Angelhas long lived in the shadows ofBuffy the Vampire Slayer, but that tends to be inevitable for most TV spin-offs. After Season 3 ofBuffyaired, the titular character, Angel,left the show and moved to Los Angeles to assist people with various supernatural problems while battling demonic forces.Angelended up being a little darker and moodier thanBuffy, and while that show was largely a coming-of-age story,Angelfelt like a show about surviving the grind of adulthood.
It ran for five seasons, often coming close to (and occasionally matching) the quality level of its more well-known parent show. LikeBuffy,Angelbenefited from having great characters, with 10 main cast members featured throughout its 110-episode run. The show’s characters were rarely all good or all evil and instead were used to explore complex questions surrounding morality. They were all interesting but weren’t all equally lovable by any means and are ranked below from least to most likable.
Without a doubt, theleast-liked character fromAngelis Connor (Vincent Kartheiser), who was introduced in Season 3 as the title character’s son. Though born during the third season, he’s whisked off to an alternate dimension where time’s experienced differently and returns towards the season’s end as a teenager. He sticks around for the whole of Season 4 and has a couple of brief appearances in the final season.
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While the comparable character of Dawn fromBuffycan be cut some slack on account of being a teenager, it’s hard to find anything forgivable with Connor. He’s particularly bratty and becomes the focus of Season 4, the show’s least-loved season. His reduced role in Season 5 redeems him a little, but he remains a largely unenjoyable presence on the show for much of his screen time.
9Harmony Kendall
Appearing in the first five seasons ofBuffyas a recurring character, Harmony (Mercedes McNab) became a member ofAngel’smain cast for the last stretch of its final season. InBuffy, she starts as a popular high school girl before being turned into a vampire, and then once she makes the jump toAngel, she spends most of her episodes as Angel’s personal secretary while he runs the Wolfram & Hart law firm.
Despite being low among the likeability ranking, Harmony’s still far from hateable. She shows some signs of maturation beyond her high school days and gives up on her attempts to be evil the way other vampires are, but does remain untrustworthy and dangerously unpredictable as late asAngel’sfinale.
8Charles Gunn
Angeltook a while to find itself as a show (much like how the show’s title character spent the better part of five seasons trying to find himself). That’s seen early on, thanks to how the first season begins with a small main cast, writes one cast member out surprisingly fast, and then gradually builds up a core team of main characters throughout the first and second seasons.
Gunn is one of these additions to the main cast, entering the picture towards the end of Season 1 and sticking around until the very end. It’s not so much the character or performance fromJ. August Richardsthat feels somewhat underwhelming; more so that the writers didn’t always seem to know what to do with Gunn, which affects how invested viewers can get. He’s a totally fine character, but he doesn’t really stand out in the crowd, likely making viewers feel neutral toward him more than anything else.
Spike (James Masters) was one ofBuffy’smost significant and memorable characters, and though he died at that show’s conclusion, he was brought back to life inAngel. He got to spend the entire final season as a main cast member inAngel, giving him and the show’s title character a buddy comedy dynamic of sorts that was often very entertaining.
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He’s generally a little kinder onAngelthan he could be onBuffy, but his limited amount of time on the show — and how he seems like he’s there mostly for comedic relief — impacts his ranking here a little. He’s charismatic and fun for what his role allows him to do, but he doesn’t have quite as much to do as the show’s best characters.
Angel (David Boreanaz) was a huge part of the earlyBuffyseasons,as was the reveal (at the time)that he was a vampire. There was clearly potential with letting him have his own show, however, and no longer be tied directly to the world ofBuffy, and the five seasons ofAngel(for the most part) made it clear that giving Angel a spin-off was the right call.
Despite being largely invulnerable, Angel was a surprisingly human, flawed, sometimes sympathetic, and compelling anti-hero/protagonist. Like the title character ofBuffy, his status as a main character meant he couldn’t always be quite as lovable as his funnier or more charismatic co-stars, but even with his flaws, it’s hard to call him anything close to unlikeable.
5Allen Francis Doyle
Doyle’s (Glenn Quinn) time onAngelwas brief but memorable. He appears as one of the three main characters during the first half of season 1 but is killed off surprisingly early, dying a hero by sacrificing his life for others.
There’s every chance that had he stuck around longer, he might have become a more fleshed-out and/or complex character, but his brief time in the spotlight ensures he’s hard to fault. The brevity of his screen time is double-sided, considering he didn’t have more time to become more endearing possibly, but for the time he was there and the purpose he served, he was very likable.
4Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
During Buffy’s third season, Wesley (Alexis Denisof) was introduced as a bumbling, foolish authority figure and as someone who held a similar position to Rupert Giles but lacked intelligence and professionalism. When he first stumbles intoAngelhalfway during Season 1, he’s not as much of an antagonist by any means, but he’s still a bit of an idiot.
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That changes a great deal asAngelgoes on, as he becomes one of the show’s most complex characters and someone with a strong moral code that finds him sometimes clashing with other characters. He grows a spine in the best way possible, and while viewers might not always support his actions, he’s an overall strong, compelling, and largely likable character.
3Cordelia Chase
Like Wesley, Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) goes through a great deal of character growth after making the jump fromBuffytoAngel. In the former show, she was a fairly bratty and sometimes cruel popular girl in high school, though started to mature by about Season 3 ofBuffy. After leaving that show before its fourth season, she continued to become less selfish and more heroic inAngel.
In many ways, she’s the most consistent “heart” of the show throughout, appearing in all five seasons (though not as a main cast member in Season 5). Some fans might have felt a little differently about the character’s arc during the controversial Season 4, but at least she was redeemed and given a strong send-off beforeAngel’sfinale.
2Winifred Burkle
Winifred (Amy Acker) (“Fred” to her friends) first appeared onAngeltowards the end of the show’s second season. She was rescued from another dimension called Pylea after spending five years there, seemingly after reading a spell from an old book. Once Angel’s team saves her and gets her back home, she joins their demon-fighting business.
Fred’s a very lovable character and one of the show’s only characters who never did anything morally gray or questionable. That being said, she does undergo a transformation towards the show’s end that makes her seem very different, but at that point, she’s essentially another character altogether, arguably leaving the real Fred’s record basically spotless.
Lorne (Andy Hallett) isAngel’smost bizarre (and best) main character. He stands out right away for his appearance, having green skin and almost always wearing snazzy outfits. He’s a demon from the world of Pylea, and just as Fred was accidentally sucked out of her dimension and into Pylea, Lorne was ripped out of Pylea and left stranded on Earth.
Lorne also loves to sing, runs a karaoke bar, and can read people’s auras/parts of their futures when they sing. As the show goes on, he slowly becomes more involved with Angel’s team, starting as a recurring character in Season 2 and receiving a spot in the main cast by Season 4. He serves as a mediator, a voice of reason, and, eventually, a hero. He makes any scene he’s in more enjoyable and is the show’s most likable main character.
