Buffy’s Greatest Love Once Played Her Greatest Enemy
Across Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s seven seasons, our title character had many powerful enemies, but perhaps none were greater than The Master, the Big Bad of season 1 who managed to do what countless other villains couldn’t: kill the Slayer. She was brought back to life and killed the villain, though he popped up several more times in flashbacks, dream sequences, and alternate universes (as you do). When original actor Mark Metcalf wasn’t available, though, David Boreanaz (who primarily played Angel, the vampire with a soul and true love of Buffy’s life) once surprisingly ended up playing the part of the Master.
The Master
Before we can get to the David Boreanaz of it all, it’s important to recap who The Master is and what makes him so important to Buffy canon. He is introduced in season 1 as a centuries-old vampire and leader of a powerful cult who might just terrorize the entire world if he could escape the mystical energy field that imprisons him.
Buffy confronts him and he kills her (which both fulfills a prophecy about her demise and frees the villain from his imprisonment), but after she is brought back to life through good, old-fashioned CPR, she manages to kill the Master once and for all.
Bringing Back The Master
Because each Buffy season has one real Big Bad, you might think the death of this vampiric villain would mean we’d never see him again. However, the character popped up again in the first episode of season 2, “When She Was Bad.”
This episode has Buffy lashing out and her friends and generally acting like a jerk, and we eventually find out why: she’s dealing with the trauma of her death and resurrection, trauma which gets ripped right open with the revelation that some of The Master’s cult are trying to give this nasty vampire his own resurrection.
When She Was Bad
At one point in “When She Was Bad,” Buffy has a dream of being killed by this Big Bad once again. There was just one problem: actor Mark Metcalf wasn’t available for this particular episode. In a truly wild choice, showrunner Joss Whedon had David Boreanaz (himself no stranger to weird vampire makeup) play The Master for this sequence.
Under The Makeup, Anyone Could Look Like The Master
This fact usually blows fans’ minds, but if you’re not a Buffy superfan, you may wonder how the guy who plays Buffy’s greatest love could convincingly play her worst enemy. The simple answer is that The Master was always portrayed as having a permanent “vamp face,” and he was designed to look like Count Orlok from the vintage vampire classic film Nosferatu.
David Boreanaz is a handsome dude, but under makeup and prostheses that transformed him into a bald, wrinkly, red-eyed monster, he is completely unrecognizable to even his biggest fans.
The Master’s Legacy
Outside of an old video game, this was the only time that Mark Metcalf didn’t play the role of this iconic villain. Incidentally, David Boreanaz’s character appeared alongside The Master in one memorable episode of Angel, “Darla,” via a flashback from long before his death.
Speaking of his passing, it’s always reassuring to remember that The Master died just like he lived: looking like he had spilled a bunch of Kool-Aid on his face right before the scene began.
