Buffy Character: Adam | George Hertzberg

Adam was a character and the main antagonist of the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Adam was portrayed by actor George Hertzberg. This character off characters like The Terminator and The Monster from Mary Shelly’s very popular novel called Frankenstein. Adam was the second and last Big Bad that was physically killed by Buffy.

Adam is half human and half an artificial creature. Yet like Frankenstein, Adam is seen as a monster by the rest of humanity, yet he doesn’t see himself this way. Adam visually looks very similar to Frankenstein and like The Terminator, he was created by a military organization.

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Biography

Adam’s Creation

As part of the 314 project in the Initiative, Adam was created by Professor Walsh and Dr. Francis Angleman. The Initiative was a top secret United States Government agency who was tasked with the mission to capture and research demons for military purposes.

The chaos-worshiping warlock known as Ethan Rayne, claimed that Adam’s creation was a very powerful thing. It was so powerful that other demons feared his coming.

Adam was created to be the most perfect organism, as he was made from part demon, part human and part robot. He was to be superior, as he was made with the most advanced technology, yet he was still able to adapt and was extremely intelligent due to his human side.

Alongside that, his demon side gave him incredible strength and he could be emotionally detached from other demons and demonkind.

In room 314, Adam was created, and his first act was to kill Professor Walsh. The professor tries to kill Buffy and he activates Adam in hope that he will do the job for him and kill the slayer for good.

Adam manages to kill the Professor with the retractable skewer that was inside one of his arms. The skewer that was used was three foot long and was taken from the Polgara demon.

After His Creation

As soon as Adam woke up, he kept thinking and wondering about his life before leaving the lab. To get a better understanding of biology, Adam killed and dissected many demons, as well as a human boy.

Adam then returned to the laboratory and downloaded every file possible about his creation, so he could understand what he was. Adam just wanted to learn more about himself and the world and how everything works.

Adam was naturally a very intelligent creature, therefore he was able to link himself up to computers and he could set traps for his targets easily. Later on, Adam would upgrade himself so that he had a grenade launcher and a minigun as a part of him.

Adam relied on his uranium based power source that was found in his chest instead of eating. We discover that Adam was actually immune to Jonathan Levinson’s augmentation spell. Adam dismissed the idea of an alternate reality, yet he was still intrigued and curious to see the chaotic result of the augmentation spell.

During this spell, Jonathan becomes a military consultant and he quickly comes to realise that the murder’s Adam commited weren’t really meant to murderers but a form of dissection to learn more about the world.

Jonathan also manages to get a look at Professor Walsh’s blueprints for Adam and learns what Adam’s weaknesses are. He only has one weakness and that is his uranium heart, that could keep him powered up for the rest of eternity.

Destroying The Scooby Gang

For a short time, Spike was working for Adam. They worked together to try and remove the behavioral chip that the Initiative implanted in vampires to make them docile.

Adam knew that Buffy could ruin all his plans, so he asked Spike for advice. Spike agreed to help Adam to stop Buffy by making the most of the rifts within the Scooby Gang.

He managed to break the group up by exploiting everyone’s doubts in each other. However, Buffy and the rest of the gang realized what Spike was doing, after Spike let too much information slip.

Adam wasn’t always completely alone, he saw Riley Finn as a brother. This was because Professor Walsh had experimented on both of them together. Professor Walsh was trying to make the perfect life forms.

Ideally, Adam wanted to take Riley with him, when he left the lab. However, Riley is offended that Adam saw him as a brother and lashes out at Adam. This then causes a fight to break out, where Adam easily defends himself from Buffy’s attacks and ends up killing Dr. Angleman, the other person who was part of his creation.

Leader Of Demons And Vampires

After his fight with Buffy and the Initiative, Adam goes underground. He comes across a group of vampires who are also hiding from the Initiative.

At first the vampires don’t trust Adam and try to kill him, but Adam explains to them their strengths and weaknesses. Eventually, the vampire’s claim that Adam is their new leader.

Adam made himself known to all the vampires and demons that lived in Sunnydale. He persuaded them all to join forces in a fight against the Initiative. Now demons and vampires, who were known for hating one another and fighting each other, were fighting together.

To show their loyalty, demons allowed themselves to become imprisoned by the Initiative. This was all a part of Adam’s master plan. His plan was to fill the Initiative facilities with these loyal demons. Then Adam will unlock the cells from Professor Walsh’s secret laboratory.

After that, he and his team would collect any remaining body parts from the battle. He would use these body parts to create a new race that were like him, part human, part demon and part machine.

To help him to create his new race, Adam created another biomechanical demonoid, by using the body parts of Forrest Gates. He also brought back Professor Walsh and Dr. Angleman, who had very little brain activity and served him as slaves.

Adam then prepared to transform Riley into a demonoid, when Adam noticed that Buffy and her friends were attempting to break into the Initiative facilities.

This then resulted in Adam refusing to remove Spike’s chip, because Buffy didn’t come alone. Then Adam learned that Spike had told the Scooby Gang with information about the 314 project. Hence, Adam orders Gates to kill him. However, Spike escaped but that didn’t stop Adam releasing all the demons on them.

Death

Adam and Buffy fought in the room where they had originally met one another. At first, Adam was a much stronger and better fighter than Buffy. He was physically stronger than her and had the advantage of using his grenade launcher and the gun he had installed in his arm.

However this advantage didn’t last long. The Scooby Gang performed a enjoying ritual, this was a special kind of magic that transferred the Scooby Gang’s powers and abilities to Buffy. This made Buffy extremely powerful, against anyone. This then resulted in Buffy using telekinesis to shield herself from Adam’s bullets. She then used a transmutation spell on the missile, which then turned it into a flock of doves.

Finally, Buffy forced the machine gun back into Adam’s arm, which paralyzed him. Buffy then punched through Adam’s chest and at the same time she removed the uranium core. This core is what powered Adam, so by removing this core it caused Adam to be deactivated.

While Adam was being deactivated, Riley stabbed himself in the chest to remove his behavior modifying chip. He fights with Gates, who is eventually killed and meets back up with the Scooby Gang and Buffy. Together, this team kills the rest of the demons who were loyal followers of Adam and rescue any surviving scientists.

After Death

The Initiative fails to contain the demons and after Adam’s takeover the government claims that the Initiative is a failed experiment and all documents relating to them are destroyed.

Anyone who survived Adam’s attack is relocated and sworn to secrecy to never talk about what happened again. The facility is shut down and all entrances are filled and blocked in with concrete. All of the demon bodies were left in the facility, so it is assumed that Adam’s body has been left in room 314, where he died by Buffy’s hands.

After that we see Adam when he was fully human. This takes place in Buffy’s dream, where Adam appears to Buffy in his human form. When Buffy asks for his name, he can’t remember. He doesn’t remember who he was before he was Adam.

Three years later, when the First Evil returned to Sunnydale, they used Adam’s form to taunt Spike for having his soul returned to him.

Personality/Traits

Adam was very aware of every aspect of himself. He was aware that he was unique and there wasn’t anyone else like him that he could find and talk to. As a result, he was constantly seeking answers, he wanted to learn more and understand how the world functions.

He was an incredibly intelligent being who was really curious about everything. However, this curiosity led him to killing several humans and demons to dissect them to understand how they function.

His operations helped him learn a lot about biology but not a lot about how the world works. However, his operation did lead him to learn that the universe was chaotic.

Adam becomes intrigued by the idea of destruction and chaos. He gained pleasure from dissecting bodies and he enjoyed doing it, because it meant he could learn more. Even when Jonathan Levinson cast his augmentation spell, Adam didn’t stop it. Instead he was interested to see the end result of this spell and the potential chaos it could cause.

Once Adam learns more about his creation, Adam comes to the conclusion that he had been created to kill. Therefore, he felt that this was now his life purpose to kill, and he wanted to live up to that.

As a result, he began his plan of creating a new race of biomechanical demonoids, who would be part human, demon and robot. Therefore, he would need a lot of bodies to create his new army and race, which would result in a lot of deaths and killing.

Adam had a very strong charisma and was able to get other beings, such as the vampires and demons on his side to work together. He knew how to speak to anyone to make them listen and get them on his side, making him very persuasive.

He was so persuasive that he convinced the vampires to stop fearing death, the sun or religious artifacts. Spike wasn’t sure if he could trust Adam, but Adam showed or had a great amount of empathy of what he was going through with the behavior modifying chip.

Overall, Adam could be a trustworthy creature, but he could also be frightening and dangerous. He was a being that wanted to learn as much as possible, which in the end made him feared by others. He wanted to learn and understand who he was and when he saw that he was created to kill he took it personally.

Adam then went on to love bringing on chaos and destruction. Yet on the quiet, he was a persuasive and sympathetic creature who managed to bring to species together who were known to not like one another.

Appearance

Adam was inspired by The Terminator and Frankenstein. He looked like a mixture of human, demon and robot. The most recognisable human body part of Adam was the left half of his head, which looked like an average human.

On the right side of his head, he had a green demon’s head. The rest of his body was a patchwork of demon parts and human parts, with some robotic devices thrown in as well. Adam had a green demon neck, torso and stomach. His right arm was a green demon’s arm, while he had a Polgara demon’s left arm.

You can see on Adam’s head, shoulders and chest, several mechanical parts. There was actually a computer that could be found on the left side of Adam’s head, which is why he was so intelligent.

Powers/Abilities

As his body is a combination of different beings, Adam had several supernatural abilities.

Intelligence

Adam was a genius, he could give you a scientific analysis on human and demon nature and their psychology. He had a great understanding of the Initiative’s facilities and the people working there. He had a computer in the left half of his brain, and had a desire to learn and to continue to gather knowledge on the world and how it works.

Persuasive

Adam was incredibly persuasive, as he convinced vampires and demons to work together and take the Initiative down together.

Self-Awareness

He had a heightened sense of self awareness. Therefore, this makes him immune from mind control and becomes very aware of any reality alterations like with Jonathhan’s augmentation spell. He knew what was going on but wasn’t actually affected by the spell.

Arm Weapons

Adam’s left arm used to belong to the Polgara demon. This arm gave Adam the ability to release a skewer/sharp bone from his hand which he used to kill many victims, including Professor Walsh. Adam later went on to upgrade his right arm to have a grenade launcher and a gun. Both of these he used in his final showdown against Buffy.

Regenerate Ability

Adam didn’t need to eat, thanks to his uranium core/heart. This core made Adam pretty much immortal, as he was able to survive any wound quite quickly, no matter how severe it was. As long as his core was still working and in his, then Adam would keep going forever.

Technopathy

It is believed that Adam had the ability to physically manipulate technology. He could mentally activate behavior modifiers and interface with computers and floppy disks.

Electrical Absorbance

Adam was seen to absorb electrical energy to make himself stronger. This then made the Initiative’s taser balster completely useless against him.

Relationships

Professor Walsh

Adam thought of Professor Walsh as his mother. Professor Walsh created Adam and tried to use him to kill Buffy. However, this plan didn’t work and Adam ended up killing Walsh instead and running away from the Initiative.

Dr. Angleman

Another creator of Adam, yet they didn’t have such a close relationship. Although Angleman was involved in creating Adam, but like Walsh, they had the same fate and ended up being killed by Adam too.

Riley Finn

Adam saw Riley as a brother, to which Riley was offended by the thought. Adam wanted to help Riley get away from the Initiative and have him join in with his master plan. Unfortunately Riley didn’t see things the same way as Adam and the pair never really got along.

Spike

Adam turned to Spike for advice, as he wanted to stop Buffy interrupting his plans. The pair agreed to help one another. However, when Spike tells Buffy and the rest of the Scooby Gang why he had been trying to break them up, they all come to the Initiative facility, which isn’t what Adam wanted. This then resulted in Adam going back on his deal with Spike and ordering the demons to kill him.

Photos

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Appearances

Adam, played by George Hertzberg, appeared mainly in season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but he is seen and mentioned in season 5 and 7. You can see Adam in the following seasons and episodes:

• Season 4, Episode 12 – A New Man
• Season 4, Episode 13 – The I in Team
• Season 4, Episode 14 – Goodbye lowa
• Season 4, Episode 15 – This Year’s Girl (Mentioned)
• Season 4, Episode 16 – Who Are You?
• Season 4, Episode 17 – Superstar
• Season 4, Episode 18 – Where The Wild Things Are (Mentioned)
• Season 4, Episode 19 – New Moon Rising
• Season 4, Episode 20 – The Yoko Factor
• Season 4, Episode 21 – Primeval
• Season 4, Episode 22 – Restless (Vision)
• Season 5, Episode 19 – Tough Love (Mentioned)
• Season 7, Episode 1 – Lessons (Vision)

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