Richard Wilkins III (commonly referred to as The Mayor) is a fictional character in the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003).

Portrayed by Harry Groener, he is the mayor of Sunnydale, a fictional town rife with vampires and demons in which the main character, Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) lives.

The premise of the series is that Buffy is a Slayer, a young girl endowed with superhuman powers to fight evil, which she accomplishes with the help of a small group of friends and family, called the Scooby Gang.

[2] This season also marks Buffy's and her friends' last year in high school, and introduces a long-running character named Faith (Eliza Dushku), who is also a Slayer.

[3] Veteran stage actor Harry Groener was cast in the role of the Mayor of Sunnydale, the embodiment of a quintessential American politician.

Series writer Jane Espenson credited Groener's performance and his chemistry with co-star Eliza Dushku with propelling his character to greater importance and making their relationship a central focus of the season.

[5] The writers created the blue collar Slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku) as an anti-Buffy: a young woman given extraordinary physical powers with no moral foundation.

He has been aware of Buffy's presence in the town from the very beginning and has kept tabs on her through Sunnydale High School's Principal Snyder (Armin Shimerman).

Inside his office cabinet he keeps a variety of skulls, shrunken heads, weapons, and other evil objects alongside a box of hand wipes, which he uses frequently in between dispensing "goofily prudish advice" tainted with dark threats.

[11] His phobia of germs was an homage to Buffy producer David Greenwalt, who exhibits similar positive enthusiasm while often wiping his hands with wet towelettes.

[12] Groener's acting was praised by author Nikki Stafford, who writes that he "is consistently wonderful in this role, one that would have been very difficult for many actors to maintain".

[10] Likewise, Jane Espenson remarked that Groener played the part exhibiting a "wonderful innocent glee" towards evil that she thought was "delightful".

[5] Groener stated that when he tried to play the Mayor too dark or evil, Joss Whedon or other directors would ask him to tone it down, take it easy and make the part "real nice".

"[7] The Mayor's unassuming appearance, pleasure in such harmless activities as miniature golf and reading The Family Circus, and his quirky mysophobia are a part of the season's exploration of moral ambiguity.

Her reaction to killing demons and vampires is "positively joyful" contrasting with Buffy's frequent admissions that she considers her responsibilities an imposition on her life—although she is committed to her duty.

Needing to distract the Slayers so that he can be assured of the privacy required to complete an important ritual, the Mayor ensures they learn of a cult of vampires loyal to a demon named Balthazar, knowing they will be fully engaged in defeating him, giving the Mayor time to enact a ritual required as part of his preparation to become a demon (referred to as his Ascension).

[15] In their efforts to track and defeat Balthazar and his cohorts, Buffy and Faith flirt with lawlessness, breaking into a store and stealing weapons, then escaping police custody to complete their mission.

The Mayor puts Faith up in a large, fully furnished apartment, buys her clothes, a video game system, and an expensive knife.

[14] Buffy writer Marti Noxon states that villains who seek out love and social connections to counter their loneliness are complex and interesting to write.

Eliza Dushku states that one of Faith's major life battles is constructing a viable self-esteem, which the Mayor never challenges, but his evil amplifies the "crazy" aspect of her nature.

In "Choices", the Mayor must complete another ritual involving a box full of grotesquely large insects which will, after he ingests them, imbue him with greater power.

[8][17] Buffy and Angel mutually but sadly concede they cannot be happy together in the next episode but they continue to work toward the goal of defeating the Mayor's plan.

The two-part season finale "Graduation Day" reveals that the Mayor will be the keynote speaker at Sunnydale High's commencement ceremony, where he will be able to feed on the students after his transformation.

[20] A fully recovered Buffy and the Scoobies enlist the graduating students of Sunnydale High, outfitting them with weapons to attack immediately after the Mayor's transformation, after learning his invulnerability will end once he is in demon form.

Unlike Giles' mentoring of Buffy, in which he encourages her to make her own decisions despite what she is ordered to do by the similarly patriarchal Watcher's Council, Faith complies with everything the Mayor wants, creating "unquestioning service of the power structure for the sake of approval, comfort, and support of the father".

[24] Jowett writes, "The Mayor is ultimately a 'bad' father because he holds the status quo: like the Master before him, he is a powerful patriarch who wants to maintain his position at the top, and the children of such parents will never be able to grow up.

Faith awakens in the hospital to discover that the Mayor has in fact died and left her a video and a device that will allow her to switch bodies with Buffy.