Buffy and Angel

One of the main reasons I began watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel over the summer was the frequent Angel or Spike debates I heard at writer conferences. Romance writers loved their Buffy characters, and they had definite opinions about which hunky vampire Buffy should end up with. As it turned out, she ended up with neither – at least in the Buffyverse material penned by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt.

I went into watching Buffy knowing certain things about the series – who some of the characters were, the general world in which they lived, and that Joss Whedon was supposed to be a writer extraordinaire. I didn’t expect to become a rabid fan of all things Joss Whedon, but the Buffy bug bit and bit hard. And I now can take part in those Angel or Spike discussions.

My answer – Angel, baby!

Lots of fans loved the Spike storyline because Spike was the bad boy, had great dialogue and wore a cool, long leather coat. Though he was reportedly based on English punk rocker Sid Vicious, a member of the Sex Pistols, Spike always reminded me more of Billy Idol, particularly in the flashback scenes where he fought Slayer Nikki Wood on the subway in New York City in the 1970s. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of Spike’s. He has some of the most hilarious dialogue of any Buffyverse character. I mean, I crack up when I hear him say things like, “I’m bad! It’s just I can’t bite anymore, thanks to you wankers.”

And honestly, I felt sorry for the guy when he fell for Buffy and she didn’t return his love. She cared about him eventually, but it wasn’t love. Spike knew this. At the end of Buffy’s last episode, she tells Spike she loves him. His response: “No you don’t but thanks for saying it.”

Throughout her seven-year run, Buffy had boyfriends and flings, but she only ever truly loved one man, Angel. Even Spike knew that when he said to Buffy and Angel, when they were insisting they were just friends:

“You’re not friends. You’ll never be friends. You’ll be in love ‘til it kills you both. You’ll fight, and you’ll shag, and you’ll hate each other ‘til it makes you quiver, but you’ll never be friends. Real love isn’t brains, children. It’s blood. It’s blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love’s bitch, but at least I’m man enough to admit it.”

We knew something was going to happen between Buffy and Angel pretty much from the first time they laid eyes on each other. At first, Buffy says she doesn’t like him or the way he pops by just to leave her with cryptic messages about impending evil she’s going to have to face. And Angel, well, he’s loved Buffy from afar for a long time, even before she got her calling to be the Slayer. But he doesn’t want to give in to that attraction because of obvious reasons. One, he’s a vampire, and she’s the Vampire Slayer. Hmm, star-crossed love, anyone? Second, he’s older than her – by like 225 years!

But during the first few episodes of season one, we see their attraction drawing them together despite their best efforts. Did any of us not get the delicious chills when Angel gave Buffy his leather jacket? By the time we reach episode seven, titled “Angel”, we’re more than ready for their first kiss. And even though that kiss leads to Buffy learning Angel is a vampire, she can’t stop thinking about him. Who can blame her? He’s dark, mysterious, has a tortured past, not to mention he’s gorgeous. Sounds like a classic romance hero to me. Buffy’s also convinced that he really is a good guy, despite all she’s been taught that vampire = bad. And in the episodes that follow, he proves she’s right. He’s a vampire with a soul, and he’s trying to pay for all the bad things he did when he was soulless, when he was Angelus. In “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”, even Giles sees what’s obvious, that Angel is in love with Buffy. “A vampire in love with the Slayer. It’s poetic, in a maudlin sort of way.”

Buffy and Angel go through the dance of trying to stay away from each other because it can never work. I mean, Angel’s technically dead after all. He won’t get any older. He can’t have children. He can’t take her out in the daytime. But none of that matters when they’re together. Angel lets Buffy know a bit about how he’s feeling in “Prophecy Girl”, the last episode of the first season. When she’s going off to face the Master and the prophecy says she’ll die, Angel says, “Do you think I could stand it?”

Their love continues to grow in season two, with much fun smooching going on. You can tell how much Buffy’s fallen for him when she kisses him in “What’s My Line, Part 1” when he’s got his game face (he’s in vampire mode) on and she says she didn’t even notice. She’s only concerned that he’s injured. They watch each other’s backs when they’re patrolling at night. They save each other on numerous occasions. One of my favorite episodes is “Surprise”. It’s the one where Angel gives Buffy a Claddagh ring and his heart. After they have another near-death experience, Angel finally tells her that he loves her, even though he tries not to. They sleep together, a beautiful expression of their love but also a gigantic turning point neither of them would have wanted. Because Angel experiences that one true moment of happiness, an unknown clause in the gypsy curse that gave him back his soul kicks in. He turns back into Angelus and starts wrecking havoc on Sunnydale, and on Buffy’s heart. The man she loves has been supplanted by the evil demon living inside him. She only gets him back at the end of “Becoming, Part 2.” His soul is returned, he tells her he loves her again, but because of what he’s done as Angelus, Buffy is forced to kill him. I admit I shed a lot of tears watching this episode. It’s a good thing I was watching the DVDs instead of the original run of the series, or I think I would have been sad all summer before Angel reappears from the hell dimension at the beginning of season three.

Despite their decision to try to remain friends in season three, it’s just not going to work. They love each other too much. Another tearjerker episode was “Amends”, in which Angel goes out to meet the sunrise so he’ll die. He’d rather die than hurt Buffy again. Buffy finds him and has tears streaming down her face as she tells him that he’s good, that he has a place in this world. Fate seems to agree because a freak snowstorm blows into Sunnydale, blocking out the sun and saving Angel. The rest of the season, they continually show each other how much they care about each other, even though at the end Angel leaves because he can’t give Buffy what she needs.

Perhaps the episode that made me cry the most and which showed just how much these two star-crossed lovers love each other was actually in the first season of Angel. In “I Will Remember You”, Angel is made human when he comes into contact with demon blood. He and Buffy get to spend a glorious day with each other, walking in the sunshine, making love, imagining how they can now be together, make a life together. Only there’s a catch, as there often is in Whedon’s worlds. Angel can’t face that his mortality and weakness compared to his vampire strength might lead to Buffy getting killed defending him. He asks to be turned back, knowing he’ll lose her all over again. And the most heart-wrenching part? He’s the only one who’ll remember the day. The day will be erased, and Buffy won’t remember it. But oh how she wants to. As the moments tick away and she’s crying and whispering to him that she will remember, and then she doesn’t…it doesn’t get any more tearjerky than that.

Though Buffy and Angel aren’t really shown as a couple after this, there are moments when their deep love for one another is still apparent. When he comes back to Sunnydale to comfort her when her mother dies, when he learns of Buffy’s death and goes off to Tibet to mourn alone, his joy when he finds out she’s alive. And even at the very end of Buffy’s seventh and final season, Angel returns and they share a kiss. Though Whedon and crew left both Buffy and Angel romantically alone at the end of their respective series, in my mind they’ll find each other again and find some way to be together. Perhaps Angel will find a way to make the Shanshu Prophecy come true, maybe that ugly “true happiness” clause of his curse can be lifted. Maybe Buffy will “finish baking” and she’ll admit that no Spike, no Riley, no The Immortal can ever make her feel love like Angel does. Angel’s had a fling here and there, but we’ve all known that he still loved Buffy. Darla was just a held-over obsession from his Angelus days. He even says he never loved her. When she returns as a human and eventually carries his child, the savior in him does his best to save her, but he still doesn’t love her. And though I do think he cared for Cordy, I never felt that romantic storyline as deeply as the Buffy/Angel one. I really liked how Cordy was being redeemed as her story progressed, but the “love” between her and Angel always felt a bit forced to me, particularly on Angel’s part. What I would have rather seen was the love story between Cordy and Doyle developed more and his sacrifice moved to sometime in season two. Unfortunately, it couldn’t have gone much longer because of the death of actor Glenn Quinn.

What it all boils down to for me is that Buffy’s true love will always be Angel, and his will be Buffy. We can see this in the last bit of conversation their two characters share, in “Chosen”, the last episode of Buffy, when Angel asks her who she sees being there with her when she’s “done baking”.

Buffy: Angel. I do sometimes think that far ahead.
Angel: Sometimes is something.
Buffy: It’ll be a long time coming. Years, if ever.
Angel: (smiles) I ain’t getting any older.

As Buffy once doodled on her school notebook, Buffy & Angel 4-Ever!

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