He is devoted to the vampire race's purpose to eradicate humanity and to fulfilling a prophecy that states he will kill the Slayer in the late 20th century.

Sunnydale High School is situated atop a portal to hell called a Hellmouth, which Whedon uses to symbolize the high-school-as-hell experience.

[2] Pragmatically, Whedon admitted that placing the high school on a Hellmouth allows the writers to confront the main characters with an endless array of evil creatures.

[3] Veteran character actor Mark Metcalf appeared in heavy prosthetic make-up for the role of the Master, belying his iconic performance in the film National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) as Douglas C. Neidermeyer, a strident rule-following ROTC officer (and the associated role in Twisted Sister's "We're Not Going to Take It" music video).

[4] Many actors auditioned for the part, but Metcalf, according to Whedon, played it with more complexity, bringing a "sly and kind of urbane" sensitivity and a charm to the villainy of the character.

Although the Master's identity is never revealed on screen, Joss Whedon wrote in the pilot's script that his name was Heinrich Joseph Nest, roughly 600 years old.

In "Welcome to the Hellmouth" the Master is presented as a vampire king with extraordinary physical and mental powers that grew as he ages but weakened through long isolation and needing to feed on people; he is raised from a pool of blood by his acolyte Luke (Brian Thompson).

The head of a cult who worships the ancient pure demons "The Old Ones" called the Order of Aurelius, the Master attempted to open the Hellmouth in 1937, placing himself in a Catholic mission to do so.

[6] He is trapped between dimensions, unable to leave his underground lair, so he commands his minions to find people for him to feed off while planning his escape.

In times, Sunnydale High School is built over where the mission was The Master's incarceration underground was a device used by the writers to avoid having Buffy meet him and then thwart his attempts to kill her each week.

Although Luke successfully feeds on a couple of victims, Buffy stakes him, thereby leaving the Master contained, robbed of his proxy, and with insufficient power to break the dimensional barrier that confines him underground.

[13] He foretells that when he is able to leave his mystical prison, "the stars themselves will hide", an aberration of a line from John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, where Satan is musing on his own power.

[14] The Master's entombment in a house of worship is a convenient vehicle to introduce the character's religiosity, but it also represents the way evil is at times allowed to thrive in churches.

[note 1] The unChristian symbolism was intentional on Whedon's part, as he was cautious about including such subversive imagery in "The Harvest"; Buffy producer David Greenwalt was certain Christian groups would protest the ceremonial aspects of the plot.

He quickly hypnotizes her and tells her that "prophecies are tricky things" that don't reveal all: had she not come to fight him, he could not rise, as it is her blood which will free him.

The themes of the first season are destiny and forming an identity separate from childhood: breaking the illusions that the world is safe and actions have no real consequences.

[19] According to Buffy studies scholar Gregory Stevenson, the Master has such confidence in the prophecy that the Slayer will die that he is unable to comprehend her resurrection by Xander.

[22] When the Master rises, the Hellmouth opens in the floor of the school library where Giles, Buffy's friends Willow (Alyson Hannigan), Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), and a teacher, Jenny Calendar (Robia LaMorte) are present and fighting off the emerging monsters.

[30] In the canonical comic book series, it is revealed that the Master has been resurrected off-screen by the Seed of Wonder as its guardian at some point after the first season's finale.

Joss Whedon created Buffy Summers to subvert the dual ideas of female subordination to patriarchy, and authority steeped in tradition, both dynamics well-established in the Master's world order[citation needed].

[31][33] Each season finale signifies a turning point for the main characters — usually Buffy — and her confronting the Master, according to Stevenson, represents "the end of her childhood illusions of immortality".

When the Master bites her it is, according to Elisabeth Kirmmer and Shilpa Raval, her sexual initiation: a different take on the young girl dying at the hands of a monster.

Thus, she is fatally vulnerable to being hypnotized by Drusilla (Juliet Landau), an insane vampire with extraordinary mental abilities, who kills Kendra easily.