Angel didn't die.

And Joss has said that Oz would have died if Willow had been dating him at that time.

Oz could have been killed, but it would have caused a completely different dynamic in Willow that would have made Season Four quite different. Him LEAVING was necessary for that arc.

Actually Seth Green's desire to leave make the arc necessary. He wasn't supposed to leave. And supposedly, eventually, the Oz character would have been killed, to turn Willow into Dark!Willow.

At which time?

ETA: Nubbermind.

At which time?

At the time when Tara bought it -- the precise identity of the corpse was secondary, as Cindy says, to turning Willow. It was the role the corpse had played that was key.

Nova, I think season 5 (which was going to happen to Tara, with the remnants of Dark-Willow in the actual arc. They ended up putting that off a year.).

Yeah, I can see that.

So they wanted to kill a guy character, they just didn't get the opportunity. Teehee.

I look at it from the standpoint that the (good) women* go down fighting.

Define fighting, then. Because of the four listed (Tara, Anya, Cordelia, Fred), only Anya went down fighting as *I* define fighting. Tara was, as mentioned, collateral damage. Cordelia got her ghostly visit thanks to the PTB, to help out "her" guy (I don't remember the word-for-word of it, and am too lazy to look it up). We've gone into, at the time of airing, the complete lack of agency for Fred.

Contrast that to the main men we saw go down (both on AtS, mind): Doyle, going to his doom to save others; and Wesley, wounded in battle. Even Gunn, whom we do not see die on screen, but whom we are told is mortally wounded, holds up for one last step into battle.

Oh, what the hell, any excuse to make a spreadsheet...

There were 56 regular or recurring characters on Buffy. At least according to TV Tome's list, which seemed slightly arbitrary, but it's close enough for this. 21 are women, and 11 of them died on the show. I'm counting Buffy (but just once) and I've got no idea if Chao Ann died or not. Of the 35 men listed, at least 18 died; there were a couple minor characters I wasn't sure about. (Personally, I'd make it 19 and count Angel as dying, too, because that was certainly the emotional impact even if he wasn't killed.)

Angel obviously had fewer women in recurring roles, but of 14 women, 5 died. Of 22 men, 15 died. (Wowie.)

I don't think it's that more women die, it's that more of the women are important, and their deaths have more impact on the audience and the other characters. So we remember them. And I agree with NovaChild that there are fewer men whose deaths would have had that same impact. The men are often cannon fodder. Or get killed by Buffy.

Strega, I'm spacing on being able to do it in my head, but do those numbers change when you don't count villians?

Oooo...

As you're going on any excuse for a spreadsheet tonight (and I'm lazy as hell tonight--witness my acute failure to go looking up specific lines), could we get a breakdown into white hats/black hats?