Riley Finn

Riley Finn is a fictional soldier and a central character featured on the WB Network television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Played by actor Marc Blucas, he was introduced in the premiere episode of season four titled, "The Freshman". He appeared in twenty out of twenty-two episodes from season four. With season five, Riley was added to the main cast line-up, but departed from the show with episode 5x10, "Into the Woods". Riley made one more guest-starring appearance in season six, in the episode titled "As You Were". He also appeared in three issues of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight comic book series by Dark Horse Comics, and received his own one-shot special, "Riley" in 2010.

Overview
Riley Finn was an Iowa-born corn-fed chisel-chinned college student who attended school at UC Sunnydale in Sunnydale, California. With his whitebread appearance and linebacker build, Riley found himself recruited into a top-secret military response agency known as the Initiative, which maintained its headquarters underground at UC Sunnydale. An adjunct of the Demon Research Initiative of the 1940s, their function was to hunt and quarantine hostile supernatural forces. The leader of the Initiative, Maggie Walsh, forced her commandos to partake of performance enhancing drugs, which gave Riley exceptional strength and durability.

Riley's unit hunted down and captured several supernatural creatures, including the werewolf known as Daniel "Oz" Osbourne. Through his actions, Riley eventually encountered a hunter of another type - Buffy Summers. Eventually, Riley turned his back on the Initiative, and helped to free Oz. He developed a romantic relationship with Buffy Summers, but they eventually broke up. Part of this was due to Buffy's growing emotional distance, but it atrophied when Riley began letting vampires feed from him, in order to understand the attraction of a human-vampire relationship.

Riley eventually got his act together, and married a woman from the Peace Corps named Samantha.

Notes & Trivia



 * Riley Finn is one of three major love interests for Buffy Summers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The other two are Angel and Spike.


 * Riley Finn is the first superhuman love interest of Buffy Summers who was not a vampire.


 * After leaving the Initiative, Riley Finn became a member of the Scooby Gang.

Related categories

 * Riley Finn images
 * Riley Finn appearances