an adventure in Pylea, he plans an attack that will send many Pylean rebels to their deaths as part of the rescue of Cordelia from the Covenant of Trombli. As he explains to Gunn when the latter questions his willingness to sacrifice the rebels: "If you try not to get anybody killed, you end up getting everybody killed."

Darker character development

In the third season, 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 (cf. "Billy"). Denisof complimented that episode, "because it was the first real dark change in Wesley to experiment with". 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 kidnapping Connor. 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."

Wesley's plan goes terribly wrong, resulting in his throat cut and the baby being taken to a hell dimension. As Wesley recovers, a furious Angel tries to kill him and he is alienated from his friends. 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 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 fight the good fight, but maintains an interest in the affairs of Angel Investigations. In the opening episode of Season Four, 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 and helping Faith escape from jail in order to stop the Beast. 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 (cf. "Salvage"). At the end of the fourth season, Angel performs a powerful mind-wipe which removes certain events from the collective memories of the world at large. Denisof believes that the mind-wipe "selectively erased certain events or adjusted them". After the wipe, Wesley no longer has any recollection of the existence of Connor or the events involving him, but he does know that he went through a dark period of alienation from the group. 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."

Wolfram & Hart

In Season Five, the character of Wesley's father appears for the first time, in the episode "Lineage". Arriving at Wolfram & Hart, supposedly to try and convince Wesley to join the new Watcher's Council, Roger Wyndam-Pryce is 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 clip 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. Wesley finally gets together with Fred at the end of the episode "Smile Time", only to lose her shortly after, when her body is occupied by the spirit of an Old One known as Illyria. Upon finding out that Gunn was indirectly responsible for what happened to Fred, Wesley stabs him in retaliation, and later kills Knox for his part in Illyria's ascension. A broken man, Wesley turns to alcohol to ease his pain and tries to help Illyria understand the world, a move that furthers Wesley's suffering but, at the same time, he sees as the only way to keep some part of Fred close to him. 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, and is mortally wounded in battle. He spends his final minutes of life with Illyria at his side, finally agreeing to let the demon take the form of Fred to allow Wesley, in some way, to say goodbye to the woman he loved (cf. "Not Fade Away").

Characterization

Wesley's most notable personality trait is his ruthlessness; he is "one to make the hard decisions even if he has to make them alone." This is evidenced even in his early episodes on Buffy, where he would rather allow 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 (cf. "Choices"). Later examples include taking baby Connor away from Angel and apparently shooting his own father.

Wesley matures significantly over the course of both Buffy and Angel; in his early appearances he was cowardly and incompetent. Denisof described some of the guideposts he used as an actor portraying his character, "I looked to Giles a little, and considered what would be the most annoying thing for him. I thought that an irritating version of Giles would be annoying for him 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 used his own backstory involving Wesley's relationship with his father as a reference for how to play Wesley, and this background story helped explain "why he was so repressed."

When Wesley is fired from the Watcher's Council, Denisof says this experience gave the character "a little shake". 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."

By the end of Angel Season Three, following his betrayal of Angel Investigations and subsequent expulsion from the group, Wesley is deeply changed from his foppish early appearance, having disdained his glasses and shirts in favor of leather jackets and sweaters, as well as no longer shaving regularly, giving him a constant stubble around his chin. Also, his English accent is gradually softened. 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 L.A. 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."

Wesley undergoes yet another drastic personality change in Season Five when he suffers a terrible tragedy. According to Denisof, "Once Fred is killed, he really becomes unbalanced, in the way that anybody would losing what they perceive as their life partner. 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. 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 for the sixth season (had there been one); Wesley and Illyria would have featured in an arc, and 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. There were things that were always in place to happen in the finale, but I don't think the death of Wesley was one of them. With the show being cancelled it did bring up opportunities for the writers. [Joss] said it would mean the death of Wesley." 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."

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. However, as his personality hardened, Wesley gained experience during his time with Angel and 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. in episode "Inside Out", when he killed the demon Skip). His superior and detailed knowledge of demons and sorcery aided Angel and the team regularly.

Romantic relationships

• 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.
• Unnamed bleached blonde — Wesley once had a one-night stand with this woman.
• Virginia Bryce — The two met and slept together in the Angel episode "Guise Will Be Guise" under the false pretense that Wesley was in fact Angel. However, the two continued in a fairly serious relationship for the rest of the second season, 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.
• Winifred Burkle — From the beginning of Season 3 until the end of the series, Wesley was quite clearly in love with Fred. This set him at odds with Charles Gunn. Even after the others broke ties with him, Wesley continued to help Fred when she needed it, and also tried to end her relationship with Gunn. In the episode Lineage, Wesley shot to death who he thought was his father in order to protect Fred. Fred began pursuing him in the episode Smile Time (though he was completely clueless), 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 that he viewed her as his soulmate.
• Illyria — Though not a 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. For her part, Illyria treated Wesley as a trusted guide and advisor. At the very end, Illyria took Fred's shape and gave him a moment of comfort before he died.

Appearances

Canonical appearences

Wesley appeared in 109 canonical Buffyverse episodes:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Nine episodes of Season 3.

• Season 3 - "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.

Non-canonical appearences

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

Nicknames

Wesley is called Percy by Spike in an allusion both to his proper name and his British aristocratic background.

Willow Rosenberg (played by his real life wife Alyson Hannigan) calls him the Marlboro Man in episode "Orpheus".

At various times, especially his freelance period, Wesley shows a tendency to use only his second surname, Pryce.

Towards the beginning of their friendship, Charles Gunn refers to him as "English". This is an affectionate nickname, as they also shared a secret handshake.