Adam (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Infobox Buffyverse Character


George Hertzberg as Adam
Title=Adam
First="The I in Team"
Last= "Lessons"
Creator=Joss Whedon
Name=Adam
Status=Deceased
Kind=Demonic cyborg
Affiliation=Former agent of the Initiative
Powers=Adam's abilities include:
* Grafted demon body parts and cybernetic enhancements grant him superhuman strength, stamina, and durability far superior to those of most vampires, demons, and Slayers.
* Uranium power core allows him to survive without eating, drinking, or sleeping, and renders him capable of healing from any wound, even decapitation.
* Heightened self-awareness makes him immune to mind control spells and reality alterations.
* Retractable Polgara Demon bone-skewer housed within left arm.
* Computerized knowledge of Initiative facilities and personnel, medical procedures, and persuasion techniques.
* Cybernetic grafts allow him to absorb power from electricity, mentally control behavior modifiers such as Riley Finn's, and link himself to computer networks and read data from hard data storage such as floppies.
* Self-upgraded with implanted collapsible minigun and grenade launcher housed within right arm.
Actor=George Hertzberg

Adam is a fictional character in the television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", played by George Hertzberg.

Character history

Originally a fallen agent of the Initiative, Adam is a creation of Professor Maggie Walsh. He is part human, part demon, and part robot, and was to be the perfect organism, with the adaptability and intelligence of humans, and the strength and emotional detachment of demons. Adam is created in Lab 314, and his first act is to kill Professor Walsh with a retractable skewer inside one of his arms.

As soon as he awakens, Adam begins philosophizing about his existence and leaves the lab. He kills and dissects a human boy as well as demons, in order to get an understanding of biology. He soon returns to the lab to download every file relating to his creation. Adam can link himself up to computers and possesses considerable intelligence.

Spike works for Adam for a short time, to extract the chip that the Initiative implanted in him to make him docile. He decides to help Adam stop Buffy by exploiting existing rifts within the Scooby Gang. Fortunately, Buffy figures out the plan when Spike lets too much information slip.

Adam does not need to eat, because he has a uranium-based power source in his chest. He is aware of every aspect of himself, and is immune to universe-changing spells, such as the one cast by Jonathan Levinson in the episode "Superstar". Adam is also armed with a three-foot-long bone skewer from a Polgara Demon and a thick hide. He later upgrades himself to incorporate a minigun and grenade launcher.

He considers himself a brother to Riley Finn, because Professor Walsh experimented on both of them to make them "perfect" life-forms. Adam intends to make Riley just like him, so the two can command an army of other biomechanical demonoids. In order to obtain the large supplies of bodies required, Adam appears before the demons of Sunnydale, and persuades them to join forces against the Initiative. Demons and vampires, known for rejecting each other, begin to fight together, while others allow themselves to be captured by Initiative agents. Adam's plan is to fill the Initiative facilities with demons and then unleash them on the soldiers by unlocking their cells from Professor Walsh's secret laboratory. Afterward, he and his minions will recover body parts from the slaughter and fashion a new race formed from man, demon, and machine (the implicit idea is that Adam will expand outward until he repopulates the planet). Adam wants Buffy trapped with the installation when this occurs, because she will be able to even the casualties before being killed.

To assist himself in the creation of his army, Adam creates a second biomechanical demonoid using the body of Forrest Gates, who Adam had recently slain. He also reanimates the corpses of his other victims, Professor Walsh and Dr. Francis Angleman, though they possess little brain activity and function as little more than drones.

Adam is defeated when Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles combine their essences in Buffy's body through a magical spell. The collective in Buffy invokes the strength of the First Slayer and uses magic to counter Adam's attacks. With the First Slayer's strength combined with her own, she manages to rip out Adam's power source and deactivate him, making him unique among the Big Bads of the series in which he was killed off in the penultimate episode as opposed to the season finale.

In the final episode of Season Four, "Restless", Buffy, in a dream, sees Adam in his human form, before Professor Walsh's experiments. When Buffy asks for his name, the dream Adam replies "Before Adam? Not a man among us can remember."

Adam's final appearance on the "Buffy" television series was as one of the guises that the First Evil used to torment Spike.

Graphic novel

The "Haunted" limited series states that Adam was originally an agent of the Initiative tasked with the protection of Professor Walsh. Adam was slain, or at least badly wounded, by the ghost of Mayor Richard Wilkins, when he possessed the corpse of a powerful demon and launched an escape from the Initiative to target Buffy. Being her favorite alongside Riley, Professor Walsh swore to bring Adam back to life.

Character

George Hertzberg outlined his character, "I think there is a boyish innocence to Adam, that coupled with his programming - which is basically to kill - makes him an evil demon being-man-machine-person. Is he evil or misunderstood? I don't think he's misunderstood. Can he be reprogrammed? I think it's possible, but if he was, I don't know how interesting that would be." [Stokes, Mike, "Young Frankenstein", from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer magazine" #19 (UK, April 2001), page 11.]

Having been created and programmed by a psychologist, Adam proved to be very charismatic and persuasive, convincing cadres of vampires to follow him and do his bidding. Examples include the vampire pack in Who Are You and even Spike was swayed in The Yoko Factor, comparing Adam to Tony Robbins. The ultimate example of this is Adam persuading demons and vampires, who hate one another, to put aside their feuds and infiltrate the Initiative.

Due to his plan of inciting a race war between demons and humanity, Adam has been compared to Charles Manson, even remarking that he liked the song "Helter Skelter", and on the DVD commentary for the episode Superstar, Buffy writer Jane Espenson remarked that Adam didn't see anyone else as being real, saying it was "creepy in the way that human villains are creepy, actual mass murderers".

Appearances

Adam has appeared in:;"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" : Adam appeared as a guest in 9 episodes in
*Season 4 (1999, 2000) - "The I in Team"; "Goodbye Iowa"; "Who Are You"; "Superstar"; "New Moon Rising"; "The Yoko Factor"; "Primeval"; "Restless"
*Season 7 (2002, 2003) - "Lessons" (as the First Evil)

Notes and references

ee also

* List of Buffyverse Villains and Supernatural Beings