Caleb (Buffyverse)
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Caleb (played by Nathan Fillion) is a fictional character in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe created by Joss Whedon. (Fillion is one of three actors who had appeared on Whedon's Firefly series who later played a villain on one of Whedon's other shows.)
Caleb is an arrogant, misogynistic defrocked priest who is allied with The First Evil and serves as one of the "big bads" of Season 7. Prior to becoming a servant of the First Evil, Caleb was a serial killer responsible for the deaths of at least two girls, whom he lured sometimes with his sermons and his priest's collar. Among his victims was a showgirl in Nashville and a girl named Betty.
He tries to help The First Evil destroy the Slayer lineage by killing the Potentials one by one. He is given extraordinary strength by the First when they "merge". According to the First, Caleb is the only human strong enough to be its vessel.
Caleb likes to reenact his killings by asking the First to take on the form of the girls he killed, so that he may "kill them again."
Caleb was the one who organized the attack of the Bringers on the Potential Slayers around the world and the man responsible for setting up the bomb that destroyed the Watcher's Council Headquarters in London and caused the deaths of Quentin Travers and all Watchers and Council Operatives present. He also may have been the one that hired a convict to kill Faith prior to her escape from prison, as both Caleb and Faith arrive through the same road. In fact, Caleb knew Faith and Willow were behind him, as he left a severely injured Shannon on the road as an annoucement of his arrival.
In "Dirty Girls", Caleb murders potential slayers Dianne, whose neck is snapped, and Molly, who Caleb stabs in the stomach, before violently blinding Xander in one eye by forcing his thumb into Xander's left eye-socket, during an aborted initial attack on Caleb's vineyard.
Despite a dramatic arrival in Sunnydale when he bested Buffy and her army of potential slayers on several occasions, he is eventually killed at Buffy's hands by being sliced in two with a scythe from the crotch up.
Caleb provided Buffy and her allies with a villain who was both a physical threat (in contrast to the non-corporeal First Evil) and a recognizable individual (as opposed to the nameless Bringers and Turok-Han, who were formidable but also more or less interchangeable). Especially striking in this role as a strictly utilitarian character is Caleb's relative lack of humor and wit compared to other villains from the series. However, Caleb's mixture of superior physical strength and pure sadism makes him one of the most disturbing and deranged threats the Slayer has come across. His particularly gruesome attack on Xander was widely criticized by fans as a cheap way of lending credibility to a last-minute villain.
A few Catholic groups have claimed that Caleb comes across as an attack on their faith. However, it is made fairly clear early on that Caleb is no longer a priest, having been stripped of his duties sometime before this (presumably as a punishment). He could be a reworking of similar (but non-supernatural) characters played by Robert Mitchum in the films The Night of the Hunter and Five Card Stud, although Caleb's mockery of religious faith could be seen as an example of season seven's "back to the beginning" theme, since the Master, Buffy's first major villain, also openly perverted religion. He is also arguably the most powerful villain in the Buffyverse, competing with Glory who killed over 20 swordsmen in less then a minute while holding on to Dawn and Jasmine who almost effortlessly bench pressed a car.
See also
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