The Mayor
Mayor Richard Wilkins appeared after Season Three.
- NAME
- Mayor Richard Wilkins III
- MONSTER CATEGORY
- Demon
- KEY RELATIONSHIPS
- Became a kind of father figure for the rogue Slayer Faith.
- UNIQUE ATTRIBUTES
- Quirky and germophobic, the Mayor had an antiquated sense of propriety, despite his demon worship and evil aspirations. As a pure demon he was an enormous snakelike creature.
- MOST MONSTROUS MOMENT
- As a wandering spirit, the Mayor occupied a monstrous creation of the Initiative laboratories to kill Buffy. In his wake, he horrifically murdered several soldiers.
- FIRST APPEARANCE (HUMAN IN COMICS)
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Slayers TPB: "The Glittering World" (Nov, 2001)
- OTHER APPEARANCES (COMICS)
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Haunted #1-4, Buffy the Vampire Slayer #50: "Hellmouth to Mouth" (flashback), Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds (cameo), Buffy the Vampire Slayer #63: "A Stake to the Heart" (Set during 'Year One').
- CURRENT STATUS
- Deceased.
History
Wilkins arrived in California in the 1899 where he found Sunnydale after the last slayer died there, which lay over the Hellmouth for demons to feed on on the promise of an Ascension. He became mayor of Sunnydale to keep an eye on everything, making sure nothing would interfere with his demon transformation plans, but remained out of the spotlight so as not to attract attention of any would-be interlopers.
After Mayor Wilkins achieved Ascension into a gigantic, snake-like pure-demon during Sunnydale High’s graduation ceremony in 1999. Buffy lured him into the empty library, now filled with bags of dynamite. Rupert Giles then pressed the trigger that obliterated the Mayor and the school building.
The essence of the Mayor survived and possessed the bodies of dead animals and demons as well as vampires to get revenge on Buffy. In the process, he was responsible for the creation of Adam, when he possessed the corpse of a powerful demon (his earlier vampire body having been captured by the Initiative) and badly injured the then-human Adam. He also put Buffy’s watcher Giles in the hospital, killed several of Buffy’s former school mates and nearly killed Willow, In his final battle with Buffy in Faith’s apartment, Buffy finally learned of his ghostly nature after decapitating his current body to no effect. Willow, with the assistance of Xander and Buffy, sent Wilkins to the next realm. There was no evidence that they ever discovered it was the Mayor who had been attacking Buffy, although Faith later told Angel in prison that she recalled the Mayor’s ghost visiting her using the body of a dead bird while she was in her coma.
Powers + Weaknesses
As a ghost, the Mayor had the ability to posess any deceased or nonliving body, including demon or vampire.
In snakeform, he was vulnerable to physical harm. As a ghost, Wilkins was only vulnerable to magical attack.