Betta George Betta George is a giant
telepathic fish, a Splenden Beast, who appears solely in
Angel comics. Created by
Brian Lynch, he first appears in
Spike: Asylum and later
Spike: Shadow Puppets. Joss Whedon liked Betta George and decided that the character should appear in
Angel: After the Fall, thus becoming part of the
Angel canon. In the series, he is described as a Splenden Beast, a race of fish-like demons who possess extremely powerful telepathic powers, to the extent that they can even read the minds of vampires, who are typically immune to telepathy. George is seen reluctantly working for Kr'ph, the demon lord of
Westwood in the hellbound Los Angeles. Kr'ph is killed by the vampire Charles Gunn, who then kidnaps Betta George. Gunn uses George's skills to allow himself to train against captive
Slayers. When George, freed, is reunited with Spike and introduced to Angel, he is the one to inform the team of an enraged Illyria's motives and plan for destruction. Angel instructs George to fill Illyria's mind with Wesley and Spike's memories of Fred, and a stunned Illyria is defeated by the Senior Partners. The canonicity of George's appearances in
Asylum and
Shadow Puppets are deliberately ambiguous; in
After the Fall, he states, "I've hung out with vampires," which Brian Lynch claims can be interpreted as a vague reference to his previous encounters with Spike. Later issues see George contact the Mosaic Wellness Center, and other
Asylum characters. Lynch says he writes George as an
audience surrogate, "He's supposed to be the most normal character. Because I know that if you have a talking fish hanging out with everyone's favourite characters, people are going to not like him immediately. Because he could be
Jar Jar very easily. So I try to make him the nicest, most normal character, and the one who would react like the audience would react." He also denies that Betta George speaks in any particular accent, but advises readers to hear him in their own accent, to help them identify with him. Later, George was selected as a main character for the 2010
Spike ongoing series, which later became a miniseries due to the transfer of
Angel characters and properties from IDW Publishing to Dark Horse. His final appearance is in the
Angel Yearbook, IDW's send-off publication, in a story by Brian Lynch featuring the entire
Angel gang.
Beast The Beast is a
demon, portrayed by
Vladimir Kulich. He is very strong, able to defeat the entirety of the Angel Investigations team plus Faith with relative ease, and possesses a rock-like hide, making him highly resistant to physical damage. He first appears in the Season Four episode "
Apocalypse, Nowish", when he tears his way out of the earth from the
Hell dimension to which he was previously banished. The first people to encounter the Beast are
Cordelia Chase and
Connor, who find the Beast arriving on Earth at the exact spot at which Connor had been born. A fight ensues, during which both Connor and Cordelia are injured. Believing he has something to do with the coming apocalypse, Connor distances himself from his teammates, who do not trust him.
Angel,
Gunn, and
Lorne decide to take on The Beast. Wesley rejoins them to help in the battle, but they fail nonetheless, and are all badly injured. The Beast then conjures a rain of fire over Los Angeles, awakening Jasmine inside of Cordelia, and causing Cordelia's possession by Jasmine. The Beast, seeking to reach Mesektet (The Little Girl of the White Room), kills everyone working at
Wolfram & Hart as he tries to reach the White Room. The Beast kills Mesektet and drains her of her dark energy. Following the death of Mesektet, the Beast hunts down the rest of her "family", an order of mystical beings known as the Ra-Tet. Ma'at, Ashet and Semkhet are killed by the Beast. The final Ra-Tet, Manjet, is killed by Jasmine/Cordelia in secret. Using the metal wings in Ashet and Semkhet and the heart of Ma'at, the Beast starts a ritual to cause a
solar eclipse, which is completed when the dark energy of Mesektet is imbued in the orb which was extracted from Manjet's head. The eclipse begins as a sunlight-blocking spot that spreads covering Los Angeles and is supposed to eventually cover the totality of Earth. Angel's team believe their only hope is in Angel's evil alter ego Angelus, who apparently knew The Beast in the past even though Angel does not remember the encounter. This is revealed to be because all references to the Beast in this dimension were magically erased. However, Angelus was unaffected as he did not, technically, exist at the time when the spell was cast. Once freed in "
Awakening", in the following episode, "
Soulless", Angelus is eventually convinced to reveal the details of his encounter with the Beast; the Beast had attempted to recruit Angelus in 1789 to stop some priestesses who were attempting to banish the Beast, but Angelus declined and was knocked out before the Beast was banished. After Angel's soul is stolen and a ritual to restore his soul via dark magic is faked, in "
Calvary", Angelus breaks free and seeks out the Beast. In "
Salvage", Wesley breaks
Faith out of jail to assist the heroes. She is beaten badly in battle with the Beast. It is then Angelus who, in an act of betrayal, stabs the Beast with a knife made from its own bones, as he had correctly surmised the only thing that could kill the Beast was the Beast itself. The death of the Beast also undoes the spell to eclipse the Sun, leaving Faith in the sunlight and Angelus confined to the shadows, much to the vampire's annoyance (Angelus hadn't expected the Beast's death would restore the Sun, but his benevolent alter ego had prior to losing his soul). Co-executive producer
Jeffrey Jackson Bell employed the effects shop Almost Human to design
Vladimir Kulich's costuming and make-up. According to Almost Human makeup designer Chris Burdett, it took 2–3 days for four people to sculpt the costume and another 7 hours to fill and shape the huge fiberglass mold. Burdett explains a life cast was made of Vladimir so the suit would fit him exactly. The night before shooting was to begin, the crew finally established the costume's paint scheme. Vladimir went through the daily eight-hour make-up process to transform him into the character of The Beast, including prosthetics and fiberglass body suit, but "The worst part was the contact lenses...[that] cover the entire eyeball," the actor said. However, the isolating nature of the costume Billy is first seen in "
That Vision Thing" when
Angel breaks him out of a prison dimension guarded by the amiable demon
Skip. His significance is not revealed until his second appearance. In Billy's second appearance, in the eponymous "
Billy" shows
Cordelia has a vision of an old man murdering his wife at a grocery store. Angel and his team find out it happened a week ago and are puzzled. Billy is staying at
Wolfram & Hart and is being entertained by Gavin. Lilah Morgan enters and is annoyed at this, viewing it as
Gavin trying to steal the congressman's favor from her. Gavin then starts an argument with Lilah and severely beats her, leaving her with a black eye. Angel stalks Billy and enters his house as the police arrive. Billy is taken away and touches one of the officers causing him to argue with his female partner. The lady cop shoots him and Billy is able to escape to an airport. Cordelia, feeling responsible for the people Billy is killing, interrogates Lilah at her apartment and learns where Billy is. She confronts him at the airfield and hits him in the groin with a
taser blast. Angel arrives and tells Cordelia he will handle Billy, and she replies since she is a woman, his power won't work on her. Meanwhile, Wesley and
Fred are analyzing some of Billy's blood under a microscope. As a result, Wesley accidentally touches some and is affected. Since, as Lilah said earlier "Billy's touch affects every man in a different way." Wesley's murderous misogyny is more quiet and subdued, in keeping with his personality. Fred does not realize anything is wrong until Wesley strikes her, throwing her into some stairs. She runs into some of the hotel's rooms, Wesley following closely behind and insulting her. Fred locks herself in one of the rooms and barricades the door. She is spooked by
Gunn and explains the situation. Gunn is horrified to learn about the powers of Billy's blood since he accidentally touched some earlier. He gives Fred a club and tells her to knock him out. Fred falters and Gunn starts yelling at her and threatens to beat her to death, showing Billy's blood affected him nearly instantly, due to his quick temper. Fred knocks him out and goes to cower in a corner. A short time later, Wesley breaks in and menaces Fred some more. He then trips a trap Fred set for him, causing a
fire extinguisher to hit him and knock him through a hole in the floor. Billy then touches Angel's face and stands back to watch him kill Cordelia. Angel walks up to Cordelia and then spins around and punches Billy in the face, revealing he is unaffected. He and Billy have a fistfight with Billy hitting the ground making red light flow into his body towards the end of it. Their fight is cut short when Billy is shot twice by Lilah and falls to the ground, dead. Later, Cordelia asks why Billy's touch did not affect Angel. Angel explains when he was Angelus he killed for sport or pleasure, but was never angry with his victims, and never hated them.
Boone Boone is a humanoid demon of an unknown species and an old rival of Angel. He was played by
Mark Rolston in the episode "
Blood Money". Boone met Angel in Juarez, in the 1920s, and fought over a woman while Boone was hung over. However, the fight was stopped because of sunlight, and Boone's sense of honor prevented him from taking advantage. Boone was left with the doubt of who would win in an evenly matched fight. Decades later, the two met again and teamed up in order to humiliate Lindsey McDonald and Lilah Morgan of Wolfram & Hart. Boone offered the two lawyers his services as an assassin, and even though he told them he had no interest in money and he held no real grudge against Angel, neither Lilah nor Lindsey suspected Boone was actually in league with his supposed target. During the Highway Robbery Ball, Boone helped Angel infiltrate the fund raiser's premises. Angel and Boone pretended to fight while Anne Steele played a tape supposedly incriminating W&H's plot to steal most of the fund raiser's money. However, the tape was nothing more than a distraction: Angel just wanted to mess with Lindsey and Lilah, using Anne in the process. Meanwhile, as the tape was played and every attendant was distracted, Boone took the two million dollars himself, as per his and Angels deal. With Boone gone from the party, Angel thought he had seen the last of the demon. However, Boone still wanted to know who was the better warrior. In the ensuing fight, Angel proved himself as the better fighter and won the money. It's unclear if he survived the fight or not as his and Angel's blood covered the money which Angel gave to Anne. Boone can emit coils of a metallic material that wrap around his fists, thus making his punches even more damaging. Like most regular demons he also has superhuman strength. His demon physiology also appears to give him a lifespan much longer than that of a human.
Trish and Roger Burkle Trish and Roger Burkle (played by
Jennifer Griffin and
Gary Grubbs) are the parents of
Winifred Burkle. They appear in four episodes of
Angel: "
Fredless," "
A Hole in the World, "
Shells" and "
The Girl in Question." In their first appearance, they come to Los Angeles looking for Fred, who has been lost for five years. Due to Fred's reluctance to see her parents, the gang at
Angel Investigations believes at first that the Burkles may have been abusive, but later discover they are in fact loving and supportive, and that Fred's strange behavior stems from her trauma at having been lost in Pylea. Once the misunderstanding is cleared up, the Burkles take the existence of the supernatural in stride and prove friendly, brave, and resourceful; at one point Trish, a retired
school bus driver, rescues the gang from a demon by driving a bus into it, while Roger and Angel bond over their shared knowledge that
Spiro Agnew was a Grathnar demon. When Fred decides that her place is with the Angel Investigations team, Trish and Roger respectfully accept her decision. Their second and third appearances are in
flashbacks as they see Fred off to L.A. to pursue her graduate studies. In their fourth and last appearance, they show up for a surprise visit at
Wolfram & Hart, not knowing Fred has been killed.
Illyria assumes Fred's appearance and manner for the duration of their visit, and they leave never the wiser. They later reappear in
Angel: Only Human, in which they attend the funeral of Fred's uncle. They remain unaware of Fred's death, dismissing the form and appearance of Illyria as a "blue goth phase." ==C==