Residing in a shared creative landscape referred to by fans as the Buffyverse, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel spawned dozens of richly drawn, deeply moving, totally hilarious characters from the 1997 Buffy premiere to the 2004 Angel finale. To celebrate these characters — even the ones I'd just as soon never see again — I've ranked them from worst to best.

Criteria: To be included on this list, a character has to have a name, appear on Buffy and/or Angel for at least three episodes, and meaningfully participate either in the episodes' plot or in a larger, season-long storyline. (Sorry random teacher or Wolfram & Hart flunky!) When it made sense, I grouped some characters, and there are also a handful of special exceptions for standout characters in just one or two episodes who have significant arcs of their own. Also, for the persnickety, since an actor's performance plays a definite role in the success or failure of a character in these rankings, I did not factor in the post-finale comic books.

A bias: I'm more of a Buffy person than an Angel person, but my editor in this endeavor is die-hard Angel fan Shani Hilton, and she successfully argued the case for several Angel characters. (Also: I really do like Angel very much!)