Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins ( ) is a fictional character who appears in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She is introduced in "The Wish" as Anyanka, a vengeance demon who wreaks havoc by granting the wishes of women wronged by men. After losing her abilities, she becomes trapped in human form and begins a relationship with Xander, a friend of Buffy's. Anya is unfamiliar with social conventions, and her blunt, tactless speech is often used for comic relief.
Anya is portrayed by the American actress Emma Caulfield and was initially written to appear in one episode of Buffy third season. The character's role was expanded, and she became a part of the show's main cast in the fifth, sixth, and seventh seasons. Anya is considered a fan-favorite character, owing to her comedic aspects and Caulfield's performance. Journalists have also commented on her relationship with Xander and her death in the series finale. Academics have analyzed Anya's character and relationships, with studies focusing on identity, symbolism, gender, and sexuality.
Appearances Seasons 3 and 4
Anya is introduced in the third-season episode "The Wish", in which she poses as a student at Sunnydale High School. She is revealed to be the 1,120-year-old vengeance demon Anyanka, who grants the wishes of scorned women. She seeks to exact vengeance for the popular cheerleader Cordelia Chase, who is distraught after catching her boyfriend Xander kissing his friend Willow. Anya prompts Cordelia to say that she wishes that Buffy, who is the Slayer and Xander and Willow's friend, never came to Sunnydale. Anya grants her wish and creates an alternative reality where Buffy is absent and vampires have overtaken the town. After discerning what has happened, Rupert Giles, a Watcher, summons Anyanka and destroys the necklace that contains her powers, returning the world to normal, and leaving Anya a mortal and powerless teenage girl.
Anya returns in "Doppelgangland", seeking to regain her powers as a vengeance demon, but she fails. In "The Prom", she attends the prom with Xander and develops feelings for him, leading her to ask him out again in "Graduation Day". When he tells her of the Mayor's planned ascension, she informs the Scooby Gang that the event involves a transformation into a pure demon. She decides to flee town and confesses her feelings to Xander before leaving. Anya returns to Sunnydale early in the fourth season, still infatuated with Xander. She seduces him in an attempt to move on, but she fails; the two begin dating, and Anya joins the Scooby Gang. Her straightforward, tactless remarks put her at odds with the other Scoobies, especially Willow, who distrusts her. Still, she helps the group battle many demons.
Seasons 5–7
In the fifth season, while playing The Game of Life, she discovers her love for money and capitalism. Anya's budding retail skills encourage Giles to hire her as a cashier at his magic shop called The Magic Box. The Scooby Gang learn of the hellgod Glory; she seeks to return to her dimension by using the blood of Buffy's younger sister, Dawn, to open a portal, which would cause dimensions to bleed into one another. Anya provides demonic knowledge and suggestions that help the Scoobies battle Glory. She also struggles to understand her newfound mortality, expressing confusion and shock over the death of Buffy's mother, Joyce. During the impending apocalypse at the end of season 5, Xander proposes to Anya, and they are engaged for most of the sixth season. She is often frustrated with him, as he refuses to announce their engagement until Halloween. At their wedding, Xander leaves Anya at the altar, because he fears he will become abusive like his father. Grief-stricken, Anya becomes a vengeance demon again. Anya tries to exact vengeance on Xander. However, she cannot find anyone who wishes vengeance on Xander, so she takes comfort in sex with the vampire Spike, an act that puts her relationship with Xander in jeopardy. In the sixth-season finale, she assists the Scooby Gang in stopping Willow, who is grief-stricken by the murder of her girlfriend Tara, from destroying the world with witchcraft.
In the seventh season, Anya does not enjoy her return to being a vengeance demon—her experience as a human has led to empathy, which makes exacting vengeance too painful for her to manage. In flashbacks in the episode "Selfless", it is revealed that she was initially a human named Aud; her lover, Olaf, cheated on her, and she transformed him into a troll. Impressed, D'Hoffryn, the leader of vengeance demons, granted her wish-granting abilities and renamed her Anyanka. Over more than 1,000 years, she became obsessed with her work and defined herself through vengeance. In the present, after her demon friend Halfrek encourages her to return to her former level of work, Anya takes vengeance on a group of college boys by unleashing a spider-like demon that kills them. Buffy decides that she must kill Anya to prevent further harm, but their battle is interrupted by D'Hoffryn, who has been summoned by Willow. D'Hoffryn asks Anya what she wants, and she asks that her vengeance be reversed. D'Hoffryn tells her the price will be the life of a vengeance demon; Anya agrees, but D'Hoffryn kills Halfrek instead and strips her of her powers, making her mortal once again. Anya decides that she has been too dependent on others and resolves to find an independent purpose in life for herself. She eventually rejoins the Scooby Gang as season 7 focuses on the fight against the First Evil, an ancient primordial force, and reconciles with Xander. The two admit that they still love each other and have sex, but they never officially resume their relationship.
In the series finale, "Chosen", Anya fights with the others in the battle against the First Evil at Sunnydale High School and is killed by a Bringer, a servant of the First Evil. Her body lies in the school's remains, although Xander attempts to locate her while fleeing the collapsing building.
Comic books In the first issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Ten (2014–2016), Anya returns as a ghost and talks to Xander about their relationship, especially his guilt from abandoning her. It is revealed that she is a fake ghost created by D'Hoffryn to exact vengeance on Xander for "robbing" her from him. The fake version of Anya realizes that D'Hoffryn had manipulated and controlled her for much of her life, and she turns on him. Before departing, she assures Xander that he is a good man and that the original Anya would forgive him as well.
Development and casting
Anya was initially written to appear in one episode of the third season of the supernatural horror drama television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The American actress Emma Caulfield, who had a prior relationship with one of the show's casting directors, was chosen for the role after she met with the series' creator, Joss Whedon. When portraying Anya's demon form, she wore prosthetic makeup, including head, chest, and hair pieces. A month after her initial guest appearance, Caulfield was asked to return to the show. Following the completion of the third season, she was informally expected to appear in the fourth. After Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) left the show at the end of the third season, Anya was incorporated to replace her frankness; Caulfield was asked to appear in an "indefinite amount of episodes" in July 1999. The consulting producer David Greenwalt highlighted Anya and Spike as key characters in replacing Cordelia because of their lack of tact and larger-than-life qualities.
Caulfield was promoted to a series regular in the fifth season. Whedon said it was a "delicate" decision and a matter of whether the character aligned with the group dynamic. Whedon chose to promote Caulfield to allow Anya to assume Cordelia's "wiseacre" role. He stated that the decision made "perfect sense" due to the character's alienated, blunt nature and Caulfield's comedic timing, adding that one does not "usually get that much funny in a girl that pretty". Caulfield said that she was not promoted earlier due to being unable to "get into the head of ... Whedon".
Buffy sixth season focuses on themes of disillusionment, responsibilities and the realities of life. Whedon wanted to explore the "frightening" idea that "monsters is one thing, marriage is another", especially for a young man such as Xander, leading to the events of the episode "Hell's Bells" where he leaves Anya at the altar. In 2001, Caulfield said her acting focused on Anya's "human" aspects in "the very broadest sense of the word", since she did not want to portray her as a "cartoon character". She found the process difficult due to Buffy frequent tonal shifts. For the seventh season, the writers wanted to explore how Anya and Xander would continue with their lives and navigate being friends after their "intense" relationship, according to the co-executive producer David Fury. The team wrote the two as growing apart before bonding again to deepen their love, despite the two no longer being in a relationship. Whedon also wanted to kill a character off in a sudden, brutal manner in the final season. Caulfield expressed disinterest in returning to the show, which Whedon attributed to a poor relationship with 20th Century Fox Television in which she found herself "ill-used" and wanting to "move on". Thus, he chose to kill Anya off. Her death scene was the last scene that Caulfield shot.
Analysis Characterization Anya often provides comic relief in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Due to her time as a vengeance demon, she lacks social skills; she is naive, literal-minded, tactless, and, at times, unintentionally offensive. Like Xander, she takes a straightforward, unapologetic approach to sexuality, frequently and openly discussing her sexual desires. Her blunt remarks are often used for humor, with her being "the butt of jokes", according to author Lorna Jowett. Articles in /Film and Den of Geek interpreted Anya as an autistic and neurodivergent-coded character, respectively. Producer David Solomon described her character as "flighty", while Caulfield dubbed her "a renegade with her own philosophy". According to Valerie Estelle Frankel, Anya replaces Cordelia as the Scooby Gang's "acerbic truth-teller". Jana Riess, author of What Would Buffy Do?, described Anya as a mouthpiece for the negative feelings that other characters refuse to discuss. Additionally, Anya is afraid of bunnies, which becomes a running gag.
Anya's character arc explores how she learns to be human and eventually develops a love for humankind. In his book Televised Morality, the New Testament professor Gregory Stevenson wrote that her development shows how moral judgments are influenced by the extent to which one values human life: In the third season, she flees town, unlike Xander, who says he will stay for his friends. However, in the fifth season, she helps fight Glory because of her love for Xander, and in the seventh season, she battles the First Evil due to a professed appreciation for humanity. According to the sociologist Ananya Mukherjea, Anya's arc is Gothic, since her identity formation involves considerable pain and death, in contrast to her desire for love and security. As examples, she cited Anya's fear of death after becoming mortal; the ridicule she experiences for her speech and interests; and her dying shortly after developing an understanding of her identity.
Symbolism and identity