How do the Angel big bads stack up against the Buffy ones?

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Robb Stark

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I was thinking about this. For the most part, Buffy has amazing big bads. Angel is structured a bit differently, with fewer clear-cut season villains, but I think they're still pretty strong. Here's what I came up with:
Wolfram & Hart
Holtz
Darla
The Beast
(I'm midway through watching S4 of Angel so I don't really remember Jasmine that well).

To you, which show had better big bads? Which is your favorite from each series?
 
With the exception of W&H I don't think the Angel big bads were that great.

Holtz wasn't really a bad guy. He was twisted by a desire for revenge against the creature that killed his family and forced him to kill his own child. Perhaps he had anger management issues but I never felt he was totally out of line.

Darla just wasn't all that bad. I always felt that there would be some kind of redemption for her because Angel wanted to save her, so I think I never felt she was a great threat.

The Beast and his contrived 'here's an offering of a dagger made of my bones' Seriously it's like having a sex tape released on the internet. If you don't want it used against you don't make it in the first place. No matter how much you love them 🙂

And as for Jasmine, if you combine how she arrived and the silly blood weakness, she might be the worst bad guy in the history of television.

Oddly although I didn't like the big bads I really enjoyed the show. The incidental bad guys and the issues the Fang Gang faced were interesting throughout although season 4 was the weakest.

Contrast that to Buffy

The Master. Only after dying will the Slayer have the power necessary to be rid of him. And even then he left her with a major attitude problem.

Angelus, Spike and Dru. Amazing big bads, that felt truly evil and you really wanted Buffy to kill Angelus the evil scumbag and save Angel all at the same time. The question was how?

Mayor Wilkins A psychotic OCD affected loving father that wanted to turn into a giant snake and eat everyone. Not to mention he was the metaphor for finally overcoming high school. What's more evil than that!?!

Okay season 4's big bad was poor to say the least.

Glorificus. A God who wants to meld dimensions together because she wants to get home dammit. Not a great motivation for an evil über-being but the way she went about it with sadistic cruelty and a smile on her face was brilliant.

Dark Willow. Attention Mr Holtz. If you want to get revenge on the world for scrwing you up, this is how you do it.

The First. Not a great big bad on the face of it but put the Scoobies through Hell. Almost lierally.

So personally taking all of the big bads into account, W&H is the only one that matches up against any of the big bads from BtVS.
 
I think Angel's big bads win it simply because of Wolfram & Hart. With Buffy's big bads you knew that by the end of the season Buffy would have won, even with Glory. But with Wolfram & Hart there was always that feeling of fighting a battle that can never be won. Which is why Angel ended the way it ended.

If Wolfram & Hart wanted to, they could have killed Angel and everyone else by the end of the first season. Hell, if they wanted to, they could have killed Angel, then sent people or demons to Sunnydale and killed Buffy and friends too.

I see them as pretty much The First that can actually do evil deeds physically.

Leaving them out though, Buffy's big bads win it. From the Master to Angelus to Glory, and The First.
 
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Hale Caesar
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Buffy's Big Bads trump Angel's, no contest.

Except for Wolfram and Hart. Which is singularly awesome.
 
I thought most of the Angel villains were pretty lame compared to Buffy's villains. I loved that they brought Darla back as a foil for Angel, but Wolfram and Hart and Holtz and especially Jasmine were all so lame to me...
 
The best villains are the ones that create a real sense of uncertainty about whether our hero can actually beat them. For me, the only two villains that ever did that, covering the entirety of both shows, were Angelus in Buffy S2 and Wolfram & Hart. So, for me, the constant threat of W&H in Ats wins hands down. Not even when Buffy was up against the First Evil (who in a lot of ways was Buffy's W&H- it had that constant omnipresence about it) did I ever feel like she wasn't going to resoundingly defeat it.
 
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Hale Caesar
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R
Robb Stark
Interesting point. W&H is one of the strongest.
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The Scourge
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I agree that W&H was the one the felt pretty much unbeatable.
You truly got the feeling that they had always been and would always be.

So in that way W&H was the biggest big bad of them all.

What I do think though is that Angel's big bads lacked humor.
Buffy had funny villains. The Mayor, the Master, Glory and so on. They all all had a funny streak, with great lines.

I guess that's not by accident though. Those kind of villains didn't really suit the show Angel.

But I really do prefer Buffy's big bads. Just as I prefer Buffy over Angel in general.

/SK
 
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dexeded
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Hale Caesar
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With the possible exception of Angelus, I thought that Wolfram & Hart were better than all of the Buffy big bads. Even between them though, it's difficult to compare because they're so different. I wish that when Angelus returned in S4 that there had been more interaction between him and W&H.
 
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