Adam is a fictional character in the fourth season of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, serving as that season's primary antagonists (or "Big Bad"). Introduced in the episode "The I in Team," Adam is a cybernetic demonoid created from human, demon, and technological components by Dr. Maggie Walsh (Lindsay Crouse), head of The Initiative—a military organization studying demon behavior. After gaining consciousness, Adam kills Walsh and escapes containment. He then sets in motion plans to stage a demon and human massacre; Adam hopes that, in the aftermath of the battle, he will be able use the carnage to create an army of undead demonoids like himself. The character is ultimately defeated by Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a Slayer with superhuman strength, and her friends in the season's penultimate episode "Primeval".

Adam was played by George Hertzberg, who series creator Joss Whedon tasked with finding the character's "stillness". In terms of thematic resonance and characterization, the character draws heavily from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the show uses the character to question the morality of scientific advancement, highlighting the tension between technology and humanity. As a monster that begins life by killing his creator, Adam also serves as a way for the show to question tradition and authority, specifically institutional authority. Critical reception to Adam has been largely mixed. Some commentators felt his subplot was confusing and unconvincing, whereas others enjoyed the concept and praised the make-up and special effects used to create the character.

Character arc

Television appearances Adam makes his first appearance on the thirteenth episode of season 4, "The I in Team". The first twelve episodes of the season establish the overarching themes, with increasing focus on the mysterious activities of the Initiative. Buffy and Willow begin attending college, an experience which overwhelms Buffy immediately as she finds herself far outside her comfort zone.Holder, et al., pp. 196–208Stafford, pp. 215–220 In the season premiere, Buffy and Willow begin attending a challenging psychology class taught by Dr. Maggie Walsh (Lindsay Crouse). She also meets Dr. Walsh's teaching assistant Riley Finn (Marc Blucas) and they become attracted to each other. Riley is in charge of a military commando organization that hunts vampires and demons, and captures them for research. It is not revealed to audiences that Dr. Walsh is the head of the research branch of Riley's military organization, called the Initiative, until the seventh episode.Holder, et al., pp. 196–212Stafford, pp. 215–231

The Initiative's goals are gradually made clearer. A recurring character since the second season is Spike (James Marsters), a mercenary vampire who has fought both against and with Buffy in the past, depending on what suits his interests. Recently wanting to kill Buffy, Spike is captured by the Initiative before he can get to her and implanted with a chip in his brain that causes intense pain if he tries to attack humans to feed on them, or even to fight them.Holder, et al., pp. 212–214Stafford, pp. 222–225 Buffy begins enthusiastically training with the Initiative, spending more time with Riley, and trying to impress Dr. Walsh. At different times, Willow, Xander, and Giles caution Buffy that she does not know the Initiative's true motives and there are questions about their mission that are unanswered. Buffy begins asking questions during "The I in Team". After being sent after a Polgara demon, a being with a skewer in its arm, she wants to know why the demon must be captured alive and unharmed as she is used to killing demons. Her questions at first confound Dr. Walsh—who answers to no one—then cement Dr. Walsh's decision to remove Buffy from the Initiative. After a botched attempt to kill Buffy, Dr. Walsh consoles herself by going into laboratory room 314, where she speaks to her pet project: Adam, who is laying on a table, apparently unconscious. Adam rises and impales Dr. Walsh with the skewer in his arm—the one taken off the Polgara demon. His first word is "Mommy", which he says as Dr. Walsh falls to the floor, dead.Holder, et al., pp. 227–230Stafford, pp. 231–232

Riley, meanwhile, learns of Dr. Walsh's death and his comrades Forrest (Leonard Roberts) and Graham (Bailey Chase) suspect Buffy to be her murderer. Extremely agitated and showing signs of drug withdrawal, he follows Buffy and demands to know the truth in "Goodbye Iowa". None of them are aware of Adam until he re-emerges in the underground laboratories of the Initiative, killing Dr. Walsh's assistant and another soldier. He tells Riley that he knows Dr. Walsh created them both, that she gave Riley chemicals to strengthen him, which makes them brothers. When Riley refuses to acknowledge their bond, Adam skewers Riley, and knocks Buffy across the room while Forrest and Graham are trying to enter the locked door. Adam leaves and the Initiative are tasked with hunting him down and killing him.Holder, et al., pp. 231–232Richardson and Rabb, p. 67 When one of Sunnydale's residents, Jonathan Levinson (Danny Strong), casts a spell making him the center of everyone's attention in "Superstar", Adam is the only character in town who realizes it is an illusion. He explains his insight by saying he is "aware". His uniqueness has set him apart.Stevenson, pp. 27–28 Adam is interested in how the illusion will play out, however, and watches it unfold. During the illusion, Jonathan—temporarily a part of the Inititative—discovers Adam's only weakness: a uranium power core source which, effectively, will never allow him to die.Holder, et al., pp. 237–238

Spike simultaneously discovers Adam to be communicating with the town's demon underworld, asking for favors through a charisma he has over them. Adam promises if Spike can drive apart Buffy and Riley and their friends, he will remove Spike's microchip.Holder, et al., pp. 239–244Stafford, pp. 239–242 The plan to drive Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles apart works for a while; at their lowest, the four refuse to speak to each other, but each of them realizes in "Primeval" that they were manipulated by Spike and return, apologetic. They realize that Adam has been orchestrating the capture of the town's vampires and demons so he can release them in the Initiative; the Initiative's holding cells are becoming overcrowded and the soldiers spread very thin and overworked. The soldiers and demons will then proceed to kill each other. Adam intends to use the resulting carnage to create an army of monsters much like himself.Holder, et al., pp. 246–247Stafford, pp. 242–244

Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles realize they must work as one unit to defeat Adam. They are captured sneaking into the Initiative, but Adam trips the power, releasing all the demons and a fight breaks out all over the facility. Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles get themselves into a room adjacent to 314 as Willow starts to cast the spell to join them all temporarily. Riley distracts Adam's demonoid minions while Buffy confronts Adam. However, Adam, after modulating his arm to dispense a minigun, is able to overpower her. Suddenly, the spell begins to work: to function as one unit, Willow becomes the spirit, Giles the mind, Xander the heart, and Buffy the hand, or strength, of their ensemble. They work through Buffy to neutralize Adam, telling him "You could never hope to grasp the source of our power". Adam, alone but intrigued, shoots at them to no avail. Adam then shoots a missile, which is changed into doves, and his gun is reverted into his arm. They are able, through Buffy, to punch inside Adam's chest, remove his uranium core, destroying him.Richardson and Rabb, pp. 73–74Stevenson, pp. 146–147

Adam's most significant influence following his death is in the next episode "Restless", where the cost of defeating Adam is made apparent. Buffy'''s fourth season was a first in the series in that the Scoobies' defeat of the Big Bad did not occur in a two-part grand season finale. "Primeval" is not the last episode of the season. Joss Whedon felt so strongly about the importance of the four core characters that he dedicated the finale to exploring their development. "Restless" opens with Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles arriving at Buffy's mother's house still brimming with the energy of the spell that bound them together in "Primeval". Each of them falls asleep quickly, however, and their dreams are a pastiche of enigmatic episodes that both reveal much about each character, but also foreshadow what will occur in seasons to come. Their dreams also mirror their roles in the spell they performed to kill Adam. The magic they used to defeat the influence of science creates an inverse crisis, violating the series' set of laws. Both Riley and Adam, now only in human form, appear in Buffy's dream. They are wearing business suits, sitting together at a glass conference table as Buffy walks into the room, telling her they are naming things—as Adam did in the Garden of Eden—and making plans to take over the world. Buffy asks Adam what his name was before he was a monster, but he cannot tell her. Adam appears once more in the series as one of the faces of the First Evil, the seventh season's Big Bad, in "Lessons".Ruditis, pp. 167–170

Graphic novel appearance According to the comic book series Haunted, Adam was once a human member of the Initiative tasked with protecting Professor Walsh. The ghost of Mayor Richard Wilkins, however, took over the body of a vampire, which was then captured by the Initiative. Desperate to escape, the Mayor moved to the body of a dead demon and killed Adam. Having been one of her favorite agents, Professor Walsh vowed to bring him back to life and placed his body in her 314 Project.Espenson, passim However, due to the complex nature of the Buffyverse, this chain of events may not, in fact, be canonical.

Development

Creation and casting