The Buffyverse Character Countdown (#8)

#8.

Hero: Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 7, Angel Season 5)

Only Season Seven Spike and Angel Spike.

It is key to remember that, under the rules of the Buffyverse, demons cannot make moral decisions. While their actions may indirectly cause good, these actions are not good in and of themselves. Thus, while Spike may do a number of very good things in seasons five and six, he’s not exactly a good person in those seasons. It’s only when he earns his soul at the end of season six that he becomes someone to admire. Spike is a complex character, and while we will see more of him on the villains list, his actions as a hero are relatively limited as compared to other characters. He’s delightful as a hero, but that heroism isn't exactly a dominating character trait.

After the… events of  “Seeing Red,” Spike realizes that the only way he'll ever be acceptable to Buffy is to undergo the trials to earn himself a soul. Needless to say, he’s not quite ready to deal with the consequences. He spends weeks in the basement of Sunnydale High torturing himself by burning himself upon a cross just to deal with the depression of knowing the horrible acts he’s committed over hundreds of years. It’s very difficult for him to operate in the realm of empathy and humanity. Moreover, unlike with Angel, the rest of the Scooby Gang are very reluctant to accept Spike's soul. Are we, as both the audience and as friends to the Scoobies, to give Spike a free pass for what he’s done just because he is now able to feel guilt about it? Unlike Angel, who is clearly divided from Angelus as a character, Spike the vampire with a soul and Spike the vampire without a soul are the same person. It is only Buffy who recognizes the enormity of what Spike has done and recognizes him as a complete being worthy of life. It’s a tremendous signal of her own growth, especially since Spike does not offer himself any forgiveness. Spike only wishes he might be able to earn Buffy's forgiveness, someday, despite him never being able to deserve it.

Throughout Season Seven, Spike must struggle with acceptance of his new soul and the responsibilities that come with it. He now has an instinct for what is right, but his soul also brings along a terrifying development: the malfunctioning of his chip. In previous seasons, Spike has avoided drinking people not because he did not want to but because he was not able to. However, with the chip on the fritz, Spike is finally capable of drinking people again. Indeed, he actually does so mid-season – though not by fault of his own. The First Evil implants a trigger deep within Spike’s memory – the song, “Early One Morning,” often sung to him by his mother – that causes Spike to vamp out and kill whomever is in reach. Ostensibly, this trigger is to be used to thin the Scoobies’ numbers and lead to Spike’s staking. Yet Spike actually manages to overcome the trigger by addressing the source of the trauma and facing down one of the main reasons he became a vampire: his dysfunctional relationship with his mother. The newly heroic Spike recaptures the best parts of William, namely the appreciation of beauty, and the best parts of his villainous personality, namely the swagger and the confidence.

His relationship with Buffy in Season Seven is also one of the most beautiful parts of the season. Spike knows he can never touch Buffy again after the events of “Seeing Red,” let alone kiss or sleep with her. He knows the abuse he is capable of committing. Buffy keeps her integrity and does come even close to offering immediate forgiveness, but she defends Spike’s life on several occasions throughout the season. As new alliances are forged and broken throughout the season, the only one that remains consistent is Spike’s unwavering loyalty to Buffy.  In the episode, “Touched,” Spike declares his love for Buffy once more, yet this love is finally the selfless breed of love great poets are able to capture. There is no doubt as to his honesty, and Buffy’s decision to let him hold her that night is the most adorable and authentic moment of compassion between the two in the entire series. It’s not an act of forgiveness, but it is an act of reconciliation. Angel’s return in “End of Days” does produce some jealousy within Spike, but Buffy’s choice to make Spike her champion in the fight against the First more than makes up for Spike’s initial outrage.

Spike’s character culminates in his sacrifice to defeat the First Evil at the end of “Chosen.” Personally, I think “Chosen” is a very middle-of-the-road episode and a somewhat frustrating series finale, but I do think that Spike’s send-off is completely perfect. The deus ex machina amulet explodes into light, using Spike’s life energy to destroy the First Evil’s entire army and close the Sunnydale Hellmouth for good. It’s a sign that he has become more than what he was, that his soul does give him heroic meaning, that there is redemption for even the most evil of deeds. The final moments between him and Buffy are some of the most extraordinary in the entire series, emotionally poignant in a way few other series finales are. From their final bit of dialogue, in which Buffy finally offers a glimmer of forgiveness for all that Spike has done, to Spike’s hand bursting into flame as he holds Buffy’s hand one last time (a clever allusion to Spike’s speech about love in the Season Three episode, “Lovers’ Walk”), to both characters’ inability to adequately form tears, the scene is perfect. Spike’s snicker as he vanishes into nothingness completes his arc from the series’ first ever truly sinister villain to its most self-sacrificing hero.

You’d think that after Spike’s sacrifice there would be nowhere else for his character to go. You’d be wrong. His dramatic re-emergence on Angel is a shocking reveal but an exhilarating one. Thanks to Spike, Angel has a true rival… not an angsty, stupid, pouty, annoying, self-entitled, murderous, piece-of-s*** terrorist of a son. Spike adds an entirely new dynamic to the show. Not only does he add charm and humor, two qualities lacking from Angel’s previous two seasons, back into the lineup, but he also serves as a wrench to the series’s main McGuffin: the Shanshu Prophecy. Now with two vampires with a soul in the world, Angel is no longer guaranteed his humanity; should Spike be the better hero, perhaps he will be the one who will find true redemption. After all, in many ways, Spike deserves it more. While Angel had his soul forced upon him, Spike embraced it by choice. On some level, he decided to change, even if it was for selfish reasons. Angel might have suffered longer and may be on better terms with the wrongs he has committed, but there is no guarantee that he would have realized them on his own. The rivalry the two had in Buffy is brought to a gloriously funny peak in Angel’s fifth season; both may be working together, but they’re working on completely separate levels.

The sheer number of great moments between the two vampires with souls in the fifth season cannot be counted. My personal favorite will always be their argument over whether a caveman or an astronaut would win in a fight (they argue about it for a good forty minutes). But there’s also the episode in which both try to earn Buffy’s affection back from the famous warrior known as The Immortal. Then there’s Spike’s mocking Angel for turning into a puppet in “Smile Time.” Most importantly, there’s "Destiny," the long-awaited grudge match between Angel and Spike as to who will be the champion of the Powers at Be. Sure, the result of the battle turns out to be an anti-climax orchestrated by Lindsey, but Spike’s victory over a morally conflicted Angel reveals just how much the character has grown over the course of eight seasons.

Spike’s heroic acts throughout the series speak for themselves, and he easily cements a spot within the top ten. Yet, given the magnitude of his sacrifice and the delightful humor his character brings to Angel, why isn’t he higher? His being a hero in only two Buffyverse seasons is certainly a big factor, but the bigger one is his slight regression during Angel. While he is a hero, first and foremost, he does a number of particularly… douche-y things in Angel. For instance, once his corporeal body is restored, the first thing he does is have a quick roll in the sack with Harmony, pretty much using her for sex so that he might achieve a release for all of his pent-up physical impulses. Granted, it’s played for comedy, and we know that Harmony really doesn’t care about Spike’s using her for a quick fling, but it’s somewhat jarring to see a character who finally learned to love authentically engage in an act of sexual hedonism just because he needs to “scratch an itch.” Plus, he doesn’t really have an arc to speak of in Angel’s fifth season outside of “Destiny”; once that episode is over, he’s just kind of there to make room for comedy. The writers didn’t really have a good plan for him in the finale, outside of one gloriously funny yet poignant scene in which he reads pretentious slam poetry to a bunch of bikers. Had these flaws been ironed out, he might have made it to the #7 spot, but I think he fits quite comfortably here. None can question he’s one of the top five characters in the show, overall, but we need to discuss the other side of his personality to see why.

    

Villain: Lindsey McDonald (Angel Seasons 1-2, 5)

For some, it’s shocking to see the most significant long-term antagonist on Angel only at the eighth spot on this list. After all, does not the first villain we meet in the series and Angel’s primary rival deserve a spot at the top of the villains’ throne for that series? However, much like Angel himself, I think Lindsey’s place in the scheme of Angel itself is somewhat overstated. While Lindsey is an excellent villain and a wonderful foil to the protagonist of the series, he’s not quite necessary for the series to function properly. At no point in Angel’s first two seasons does it feel as if Lindsey is a crucial piece of the puzzle or the only source from which the conflict stems: the heroic cast produces enough conflict within its own dynamics to sustain a series on its own. Moreover, other villains in the series do seem as if they are better integrated into the cast than Lindsey. Lindsey ranks as high as he does on the basis of his individual parts rather than the whole.

If one word adequately characterizes Lindsey, it’s “relentless.” Once he determines himself to completing a task or achieving some goal, there is no one on earth that is able to stop him. Born into a life of poverty and hunger, Lindsey clawed his way through high school, college, and law school – all while working multiple jobs to keep himself afloat – in order to be noticed by major law firms. Even here, he had to work his way through the mailroom of Wolfram & Hart before he was allowed to work major cases. Yet his work pays off, as he’s made an integral member of the Special Projects division under Holland Manners – defending demonic clients and generally “getting things done.” It’s here that he makes his first impression upon Angel, one of the worst in the entire series. Lindsey comes across as truly heartless, willing to go to any immoral lengths to protect his clients… even when those clients are unrepentant serial killers. If Holland is the brains behind the Wolfram & Hart schemes of the first two seasons, Lindsey is the muscle, the Agrippa to Holland’s Augustus, the face of evil that must truly be feared. Lindsey does, however, show much more humanity than his Wolfram & Hart peers, having an aversion to killing children and showing intense affection for Darla. He’s thus alternatively an untrustworthy ally or the most devious enemy Angel Investigations must face in the early seasons.

Lindsey’s rivalry with Angel operates on multiple levels. Obviously, their romantic affections for Darla produce tremendous antagonism, including one nasty scene in which Lindsey both runs Angel over with his truck and smashes him multiple times with a sledgehammer. Then there’s their origins to consider. Both Lindsey and Liam, Angel’s human self, were low-lifes, but Lindsey worked through his problems while Angel… turned into a vampire. Angel’s dramatic turnaround to owning his own investigative firm, having a group of supportive friends, having Darla’s affections (even if they are sinister in intention) produces no small amount of jealousy. Combine that with the sheer power gap between them and Angel’s cutting off Lindsey’s hand in “To Shanshu in L.A.,” preventing Lindsey from ever playing the guitar (his only release from his stressful life) again, and one’s got the set up for a great rivalry.

Nonetheless, there’s something… lacking from Lindsey in the first two seasons of Angel. Many of these problems can be ascribed to the wonky pacing of the first season: Lindsey only comes into his own in “Blind Date,” the penultimate episode. That’s a looong time without any development. More importantly, though, Lindsey has a bad habit of being overshadowed in each of the arcs he is involved in. Throughout the second season, he tends to feel like a second fiddle to Holland and Darla in terms of the threat level to Angel Investigations. He even ends up on the wrong side of his feud with Lilah Morgan for control of Special Projects in the wake of Holland’s death, since his special treatment under Holland’s regime automatically grants Lilah the audience’s sympathy. He might be a capable antagonist, but he’s never quite the great villain we need. Sure, he has a backstory – something most Buffyverse villains do not have – but it’s a relatively cliché one that doesn’t make him that interesting. By the time he departs the series at the end of the second’s season’s main arc, the audience pretty much says “so long and thanks for all the fish” – especially considering that his last episode features him suffering from having a suicidal replacement hand. The plot point is exactly as stupid as it sounds.

                                                                                        

However, everything changes in Season Five. It’s here that we finally get the terrific rival to Angel that Lindsey promised to be in his first appearance. Honestly, Lindsey is such a good antagonist in Season Five that it’s almost like hearing the writers apologize for what happened to Lilah in Season Four. He’s far more diabolical, crafty, and menacing, yet he retains the inferiority to Angel that keeps his character consistent across the series and keeps the show’s philosophical universe in balance. Enraged that Angel has climbed up the ladder of Wolfram & Hart far faster than he ever could (and noticing the power vacuum in place now that Lilah has died), Lindsey schemes to use his contacts to bring down Angel from the outside. He ensures Spike’s resurrection such that there is a rival to Angel in the eyes of the Powers at Be, and he feigns Doyle’s identity in order to feed Spike false information about his destiny. His conflict with Angel comes to a head in “You’re Welcome,” in which he unleashes Wolfram & Hart’s anti-Angel fail-safe, a zombie army dedicated to killing the members of Angel Investigations without mercy. The episode's climax is the single best choreographed fight scene in the series, featuring a swordfight good enough to rival that of “Becoming Part 2” and one of the best fistfights in the series. It’s a brilliant spectacle, with the two rivals getting right into the meat of each other’s characters with some of the best insults in the series.

Even Lindsey’s final bow in Season Five is brilliant. Defeated by Angel, with his last plan exhausted, Lindsey finds himself trapped by the Senior Partners in a particularly horrifying torture dimension: forced to re-live a perfect suburban day over and over, all before having his heart ripped out by a giant demon. It’s a modern day Prometheus torture, except Lindsey is being punished for being a destroyer rather than being a creator. Angel Investigations eventually rescue him for the purpose of thwarting the schemes of the Cirlce of the Black Thorn, but, even here, Angel does not trust him. Lindsey appears to get his second wind by helping Angel Investigations kill off members of the Circle, but Angel betrays Lindsey in the finale, having Lorne kill the arrogant and scheming lawyer off so that he won’t become a loose cannon and end. Lindsey’s disappointment at his own death is a wonderful send-off to a character who never could grasp the meaninglessness of his own existence.

I am of the opinion, though, that Lindsey’s ultimate meaninglessness should be reflected in his placement on this list. Certainly, it might have been Joss Whedon’s intention that Lindsey be ultimately insignificant as a “main antagonist” as a metaphor for the meaningless of all individuals in an indifferent universe, but I can’t help but find many more villains in the series more interesting than him. He only gets as high on this list as he does for his longevity, his excellent Season Five appearances, and his villainous acts being genuinely threatening. Otherwise, I don’t think he’s nearly as good as his main rivals, both heroic and villainous. We'll get to them in a few days.