In the final episode, Angel expects to save the world by sacrificing his life.
He is villain, hero, and antihero all at once. Totally understandable.īuffy the Vampire Slayer is a multi-layered show with many strands that explain its popularity and its following even now. He wants to be good but only sometimes and not yet.
He wants to fit in but he just can’t manage it. He wants someone to love him, first Drusilla and then Buffy, but never succeeds in attaining the relationship he wants. In fact Spike remains always insecure, a feeling he covers with a flippant swagger. He certainly never achieves Angel’s almost arrogant level of self-confidence. Yet, when he loses his soul, he becomes über evil. He strides through the episodes like Cotton Mather in a leather coat. But when he reforms, he reforms all the way, becoming, to my way of thinking, a little self-righteous. As a vampire, he has a rep as the baddest of the bad, with no pity or remorse. He is never really happy again.Īngel, on the other hand, never worries about fitting in. His wistful regret for a happy time that has passed really resonated with me. Recalling his experiences with Angel and Drusilla during the Russian Revolution, Spike tells Buffy that it was the best time of his life. He has his own little family and is too scary to be mocked. Transformed to a vampire, he becomes part of Angel’s coven, and for the first time, he becomes part of something. Drusilla (Juliet Landau) seduces him with the promise of love and acceptance. In flashbacks, we see William in a Victorian drawing room, writing really terrible poetry to the fashionable and beautiful object of his desire. Although his love for Buffy endures, he remains Spike, flawed and fascinating.Ĭan’t we all just get along?He never really fits in, not with anyone. Spike tries to change, over and over, but doesn’t succeed. And Riley turns to the vampire junkies, because they need something from him Buffy doesn’t. Angel’s love for her almost costs him his soul. Look at the relationships the romantic leads have with Buffy. He may be fighting an evil vampire one second and making a deal with a demon the next. He wants to be good but he enjoys being a bad boy too much. No one in the gang, not even Buffy, ever trusts him completely, and with good reason. Spike becomes the romantic lead and, arguably, the most important male character in the Buffy world. He never becomes a replacement for Angel, even when David Boreanz (who plays Angel) leaves the show. And a character who is capable of great evil and great good. And his very unexpected truce with the Slayer foreshadows his future, as a semi-regular member of the Gang. Spike’s flash of altruism is explained by his self-interest he doesn’t want the world destroyed. Angel, who has lost his soul with the consummation of his love for Buffy, is trying to raise a demon to destroy everything. As early as 1998, Spike, still an evil force, allies himself with Buffy to save the world. Certainly Spike plays the role of second banana when he is a member of Angel’s vamp group.īut as the show moves forward, Spike evolves into a more complicated character. Spike fills the same role as foil to Angel. In fact, they compete for the title of homecoming queen in the larger high school world. Cordelia serves as the envious, less popular girl, wanting to take Buffy’s place. Buffy is the prom queen and Angel is king. The Buffy world begins in high school and, to some degree, that dynamic continues throughout the show. But for me his appeal is more nuanced than that. Is it because of the appeal of James Marsters and those killer cheekbones? Again, partly. Is he popular because he is the bad boy, the antihero? Partly. Even when he becomes, well, not good exactly, but less evil, and attains his heart’s desire-Buffy-he remains a bad boy. Why is this? Shouldn’t Angel, the brooding vamp who will lose his soul if he experiences true happiness, be the most popular? Spike, after all, is evil. Spike, in fact, became one of the most popular characters on the show and a cult favorite. But he is definitely my favorite and, in my very informal survey, Spike, the vampire who goes from evil to good and back again-and is frequently both at the same time-is by far the more popular. And Spike? Well, “reform” is not a word one thinks of in connection to Spike. Angel, the reformed vampire with a soul, is the hero and romantic lead, a tortured Heathcliffesque character who broods about his evil past. In fact, the names of the two most important male characters would seem to indicate that Spike, whose name sounds like a street tough, is the villain, and Angel, whose name sounds, well, angelic, is the hero.
#Spike from buffy tv
I’m sure this title makes no sense to those souls who have never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which aired on TV from 1996 to 2003.
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