Maggie Walsh

“I'm Professor Walsh. Those of you who fall into my good graces will come to know me as Maggie. Those of you who don't will come to know me by the nickname my T.A.s use and think I don't know about: the Evil Bitch-Monster of Death.”

―Maggie Walsh^[src]

Maggie Walsh was a psychology professor at UC Sunnydale^[3] and director of the Initiative military organization.^[4] She was also the mentor of Riley Finn^[3][1] and the creator of the secret project that built the bio-mechanical demonoid Adam.^[2]

Biography[]

“She was the one who shaped your basic operating system. She taught you how to think, how to feel. She fed you chemicals to make you stronger, your mind and body.”

―Adam to Riley Finn^[src]

Professor Walsh first became involved with Buffy Summers when the young Slayer was enrolled in her Introduction to Psychology class, along with Willow and Oz in their first year at UC Sunnydale. At the university, Walsh had a fearsome reputation as an academic and taskmaster.^[3] However, like Buffy, she also led a secret double life: she was a chief member of the Initiative, a secret government agency located below the university. The Initiative employed a team of commandos, led by Riley, tasked with capturing demons and vampires. The captured demons were taken back to the Initiative facilities, where experiments were performed on them.^[4]

Along Dr. Francis Angleman, Walsh was also involved in the 314 Project, a secret operation intended to create a race of bio-mechanical demonoids, super-soldiers combining human, demon, and machine. The first of these was Adam.^[2]

Walsh maintained a close relationship with Riley. As he developed a relationship with Buffy, the identity of the Slayer became known to Walsh. Though she initially thought that Buffy was a useful ally, Walsh soon disliked her unpredictability and unwanted curiosity, especially in regards to Project 314. Eventually, Walsh tried to kill Buffy by sending her on a mission on which she was ambushed by two demons released from the Initiative's holding cells while armed with a defective taser blaster. However, Buffy defeated the demons and appeared on the monitors when Walsh prematurely announced Buffy's death to Riley, causing the latter to lose trust in her.^[1]

As Walsh retreated to the labs of Project 314, she plotted how to use Adam to defeat Buffy. However, the creature awoke and impaled Walsh with his Polgara skewer, killing her, and escaped from the Initiative.^[1]

Reanimation[]

“Mother kept her secrets well... Didn't you?. This is all as she planned it. Except she thought she would be alive...”

―Adam^[src]

Adam artificially reanimated Walsh's and Angleman's corpses with "moderate brain activity" for the final stage the 314 Project, which involved locking up the Initiative and then unleashing all captured demons on the soldiers so they would annihilate each other. This would leave behind a large number of human and demon corpses to build an entire army of creatures like Adam. Walsh also had set Riley up to be part of 314 by implanting a behavior modifier chip within his chest that could be used to control his actions.^[2]

When Buffy appeared at the secret laboratory to confront Adam and save Riley, the undead Walsh tried to attack her with a bone saw. Riley managed to remove the chip in his body and ripped out the tubes pumping blood to keep Walsh reanimated, killing her for good.^[2]

After the Scooby Gang defeated Adam and defeated the demons rampaging within the complex alongside the Initiative soldiers, the U.S. government deemed Walsh's vision of using demons for military purposes brilliant, but ultimately impossible due to the volatile nature of demonkind, officially closing down the Initiative.^[2]

Behind the scenes[]

• She was portrayed by Lindsay Crouse.
• About Maggie Walsh's departure and the Big Bad reveal in "The I in Team", producer Doug Petrie has said: "It's very much a Frankenstein story wherein someone creates a monster and then the monster is out of their control. That's what this was. We knew from the beginning that Maggie Walsh was going to be killed by her own creation. Then we got Lindsay Crouse, the great Lindsay Crouse. This is the episode where sadly she shines the most and this is her best episode. As often happens, just when things really start cooking, they've got to go. She's one of the bigger names that we've gotten on the show and we know that we had her for a limited time, so there was a practical consideration as well. It's very much in the vein of Frankenstein's monster and we felt it essential that the first thing the monster do is kill its creator — to hand over the baton as it were and give someone else the villain's mantle for season four."^[5]
• In the Star Trek novel The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, it is implied that she is the same person as scientist Maggie Erickson, engaged to be married to Dr. Everett Walsh. In 1974, she was in India working on Project Chrysalis, genetically engineering superhumans. Her much-discussed doctoral dissertation had been in child psychology.

Appearances[]

Canonical[]

Other[]

References[]