In many ways, Supernatural resembles a show created by Joss Whedon. It has similar supernatural elements and both have huge online fan bases. They also share plenty of the same actors. Sometimes a star from a Whedon show comes to Supernatural as a guest star, and other times a prominent Supernatural star started with a small role on one of Joss Whedon’s four TV shows: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly or Dollhouse. Here are 20 stars who’ve appeared in both worlds.
#20 Charisma Carpenter
Supernatural Role: Maggie Stark
Whedonverse Role: Cordelia Chase on Buffy and Angel
Carpenter played spoiled cheerleader turned bad-ass vision-having higher being for three years on Buffy and four on Angel. Now she’s taking on an even more magical role as a witch on Supernatural.
#19 James Marsters
Supernatural Role: Don Stark
Whedonverse Role: Spike on Buffy and Angel
After countless years as the bleach-blond Spike, Marsters is far less scary as the adulterous husband of Carpenter’s witch on Supernatural.
#18 Amber Benson
Supernatural Role: Lenore
Whedonverse Role: Tara Maclay on Buffy
Tara was a sweet witch on Buffy but she got to play a real vampire on Supernatural, though she was still nicer than expected, leading a crew of kinder, non-murdering vamps.
#17 Mercedes McNab
Supernatural Role: Lucy
Whedonverse Role: Harmony Kendall on Buffy and Angel
McNab has the distinction of playing a vampire on three different shows, first as peppy Harmony on Buffy and Angel and then as a bloodthirsty vamp on Supernatural.
#16 Julie Benz
Supernatural Role: Layla Rourke
Whedonverse Role: Darla on Buffy and Angel
Darla was a scary vampire, but on Supernatural Benz showed off a different side of her acting ability as a woman who sought out a faith healer to cure her brain tumor.
#15 Amy Acker
Supernatural Role: Andrea Barr
Whedonverse Roles: Winifred Burkle/Illyria on Angel and Dr. Claire Saunders/Whiskey on Dollhouse
Acker was the first member of the Whedonverse to show up on Supernatural when she played a widowed mother whose son was saved by Sam and Dean in the third episode of the series.
#14 Jewel Staite
Supernatural Role: Amy Pond
Whedonverse Role: Kaylee Frye on Firefly
Staite’s unending adorableness helped make her Supernatural monster so sympathetic that her death was viewed as a bad thing.
#13 Mark Sheppard
Supernatural Role: Crowley
Whedonverse Role: Badger on Firefly and Agent Graham Tanaka on Dollhouse
Sheppard is an actor who shows up in nearly every sci-fi series soon or later, so it’s no wonder that, after appearing in two Joss Whedon shows, he popped up as the King of Hell on Supernatural.
#10 Chad Lindberg
Supernatural Role: Ash
Whedonverse Role: Dave Kirby on Buffy
Something about Lindberg screams computer nerd. On Buffy he was one of the computer geeks who served Moloch, a demon living in a computer in a first season episode. On Supernatural he was the mullet-loving hillbilly hacker that helped Sam and Dean.
#9 Ridge Canipe
Supernatural Role: Young Dean Winchester
Whedonverse Role: Tommy on Angel
Before he was the younger version of Dean in the memorable season 3 episode “A Very Supernatural Christmas,” Canipe showed up as a boy whose life force was stolen by evil puppets on a kids’ TV show, Smile Time. That episode was written and directed by Ben Edlund, who would LATER write for Supernatural.
#8 Aldis Hodge
Supernatural Role: Jake Talley
Whedonverse Role: Masked Teen on Buffy
Before being the guy who killed Sam in the season 2 finale of Supernatural, Hodge had a very minor role as a teenager who snuck up on Buffy in a monster mask on Halloween and got punched because she thought he was a real monster.
#7 Sam Hennings
Supernatural Role: Samuel Colt
Whedonverse Role: Senator Boxbaum on Dollhouse
Supernatural fans know him as the iconic real-life Old West inventor Samuel Colt who, in the show’s mythology, built a special demon-killing gun. He also showed up as a powerful client of the Dollhouse.
#6 Jeff Kober
Supernatural Role: Randall
Whedonverse Role: Rack on Buffy
Buffy fans will always know Kober as the warlock who got Willow addicted to magic in season 6, but he also showed up as a prisoner in a season 2 episode of Supernatural.
#5 Jack Plotnick
Supernatural Role: Ian
Whedonverse Role: Deputy Mayor Allan Finch on Buffy
Plotnick can wear many different hats as an actor. In a suit he was the Mayor’s deputy in season 3 of Buffy (the human who was accidentally staked and killed by Faith). But in jeans and a t-shirt he was one of Sam’s nerdy co-workers in an alternate reality where Sam worked for the IT department of a large company.
#4 Jack Conley
Supernatural Role: Sheriff Al Britton
Whedonverse Roles: Gib Cain on Buffy and Sahjhan on Angel
Conley has a wide variety of roles. He was a werewolf hunter on Buffy and then showed up as the timeshifting demon on Angel who helped bring vampire hunter Holtz into the modern world. On Supernatural he turned up as a small-town sheriff who obsessively cleaned his hands.
#3 John Rubinstein
Supernatural Role: Charlie the Magician
Whedonverse Role: Linwood Murrow on Angel
He might look like a nice old man, but that’s far from the case. On Angel he was a lawyer at Wolfram and Hart in charge of Special Projects and on Supernatural he was an evil magician who used real magic to stay alive forever.
#2 Todd Stashwick
Supernatural Role: Dracula
Whedonverse Roles: The M’Fsahnik Demon on Buffy and the Vocah Demon on Angel
Stashwick has a lot of credits without makeup, but on Supernatural and in the Whedonverse, he was always a monster. He was a demon summoned by Wolfram and Hart to fight Angel in the first season finale of Angel and on Buffy the nerds of season 6 summoned him as the M’Fashnik demon (as in “mmm, cookies”). On Supernatural he showed up in the special black-and-white monster movie episode as a shapeshifter who took the form of Dracula.
#1 Frederic Lehne
Supernatural Role: Azazel the Yellow-Eyed Demon
Whedonverse Role: Ranse Burgess on Firefly
Best known as the evil Yellow-Eyed Demon on Supernatural, Lehne turned up on Joss Whedon’s Firefly as a rancher waging war against a brothel.
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
