Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
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| Image:Wesley Wyndam-Price.jpg Alexis Denisof as Wesley Wyndam-Pryce | ||||||||||||||
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Wesley Wyndam-Pryce (born in England, died in Los Angeles) is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon and introduced by Douglas Petrie for the cult television programs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. The character is portrayed by Alexis Denisof.
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[edit] Biography
The character first appears in Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a replacement Watcher for Faith Lehane and Buffy, following the discharge of Rupert Giles by the Council for disobeying its orders and becoming too attached to his charge. For the duration of Buffy and until Season 2 of Angel, Wesley is portrayed as an incompetent but intelligent and likeable buffoon with a heart of gold. 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. An adequate hand-to-hand combatant, Wesley's skills lie with thrown weapons and firearms.
Wesley is introduced as a clean-cut, somewhat pompous and bossy watcher who is immediately disliked by the Slayers under his watch. When introduced to Buffy, he is inexperienced and handles himself poorly in combat; prior to his assignment to Buffy and Faith, his only encounter with vampires had been brief and controlled. 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 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.
Faith gradually descends into darkness and Buffy quits working for the Watchers' Council entirely when they refuse to help her save Angel; Wesley is eventually fired from the Council. He stays to help fight the pivotal battle on "Graduation Day", when the Sunnydale mayor ascends into a powerful demonic form. The last appearance of Wesley in the series shows him being carried away on a stretcher (after taking only one hit in the preceeding fight).
Even in his early episodes on Buffy, his role as the "one to make the hard decisions even if he has to make them alone" is evidenced in an episode 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 group as lacking in compassion, though his logic is sound.
In the first-season episode "Parting Gifts" of the Buffy spin-off series Angel, Wesley appears as a self-styled, leather-clad "rogue demon hunter", despite the fact that he needed Angel's help to stop the demon he was after. After introducing himself to Cordelia with this title, he is faced with her question, "What's a Rogue demon?" Despite his uncertain introduction, he continues to work with Angel and Cordelia, serving as a partial replacement for the recently lost Allen Francis Doyle, and eventually joining the team full-time a few episodes later. While working with Angel Investigations, Wesley becomes more confident in his abilities and develops close friendships with Angel, Cordelia, Gunn and Fred.
Wesley gradually begins to show signs of emotional complexity and a troubled past. In the episode "I've Got You Under My Skin", viewers are given hints that Wesley may have been psychologicially abused as a child, and that his various insecurities may be in part a result of his father's unrealistic expectations of him. Indeed, Roger Wyndam-Pryce, a respected member of the Watcher's Council, was an insensitive and harsh father, a man who made little or no effort to tolerate Wesley's mistakes, or the actions he perceived as such, and in a way inspired Wesley's ruthlessness.
Wesley eventually becomes a crucial member of Angel Investigations. In Season 2, he 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 Charles Gunn. He shows his ruthlessness once more when, in the 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."
His path becomes filled with tragedies and difficult choices. Just as he is beginning to have romantic feelings for Winifred "Fred" Burkle, he is supernaturally influenced to attempt to kill her, ending his immediate opportunity for love. After the birth of Connor, Angel's son, Wesley becomes convinced of the truth of a prophecy that Angel would kill Connor. With the intention of saving Connor, Wesley kidnaps him to try and get him to safety, betraying all of his companions. In doing so, Wes himself is betrayed, his throat is cut and the baby is taken from him. When he finally recovers, Angel tries to kill him out of rage at his friend's attempt to take his son away. The prophecy turns out to be false, created by a being that it is prophesied will be killed by Connor, meaning his betrayal had been for naught. As a result, Wesley was banished from Angel Investigations and exiled from his friends.
Wesley continues his descent into self-loathing when he begins to sleep with Lilah Morgan, a mortal enemy. However, he still continued to fight the good fight, albeit in a far darker way than before. By this time he is deeply changed from his foppish early appearance, having disdained his glasses and shirts and started wearing leather jackets and sweaters, as well as no longer shaving regularly, giving him a constant stubble around his chin. He keeps becoming involved in the affairs of Angel Investigations throughout Season 4, starting by rescuing Angel from the bottom of the ocean and reviving him with his own blood. He eventually returned to the team full time during the first confrontation with the Beast and Jasmine's manifestation. Now deeply serious, humourless and pessimistic, he takes command and makes the difficult decisions of bringing back Angelus and helping Faith escape from jail in order to stop Jasmine and the Beast. He 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.
His dark attitude is alleviated somewhat when the gang takes over Wolfram and Hart, but is still a far cry from his days on Buffy. He is further traumatized when his father appears in Los Angeles, reprimanding him and scrutinizing his every move. When his father threatens to kill Fred and tries to take away Angel's free will, Wesley shoots and kills him without an instant's hesitation, throwing up afterwards only to find seconds later that what he thought was his father was a cyborg designed to infiltrate them in order to enslave Angel, and who had complete knowledge of Wesley's background learned from the Council's records. The fact that the being he had killed wasn't his real father did little or perhaps nothing to appease Wesley. Wesley's relation with his father over the years had left him convinced that the real Roger Wyndam-Pryce was a ruthless man who would be capable of deceiving and killing even his own son in the name of the greater good.
In the fifth season, Wesley finally gets together with Fred, only to lose her shortly after, when her body is occupied by the spirit of the demon Illyria, one of the Old Ones. This leaves Wesley a broken man who 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. Upon finding out that Charles Gunn was indirectly responsible for what happened to Fred, he stabs him in retaliation. He also kills Knox for his part in Illyria's ascension, a fact that annoyed Angel as he had just been giving a speech about how fighting for human lives was what made them better than the likes of Illyria.
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 knew of Wesley's growing instability and believed him to be a wildcard who could betray Angel. Cyvus proved too powerful for Wesley and he was overpowered and mortally wounded. Despite his wounds, Wesley manages to temporarily knock Vail out with an energy sphere, which allowed him to spend his final minutes with Illyria at his side, finally agreeing to let the demon take the form of Fred to allow Wesley to, in some way, say goodbye to the woman he loved. After Wesley passes away, Illyria avenges his death by shattering Vail's skull with one punch.
[edit] 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: with whom Wesley had a one-night stand
- Virginia Bryce The two met and slept together in "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.
- Winifred Burkle From the beginning of season three until the end of the series, Wesley was clearly in love with, or at least infatuated by, Winifred. It was not until near Fred's death that the two finally developed a romantic relationship.
- Lilah Morgan Lilah and Wesley's relationship initially began as simply physical but eventually grew into something more. Despite the fact that the two were effectively working against each other, they did in fact grow to care for each other. Wesley broke off the relationship after realizing that he could no longer bring himself to ride the line of good and evil.
- Illyria: Though not a romantic relationship, Wesley felt drawn to Illyria as she was all that remained of Fred.
[edit] Appearances
Wesley has appeared in:
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Nine episodes of season three.
- 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 season five episode "Destiny" (Due to Alexis Denisof's real life wedding with 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.
