Warren Mears

Warren Mears, played by Adam Busch, was introduced in Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5, and was a recurring villain in Buffy season 6. He was killed, reappeared as a form of The First Evil in Season 7, returned to life in the comics, and was killed again.
==Canon==
Warren first appeared in Season 5 as the creator of the robot April, designed to be his girlfriend and sex slave, which he abandoned when he began a relationship with Katrina Silber. Later Spike tried to get Warren to modify or remove a chip which stopped him from killing people, then made him build a robot duplicate of Buffy Summers with similar programming.
In Season 6 Warren returned, having been dumped by Katrina, and joined forces with Andrew Wells and Jonathan Levinson with the goal of becoming supervillains. This led to escalating conflicts with Buffy and the Scooby Gang. After several incidents Warren created a mind control device, intending to use it on Buffy and make her his slave. Instead he encountered Katrina in a bar, used it on her, and forced her to act as his slave. When it wore off she tried to escape and was killed by Warren. He persuaded Andrew and Jonathan to cover up the crime, dump the body, and make Buffy think that she had killed Katrina. This almost worked, but there were flaws which revealed the truth. Soon after this Warren acquired super-strength and near invulnerability by stealing demonic orbs, and set out to rob an armoured car. Disgusted by his behaviour, Jonathan revealed the secret of the orbs; Buffy smashed them but Warren escaped. The next morning he shot Buffy and nearly killed her, killing Tara Maclay with a stray shot. Willow set out in pursuit, eventually skinning him alive magically and killing him.
In Season 7 the First Evil repeatedly appeared as Warren, conning Andrew into killing Jonathan. Willow was also the victim of a spell which made her morph into Warren's form, the thing she hated the most.
In the Season 8 comics it was revealed that Warren had somehow survived Willow's magic and had been kept alive magically (albeit without skin and undead) by Amy Madison; the use of his form by the First was explained as his having been dead for "a few seconds". He was finally killed when Buffy destroyed the "seed of wonder" which ended all magic.
==Fannish Opinion==
Warren appears to be the most unpopular human character of this series, a rapist and murderer with no redeeming features apart from his (temporary) love for Katrina. It's common for fanfic writers to write stories with the goal of making his death even more prolonged. A very few stories show him more sympathetically, e.g. by changing events so that he decided to help the Scoobies instead of becoming a villain, but this is extremely rare. The most common ship is Warren/Andrew, Warren/Katrina is much rarer.
==Example Fanworks==
*Magic Mirror by Teland (2002); Andrew knows how it goes. (Warren/Andrew)
*Five things which never happened to Warren by Selena (2003); Five things which never happened to Warren Meers. (Warren/Andrew)
*As You Wish by jeeps (2008); Warren and Katrina study (Warren/Katrina)
*Looney Tunes by Settiai (2002); Fanvid - A look at the Troika... what they were and what they became.
==Meta==
* Part of Your Plan, a Warren/Andrew ship manifesto by guest_age (2007)
==Archives and Communities==
* Works tagged Warren Mears on AO3.
==Links and Resources==
* Wikipedia
* Buffy Wiki
==References==
Category:Buffyverse Characters