As the lovable high school student Xander Harris, who just happens to be best friends with a superhuman vampire killer and a powerful witch in the cult American TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Nicholas Brendon portrayed a flawed everyman that fans could relate to. “I laugh in the face of danger. Then I hide until it goes away,” Xander told his friends in a characteristic wisecrack, early in the first season of the show.
Brendon, who has died aged 54, appeared in all but one of the 144 episodes of the seven-series show, which aired from 1997 to 2003. He saw his charismatic portrayal of Xander’s ordinariness in comparison with Sarah Michelle Gellar’s titular character as one of his biggest achievements. “His power was not having power,” he said in a 2017 interview.
