Angel
- Assuming he was immune due to having a century's experience quashing semi-external evil influences (due to suppressing the demon) is just as consistent with mind control - more so, since the very specific nature of the control argues against a purely biological aspect.
- Word of God is that Billy's mother was a good demon woman raped by his evil human father, so she surely didn't have misogyny powers, but perhaps manifested some other form of emotion projection.
- Faith never raped anyone while in Sunnydale - this is pure speculation. Some may refer to her tryst with Xander, but he was a (very) willing participant and she only turned violent post-coitus.
- Faith absolutely raped Riley. She stole Buffy's body and took her boyfriend for a joyride.
- He didn't exactly have a terrible time. Not sure where this Faith-rape narrative comes from with some Buffy fans, but that was not her character. She uses people for sex, but she isn't a sexual predator beyond knowing what she wants and distancing herself emotionally because of past times she's been burned. As she says: 'get some, get gone'.
- "He didn't exactly have a terrible time"? I could throw up. That's rape apologism. Riley didn't consent to having sex with Faith, therefore it was rape. By definition. Period. She didn't care how good a time he had or have any respect for his right to choose whom he slept with. The legal term is rape by deception; it's no different from a man sneaking into bed with his identical twin's wife. You going to say it's not rape because she enjoyed it when she thought he was her husband, even though she'd never have slept with him willingly?
- This could be considered rape of Buffy, too, since it was her body that was being used without her consent. Also, Faith attempted to rape and murder Xander and would have had Angel not stepped in.
- Faith NEVER tries to rape Xander. She tries to strangle him, but not rape him. She never takes any actions that even suggest rape. That wasn't how the character was ever portrayed.
- Never takes any actions that even suggest it? Don't be ridiculous. Faith pins Xander to the bed and begins straddling him against his will before it turns into strangling. She says she can make him scream (in a sexual way) before she says she can make him die. In her current wild frame of mind where sex and death and guilt and lack-of-guilt are all mixed up, she clearly considers forcing herself on him before she decides to throttle him instead. That said, I don't think she molested Wesley. She was going for torture only, to provoke Angel, and the way Wesley acts around her later doesnt' suggest it.
- Faith still didn't try to rape Xander. She never intended for anything other than non-sexual violence to occur in that scene. Considering forcing themselves on someone, even if true here, is not the same as actually doing it. Many fans have rewritten this scene in their heads retroactively, in many cases having not seen it for years.
- Just want to point out that when Angel breaks up Faith and Xander in "Enemies", he clearly thought he was breaking up a rape attempt. He even says "He forgot the safe word, didn't he?" to Faith. Faith doesn't dissuade him of that notion.
- This is flatly untrue. The Buffyverse has never been linked to the 'Whoniverse' officially/canonically.
- With most of the above though, it could be argued that he had ulterior, and noble, motives: He wiped everyone to save Connor (and it pained him to do it), he killed the guy because he was outright evil (Lilah was bad news, but she still was capable of doing good when she needed to) and Angel didn't want that on his team, Pavayne tried to sacrifice Fred, which is pretty much a good way to get everyone on Team Angel to murder you, and the Spike thing was just petty bickering, which is par for the course between them. As for the Circle, Angel had to assume that he was under surveillance by Hamilton and the Senior Partners (which, indeed, he was); if he told one person, and it was found out that they were working with Angel, that person would be dead, and Angel would be too. By not telling the team until the last minute, and when they were all together, he was able to strike the Circle down without them seeing it coming.
- Everything he did post his second soul restore sadly was in character for Angel - he is a guy trying to do his best to fight the good fight against harder and harder challenges. It's unsurprising he had a number of slips along the way. There's certainly nothing in canon that suggests he has 'half a soul'.
- With most of the above though, it could be argued that he had ulterior, and noble, motives: He wiped everyone to save Connor (and it pained him to do it), he killed the guy because he was outright evil (Lilah was bad news, but she still was capable of doing good when she needed to) and Angel didn't want that on his team, Pavayne tried to sacrifice Fred, which is pretty much a good way to get everyone on Team Angel to murder you, and the Spike thing was just petty bickering, which is par for the course between them. As for the Circle, Angel had to assume that he was under surveillance by Hamilton and the Senior Partners (which, indeed, he was); if he told one person, and it was found out that they were working with Angel, that person would be dead, and Angel would be too. By not telling the team until the last minute, and when they were all together, he was able to strike the Circle down without them seeing it coming.
- Kindof sortof Jossed by the fact that Illyria knew of them as demons and said so.
- On the other hand, Pyleans seem to know about them, and Illyria's statement was somewhat vague. Perhaps the Wolf, Ram and Hart are just a name. Think of brand names like Kodak, Xerox or Macintosh. They're just names that symbolize something. Wolf Ram and Hart is just that - a name or symbol for something even more terrible than any demon or sorcerer could be: the inherent darkness of humanity.
- As has been revealed in canon (including the official canonical comics), the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart were indeed lesser demons in the Primordium Age and have built their power over millions of years.
- Also, vampires were created when one of The Old Ones mixed their blood with a human's, indicating that humans predate vampires.
- Angel and company toured the restored building and staff before Angel accepted the deal.
- A Wizard Did It. Or Wolfram & Hart pulled a Batman Gambit.
- The instant he entered the limo, since it was a mystical symbolization of good versus evil, even entering the limo showed they where considering the deal.
- The Beast killed the LA staff. The building was intact and new staff can always be hired. W&H is a huge organisation with many branches in many countries, this was easily within their capabilities.
- It would have been a self-fulfilling prophecy; had Angel committed himself to serving the Black Thorn, it would have taken him so far off the path of righteousness that Shanshu would no longer be possible for him. Of course, that was never his intention.
- In the canonical (that is, plotted by Joss) Angel: After The Fall comic book, Angel is human again, although how he got that way has not been revealed.
- He signed it Angel. His name is Liam.
- Better yet. He NEVER signed it away because his Shanshu was already fulfilled. Remember when Angel turned human in 'I Will Remember You'? The prophecy occurred already, and he already gave it up. He's just the only one who remembers it happened.
- Jossed in the season six comic books. Angel did indeed sign away his role in the Shanshu prophecy. However, Wolfram & Hart never filed the signed prophecy; because they didn't, Angel will eventually get the shanshu. They turned him human at great expense, but it's not the true Shanshu. That's yet to come.
- What's more, Given that Angel's destined role in the Shanshu Prophecy has been, at last, revealed to be as the destroyer of the world and not its savior, unambiguously doing away with the "no one knows what side" bugaboo, Wolfram and Hart has no interest in allowing him to sign it away in the first place; their vehement interest in Angel is, and has always been, to fulfill it.
- Buffy Season 8 has what is almost certainly him turning it down by refusing to create the next universe with Buffy (due to her not wanting to), which would end this one.
- Maybe it already came to pass in '98, but the whole gut stabbing and adverting it prevented it from being fulfilled.
- What's more, Given that Angel's destined role in the Shanshu Prophecy has been, at last, revealed to be as the destroyer of the world and not its savior, unambiguously doing away with the "no one knows what side" bugaboo, Wolfram and Hart has no interest in allowing him to sign it away in the first place; their vehement interest in Angel is, and has always been, to fulfill it.
- And anyway, who ever heard of a prophecy you can sign away? What kind of cheap-ass clairvoyance did that prophet have?
- Whoever heard of a demonic law firm? <grin>
- It's a Deal with the Devil. You can sign away lots of things with those.
- In the episode "The House Always Wins" Angel actually lost his destiny at a casino, which was then going to sell it to the highest bidder. Presumably, if you can gamble away your destined fate, you can sign it away, too.
- He has all the right attributes: immortal, suave, interested in sex, and competent.
- It's confirmed in the Season 8 Buffy comic or Season 6 Angel comic (I can't remember which) that the Doctor is a part of this world. He can be seen in his 10th incarnation running with Rose or Martha (again, can't remember which) through the streets in the background of one issue.
- It's Rose and it can be found here◊
- A silly writer/cartoonist nod - this is like saying Star Wars is part of Star Trek because a clever FX guy put a Millenium Falcon into a battle (the Borg battle in First Contact). Neither make sense at all.
- It's Rose and it can be found here◊
- Without the mustache, or he'd never get laid, Willing Suspension of Disbelief or not.
- Perhaps it would have been Sean Maher. Just sayin'. He'd have to fit in as a high class guy in 1800s Rome, and I can't think of Tudyk that dressed up.
- Makes sense.
- It would have to be an immortal being who used the Superstar spell since he lived 350 years at least.
- Life extension magic exists in the Buffyverse (just look at Mayor Wilkins and his 100 years of youth), and I'm pretty sure a guy under a spell to succeed at everything he does would be, y'know, successful if he went out looking for some.
- The Mayor sold his soul (he mentioned it once or twice).
- Life extension magic exists in the Buffyverse (just look at Mayor Wilkins and his 100 years of youth), and I'm pretty sure a guy under a spell to succeed at everything he does would be, y'know, successful if he went out looking for some.
- Unlikely since, in the canonical Buffy: Season Eight comics, Andrew mentions that the Buffy that was dating the Immortal was, in fact, one of two decoys, and that having this decoy date the Immortal was a choice he made with the intention of humor by humiliating Angel and Spike. The Supperstar spell usually wouldn't allow someone to be that nonchalant about anyone.
- This would explain the Fray comic showing up, he just brought it with him on his way in.
- While Joss being an atheist and an absurdist makes this WMG seem unlikely consider that he refers to God as "the sky bully". Also consider the PTB's and their angels' attitude in Season 6 and it could be right.
- The season 5 episode "You're Welcome" makes this verrry unlikely. The Powers That Be sent Cordelia back temporarily in that episode to stop Wolfram & Hart from breaking his spirit when that was exactly what the Senior Partners wanted to happen. Also, Cordelia's visions (which come from the Powers That Be) set Angel on the path to finding and destroying the Black Thorn, which the Senior Partners absolutely did not want Angel doing.
- If the PTB and the Senior Partners were the same force that just enjoyed watching destruction, then it would have made more sense for them to have let the Circle of Black Thorns fulfill The Plan and then let Angel & Co. deal with it later. By having Angel stop the event ahead of time, the ultimate apocalyptic battle became a (relatively) small fight with maybe 2000 total participants (including the army at the end) and no innocent bystander deaths.
- The PTB and the Senior Partners are all Tzeentch. Even more his style.
- This one's contradicted in the episode: the hospital staff say that Dana was always insane, but her super strength and speed only appeared a few months ago (when Willow awakened all the potential slayers at once).
- Seconded. You even ignored the fact that Buffy and the Watchers themselves have mentioned that her death technically removed her from the slayer line.
- Yeah, he was tame compared to last time. But how do you explain his trying to turn Faith, or the mental journey in "Orpheus" where he met Angel?
- Jasmine-possessed Cordelia addressed Angelus as "Angelus" when talking to him mentally. There is no way that a renegade Power That Be who was telepathically communicating with Angelus would be mistaken in that identification.
- Maybe Jasmine is just that dumb. Let's take a look at how that might go down:
- "Angelus why are you thinking such happy and pleasant thoughts about raising a family with this blonde girl?" "Oh, uh I, uh, I wanna rape her?" "Truly you are the greatest evil in the world Angelus!"
- Maybe Jasmine is just that dumb. Let's take a look at how that might go down:
- Angelus always seems to talk a bigger game than he plays. He killed Jenny Calender and some nameless students in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but that's the extent of his successful crimes in his first appearance. He makes lots of threats while he's in a cage (including one threat toward Fred that the writers probably wouldn't have dared state so bluntly back in S2 Buffy); but once he's out, he doesn't do any permanent damage. This is probably more the result of Status Quo Is God than a reflection on Angelus, but it does make his onscreen rampages tame compared to his reputation.
- Angelus wanted to torture Angel's friends as is his M.O. and tried to find carnage in the meantime but had trouble making any because of all the demons and whatnot already killing and all. He was only free for a short time.
- ^ This. One of the things one has to remember when talking about Angelus reputation is that it is not about the body counts, it is about the way those bodies ended up. He likes to focus on one person at a time and torture their minds in the way he determines is best before moving on to the final kill or worse turning them. See Drusilla. I always got the impression in Buffy Season 2 that Angel was just taking his time, but you notice as he starts to realize the scoobies are closing in, he picks up the pace some. Just a bit too late. In Angel season 4, he knows his time is limited due to the reasons he was released so he doesn't have time to bring his "A" Game. That and of course the demons and other vampires after the beast arrives. Had he been given time (and the show been a very different kind of show) we might have seen him really go all out on Faith. And I imagine turning her would have been just the beginning of some potential plan of doom. Probably involving getting back at that bitch Buffy that Angel loved.
- Would they also have danced the dance of joy?
- If this happened around the time of Firefly, it's more likely they would be dancing the dance of shame. Numfar, do the dance of shame.
- Maybe you mean the dance of AWESOMENESS...
- I think they meant for its cancellation...
- Numfar, do the dance of executive meddling.
- If this happened around the time of Firefly, it's more likely they would be dancing the dance of shame. Numfar, do the dance of shame.
- I don't buy it. The thing with prophesies is that they always come to pass. If Wesley hadn't kidnapped Connor then Connor would have grown up in Angel's world training from the time he could walk. Sure his skill set would be different but he'd still be an accomplished fighter. Even if he wasn't Sahjan would either stumble into Connor's path accidently (remember he didn't recognize Connor so he didn't know WHAT human he needed to be avoiding) and get himself killed or it would happen entirely accidentally. He'd end up getting in a car accident and killing Sahjan. The best thing Sahjan could have done for his health was endear himself to Angel, treat the child like his own son and live a nice healthy life until Connor was forced to put down his beloved Uncle to end his pain. (Or you know he kills his uncle in a car accident).
Near the end of the series, the Circle presents Angel with a contract to remove himself from the prophecy. Surely that is the solution to the "two champions" problem? Perhaps the only reason Angel could sign away the prophecy is that Spike gave the prophecy a "backup" Shanshu candidate. If Angel signs his destiny away and Wolfram & Hart ever bother to file the papers, then it no longer makes the Shanshu prophecy untrue. Spike is now the only one prophesied to become human after the apocalypse; this also fixes the whole cosmic balance situation.
- Pff, Spike IS the vampire with a soul foretold in the Shanshu prophecy. He died in Chosen, then returned to life in Angel.
- It gets better. For a brief while in Angel, Spike was a ghost vampire. Surely you know why that should normally be impossible. Of course, he couldn't fulfill the prophecy unless he was, um, no longer dead...
- Jossed. In canonical Angel After the Fall (the comic book), Angel is told that he was always the subject of the prophecy and that it has only ever referred to him. Additionally, the world spinning off its axis was a trick by Lindsey and Eve, who hoped that Spike would kill Angel (Lindsey's archenemy). If the world were falling apart because of the two ensouled vampires, then how did it return to normal at the end despite nothing being accomplished and the supposed cup that would fix everything being a fake?
- Additionally, Spike got his soul roughly the time Angel started its fourth season. The world didn't go all screwy then, it waited for Spike to come back after his Heroic Sacrifice. While Eve attempts to Hand Wave this with her bit about him not being a champion then, remember that she and Lindsey are making the whole thing up. Prophecies aren't a roulette table that you spin and see who it lands on, what occurs in the prophecy occurs exactly as it was meant to, in precisely the way it was meant to, to precisely who it was meant to. Whether it means Angel or Spike (it means Angel, After the Fall confirmed this), it is, has always, and will always be specifically for that one individual and nobody else.
- Anybody else getting sick of Jossed getting thrown around like it's some unbeatable trump card? The comic book did not "joss" anything, and prophecies work however writers want them to work. At one point, Eve claimed Angel and Spike were both in the running. Later, the Circle claimed that they could waive Angel's role in the prophecy. Still later, the Senior Partners claimed that it was always Angel alone. That's nice. Now everyone who actually believes that the series will canonically end with Angel evil and responsible for it all, raise your hands. That's what I thought. As for how the world got back on track, Eve claimed that the Senior Partner found a temporary fix for the situation. Was she telling the truth? Was the Circle telling the truth? Were the Senior Partners telling the truth? Until the Apocalypse happens and we see it for ourselves, (and not through visions from Wolfram & Hart, who've already used false visions to manipulate Team Angel once) that's what Wild Mass Guessing is for.
- Even though you're throwing your "anything can happen in fiction" like an unbeatable trump card yourself, still it fails to explain why both the PTB and the Senior Partners are focusing so much on Angel (6 seasons + bringing him back at the beginning of BtVS season 3... mentioning all the single interferences would be an almost impossible task), and they never focus on Spike. The only time Spike was marginally included in this was in season 5, but in that case it was both because of Eve's and Lindsey's plot to turn him against Angel (again, the focus is on Angel) and because he was in that condition for wearing a magic amulet that was meant for (guess who?) Angel in the first place. It ended there. So, if Word of God happens to confirm something that logic suggests, it makes Angel a better candidate for the Shanshu prophecy than "you never know... it could be someone else". Of course everybody also believes that Angel will say "Screw Destiny!" and Take a Third Option, but that has nothing to do with Spike being at the center of any prophecy (a surpassed theory, by the end of Season 5). Spike still hangs around just because he's a cool character.
- About BtVS S3, well, if the Powers can see all possible futures and saw one where Mayor Snake owned Sunnydale, Glory destroyed the universe and The First took over, and then saw the main universe, which would you select?
- But it's still his alone, the Shanshu prophecy that is. Also there's only one logical outcome. Angel will play on the part of good because A) if Angel becomes Angelus and end the whole universe then there will be nothing left and it would be hard to claim a reward in a universe that doesn't exist. B) if Angelus participates in the apocalypse and the universe isn't completely destroyed, then he will be turned human and killed practically instantly and Angelus is definitely smart enough to figure that out. So the only logical answer left is C) Angel or Angelus works for the side of good and stops the apocalypse.
- So the Senior Partners were lying about Angel's role in the prophecy, but at the same time telling the truth about Angel being the subject of the prophecy? That isn't jossing, that's just picking and choosing which particular elements of the chronically lying villains' claims to believe. Angel's role in the Shanshu prophecy is hardly set in stone just because Wolfram & Hart gave Wesley a vision. Even ascended-to-a-higher-plane Cordelia didn't buy it. It just seems to me like fans who should know by now that Joss Whedon loves messing with people's expectations are falling hook, line and sinker for another bait and switch plot twist. Remember "the father will kill the son"? Or heck, the first Shanshu interpretation, as in "Angel will die during the apocalypse"? Until it actually happens, we don't know what the prophecy means, except that, because it's Whedon, it'll deliberately subvert whatever seemed like the obvious answer. Which makes me think that, both because it looks so clearly like it was always Angel, and because the only source we really have for that is the Senior Partners, that's going to turn out to be a red herring.
- It helps none of this that we never get to see the prophecy directly (justified by it being in an arcane tongue); all we get are paraphrased excerpts which, given how well Wesley starts out, is likely a "Blind Idiot" Translation
- The canonical series helps clear it up and cements Angels part, as Angel is responsible for almost destroying the World. For saving the World and changing the World in relation to magic and the supernatural. Spike not so much.
The Beast slaughtered every single employee of Wolfram & Hart, even the ones who were absent that day, during Season 4. So how did the Senior Partners manage to repopulate the office so quickly? Well, we know Wolfram & Hart has a ton of branches set up in other dimensions. It makes sense that, to get the LA branch up and running immediately for Team Angel, they had to transfer most of the staff in from some of those off-world branches. That would go a long way toward explaining why the majority of the lawyers walking around Season 6's Wolfram & Hart are demons.
- Except that everybody at W&H knew from the start what kind of place you were working for. Even ordinary security guards know that they have vampire detectors (namely demons sitting in the security office crying out whenever a vampire enters the building), and know what to do when they go off. And the lawyers keep making dark jokes about the people who get "fired" or "sacked" all the time. The new staff still seems to be mostly human, apart from a few exceptions most of the demons in the building seem to be clients. The chances are that the new employees were simply transferred from other Earth offices - they seem to have them in numerous major cities around the globe.
- In addition, the ordinary security guards performed on-the-spot executions if the Special Projects lead deemed it a requirement. At W&H, you are summarily KILLED if they find out you're going to leave for a rival firm and take clients with you. Not just sacked - shot in the head.
One thing we notice about Darla is that she rarely uses violence to secure her victims, preferring to lure them - completely opposite to how Slayers go after vampires.
In the flashback of her turning in Darla, she doesn't seem shocked in the least to see The Master in full vamp face. He seems to have sought her out just to turn her into a vampire, which he would only do if there was something special about her. Making a Slayer a vampire seems like a good recipe to make a powerful vampire.
She has no memory of her human life or name despite being young by vampire standards - only 300 or so. She may have repressed those memories because of the dissonance between her lives or because she's trying to get rid of leftover instincts telling her to destroy vampires - including herself. Her breakdown when returning to human is odd, since it isn't motivated by guilt or anything else one would expect to come with a soul; but this is the return of all those Slayer instincts telling her to destroy vampires, which still includes her by her way of thinking.
She didn't seem to lose much strength on her return to human form; vampire strength was replaced by Slayer strength.
She is the first vampire we ever see on BtVS, which should mean something.
- As a matter of fact, the first time I saw Buffy, (blonde, in a weird place at night, 'normal' girl) I thought Darla WAS Buffy! (Y'know, until she sprouted her vamp face.)
In the end, both times she dies, she is killed by a vampire, not by the Slayer or any human: She's killed by Angel in Angel and by herself in Lullaby.
Plus, it would be cool.
- It's still pure speculation with zero evidence. Darla was 388 when dusted (sired in 1609 - stated onscreen in an Angel episode). This is actually fairly old for a vampire, because Whedon let American views of what is 'old' colour his work (to most people in the US, anything longer than 100 years ago is ancient, whereas I have the ruins of a 2,000 year-old Roman fort visible from my house). She wasn't surprised to see the Master because she was near death and actually thought he WAS Death himself. Vampires aren't the inverse of the people they are in life (virtually every vampire in the show disproves this claim), but even if they were, this isn't evidence to support the claim. She also isn't any stronger compared to normal vampires - Buffy bests her fairly easily in 'Welcome to the Hellmouth', and Buffy at that point wasn't a hugely experienced Slayer (she wasn't a noob, but she was relatively new to the gig).
- Vampires aren't the opposite of their human form, they're actually mostly the same with some fairly standard changes. Willow was bisexual and so was vampire-Willow, Harmony was extremely susceptible to peer pressure as a human and a vampire, Darla was a prostitute as a human and as a vampire lured victims by seduction, Drusilla was insane both as a human and as a vampire, Liam was a reckless party guy and so was Angelus, etc. The big difference is that vampires: a) lack empathy and enjoy killing, and b) have reduced inhibitions. Very often vampires express traits that they were repressing as humans, for example with vampire-Willow being openly bisexual while Willow spent quite awhile expressing as straight and then shifted to lesbian. The only exception is Spike.
- He's an exception? Not so much. Spike showed William he didn't have to be the meek little bookworm that he'd made of himself. Both personas were full of passion, all the time. Spike's lack of empathy meant that he didn't care anymore about what others thought of his passions and acted on them, rather than writing bad poetry the way his human self had. Also, he had the Waspinator reaction to his change: damn, the new me is cool.
- This is off the mark. We are shown quite clearly in 'Lies My Parents Told Me' and 'Fool for Love' that Spike is a persona built by William once he became a vampire. He hated his middle-class, repressed gentleman self and deliberately became Spike, a rough and tumble working-class personality complete with a more pronounced accent. Spike used this persona to distance himself from who he once was, and it was this persona that embraced his passionate side.
- "She is the first vampire we ever see on BtVS, which should mean something." Of course it does! It means two things: 1) It means that, in a vampire show, someone had to be the first vampire shown. 2) It means that probably (but not necessarily) that particular vampire was going to have an important role in the plot of that episode and/or the entire season (she was both... kinda). It doesn't imply anything else, really. Also, as stated above, not only vampire-selves share all the traits of the human-selves (except compassion, etc.)... we also do know what Darla was in life. She was a prostitute. Ouch!
- So, where is the WMG that Inara descended from her?
- Um... it's right here. You just made it.
- In support of this point, it would explain why members of Darla's line - Angelus > Drusilla > Spike - are so much stronger than other vampires, beyond Plot Armor. Sure, they're a pretty close direct line to the Master, but the Master's other vampires didn't show the same level of resilience. It's because the members of her line have a little bit of Slayer in them! This could also potentially explain why every single vampire that's not one of the main four is a total idiot, while those four remain, for the most part, intelligent (though they all have their moments, of course). They've got part of the Slayer's power in them, which is mostly demon in itself, but includes a little bit more humanity than what's available for other vampires.
- They aren't stronger than normal vampires. Angelus and Darla are old, have been about a while and therefore have had time to grow in strength/ability. Spike from day one sets out to make himself more than he was, picks fights whenever he can, and tends to win. He also tends to either pick fights where the odds are in his favour, or withdraws when he starts to lose (in contrast with most vampires who often keep attacking even when outmatched or surprised). So it's no surprise he's very dangerous. Drusilla is a little older than Spike and at full strength, doesn't quite have the same fighting ability he does. She's also not ever shown to be particularly strong.
- It would also explain why Angel and Spike both have a thing for Slayers (both in a romantic sense when it comes to Buffy, and a broader sense, with their fascination with Slayers in general)—it's in their bloodline.
- there's a comic story out there, somewhere, in one of the Omnibus I believe that has something akin to this; where a Slayer became a Vampire, she was Japanese and got tricked, or something (my memory is a tad rusty on this) and became a vampire. So Darla being a Slayer turned would not be out of the question; her actions all in all could possibly support this.
- Vampires aren't the opposite of their human form, they're actually mostly the same with some fairly standard changes. Willow was bisexual and so was vampire-Willow, Harmony was extremely susceptible to peer pressure as a human and a vampire, Darla was a prostitute as a human and as a vampire lured victims by seduction, Drusilla was insane both as a human and as a vampire, Liam was a reckless party guy and so was Angelus, etc. The big difference is that vampires: a) lack empathy and enjoy killing, and b) have reduced inhibitions. Very often vampires express traits that they were repressing as humans, for example with vampire-Willow being openly bisexual while Willow spent quite awhile expressing as straight and then shifted to lesbian. The only exception is Spike.
- In the Angel After the Fall comics, Angel is told flat out that he is the only vampire who could be the subject of the prophecy. And it would be stupid to have the main character not be the one entitled to the prophecy introduced specifically for him.
- Then again, it's stupid to say the Shanshu will happen after the last apocalypse and then declare that evil will always be there and there will never be a last apocalypse, meaning there will never be a time when the Shanshu can happen. Having the big plan to show the forces of evil you'll never stop fighting be... to engage in a massive battle that you can't survive, which will force you to stop fighting because you're DEAD — that isn't so bright, either...
- Buffy Season 8 shows that there really should have been a last Apocalypse, but Buffy and Angel basically said fuck that and didn't cause it like they were supposed to. This most likely also invalidated Angel's Shanshu. Shanshu is gone, THE Apocalypse was stopped, ours is the last universe.
- Then again, it's stupid to say the Shanshu will happen after the last apocalypse and then declare that evil will always be there and there will never be a last apocalypse, meaning there will never be a time when the Shanshu can happen. Having the big plan to show the forces of evil you'll never stop fighting be... to engage in a massive battle that you can't survive, which will force you to stop fighting because you're DEAD — that isn't so bright, either...
- Jasmine is a PTB as evidenced by the facts that she takes over Cordelia while Cordelia is a higher being and it is unlikely that a demonic old one could traverse their way up to the Heavenly plain without raising suspicion. Additionally, Jasmine sent Cordelia fake visions to manipulate the team and only PTB have the ability to send visions. Lastly, her ultimate goal was world peace which is probably not the ultimate goal of an ancient demon.
- If you listen to the speech by Jasmine as the end of "Shiny Happy People" we learn that the Old Ones and the PTB were originally more or less the same thing with the Old Ones being the "malevolent" among them. This is not necessarily reliable of course. Here's the full quote:
"In the beginning, before the time of man, great beings walked the earth. Untold power emanated from all quarters — the seeds of what would come to be known as good and evil. But the shadows stretched and became darkness, and the malevolent among us grew stronger. The earth became a demon realm. Those of us who had the will to resist left this place, but we remained ever-watchful."
- This. The PTB and the Old Ones are effectively just the same race separated by outlook (malevolence vs peaceful) and vast tracts of time.
- In "Conviction" a lawyer mentions that the DA office employs its own shamans.
- That just means that the government knows about and practices magic. Remember Mayor Wilkins' administration in Buffy, and remember the government coming to take away the invisible girl.
Well, he did, after a fashion, at the end of season 4.
Wesley was told that Angel would "devour" his son and that the portents would be an earthquake followed by fire and blood. Then an earthquake happens that causes a fire in Angel's room and causes him to bleed all over Conner, and that was supposedly it.
But in season 4, an earthquake accompanies the arrival of the Beast, who causes fire to rain down on the city; then Connor uses innocent blood to bring Jasmine into the world. This all precedes Angel using his new-found powers at Wolfram and Heart to "devour" Connor's memories, in essence killing all that Connor used to be. (No soul, no memories - what's left?)
That Sahjhan is one clever bastard.
- Wait, why doesn't Connor have a soul?
- Setting that aside, the memories? He got better.
Well he still has his soul so WTF. But other than that the original post makes sense. No matter how much better Connor's life is now, the memory wipe means that the original version him from season 4 doesn't exist anymore. He is for all intents and purposes, dead (even if his memories live on in the new Connor now). Just like many of The Nameless One's previous incarnations.
- Don't forget Angel did symbolically "kill" Conner in "Home." Right before the spell took effect, Angel took a knife and slashed at Conner's throat. The DVD Commentary even states that this was done as an allusion to "The Father Will Kill The Son."
- Jossed. Angel After the Fall makes it clear that Angel is the subject of the prophecy, and the comic book is considered canon.
- It's clear unless and until Whedon decides to reveal that information was false. Come one, this is a universe where prophecies get misinterpreted FAR more often than they're read correctly. All it takes is a new revelation to override the old revelation.
- I'd like to point out that, in-canon, a vampire with a soul has already played a part in the Apocalypse, and then shanshued. Due to this word being flexible, plus the fact that there was only 1 VWAS at the time of translation, this whole thing could have been talking about a certain Bleach Blonde Brit.
- Angel part of the chosen one is confirmed in the canonical continuation where he is responsible for almost destroying the World , saving the World and changing the World. Spike not so much.
But it makes more sense if Blim was originally guarded by someone or something else. Wolfram & Hart threatened Cordelia's life to make Angel rescue the guy. To ensure that Cordelia would be rescued, Jasmine's cult eliminated the original guardian and installed Skip in his place to ensure that Angel would succeed; thus Cordelia would not be rescued.
- Possible, but the simpler answer is that Skip was both. He was a servant of the PTB, but was also a minion of Jasmine and accepted her orders, thus making him something of a Jasmine Fifth Columnist.
Let's face it - for series 4 to make any sense at all, Cordelia must have been pregnant with an evil being, only for Jasmine to hijack the situation at the last minute and come into the world instead of some (more) monstrous evil.
- Jasmine admits to causing all that chaos in "Peace Out." "I murdered thousands... to save billions!" According to the commentary, all of Jasmine's actions while in charge of Cordy's body were to put Team Angel off guard so they wouldn't notice her coming until it was too late to do anything about it. In fact, Team Angel themselves probably realized it was all a distraction in "Inside Out." She wanted Angelus to be her champion; when that fell through, she had to settle for Connor. That's the real reason Connor never felt the happiness everyone else did; somehow, he knew it was a lie.
- Perhaps the commentary is wrong?
- So David Fury and Joss Whedon are both wrong about the motives of a character one wrote and the other created? Death of the Author indeed. Plus Jasmine admitted to being responsible.JASMINE: Why do you hate me so much?
——>ANGEL: Let's run down the list, huh? Rain of fire, blotting out the sun, enslaving mankind, and, yeah, oh, yeah, hey, you eat people! ... Thousands of people are dead because of what you've done.
——>JASMINE: And how many will die because of you? I could've stopped it, Angel. All of it. War, disease, poverty. How many precious, beautiful lives would've been saved in a handful of years? Yes, I murdered thousands to save billions.
- So David Fury and Joss Whedon are both wrong about the motives of a character one wrote and the other created? Death of the Author indeed. Plus Jasmine admitted to being responsible.
- Compromise theory: Jasmine decided to change her tactics shortly before she was born. Not Heel–Face Turn, but Heel - Less-obvious-heel Turn.
- About Angelus being her champion - she was just keeping Angel, the champion of the Powers That Be and a huge threat to her plan, out of the way long enough for everything to go through; she used Angelus in the meantime because he was available. She didn't destroy Angel's soul, and so she might have been planning on releasing it once she was born. She certainly has no love for vampires in general: one of the first things she did as ruler of Los Angeles was to begin a purge of vampires and demons.
- Perhaps the commentary is wrong?
- Jasmine didn't have her handy dandy "everyone loves me" effect while she was inside Cordelia, so she couldn't just charm her way through things. Her attitude towards Lilah probably reflects Jasmine's true feelings: she hates Wolfram & Hart, and so stabbing Lilah and calling her names may have been genuine fury on Jasmine's part. Her frustration with Willow might also have been real. She's a Power that Be who's being challenged by a mortal witch; it's not surprising that she sees it as a personal insult. As for the rest - she manipulated everyone the way she wanted, and when they caught her, she played up the villain role to keep Team Angel and Conner on opposite sides. If Jasmine had genuine compassion for humans (debatable but possible), then she probably kept telling herself that she'll make it all up to them once she's herself.
- That is essentially how Jasmine justified everything she did: it's all ends justifies the means, because once she's born she will make war, famine and disease go away (at the cost of needing to eat people every now and then). She's a well-intentioned extremist that is more interested in humanity as a race, not how many crimes she commits to achieve her goals.
- I think that Jasmine had control of Cordy from the moment Cordy reappeared at the end of "The House Always Wins." However, she lacked Cordy's memories, and without them she couldn't sufficiently impersonate her; so she had to blame that on amnesia and thus manipulate Team Angel into doing a spell to "restore" them. Note that Connor impregnating Cordy was key to her plan, and she was already kind of working on Connor pre-memory-restoration.
- The simplest answer is still the one given on-screen: they woke up the dormant Jasmine when they restored everyone's memories in 'Spin the Bottle.'
However, trauma can make you feel like you need to hide who you are. Maybe Angel was aware that Angelus's behavior was related to a number of inherent personality traits he had even as Liam, and decided to try to remake himself as a different person. That would support what the First Evil told him, that he was only ever good at being bad. (Since the First Evil is a master at picking at whatever is already an issue for a person.) So Angel wasn't a hero because of an inherent concern for humanity, but because he was so scared of being Angelus that he was trying to act the opposite.
- I'm not sure this take is wrong, but I feel like it's incomplete. Our choices define our identity. Angel, based on his experience, chose to become the hero, chose to have concern for humanity. He decided to change his identity and grow as a person. At what point do you stop calling it hiding and start calling it actual change, especially given the focus on the importance of free will in the series? So, while the analysis of Angel/Liam's motivation makes sense, I'm not sure, ultimately, that the conclusion really matters.
- There is also Angel's curse that has to be taken into account. Liam could party because he was carefree and felt he deserved to have fun. Angel is constantly tormented by the guilt of all the horrors and atrocities he committed as a vampire. He is punishing himself because he does not believe he deserves happiness. Becoming a hero is the only way he can feel he is redeeming himself by balancing the scales. He hopes that saving the world can equal the number of people he killed.
- There's all that, and the fact that Angel lived (vampirically) for a hundred years with a soul after the Gypsies cursed him. During that time, he changed as a person — repreatedly. When he was first re-ensouled, he was full of weaknesses and self-loathing, just like Liam was, and was desperate to go back to belonging somewhere, to the point of actually rejoining with Darla and Co. Basically, he's back to being Liam. However, Liam may have been hedonistic and full of self-loathing, but he was never evil, which is why he could only go as far as becoming a Serial-Killer Killer and flunking Darla's If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten! test. After that, he retreats into seclusion for some decades, holing himself up and isolating himself from society at large. This works for a while, and he even tries his hand at hero work a few times. Then he feeds of a gunshot victim, is filled with even more self-loathing, and retreats to teh streets and starts living off rats. It's only after he meets Buffy that he actually does anything heroic — she was a big influence on him. Angel is a different person than Liam, in that he's had decades to grow as a person.
- Ironically, this meant that stopping Jasmine was both the good thing to do and the evil thing to do. If the First hadn't been busy trying to start its own apocalypse in Sunnydale, it might have sought to aid Angel more openly.
- Wasn't that the entire point of the arc; that Jasmine wasn't Unambiguously Evil or Unambiguously Good, she was a Knight Templar upholding a principle of Utopia Justifies The Means, and very well could have actually brought about that utopia, with absolute peace, love, and prosperity for the entire world, at the cost of free will? Destroying her wasn't necessarily the Right, Just, Heroic course of action that leaves everyone feeling good for having beaten the bad guy, because she may well have been right. When Angel lists her crimes, "enslaving humanity" is the one to take note of; when he says that her paradise isn't worth the price, he's not talking about the fact that she eats people from time to time, he's talking about the fact that the loss of free will, for everyone to become a mindless automaton, is too much of a price to pay, even for world peace. So yes, The First may well have been trying to stop Jasmine just as much as the Fang Gang was; even Wolfram and Hart salutes them for ending world peace after Jasmine is destroyed.
- It's a very interesting concept when you consider the Big Bads from season 4 of Angel and season 7 of BTVS thrive off completely opposite principles, Jasmine wants to rule over a Utopia of peace and love with no free will whatsoever while The First Evil exists solely because there is bad in the world. Thus if Jasmine succeeded The First would cease to exist.
- Interesting idea, but Jossed by the DVD commentary. He confirms that it was the other Powers trying desperately to stop Jasmine's birth by allowing the visitation by Darla.
- ...Which means Joss wasn't writing it with that in mind. It's still the most logical interpretation of the season on both series, even though Word of God confirms that was not the writers' intent. At the very least if no great plan (such as the empowering of all the Potentials, which was what happened) had been found to stop The First from taking over the world, stopping Jasmine would have clearly been the bad decision. Jasmine's Utopia Justifies the Means was flawed, and most people would probably prefer free will even with the evil that comes with it; but if the other option is "all humans are killed by The First and its minions", it's at the very least the less awful option.
- First, it was Jossed quite definitively. Second, why would you complicate the finale of a series by off-hand mentioning the potential effects of Angel S4? Yes, we get that the First and Jasmine essentially have the opposite plan. One intends to essentially kill as many on Earth as possible until it manifests and is able to also kill, and feel. The other intends to brainwash the entire planet into nice little calm cattle that will work together under her 'guidance' to banish war, poverty and disease, so long as she gets to eat a few of us now and then. At the very least, both are extremely evil acts; one is just more blatant while the other is the wolf protecting the sheep. If Jasmine had succeeded in doing away with the LA opposition, while the Sunnydale crew also failed, the two evil beings would quickly find themselves at war. Jasmine's brainwashed but individually weak masses vs the First's powerful but much less numerous Ubervamps...it wouldn't be pretty.
- ...Which means Joss wasn't writing it with that in mind. It's still the most logical interpretation of the season on both series, even though Word of God confirms that was not the writers' intent. At the very least if no great plan (such as the empowering of all the Potentials, which was what happened) had been found to stop The First from taking over the world, stopping Jasmine would have clearly been the bad decision. Jasmine's Utopia Justifies the Means was flawed, and most people would probably prefer free will even with the evil that comes with it; but if the other option is "all humans are killed by The First and its minions", it's at the very least the less awful option.
- Angel getting control of the Los Angeles branch was a response to the imminent awakening of the Slayer Line. Had everything gone according to plan, the good guys would have ended up in control of Wolfram & Hart. However, two events changed their plans - the schism with the Slayers, and the return of Illyria. The Powers' current priority is to bring Illyria over to their side. In the end, an Old One is far more valuable than a Champion, especially one who is at odds with the dominant force for good on Earth.
- This WMG has already been disproven - the Powers allowed Darla to visit her son to try and stop Jasmine's birth, and Cordelia even mentions the Powers 'owed her one' when they allowed her to visit Angel and get him back on track.
- One problem: The First was powered by evil. Jasmine's mind control removed your evil. Perhaps Jasmine was the PTB's attempt at stopping The First.
- The thing is, Jasmine was growing stronger as more people began worshiping her. Even when Angel depowered her, she still seemed confident that she could single handedly wipe out humanity (though whether she really could or not is debatable) so it's entirely possible that at fully strength she could have taken out all the ubervamps herself. Plus she did have demonic minions in the past (the Beast and Skip), so she could have more of those to throw at the First and she had an entire world full of spider demon thingies she could import if she really needed an army. And if her influence had spread far enough, she would have had control of vast military resources. A nuke or two on top of the Hellmouth would pretty much have taken out the entirety of the First's forces.
- In terms of race, Jasmine would've rivalled Old Ones in terms of strength, as the Old Ones and the Powers are the same race. Jasmine even confirms this herself - the malevolent of their race become the True Demons while the benevolent ones left our reality. The only thing is, a cthonic entity is a cthonic entity whether it considers what it does good or evil. Jasmine may have been a Power, but she was also a well-intentioned extremist. She was fixated on 'saving' humanity from itself, even if that meant the complete removal of all free will.
- I suppose it would depend who got their army ready first (and if jasmine even knew about the First). If I was the first, I'd storm the Hyperion with a horde of 'Bringers and Uber Vamps.
- While it isn't stated it's unlikely that two global level threats arrived at the same time, arrived physically near each other, had plans that were set to climax at nearly the same time and were mutually unaware of each other. It's likely that one of them was reacting to the other. If the First had suceeded and taken corporeal form it's safe to assume he would have been powerful, quite probably the most powerful being we've seen to date. Any time after this point Jasmine's arrival wouldn't have helped anything. On the other hand had Jasmine taken over the globe and solved all of our problems (albeit by taking away our free will and replacing it with happy feelings of love and togetherness)the First's plans would have been solved in short order. Uber Vamps are bad ass yes, but a Jasmine operated military would have slapped them down without trying. It's also important to note that the electricity (and thus the televisions and for an unknown reason the radios as well) in Sunnydale got cut at a VERY strategic moment. That moment being when Jasmine functionally ruled California and probably a good deal of the world since radio and television get around pretty fast and her hypnosis effect appears to be instant.
- There's also Willow. She's powerful enough that she might be immune to Jasmine's mind control.
- And if she wasn't, well, The First would be fucked. Think for a moment: Jasmine can make you do anything. Tell Willow to go full power and have her vaporize the ubervamps.
- After Ascending, Cordelia never returned. Instead, it was entirely Jasmine who came back to Earth. Because she couldn't take on her own form yet, she instead took a real human's form in order to give birth to herself. However, it was just Jasmine controlling Cordy until the end. This is why Cordy was in a coma after Jasmine's death: she was really just a body, and everything that made her function was gone into another body now. The only time we saw Cordelia again after the end of season 3 was when she appeared briefly in You're Welcome as a spirit, to say goodbye to her friends. She killed the body that Jasmine had created to come to Earth in on her way out, so that her identity could never be used again. It's up to you whether she Ascended or died after this.
- Didn't she say that she was going to die? I don't remember the exact quote, but I think I remember something about that.
- Alternatively, Cordelia did come back to Earth, but as soon as she got her memories back at the end of Spin the Bottle, she was killed by Jasmine hijacking her body. She Ascended again.
- The idea is that from the very beginning of the series or even earlier, Jasmine's been the PTB that the team has been getting the visions from. Jasmine used the visions as a means to guide Angel into all the little hoops she needed him to jump through in order to bring about her birth four years later, as well as doing various Good Deeds to pass the time from one hoop to the next.
- Angel is a "champion of the Powers That Be" but the PTB in general don't have any issue letting him go. For all the importance and all the value that he's been told he has, when he became human in season one, the Oracles pretty much just told him, "Hey, you're off the hook, enjoy it." This is because he's important to only one specific Power That Be...and it was a vision, from her to Doyle, that prompted him to convince the Oracles to undo his humanity and get back on the rails.
- When WRH hijacked the visions and Angel beat the crap out of Skip, who we know works for Jasmine, to set Billy free, Jasmine wasn't about to just let that go. It wasn't long before Cordelia was getting visions crammed down her throat that essentially said "Undo it".
- After Cordelia was possessed by Jasmine, she continued having the visions - because Jasmine is the one in control of them, after all, so she can give herself visions. Either that or she already knew what was happening and faked them.
- Once Jasmine was killed, Cordelia appeared one last time, post-mortem, to pass the visions on to Angel. This was the Final Vision; but instead of striking right then and there, in his office, the vision waited until he was in bed that night, giving Cordelia time to get settled into her Higher Power status and send a vision. Note that after Jasmine's death and after this one vision from Cordelia, no one ever had a vision again.
- If this were true, why would the Powers suddenly decide on a vision out of the blue? You're trying to say they don't care, but they cared enough to suddenly send Cordelia back and give her a vision at the end?
- This may even date back to before Buffy began. Angel got his start on the hero path from Whistler, an ambiguous entity sent to him to help him find his path, just like Doyle. When Buffy asks Whistler if he's some kind of demon sent down to help maintain the balance between good and evil, he responds, "Wow, good guess." suggesting that he, like Doyle, works for the Powers That Be (in this case, Jasmine). Word of God even has it that Doyle's role was originally supposed to be Whistler.
- During Angel's fight with Jasmine, she Motive Rants, "Because I cared. The other Powers don't. Never really did. You know that's true in your heart." A particularly odd line given that the Powers have been bestowing visions on Cordelia all this time, unless we assume that it's always been Jasmine; in which case, this line gains particular emphasis; Jasmine WAS the only Power that ever really cared about Angel's whole little campaign. The Others, as evidenced by the Oracles, were more than happy to just let him go.
- It certainly hasn't been Jasmine all along. Skip/Jasmine simply wanted Team Angel to believe that. Jasmine believes the other Powers 'don't care' because they aren't willing to physically intervene like she is. The Powers have been making tweaks along Angel's path (a major one is bringing him back from Hell, which he specifically refers to in early Angel Season 1) in order to make him their champion. Jasmine's opportunity only came along because Angel decided to use the Trials to win a new life for Darla. Jasmine even SAYS IT herself - if that new life hadn't become available, Darla could never have been given a life and made pregnant. No, the Trials are the turning point in Jasmine's interest in Angel. She wasn't involved before, it was the Powers in general. This is supported by the fact that they are CONSTANTLY hands-off until season three, when suddenly they need Cordelia to not die from the side-effects of the visions and for her 'ascension'. Both of these events are conveniently orchestrated by Skip, one of Jasmine's minions. In all other cases, the Powers acted in very subtle ways, through their more subtle agents like Doyle and Whistler. Neither of these two were manipulating Angel, yet they knew full well who the Powers were and what was expected of them. There's simply no reason for Jasmine to want to help random people with the visions early on, and no reason why Cordelia wasn't simply gifted the visions to begin with.
- In the Canonical spinoff Only Human we learn that Gunn's grandmother ended up staking an old former friend and had a part of Gunn's training. Looks like she had experience dealing with vampires. Possible a former Slayer which could explain Gunn's aptitude for fighting the Supernatural. But then again a former Watcher could also count. Combining both experience with fighting vampires and the ability to teach it to others ie her grandson.
- "Former slayer"? You don't get to be a "former" slayer, you keep being the slayer until you die and stay dead, which is usually only a few years at most. However, we know that some potentials start training with a Watcher before they have any chance to become the slayer, and that there are enough potentials that, until Willow made all of them slayers anyway, most of them never would have been chosen. It's possible that Gunn's grandmother was a potential who never became a slayer.
- Then again Buffy 'died' twice and two other slayers where activated. Lets say she died, found out that another Slayer got activated and kept her mouth shut . Instead of leaping up and yelling out ' I got better' stayed under the radar with the aim of reaching old age...and having grandkids.
- That makes no sense. The First's plan with respect to the slayers in season 7 was explicitly only possible because there was an ex-slayer walking around; if Faith and all the potentials died, and then Buffy, there wouldn't be any more slayers. (Apparently, if Buffy didn't die last, the slayer line could continue through a less-potential...)
- Good point, then again Potential's get trained . So..it is possible she was a possible that she was a trained Poetential thant never got called..
- In the Canonical spinoff Only Human we learn that Gunn's grandmother ended up staking an old former friend and had a part of Gunn's training. Looks like she had experience dealing with vampires. Possible a former Slayer which could explain Gunn's aptitude for fighting the Supernatural. But then again a former Watcher could also count. Combining both experience with fighting vampires and the ability to teach it to others ie her grandson.
- They are dealing with a war in the Lower Dimensions. The big Bad fighting on their home turf? A certain hardened and badass Wesley Pryce who decided that enough is enough. I mean due to the contract W and H gave to their employees. They have the souls of Lilah Morgan, Lindsey and Pryce in one place . All that smarts, intellect and willpower. You know there's going to be a fight.
- Angel and Angelus are very different beings. Not just in terms of their actions but their personalities are wildly different as well. No other vampire is that different from their human personality. Character development excepted, Dru, Darla and Spike are all pretty much the same as the were as humans (apart from loss of inhibitions and conscience). Harmony is virtually identical except even more petty. Likewise Gunn in After The Fall. When Spike gets his soul back even, there's no noticeable shift in personality apart from the reinserted inhibitions and conscience. Angel and Angelus are so different in personality, speech pattern, attitudes, etc, that the only way it makes sense is to assume that they are actually two entirely seperate personalities. Maybe Liam already had a minor mental problem as a human (not farfetched, considering his background). The trauma of being sired turns that into a full fracture. All his nastier thoughts and desires become the new personality that Darla names "Angelus" while Liam goes into hibernation within his psyche. When he's cursed with a soul, those nasty thoughts and desires are stuffed back into their box, allowing Liam to surface again and he takes the name "Angel".
- Or Angelus was cursed with "a" soul... rather than "Liam's" soul. If that's the case, it could explain why it took Spike much less time to adjust, because he actually received "William's" soul.
- Which means we can probably assume that the three different chunks of time we see Angel with a soul, it isn't necessarily the same one (which would account for personality differences during each chunk of time)... which means that all the constant traits of Angel that we know and love come from Angelus...
- ...And the brain that Angel and Angelus share. One has to assume that the reason that vampires are usually somewhat similar to the person they were is that the soul is the conscience/etc., which changes but the brain is the same. But I like the theory. The Angel before he first lost his soul— that could easily have been Liam's soul. He was lazy and usually provided info rather than actively fight. Upon Buffy Season 3 and then into his own series, Angel was much more proactive and willing to get hands-on involved. Then, as people have noted, after Willow restored Angel's soul in Angel Season 4 (into the series' final TV season), he was grittier and more willing to use more brutal tactics if the end was good.
- Angel and Angelus are very different beings. Not just in terms of their actions but their personalities are wildly different as well. No other vampire is that different from their human personality. Character development excepted, Dru, Darla and Spike are all pretty much the same as the were as humans (apart from loss of inhibitions and conscience). Harmony is virtually identical except even more petty. Likewise Gunn in After The Fall. When Spike gets his soul back even, there's no noticeable shift in personality apart from the reinserted inhibitions and conscience. Angel and Angelus are so different in personality, speech pattern, attitudes, etc, that the only way it makes sense is to assume that they are actually two entirely seperate personalities. Maybe Liam already had a minor mental problem as a human (not farfetched, considering his background). The trauma of being sired turns that into a full fracture. All his nastier thoughts and desires become the new personality that Darla names "Angelus" while Liam goes into hibernation within his psyche. When he's cursed with a soul, those nasty thoughts and desires are stuffed back into their box, allowing Liam to surface again and he takes the name "Angel".
- Fred doesn't seem like the type to exaggerate about that, although it's possible she simply lost track of time when she was on the run in Pylea, and assumed it had been five years when she found that five years had passed on earth, since I could certainly imagine any amount of time living like she was feeling like years. It also doesn't seem unreasonable to think that she might have started doing college or grad school work a bit early, which, combined with being slightly older than she looks, would account for the missing time.
- Regular degree gained at 21 plus a Master's degree (one year) or PhD (~3) would put Fred's minimum age as an 'accomplished grad student' somewhere between 21 and 25. Also, it was quite firmly established that in demon dimensions such as 'Hell' or Quor'toth, time moves faster than it does here, not slower. Fred was probably gone for a lot longer (in Pylean time) than she was in Earth time.
- Rather unlikely. The Doctor's Beast claims to have been trapped since before time and has power and ambition to rival The First, while the other Beast is a lowly servant of Jasmine. "...Crafted from my unworthy bone" doesn't sound that diabolical.
- More likely, The Doctor's Beast was the First, made more powerful by the evil given off by trillions of humans as well as all the alien species in the universe (including the Daleks). The Beast seen in Angel was based off him (in universe).
- Ouch.
- She also seems to have no trouble sitting. Ouch indeed.
- It's actually more that Spike's personality is the same - Spike doesn't really make much distinction between 'good' and 'evil' at any point in the series. He's capable of as much with or without a soul, and never actually changes. It's not that it was a different form of magic, just that Spike is a different form of vampire. Spike is Spike, never good, never evil by conventional definitions.
- She actually was too poor to buy food. She had to sneak sandwiches from the party she met Angel at just so she could get something to eat.
- Her family pretty much lost it all halfway through season 3 of Buffy because her father hadn't paid his taxes in "like, forever."
The attraction of this theory, of course, is that it lends a whole new meaning to the prophecy that "The father will kill the son." There's stil the oddity that according to this theory, Sahjahn's plan runs into severe Grandfather Paradox problems. But Sahjahn's plans were supposed to be a rebellion against the natural necessities of prophecy, anyway.
Or, here's another interpretation, maybe "The father will kill the son" refers to Connor killing Jasmine. Surely, with a prophecy this ambiguous, this can't be dismissed merely because the English translation refers to a "son" rather than a "daughter"—especially since Jasmine's true self is no doubt beyond our concepts of gender.
- Why would Doyle ever be a Big Bad after being such a loved character?
Based on this, and assuming that Jesus did some or all of the things he is recorded as having done, it makes sense that some time around 0 AD, a more benevolent PTB came down to Earth and tried to teach humans how to cast of their mortal coils and enter a Heaven dimension.
This, interestingly, bears some striking similarities to Gnosticism, and also dovetails with Joss Whedon's views on religion in an interesting, and surprisingly Lovecraftian, manner. In Gnosticism, there exists a cosmos of pure light in which everything is a Platonic ideal. This cosmos is inhabited by entities called aeons, which are sentient embodiments of ideas and concepts.
The lowest Aeon, Sophia (Wisdom) attempted to create something by herself; the result was Ialdaboath, a blind idiot god, also called the Demiurge and Rex Mundi. The other aeons were so disgusted with Ialdaboath that they cast it out of Heaven into another cosmos of empty darkness. However, when they did so, some sparks of light were cast out with it.
Ialdaboath, finding itself alone in the cosmos, believed itself to be the creator of all existence, and went and made a bunch of servants for itself. It then shaped the primordial chaos of the dark cosmos into Earth, and created bodies made of meat to trap the sparks of light in. Those sparks are actually human souls, and by being trapped on Earth, Ialdaboath tortures them for shits and giggles. Oh yeah, according to the Gnostics, this evil Ialdaboath is the God (of the Old Testament at least).
In many branches of Gnosticism, Jesus is not the son of God (ie Ialdaboath), but rather is an Aeon, who took human form to teach humans how to escape from Ialdaboath's clutches.
Now, if you compare Gnostic and Buffyverse cosmology, certain similarities emerge. The Powers that Be / 'higher beings' strongly resemble the Aeons. Holland Manners' comment that Earth is all evil and stuff bears similarities to Earth being an imperfect creation made by Ialdaboath to torture the sparks of light. Ialdaboath being a bastard gels well with Whedon's opinion of God being a sky-bully. (As an aside, Ialdaboath also resembles Azathoth to an extent. Buffy and Angel have both made mention of the Necronomicon. Draw your own conclusions.)
We know that the PTB aren't necessarily good, but then we mere mortals can't expect to comprehend the thought process of Aeons, either.
So, based on this cosmology, here's the history of the universe. In the beginning, there are the Powers that Be, who sometimes quarrel among themselves. At some point, one of them creates Ialdaboath, and they chuck it out into the cold, dark space and time of our own cosmos, creating the Big Band. Due to the influence of Ialdaboath, ripples in space and time form elementary particles, which form hydrogen atoms, which form stars, which form heavier elements, which form planets and moons. One of these lumps of rock becomes Earth. This happens trillions of times, creating all the universes and Hell dimensions we have seen.
Meanwhile, some of the PTBs decide to see what Ialdaboath is up to. Ialdaboath, along with a whole bunch of Aeons, create more monstrous beings, some of which come to Earth around 300,000 BC and begin to make war, covering the planet with demons.note
Eventually, humans arose in Africa and began to resist the remaining demons. The Shadow Men imbued Sineya with the power of a demon, creating the first Slayer, and sent her to kill all the demons; when she fell, another girl was called, a chain which continued up to the 21st century. At some point, the Shadow Men encountered a time-travelling Buffy Summers, and were surprised when she stood up to them and refused to accept the power of another demon. Many of the demons were driven off Earth, though some, such as Illyria, were imprisoned in the Deeper Well. A few of the last demons infected humans with their own blood, creating the demons that still walked the Earth and which Sineya and the Slayers had to kill; the most notable of these were the Turok-Han and the vampires. Also, a few places on Earth had Hellmouths.
Time passed, Slayers fought demons, and the descendants of the Shadow Men formed the Watchers' Council. In 4 BC by human reckoning, a PTB decided that humanity was worth helping, and so got a young Hebrew woman pregnant before she had consummated her marriage to her carpenter husband. This woman gave birth to a PTB in human form, and named him Jesus. Jesus travelled around Israel, preaching his gospel, until he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot (though that might have been at Jesus' request, for whatever reason.)
Jesus' followers founded a religion based on his teachings, and also carried out a particularly devout campaign against vampires; so effective was this that the Christians' symbols, the cross and holy water, were imbued with the power to repel and harm vampires respectfully simply by their very natures.note
While all this was going on, one PTB came across a universe populated by insectoid beings, and incarnated among them so that she might establish a utopia. Due to her inexperience, she failed.
Approximately 2,007 years after the birth of Jesus (year 2003 by human measurement), the god of the insectoids decided to try again on Earth, and the events of Angel season 4 happened. It was called Jasmine at this time.
If all this is true, it means that Joss has the potential for a truly spectacular Grand Finale - the characters go on a mission to kill God.
Jasmine: Well, as much of a paradise as one could with a bunch of insects to work with. ... It was a trial run, an early experiment to work out the bugs, so to speak.
So she's a transdimensional being, full of benevolence, but she's prejudiced against one particular type of sentient species over another?No. There are two possibilities: either Jasmine really believed this at the time, or she was telling the humans what they wanted to hear. Either seems plausible, as Jasmine has been seen to be both emotionally unstable and manipulative. But either way, what she really does is go from dimensions to dimension, making the sentient species worship her, and then gets bored after a while and leaves them, still under her spell, and therefore in despair. (And, of course, she eats a good portion of them.) She would have done it to humanity eventually too if the spell had not been broken.
- Further speculation: if the insect race is as old as the minion said it was, then we have no way of really knowing if there were races between them and us that she tried this on. They're just the ones who caught up with her.
- Even further speculation: perhaps that's why there are so many hellish dimensions around. Jasmine has gotten around, showing everyone paradise and then abandoning them. Perhaps that's what happened to Quor'toth, wherever Angel went, and maybe even Pylea; the latter may be a case from so long ago that the people have begun to recover.
- While it's not impossible, or even improbable that Jasmine has tried this on mulitiple dimensions/planets it's unlikely she went to Quar'thoth or Pylea. Quor'toth is described by everybody as the most fucked up dimension in existance. It doesn't seem that a society worthy of Jasmine's attention has formed there. Though I doubt the world is half as bad as we're told. I mean an old man survived there with an infant. I know he's a bad ass but he's not THAT bad ass. Pylea for starters is a world controlled by Wolfram & Hart and aside from I wouldn't want to be a human in Pylea it doesn't really seem to be at all a terrible place. Hell judging by the reception Angel got (and the fact that he LOOKS Human) you could probably get along there as a human if someone vouched you were a bad ass.
- The conditions of those dimensions are current. Jasmine could've have visited both dimensions far in the past, done her thing, and left them in ruins. One got better, or, like in Angel's dimension, she was defeated before she used it up, and the other never recovered, maybe even got worse after. What we experience or hear of them is the aftermath of her stay there, which is the idea of the WMG. She destroys and leaves, and that's why the hell dimensions exist. Also, another a side note, it'd make for a great karmic cycle if this WMG were the case, as her downfall was directly caused by somebody who spent some time in one of her abandoned dimensions.
- While it's not impossible, or even improbable that Jasmine has tried this on mulitiple dimensions/planets it's unlikely she went to Quar'thoth or Pylea. Quor'toth is described by everybody as the most fucked up dimension in existance. It doesn't seem that a society worthy of Jasmine's attention has formed there. Though I doubt the world is half as bad as we're told. I mean an old man survived there with an infant. I know he's a bad ass but he's not THAT bad ass. Pylea for starters is a world controlled by Wolfram & Hart and aside from I wouldn't want to be a human in Pylea it doesn't really seem to be at all a terrible place. Hell judging by the reception Angel got (and the fact that he LOOKS Human) you could probably get along there as a human if someone vouched you were a bad ass.
- XWMG (extra-wild): The reason why humans are oppressed in Pylea has its origins in their being blamed for Jasmine's departure way in the past. (Whether this was justified or not is irrelevant.) But no one remembers this reason, because later, Wolfram and Hart moved in, and capitalized on the Pyleans' vacancy for an object of worship by establishing their own religion centered around the priests. These priests then used the existing prejudice against humans as an excuse to enslave them, because they needed slaves for their project of blahbiddyblah. Or they just liked slavery because it's evil. Since Wolfram and Hart have no love for Jasmine, they encouraged the fading of any memory of her existence, and the enslaved humans also weren't in a position to preserve the memory of why they were originally oppressed.
More we should look at the one world they do rule, Pylea, we don't see much to convince me these are evil rulers. Sure they speciests or whatever you call a demon for hating humans and treating them as animals. They seem to be roughly in the mideval period and mankind acted similarly at the time. If we take the Groosalug and Angel into account it seems that if your a warrior it doesn't much matter if you are human or not. Connor or any Slayer would likely be allowed to walk the streets completely unmolested after one or two fights. Where is the rampant sadism and strict dictatorship? Where is the starving population or anything to show that Wolfram and Hart are anything remotely as evil as they are not only are seen, but as they present themselves? Frankly I'd paint myself green, glue on some horns and purchase some vacation land out in Pylea if I could.
It also tracks with why the Beast went so far out of its way to eliminate Wolfram and Hart. Jasmine tells us that all the death and terror before her birth was a necessary evil for her to come into the world. Either she's telling the truth and the people at Wolfram and Hart are sufficiently good that their deaths were worthy of being hunted down to the last man, well woman in the end, or she's lying and Wolfram & Hearts extirmination had to do with them being a large organized group that could thwart her plans to take over. Which leads to the was Jasmine evil headscratcher.
Finally we know that they have plans for the Apocalypse and that they involve Angel (or possibly Spike) specifically. You'd think a group of evil demons would want Angelus not Angel however dark but it mentions a vampire WITH a soul so Angelus is out of the picture in their ideal plan. Given that Jasmine is the only "good" entity we've encountered its possible that Wolfram & Hart aren't evil, they just think of good as Jasmine's zombie squad. So we don't even know for sure that the "Apocalypse" they have planned is a bad thing for humanity. Everything is going to be different after that point but different isn't by definition bad it's just change.
The only problem we have left is the Circle of the Black Thorn and they may not be in on the grand plan or we don't know them very well to know how evil they actually are.
- There's also the minor issue of the fact that they keep *saying* they're evil. Lila says "I'm still evil. I don't do errands unless they're evil errands." And Hauser even says "I believe in evil." But perhaps they don't really mean "evil", perhaps they really mean that the ends justify the means, or they believe in order. Or maybe this is just some mantra that the lower ranks are given but which don't mean anything at the top levels.
- The Senior Partners may not be evil, and they created Wolfram and Hart or infiltrated it to organize all the evil beings and keep them tame and out of the way. It's their orders that give Angel his free pass to do good, even after they give him a franchise of their law firm of "evil", where he consistently does good. And they're routinely keeping their minions out of the way at crucial moments of Angel's journey, leaving him free to choose his own path. Maybe that's why they made their deal with him; maybe they knew what he would do with it, and they approved of it, because that's what they were doing all along.
- Holland Manners has one of the most interesting quotes about this in the entire series, when Angel says that they're not going to win: "Well... no. Of course we aren't. We have no intention of doing anything so prosaic as "winning."" In short, they have no intention of evil ever entirely conquering the world. They like the status-quo.
- Also, taking a little inspiration from Twilight!Angel in the comics, the Senior Partners could be good guys, possibly agents of the Powers that be, who created their organization not only to control and manage the forces of evil, but to corral them for convenient slaughter. I think it's safe to say that everyone in the Circle of the Black Thorn is undeniably evil; it was awfully nice of the Senior Partners to bring them together so Team Angel could take them out. If there was no Circle, no secret society to which all those Big Bads belonged, Angel would never have been able to earn their collective trust and gather the intel required to take them all out.
- Even on THIS page, it's pretty out there to suggest this. Aside from the fact that they were the Big Bads, and routinely tried to have people assassinated, while also defending the rights of criminals AND enabling creatures like Russell Winters to eat whoever they wanted...they were stated to be demons in Illyria's time (which Wesley said was from millions of years ago until the advent of Man), which means they were lesser True Demons (Old Ones). Old Ones are definitely a big tick in the Evil column.
Think about it, Liam was known for being around loose women. He got one pregnant and either never knew or never claimed the child. Centuries later in the bloodline we get another superhero who uses the dark.
As River Tam. Think about it; their characters could practically be twins.
Who else do we know who can impersonate dead people and is active in Sunnydale around that time?
When she died, so that she could "live" with Dennis.
- I think this makes a lot of sense (assuming she is not still a PTB like some other WMG have stated) considering how attentive Dennis was to her when she lived there and how open she was with him (bathtub). She also has a thing for guys that may not be cool by conventional standards when one considers she dated Xander (at a time before he was cool) "... no matter how lame he is." It seems to me that Dennis would make a good ghostly companion to Cordie. And probably explain why she never gave any more visions to anyone. She was busy with her new bo.
Instead of giving Connor a real happy life, Wolfram and Hart instead gave him a life that only made him appear successful and happy This life is the one of Pete Campbell and is depicted on the TV show Mad Men.
- They were definitely hybrids, as are all demons on Earth. No one in The Scourge looked anything like an Old One, either.
- This. All non-Old One demons on Earth are hybrids of demons and humans. They probably had a lot of human in them, as they were human-sized and humanoid (two arms, two legs etc). The clue to a demon's 'purity' is its physical size, as Old Ones were huge creatures. The closer to the Old Ones and the less human ancestry is in the demon, the bigger it is. Also, ew.
They are badasses well-versed in pop culture. They also like being prepared for unlikely scenarios. Like if a blackout occurred worldwide. In that scenario, fighting supernatural creatures would become difficult in a number of ways.
In season four it's revealed that the original version of the conduit for Wolfram and Hart in the White Room is actually Mesektet, a member of the Ra-tet. This version was eventually killed by The Beast and then replaced by another version who took the form of a black leopard and then of Gunn himself.
Basically, my theory is that when the sun was restored the Ra-tet were resurrected (being linked to it in some way). Mesektet didn't want to return so Wolfram and Hart then chose to hire the other evil member of the Ra-tet.
Semkhet normally appeared as a skinless sabretooth tiger so we know has a fondness for cats which would fit with the whole leopard thing. Also given the other members of the Ra-tet seemed capable of human appearance it's likely they had the ability to change appearance whichwould fit.