Teen supernatural drama Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a formative force in the world of genre television. It made lead Sarah Michelle Gellar a star, helped shape over two decades worth of similar shows that followed in its wake, and became beloved by a legion of dedicated viewers who can still almost certainly recite the “Into every generation a Slayer is born” monologue that once opened the show by heart. But it’s been a particularly rough year to be a Buffy fan, as several of the series’ core original cast members, including Michelle Trachtenberg and Nicholas Brendon, have passed away within the space of the last 16 months. Now Anthony Head, who played Watcher Rupert Giles, has joined them, and his death at the age of 72 has left a generation of fans in mourning.
Initially a British stage actor who broke out after a series ofsurprisingly sexy coffee commercials, Head was a performer who did it all over the course of his long career, playing roles that ran the gamut in terms of tone and content. He was a ruthlessly gleeful alien villain on the Doctor Who episode that brought Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith back to the franchise. He played difficult dad King Uther Pendragon on beloved BBC fantasy series Merlin, and, most recently, Rebecca’s dirtbag ex-husband on Ted Lasso. He even had an iconic West End turn as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in a stage revival of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The man contained multitudes.
But for many of us, Head wasn’t just a performer; he felt like family. Thanks to his role as Giles on Buffy, he not only helped reimagine the role of the mentor figure in the genre television space, but he did it with rare warmth and style, taking a character who could have been little more than a caricature — a token grown-up set as an antagonist to the series’ teen heroes, there to lecture about duty and rules or, worse, to serve as the butt of age-related jokes — and infusing him with emotional depth, moral complexity, and lots and lots of unexpected heart.
In the Buffyverse, characters subvert many archetypes and the show revels in crafting complicated characters who refuse to fit neatly into the predefined boxes — the sidekick, the comic relief, the bad boy, the mean girl — that so often litter teen TV. Its traditional Chosen One hero is an unapologetically feminine former cheerleader who may look like the girl who always dies first in these sorts of stories, but is actually more than capable of kicking ass in her fashionable high-heeled boots. Her best friend is a shy, seemingly helpless nerd who becomes an ultra-powerful witch by learning to claim her own power (both figuratively and literally speaking). And her brooding vampire love interest isn’t the bad boy he initially seems to be, but rather an existentially troubled former mass murderer trying to get his shit together, penitentially speaking.
In the world of the show, Giles is a Watcher, a fancy name for Buffy’s assigned guardian, the person meant to educate and train her in all the ways of being a Slayer. A prim, tweed-wearing librarian, the character leans into all of Head’s inherent Britishness: A dry comment, a pointed eyeroll. Giles initially seems to be something of a relic, the onscreen stand-in for an inflexible, frequently archaic system that refuses to see the girls they train as anything more than a duty to be managed or a weapon to be forged. But that was never who Giles was, because Head’s emotionally complex performance always centered the character’s most human traits. A mentor who sees Buffy as a person, not merely as a Slayer, he comes to love her for all the things that make her herself, not the supernatural abilities that make her exceptional.
Yes, Giles is a capable mentor, a walking library of vampire fun facts and deep-cut supernatural lore who helps Buffy and her friends solve a myriad of dangerous problems. But unlike many classic authority figures in the genre space, he isn’t overly stoic, rigid, or removed. For all his magic and historical knowledge, Giles doesn’t always have all the answers, and must find his own way to navigate love, loss, and failure in much the same way Buffy and her friends do. (Just with less homework and/or extracurricular activities.)
Humanized by his ex-rebel with a dark magic past and vulnerable in a way that few men on TV during this time period were allowed to be, Giles frequently second-guesses himself, acts selfishly, and makes mistakes, sometimes all within the same episode. Yet he is also Buffy’s staunchest supporter and advocate, not only prepared to die for her (season 1’s “Prophecy Girl”), but kill for her if need be (season 5’s “The Gift”). And Head makes it all look effortless, deftly shifting between genuine sincerity, fierce protectiveness, and the biting humor that gave him many of the show’s most memorable one-liners.
Buffy’s actual dad, Hank Summers, only appears a handful of times on the show — and one of those episodes takes place in an alternate reality and therefore doesn’t really count — so it makes sense that Giles eventually becomes a sort of surrogate stand-in, both a father figure and a trusted confidante who pushes the Slayer to become her best self without asking her to sacrifice the spirit that makes her so special. It’s evident from very early on that Buffy is the most important person in Giles’ life, and their relationship ultimately forms the emotional heart of the show. Say what you want about the (still ongoing!) debate about who Buffy should have ended up with romantically — Team Angel, for the record, but it really doesn’t matter — her most important relationship was always the one she shared with her Watcher, and the warm, lived-in chemistry between Head and Gellar carried over into every interaction between the pair, whether it was Giles making a fool of himself for Buffy’s benefit or refusing to judge her for making the same kind of reckless teenage choices he once did.
In many ways, Anthony Head didn’t just play a father figure to Buffy Summers on TV; he filled a similar role in the hearts of many of the impressionable young nerds watching along at home during Buffy’s heyday. Don’t we all still wish we had a Giles in our own lives — fiercely protective, patient, endlessly loving and loyal, most especially if and when we probably don’t deserve it? We have the actor who brought him to life to thank for that, and the performance helped teach us how to stand against the forces of darkness in the first place.
