(Spoilers ahead: Her not-so-sunny battles with Buffy Summers are the stuff of legend, but a new generation of Slayers is discovering this vampire’s mythos, so don’t spill the blood, er, beans.)
The stakes have been raised… and they’re pointed at the hearts of the creatures of the night. The ordinary citizen not armed with holy water or garlic may as well be walking filet mignons to these fanged fiends. Vampires are demonic in nature, but their glamour can lure you into a trap, leading to their dark nests. The allure of eternal (if not a bit pale) beauty has long been an enticing way to get naive victims to expose their necks, but even the undead should beware - insanity can last forever, too. In the case of Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, being crazy in love is taken to a lethal level.
Buffy debuted in 1997 on The WB network as the television series adaptation/continuation of the 1992 film of the same name. Created by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt, Drusilla is a crazy killer with a Cockney accent. The show’s second season premiered in September 1997, and in the third episode, “School Hard,” Sunnydale High School was stormed by the new big bads in town: the vampiric duo of Spike and Drusilla. James Marsters and Juliet Landau portrayed the bloodsucking couple and quickly became fan favorites, chewing scenery and sinking their teeth into every scene. The violence-loving lovers wreaked havoc on Buffy (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her “Scooby Gang,”‘ but their story, namely Drusilla’s, started long ago in Britain.
In 1860, Drusilla lived as a Catholic-raised girl in London, gifted with psychic abilities. It was here that the vampire known as Darla (played by Julie Benz) discovered Dru, selecting the young girl as the latest plaything for herself and the vampire who sired her, Angelus (played by David Boreanaz). Also known as Angel, Angelus stalked the Victorian streets as a remorseless predator, feeding off of the innocent and the pure. Drusilla believed her premonitions to be the devil’s influence, which Angelus exploited to satisfy his twisted desires. Angelus played with Dru’s purity, escalating his evil, and eventually slaughtered her entire family. Fleeing the country did not save Drusilla, as Angelus and Darla followed her to Prague where they’d inflict even more damage to Dru’s already rattled mind. Dru was forced to witness Angelus and Darla murder churchgoers and engage in perverted acts with the hapless congregation. Having broken the once innocent Drusilla to the brink of madness, Angelus decided to sign his torturous masterwork by turning Drusilla into a vampire.
Once bitten, Drusilla succumbed to their wicked ways, joining Angelus and Darla on their rampage through Europe. In 1880, Dru met a poet named William Pratt and proceeded to sire him, enlisting the young man as part of their vampire horde. He would become familiar to some under the moniker William the Bloody, but his most well-known name would be Spike. Dru and Spike developed an intense romantic relationship, but she and Angelus would still be intimate with each other. They existed in excess, drinking blood and stalking the night.
After a time, Angelus would cross paths with the Kalderash, a Romani clan, and cross the line by killing one of their kin. The clan elder cursed Angelus with a soul so that he’d bear the guilt of all of his atrocities. Angel hid himself away, leaving Spike, Darla, and Drusilla on their own to continue their nomadic quest to quench their blood-thirst. The trio’s reign lasted for decades until in the 1990s when Dru’s fate changed yet again.
While in Prague at the time, Spike and Dru had splintered off as a deadly duo, but an angry mob nearly killed them. A local inquisitor abducted Dru then mercilessly tortured her. Spike rescued his beloved, murdering her captor, but Dru’s injuries proved to be extremely severe. Her mental state further deteriorated from her physical weakness, and despite his care, Spike was unable to fully revive Dru on his own. In hopes of restoring Dru’s strength, Spike took her to California, the location of the Hellmouth, the home of the current Vampire Slayer: a (super)naturally gifted female warrior born every generation whose innate mission is to eliminate monsters and demons from the world.
Not long after storming the city of Sunnydale, Spike set in motion his machinations for killing the latest Slayer, Buffy Summers. Having slain two Slayers in the past, Spike thought it would be an easy task to get rid of a high school girl, but Buffy and her loyal companions defeated Spike at every turn. Spike pressed on, learning that if Dru absorbed the life force of the one who sired her, Angel, the process would restore her health. The ritual was successful but Buffy interfered, attacking the vampires. The battle left Spike badly injured and confined to a wheelchair.
Spike and Drusilla discovered that Angel resided in Sunnydale, but stricken with a soul, their former vamp comrade worked against them. Angel had developed a romantic relationship with Buffy, but this would lead to a devastating turn of events - as a condition of the Romani curse, if Angel experienced a moment of true bliss, he would regress into his Angelus persona. Buffy and Angel consummated their relationship, causing Angel to experience pure happiness, thus activating his curse. Stripped of his soul once more, Angelus returned to raise hell all over again.
Rejoining his former brood, Angelus established dominance over the immobilized Spike and quickly rekindled his affair with Drusilla. Throughout the reformed vampire trinity’s sundering of Sunnydale, Spike’s resentment of Angelus festered until the time came when he secretly healed enough to walk again. When Angelus devised a way to destroy the earth, Spike threw a wrench in the plan by temporarily siding with the Slayer, stating that the planet had too much he enjoyed, not to mention his burning envy over Angelus stealing Dru’s attention. The scheme was foiled, and Angelus was sent to a hellish dimension while Spike and Dru fled the country. Drusilla would tire of Spike and leave him for a chaos demon.
Angel would later relocate to Los Angeles where he’d become embroiled in a longstanding war against an evil law firm, Wolfram and Hart. As a way to torment Angel, the insidious organization resurrected Darla who had died years before, only now she was once again human. To twist the proverbial knife, Wolfram and Hart summoned Drusilla to sire Darla, once more turning her into a vampire. Darla and Dru resumed their partnership, assaulting not only the law firm, but recruiting demons to help them terrorize L.A. Driven to desperation, Angel sets the two female furies on fire. Darla would later perish once more, but after the burning, Drusilla returned to Sunnydale. She attempts to reconcile with Spike, but he has fallen in love with Buffy, much to Dru’s horror. Spike betrays her by trying to kill her, all to prove his devotion to the Slayer. Drusilla resorts to fleeing yet again.
Drusilla’s penchant for skipping town would be a frequent theme in her later appearances in comic book form. Her devious dealings would see her recruited again by Wolfram and Hart in a soul-stealing caper. The ordeal involved a soul-endowed Spike saying even Dru deserved a second chance. A later stint in London led Dru to becoming a cult-like leader of weaker vampires and devout humans. Later still, Dru would find herself commanding a new set of minions, but like all her associations, it ends with Dru on the run, seemingly cursed to constantly be on the lam in some way, as if a fugitive running from her own life.
Drusilla’s visions of things to come did not prepare for the fantastical (and tumultuous) life she’d live, but this prophetic gift isn’t always the stuff of fiction. Born in 1856, Florence Cook was a teenage girl from the United Kingdom who claimed to be a medium who could contact spirits. Florence’s spiritualistic episodes could get so intense that she appeared to manifest different personalities, one of which reverted to herself as “Katie King.” Accusations of her being a fraud plague Florence’s already disturbed life, but during seances she would demonstrate inexplicable behavior and actions—ghostly correspondence with the deceased that Florence stated began when she was very young.
Drusilla originated as a victim but evolved into a ghastly villain over her unnaturally long life. Her most despicable acts can be debated, but drinking from a soul-imbued Angel and siring a recently-human Darla are among her most vile acts.
Villain ranking: BLOODTHIRSTY
Drusilla’s vampiric nature makes her untrustworthy to say the least, plus she is slippery and always seems to escape custody, at least temporarily. Her undying hunger for blood drives her to seek out human victims. Whether she’s mentally unstable or enjoying a respite from the insanity, Drusilla’s need to feed will always make her a deadly enemy.
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