Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Nicholas Brendon died in his sleep of natural causes on Friday, March 20, 2026. In 2023, Brendon revealed that he had suffered a heart attack and had a congenital heart defect. He also had cauda equina syndrome and had multiple spinal surgeries. He was 54 years old.

Brendon starred in all seven seasons of Buffy as Xander Harris, one of the Slayer’s best friends and often the show’s comic relief. He was an unfailingly loyal friend and brave young man who always fought by the Slayer’s side despite being one of the only characters without some kind of supernatural power.

He was born Nicholas Brendon Schultz on April 12, 1971, in Los Angeles. He started acting as a method for managing a stutter that he’d had since he was a child. When acting wasn’t panning out, he went back to school for a period to study medicine. Then he worked as a plumber’s assistant, janitor for a veterinarian, was a waiter, and a production assistant on the TV show, Dave’s World.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was Brendon’s first big role, which ran from 1997 to 2003. While on the show, he was in Psycho Beach Party and voiced Xander in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds video game. After the series, Brendon was in the short-lived Kitchen Confidential TV show and TV movies including Celeste in the City, Relative Chaos, and Fire Serpent.

He had a recurring role in Criminal Minds as Kevin Lynch, had a four-episode arc on Private Practice, and was in episodes of Hollywood Heights and Faking It. He was in King of Crime, Dawn, his last completed project was 2024’s Yesterday Is Almost Here, and he had completed filming for a project called Once in a Blue Moon.

Brendon was arrested several times in the 2010s for vandalism, theft, and domestic violence, and struggled with depression and alcoholism. In more recent years he mostly pursued visual art, selling and exhibiting his photography and paintings.