Anya Jenkins

“I was being patient. But it took too long.“

Also known as Anyanka; Aud; Anya Emerson
Played by Emma Caulfield

First Appearance: The Wish

Anya Jenkins began life as Aud, a peasant girl in Sjornjost in 880 A.D. After catching her lover Olaf cheating with a bar matron, she transformed him into a troll with a spell so impressive that D’Hoffryn recruited her into the ranks of the vengeance demons. As Anyanka, she became a legend — a patron saint of scorned women, travelling the world with her friend Halfrek and granting wishes that reshaped lives and sometimes destroyed them. In 1998 she posed as Anya Emerson to help Cordelia Chase, granting the wish that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale and creating a dystopian alternate reality. When that world’s Giles destroyed her power centre, Anyanka was trapped in human form.

Ironically, stripped of immortality, Anya found herself drawn to Xander Harris. Their relationship blossomed after graduation, and despite her bluntness and fear of bunnies, she became a beloved — if bewildered — member of the Scooby Gang. When Xander proposed, she accepted with joy, only for him to abandon her at the altar. Heartbroken, she returned to D’Hoffryn and reclaimed her demon hood, but her lingering humanity made vengeance unbearable. After she accidentally killed twelve students, she begged Buffy to kill her. Instead, D’Hoffryn sacrificed Halfrek and stripped Anya of her powers, leaving her mortal once more. Anya fought alongside the Scoobies against the First Evil, and in the final battle she died saving Andrew, cut down by a Bringer’s sword.

After magic was restored with the creation of the new Seed of Wonder, a version of Anya began haunting Xander — visible only to him. She blamed him for abandoning her, for costing her immortality, for her death, and Xander accepted the weight of his guilt. Believing she might be a ghost meant to guide him, Anya embraced the idea of being his “sidekick,” helping him break enchantments, confront emotional paralysis, and support Dawn. When a psychic revealed that the real Anya’s soul was at rest, Xander learned that this Anya was not the original — and not a figment of his imagination — but something else entirely.

The truth emerged when Xander distanced himself to protect Dawn: this Anya was a creation of D’Hoffryn, crafted as revenge against the Scoobies for “stealing” the original Anya from him. Resentful and manipulated, she was transformed into a vengeance demon and granted Buffy a wish that empowered D’Hoffryn to kill his enemies — and Buffy’s allies on the Magic Council. Now corporeal, she fought alongside D’Hoffryn and other vengeance demons in an assault on the Scoobies, still torn between her constructed purpose and the echoes of the woman she resembled.

During the final confrontation, Buffy exposed D’Hoffryn’s cruelty — that he had never loved either version of Anya, just possessed them. At Xander’s mercy, Anya listened as he apologised not for ending their engagement, but for abandoning both Anyas when they needed him most. Choosing her own path, she turned against D’Hoffryn and granted Buffy a wish that stripped him of the power she had helped him gain. The act saved the Scoobies but sealed her fate. D’Hoffryn incinerated her, and in her final moments she declared that though he had made her, she had made herself real.

Her ashes were placed in an urn in Xander and Spike’s apartment, inscribed with the words: She owned her life. Across centuries, identities and incarnations, Anya remained one of the Buffyverse’s most singular figures — fierce, literal, loyal, flawed, and ultimately defined not by the powers given to her, but by the choices she made when they were taken away.

APPEARANCES

Buffy SEASON 3

Buffy SEASON 4