The Master (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
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The Master is a fictional character in the U.S. television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played by Mark Metcalf.
The Master first appeared in Welcome to the Hellmouth, the first episode of Buffy, as Buffy's first Big Bad. The Master has had a gang, the Order of Aurelius, for hundreds of years, which has included the likes of Angelus, Drusilla, Spike, and Darla, along with many others. He is magically trapped inside the Hellmouth and seeks to escape, to claim dominion over the world.
The Master is unlike other vampires, and is similar looking to Nosferatu, due to his old age. When The Master was staked by Buffy in season one's Prophecy Girl, he left bones, unlike most vampires. The Master was supposed to be revived by his right-hand kid, the Anointed One, but his plans were stopped by Buffy, and the Anointed One was killed by Spike.
Unlike ordinary vampires, The Master could exercise hypnotic control over Buffy. The only other vampires that later proved able to do so were another vampire king — Dracula himself — and Drusilla, who hypnotized and killed the Slayer known as Kendra.
The Master was also somehow associated with a three-headed demon. During his escape from the Hellmouth, this demon fought Giles, Willow, Cordelia, Jenny, and Xander inside the library, while Buffy fought The Master on the rooftop of Sunnydale High School, above the library. During the fight with the three-headed demon, a library table was turned over and a leg broken, so that it resembled a long, pointed stake. Buffy threw The Master through a skylight in the roof, and he was impaled upon the broken table leg. All the flesh on his bones streamed off, leaving only his skeleton behind. The Anointed One later tried to use these bones in his ritual to return The Master to life, but Buffy interrupted the ritual and crushed the skeleton with a sledge hammer.
The Master is known to have been very old. He sired Darla, who was the sire of Angel.
The Master's original human name is Heinrich Joseph Nest, though this was never mentioned in the series itself.
Despite his death, The Master would appear several more times on both Buffy and its spin-off, Angel, usually in flashbacks involving specific vampires.
In the first Buffy the Vampire Slayer video game, the Master returns as a spirit and temporarily possesses Angel with the help of a trio of demons known as the Dreamers.