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Spike, parte IV

Appearance and Personality
William's natural hair color was medium brown; in 1943 he was seen with it dyed black and slicked down; and by 1977 he had begun to bleach it, keeping that look at least until he was last seen in May of 2004. Spike has claimed that Billy Idol stole his look from him, which accounts for his appearance in 'present day' continuity as well as during the flashback to the 1970s (see below). He received an V/Y-shaped scar on his left eyebrow from the sword of Xin Rong, the first Slayer he killed, in 1900; on his first appearance in the series, the wound still looks fresh, but gradually blends in over the course of the series. James Marsters had received the scar in real life during a mugging.

Spike has a taste for long black leather jackets, including one that he took from a Nazi officer and another that he wore as a trophy of Nikki Wood, a Slayer whom he killed in 1977 after coming to New York specifically to find and fight the Slayer of the time. Spike wore Nikki's jacket for over twenty-five years before it was finally destroyed in a firefight in Italy, after which the Italian branch of Wolfram and Hart supplied him with a new, nearly identical coat. His trademark look typically comprises the leather jacket, a black/dark brown t-shirt or v-neck shirt and black denim pants, usually with heavy boots; he also wore a red long-sleeve shirt fairly often, but this item was occasionally omitted, particularly in later seasons of Buffy and Angel. In "Doomed", Spike is forced to wear one of Xander's Hawaiian shirts and a pair of knee-length shorts because his clothes were shrunk due to the basement flooding.

Asides from his appetite for destruction, one of Spike's most prominent characteristics is his dry, sarcastic sense of humor. A polar opposite to his callow and simpering human nature, Spike quickly adopted a swaggering posture and enjoyed living by nobody's rules save his own. Fitting in with this was his habit of making pithy remarks and glib insults, even towards the few he didn't see as antagonists. Among his favorite targets was his grandsire and rival, Angel (often making fun of his large forehead, constantly groomed appearance and his attempts to be a 'big, strapping hero'); others include Xander Harris, Rupert Giles and, to a lesser degree, Buffy Summers. However, Spike also retained something of his literary intellect from his human side, routinely referencing poetry, songs, and literature; he would, on occasion, also wax poetical on the nature of love and life (even unlife) as being about blood, reasoning that it is what separates the living from the dead, and is therefore more powerful than any supernatural force.
Spike enjoys beer, whisky, Weetabix (which he mixes into blood for texture), spices and burba weed (which he mixes into blood for flavor), ate a box of chocolates from a present meant for Buffy, Buffalo wings and onion blossoms, having perhaps the most varied diet of any of the vampires or other demons on the show (another example of Spike defying vampire conventions). He also smokes, (as do many vampires); his preferred brand is Morley cigarettes, which he lights with a trademark silver Zippo lighter.

Powers & Abilities
Spike has the standard powers and vulnerabilities of a vampire. On many occasions he has tracked people or demons through the streets (or even sewers) by smelling the air. Like other vampires, Spike's "vampire constitution" provides him with an extremely high tolerance for alcohol. Age has given him strength, speed, stamina and resistance superior to those of most other vampires.

He has acquired a number of skills in his long unlife. One of the factors making Spike so deadly an opponent in battle is his complete disregard for tradition and rules, placing him on equal footing with Buffy - herself not much for rules and traditions. Spike is highly skilled and adaptable in both armed and unarmed combat. Spike has been shown on occasion using firearms and modern weaponry as well as the bladed weapons more often seen in the Buffyverse. He is skilled at using many varieties of weapons, such as a rifle, knife, sword, axe, crossbow, stake, and a staff. His fighting style seems to blend several different disciplines accumulated over his years of fighting others. His style resembles a cross between kung fu, with its free style movements, and various other martial arts blended into one flowing style, shifting from a classic karate stance to a boxer, nearly instantly. In combat, Spike shows great physical strength and adaptibility; for example, he was able to briefly overcome Illyria during a testing of her abilities, when she was at the height of her powers. Illyria criticized his (and others') ability to adapt, calling it "compromising"; however, for a creature with somewhat limited power (unlike the orignial Illyria), it was one of his greatest strengths as a fighter.

What gives Spike an added edge in both combat and personal matters are his skills in perception and observation, especially with regard to relationships and personalities. His strong connection with his own emotions also provides him with useful insight, giving him the previously mentioned "truth-seer" status. His ability to take a "Big Picture" approach, analyzing complicated interpersonal dynamics with ease, allows him to wield powerful psychological weapons as well as physical ones. For example, when he wants to create disharmony among the Scoobies, he divides-and-conquers with the "Yoko Factor", exploiting tensions that exist under the surface to alienate the group members against each other. When he and Angel compete for the Cup of Perpetual Torment, Spike's verbal taunts, insights, and insults are as crucial (in that they further demoralized an already insecure Angel) to his success as his physical blows. He explains to Buffy that he was able to defeat two Slayers because he sensed and exploited their "death wish." His skills of analysis also have many positive effects. For example, his perceptiveness and insight makes him a natural father-figure for Dawn, who needed protection, attention, and guidance. He is the first to see through Tara's abusive and controlling family, and reveals their sinister intentions before any of the Scoobies even suspect it. He has a solid sense of the state of relationships, identifying with startling accuracy when and why relationships, such as that between Buffy and Riley, are not meant to last. He also clearly identifies Buffy and Angel's continuing love at a time when both of them are trying to say that they are "just friends", forcing the two of them to finally face the truth to each other.

Spike's most distinctive trait is his love of combat for the sheer joy and adrenaline rush; up until the point when he falls in love with Buffy (about a year and a half before he regained his soul) he does not much care if he fought for good or evil; he is driven by the desire to do violence, and he particularly appreciates fights that pose a challenge, which has resulted in him taking on angry mobs and multiple Slayers (Spike has a special place in vampire lore for the rare feat of killing two Slayers in single combat). However, after falling in love with Buffy, Spike consistently fights on the side of "good". His love for battle continues after his re-ensoulment, which is ironic because, as a human, he had been quite meek, mild-mannered, and gentle. Even as a ghost, Spike tries to be useful and join in the fray. When he first arrives at Wolfram and Hart, he and Angel are confronted by a Droxlar Beast, whom Angel attacks. Spike immediately moves to fight the Droxlar (although, being immaterial at the time, this proved impossible), despite being in the course of a bitter argument with Angel and having no particular reason to help him. He eventually finds himself able to affect the world around him if he wants to badly enough, so he is able to assist in fighting before he is actually recorporalized.

Spike can also withstand excessive amounts of pain for extended periods of time, particularly when properly motivated. He withstands terrible torture at the hands of Glory, refusing to tell her that Dawn was the Key she sought, sustained only by his unrequited love for Buffy. He later withstands extensive torture while imprisoned by the First Evil; he refuses to give in to despair, taking strength from Buffy's declaration that she believes in him. While not as skilled or as cruel as Angelus, Spike also proves himself to be an effective torturer when he tortures Doctor Sparrow. Although capable of developing sound battle strategies, Spike (particularly in the days before the chip and the soul) often loses patience with anything more complicated than outright attack:

Spike: I had a plan.
Angel: You, a plan?
Spike: Yeah, a good plan. Smart. Carefully laid out. But I got bored.

He also is impatient to fight the Slayer upon his initial arrival in Sunnydale; while the attack is supposed to coincide with the Night of St. Vigeous (when vampire powers are enhanced), he "couldn't wait" to go after the Slayer and attacks the night before. However, he is somewhat masterful with strategy, and has exercised patience in many ways. For example, in Sunnydale, when Angelus joins Spike and Dru after Spike's injury, Spike patiently plays the role of the weakened cripple, listening, learning, and enduring tortuous weeks watching Angelus sexually pursue a very willing Dru as he waits for the right time to strike.

Spike is also seen: picking locks; driving a car, a motorcycle, and a motor home; using video game systems and a computer; treating injuries; pickpocketing; and playing poker and pool. He is fluent in Latin, Luganda (a language of Uganda, where he meets the demon shaman), and the language of Fyarl demons. It is implied that he has some minimal familiarity with Italian (he can at least say "ciao" and "strada").

Spike, parte III

Los Angeles
Despite his apparent death at the end of Buffy's final season, Spike returned as a regular on Angel in its fifth and final season, having been brought back by the same amulet that was initially given to Angel by Wolfram and Hart. The amulet is mysteriously returned to the offices by mail. Spike seeks, at this stage, to leave Wolfram and Hart and find Buffy, but, when he tries, he discovers that he is mystically bound to Los Angeles and unable to leave. For the first seven episodes of the season, Spike is an incorporeal being akin to a ghost with a connection to the human world that is unstable, causing him to disappear at random (but increasingly frequent) intervals. Spike, terrified, confides only to Fred that every time he disappears he is being transported to Hell. He asks her to help save him, and she promises to find a way to make him corporeal again. Later, it is discovered that Spike's disappearances are being caused by another ghost, the Reaper, who toys with the many souls trapped at Wolfram and Hart in order to delay his own sentence to Hell. Meanwhile, Fred successfully creates a machine to recorporealize Spike. However, when the Reaper threatens Fred's life, Spike chooses to use the machine to save her, in the process throwing away his opportunity to become corporeal but successfully stopping the other ghost. His actions prove to her, at least, that he is "worth saving."

Later another mysterious package comes in the mail, addressed to Spike but with no return address. Upon opening the package he sees a flash of light; after trying to walk through a wall, Spike discovers he has become corporeal once more. One of his first acts is to attempt to rekindle his physical relationship with Harmony, who is now Angel's secretary; however, during their attempt at sex she is strangely (temporarily) affected by a force causing her eyes to bleed and her behavior to become violent. This is the end of their physical intimacy.

Chaos concurrently erupts in Wolfram & Hart, and Eve arrives with information that the existence of two ensouled vampires in the world is affecting the fabric of reality. A new translation of the Shanshu Prophecy reveals that in order to restore the balance, Spike and Angel must compete to drink from the Cup of Perpetual Torment. Angel and Spike's relationship has always been strained by competition over women, notably Drusilla and Buffy. Ego clashes and personal hostility that had been building up for more than a century lead to an extended battle between the two adversaries; each believes that the Cup would bestow upon him great responsibilities and pain, while ultimately washing his past clean and allowing him to live as human again. When Angel asks him if it's the destiny he wants, or just to take something away from Angel, Spike answers honestly, "a bit of both." Although Angel tells Spike that Spike is a monster just like him, Spike denies any similarities: "You had a soul forced on you. As a curse. Make you suffer for all the horrible things you've done. Me, I fought for my soul, went through the demon trials, almost did me in a dozen times over, but I kept fighting. Because I knew it was the right thing to do. It's my destiny." Angel retorts that the only reason Spike wanted his soul was to "get into a girl's pants" (an interesting argument considering that for a hundred years or so after Angel was re-ensouled, his actions, though not completely unnoteworthy, mostly consist of self-imposed isolation and brooding; Angel only becomes a "useful" creature after seeing and falling in love with Buffy). Then, for the first time in over a century of friendship and rivalry, Spike clearly defeats Angel and drinks from the Cup. Clearly, for the first time, Spike believes he is the better "man," and is able to prove it. Perhaps the battle between them is best symbolized by Angel's inability to touch a giant cross, which Spike, contemptously ignoring the pain, holds and wields with ease. However, the prophecy turns out to be a sham (the liquid in the Cup was merely Mountain Dew), rendering the whole exercise seemingly useless. Spike regains much self-confidence with his defeat of Angel.
Even though he is now corporeal (and therefore no longer bound to L.A.), he decides not to go to Europe in search of Buffy; he wants her to remember him as the hero who died to save the world. Spike later takes on a psychotic Slayer, who had until recently been locked in a mental institution, but she captures him, drugs him, ties him up, and cuts off his hands. This experience causes Spike to more deeply examine the nature of the evil inside him. He tells Angel that the girl thought that he had killed her whole family: "What am I supposed to do, complain, because hers wasn't one of the hundreds of families I did kill?" He believes that the girl has become a monster like them; Angel responds that the girl is an innocent victim, and Spike points out that he and Angel were innocent victims at one point. His hands are subsequently reattached at Wolfram & Hart, and he is instructed to play video games for physical therapy, including Donkey Kong and Crash Bandicoot.

Beginning in "Soul Purpose", Lindsey McDonald, pretending to be the late half-demon Doyle with a connection to The Powers That Be, persuades Spike that he is destined to "help the helpless," in much the same way as the real Doyle persuaded Angel of the same thing at the start of Angel. Alienated by Angel's corporate, bureaucratic approach to fighting evil, Spike steps into his role as hero until he learns that "Doyle" is actually Lindsay, who has been manipulating him the whole time. Spike, after a bout of depression, is brought back to being an affirmed champion of the good. His relationship with Angel becomes increasingly acrimonious, and they contemplate the possibility of Spike leaving L.A. after a particularly bitter argument over whether cavemen or astronauts would win in a fight. When Fred becomes infected with the essence of an ancient demon named Illyria, Spike works alongside Angel and the team to find a cure, and mourns for her when they fail. He abandons the idea of leaving L.A. after Fred's death, deciding to stay because that is what she would have wanted. He is put in charge of "testing" the newly-awakened Illyria's abilities, which generally involves fighting with her and recording details on his clipboard. Because of the drastic changes in the circumstances of his own life, he could relate to her situation, offering her conversation, company, and advice. By the end of the season, Spike is a trusted member of the team, and he is the first to vote for Angel's plan to wound the Senior Partners by taking out the Circle of the Black Thorn. In this endeavor, he is entrusted to rescue an infant and destroy a demon cult (the final episode "Not Fade Away"). Before Angel's team of demon killers enter their greatest and perhaps final battle, Angel gives them the day off, to spend as though it was going to be their last day. Spike, returning to his mortal roots as a frustrated poet, triumphantly knocks them dead (figuratively) in an open mic poetry slam, reciting his completed version of "Effulgent", a poem he'd begun over a century earlier, before being sired by Drusilla.
After succeeding in his mission, Spike joins Angel, Illyria, and a badly-wounded Charles Gunn in the alley as the series draws to an end, preparing to suicidally incur the apocalyptic wrath of the Senior Partners, as a way of going out in a blaze of glory. Whether Spike survived this battle has yet to be confirmed, although he does appear in (non-canon) material set after it.
Joss Whedon has spoken of a possible Spike movie set after the events of the series, so Whedon apparently still regards Spike as an active character.

Spike, parte II

Sunnydale
Spike first appears in Sunnydale in Buffy's second season, in the episode "School Hard", accompanied by his longtime love Drusilla, who is suffering from crippling weakness after having been attacked and viciously beaten and injured by an angry mob in Prague (her chronically weakened condition indicates that vampires can actually be harmed physically to a degree that it would take years or decades for them to recover). Spike is a devoted caretaker to Drusilla in her weakened condition, treating her with gentleness and consideration in sharp contrast with his behavior toward others. He initially believes that the Hellmouth's energy could cure Drusilla, and the presence of a Slayer he could fight only makes the town more attractive to him. Upon discovering that Angel(us) is also in Sunnydale, Spike seems genuinely glad to see him, suggesting that despite their many differences, he still considers the older vampire a friend. However, Angel's loyalty to Buffy soon ends that camaraderie, and when Spike later learns that Drusilla can only be cured by the blood of the vampire who had created her, Angel, Spike is willing to kill him to save her without a second thought. Early on, before his past is clearly revealed to viewers, Spike refers to Angel as both his "sire" and his "Yoda", but in later episodes, it is made it clear that Drusilla is the one that sired Spike. Joss Whedon explained in an interview that a vampire's sire refers to anyone prior to them in their "line". Spike later noted that Drusilla had made him a vampire, but Angel had made him a monster.

For much of the second season, Spike and Drusilla are major enemies of Buffy, until Spike is so severely injured in a fight with Buffy and Kendra that he spends several months confined to a wheelchair. Originally, Whedon had intended to kill Spike, but fans were so attached that Spike was simply crippled. When Angel reverts to Angelus after making love with Buffy, he joins the pair, and eventually plots to destroy all of humanity, as a way of getting rid of the stench of humanity that Buffy's love left in him. Spike at first celebrates their reunion with Angelus, again demonstrating that genuine affection exists between the two, but when Angelus woos the appreciative Dru as a lover and persistently taunts the (temporarily) helpless Spike, their longtime rivalry is renewed. Even after Spike is recovered, he still pretends that he needs a wheelchair, feigning weakness to avoid suspicion while he plots against Angelus.
This rivalry eventually motivates Spike to ally himself with Buffy to defeat Angelus; there is some ambiguity regarding his motivation in doing so, since despite his initial claim that he just wants Drusilla back, he also makes a speech:

“We like to talk big, vampires do. I’m going to destroy the world. That’s just tough guy talk. Strutting around with your friends over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world. You’ve got – dog racing, Manchester United, and you’ve got people: billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It’s all right here. But then someone comes along with a vision, with a real passion for destruction. Angel could pull it off. Goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester bloody Square."

Spike knocks out Drusilla, removing her from the fight. As he carries her from the fray, he sees Angelus corner an unarmed Buffy, and thinks that he is actually going to kill her. He shrugs and leaves Sunnydale; he and an unconscious Drusilla travel to Brazil.

Spike appears in only one episode of season three ("Lovers Walk"), attempting to force Willow Rosenberg to cast a love spell on Drusilla, who had turned away from him because he's not enough of a demon for her, because of his alliance with the Slayer and (as we learn later) because she suspects that he has feelings for Buffy. He visits Joyce Summers, who listens sympathetically to his heartache. Spike, after feeling the rush of an intense fight, abandons the love spell idea, resolving to win Drusilla back the old-fashioned way: by finding and torturing her until she likes him again, as Angel did in 1860. Buffy remarks to Angel that "I can fool Giles, and I can fool my friends, but I can't fool myself – or Spike, for some reason," foreshadowing Spike's role as the "truth-seer" of the group.

Spike returns to Sunnydale alone in season four to search for the Gem of Amarra, a talisman that allows a vampire to endure sunlight and even a stake to the heart without ill effect; he later travels to L. A. to retrieve it, torturing Angel in an attempt to discover its location before he is thwarted and driven from the city. He becomes involved with Harmony Kendall, a shallow young vampire. Despite her beauty and affection, Spike considers her little more than a nuisance and sexual plaything. His unlife takes a pivotal turn when The Initiative, a secret government demon-fighting army, captures him and implants a microchip in his head, which causes crippling pain whenever he harms or attempts to harm a human being.
Unable to hunt for blood, he turns to the Scooby Gang for protection, bartering his knowledge of the Initiative. He helps Rupert Giles out of a tight spot for a price. He and Buffy briefly become engaged through an accidental enchantment by Willow, foreshadowing their later bond, and it is telling that, though Willow only told them to get married, both of them mention being in love with the other. He discovers that the chip does not prevent him from fighting demons, and, since he thrives on violence, fights alongside the Scoobies on occasion.

At this point, Spike is still looking out for himself first and foremost however, and doesn't shy away from letting the Scoobies know it. On learning that Faith is on the loose after coming out of her coma, he proclaims that he'll be the one to find Faith, so he can tell her exactly where the Scoobies are, and watch while she tears them all apart. Later in the season Spike allies with Adam, a demon/human/cyborg chimera created by The Initiative, and helps the creature in its quest to destroy the Initiative and the Scoobies. Spike's price is simple: he wants the Initiative's chip out of his head for good. Through the use of lies and lines, he briefly manages to split the Scoobies up and turn them against each other ("The Yoko Factor"). They manage to overcome his scheme and learn the truth; when Spike realizes that Adam is double crossing him, he turns back to the Scoobies, even saving their lives against rampaging demons in the middle of a battle.

In season five, Spike becomes aware after some erotic dreams that, to his horror, he has fallen in love with Buffy. Unsure how to proceed, he keeps a nightly vigil outside her home, occasionally even breaking in (most notably to sniff and steal Buffy's clothing, and to steal photographs for his secret shrine to her). Spike also becomes a more active participant in the Scooby Gang, jumping into several of Buffy's fights to provide assistance whether she wants it or not. At Buffy's request, he reveals to her how he killed the two Slayers he had fought, offering survival advice, and later comforts her when her mother has to go into the hospital. Buffy's younger sister Dawn, who has a crush on Spike, perceives his obsession with Buffy, and casually tells Buffy of it. Disgusted, particularly after witnessing the full extent of Spike's obsession, Buffy rejects him, going as far as to uninvite him from her home (something she had not bothered to do in the two years since their brief alliance against Angelus). Still, Spike's feelings for the Slayer, his inability to harm humans, and his love of a good scrap lead him to fight alongside the Scooby Gang against the forces of evil. During this time, Spike impressed Tara Maclay, at least, as having genuinely been in love with Buffy; Tara also shared Spike's near-parental love for Dawn. There is, however, little further connection between Tara and Spike. Towards the end of the season Spike becomes one of Buffy's principal allies against the season's Big Bad, Glory, including, among other things, refusing to reveal the location of the Key to Glory under intense torture, nearly laying down his life to protect Dawn. In the days and hours leading up to the final showdown, Spike fights as a selfless warrior, earning Buffy's trust (as well as a re-invite to Buffy's home). After Buffy dies in the showdown with Glory, Spike honors her memory by remaining loyal to the Scoobies, fighting at their side and serving the role of baby-sitter/father-figure/protector to Dawn. Blaming himself for Buffy's death, he keeps track of the number of days since she died until she is resurrected in season six.

During season six, Spike and Buffy became lovers of a sort, engaging in a twisted sexual but emotionally one-sided relationship in which Buffy does not return his intense, obsessive love. Their physical relationship starts after a demon's spell makes them share their emotions and Buffy expresses that she "want[s] the fire back"; but it is not consummated until Spike finds out that his chip no longer stops him from hurting Buffy since she was resurrected by Willow's spell. Buffy most often initiates both the violence and the sex between them. This includes a dark moment where Buffy beats Spike severely enough to cause injuries that last at least a week. She also threatens to kill Spike if he ever tells anyone about them. Both are unsatisfied with the relationship; Buffy is ashamed of her dark desires, and unfulfilled with what, for her, is an empty sexual relationship, while Spike craves the love, trust, and affection that she is unwilling to give. Additionally, their relationship was challenged when Riley Finn, Buffy's ex-boyfriend, found Spike in possession of smuggled demon eggs and accused of him being "The Doctor" ("As You Were"), though Spike himself claimed to be storing the eggs for a friend.
Buffy decides to call it off shortly thereafter, admitting that she is just using him, and that it is killing her. Spike at first tries to get her back by making her jealous by bringing an unnamed goth girl as his date to the wedding of Xander . He succeeds in making her mildly jealous but she keeps up her resolve to not resume the destructive relationship with him. Later, after Xander left Anya at the altar, Spike and Anya get drunk together and seek solace in each other's arms. Buffy and Xander catch them, and her jealousy at seeing Spike with Anya leads him to believe he still had a chance at winning Buffy back. Spike, his obsession out of control, corners an injured Buffy in her bathroom, making aggressive sexual advances. When she refuses him, he attacks her in desperation, apparently intending to rape her; although most of their sexual history is highly violent, Buffy clearly says no to this encounter. Her original injury is increased when she slips and lands on the shower curtain, making it easier for Spike to force himself on top of her. However, Buffy is able to kick Spike across the room after he fails to respond to her cries. He draws back and tries to reconcile, to which Buffy responds, "Ask me again why I could never love you." He flees to his crypt in horror at what he had done, as well as what he had almost done.

Incapable of dealing with his emotions, he leaves town and heads to a remote area of Africa, vowing to "give her what she deserves." He seeks out a legendary Shaman/demon with the power to make him "What he once was." He undergoes a series of grueling physical trials (the Demon Trials) to prove his worthiness before a demon shaman, who promises to give him what he wants if he survives. In the final scene of the season ("Grave"), Spike survives the trials and the shaman grants his request, giving him back what he lost: his soul. Spike's intentions are confirmed in "Lessons", when the First in the form of the Mayor confirms that Spike chose to get his soul. Spike, tormented and more than half-mad with the guilt brought about by his newly restored soul, repeated this with his own words when he tells Buffy about his soul, at the end of "Beneath You":

BUFFY: "This is all you get. I’m listening. Tell me what happened."
SPIKE: "I tried to find it, of course."
BUFFY(annoyed): "Find what?"
SPIKE: "The spark. The missing— the piece. That fit. That would make me fit. Because you didn’t want— god— I can’t! Not with you looking."
He stands up and moves off into the shadows.
SPIKE: "I dreamed of killing you."
Spooked in spite of herself, Buffy bends down and picks up a splintered piece of wood and wields it as a stake.
SPIKE: "I think they were dreams. So weak. Did you make me weak? Thinking of you, holding myself and spilling useless buckets of salt over your . . . ending. Angel, he should have warned me. He makes a good show of forgetting but it’s here in me — all the time. The spark. I wanted to give you what you deserve. And I got it. They put the spark in me — and now all it does is burn."
Buffy is stunned.
BUFFY: "Your soul . . ."
SPIKE: (laughs) "A bit worse for lack of use."
BUFFY: "You got your soul back. How?"
SPIKE: "It’s what you wanted, right? (looking up) It’s what you wanted, right? And now everybody’s in here, talking. Everything I did, everyone I . . . and him . . . and it . . . the other. The thing beneath – beneath you. It’s here, too. Everybody. They all just tell me go. Go — to hell . . ."
BUFFY (horrified): "Why? Why would you do that?"
SPIKE: "Buffy, shame on you. Why does a man do what he mustn’t? For her. To be hers. To be the kind of man who would nev— To be a kind of man."

It was clear that all Spike had done, he had done for love of Buffy. With the returning of his soul comes a conscience filled with guilt as well. He must learn to live with himself as Angel did when he was cursed with a soul. In the early episodes of season seven, Spike resides in the basement of recently reconstructed Sunnydale High School, close to the Hellmouth's opening. Tormented by The First Evil as well as by his newfound conscience, Spike appears to be going insane (he notes at one point that he is "bug-shagging crazy"). After Buffy learns that Spike is in the basement, she enlists his assistance in several situations, although it isn't until well after she learns that he is ensouled that she decides to bring him out of the basement. Spike becomes reluctant roommates with Xander, because he has nowhere else to go. However, this arrangement backfires as Spike, under influence of the First Evil's hypnotic trigger, is forced to kill innocent people. Spike initially has no memory of his actions; after he discovers what he's done, he begs Buffy to stake him. Buffy refuses and takes him into her house and tells him she has seen him change. He suffers severe withdrawals after his extended feeding on human blood, and is still vulnerable to the (as yet unidentified) hypnotic trigger, and is willingly confined with ropes or chains. Buffy tells Spike that she believes in him, a statement which later sustains him throughout his imprisonment and torture at the hands of the First Evil.

Spike faithfully assists Buffy in her efforts to train the Potentials that are gathering in Sunnydale. In the meantime, Spike's chip begins to malfunction, causing him intense pain and threatening to end his unlife. To the dismay of Giles and most of her other friends, Buffy trusts Spike enough to order Initiative agents to remove it from his head. She also takes Spike's side when Principal Robin Wood, son of the slayer Spike murdered in 1977, attempts to kill him as retribution. Ironically, by attempting to kill Spike when he is under the First's influence, Wood frees Spike from his hypnotic trigger: a song called Early One Morning that Spike's mother often sang to him before he became a vampire. The song evoked Spike's traumatic memories of his mother's abusive behavior toward him after she turned. After Spike is able to address these issues, he realizes that his mother had always loved him, knowledge which frees him from the First's control. Late in the season, Spike and Buffy achieve an emotional closeness; he remains her only supporter when the other Scoobies, Giles, and the Potentials abandon her. Spike contemptously tells the rest of the Scoobies, "You sorry sods, she died for you, and you betrayed her!" The only one that remains selflessly loyal to Buffy is Spike. They spend two nights together, though it is not clear whether they resume their sexual intimacy. Creator Joss Whedon has said he intentionally left it to the viewers to decide how they felt the relationship progressed though Whedon himself said he personally felt that it would be wrong for them to resume a sexual relationship. After the first night, Spike tells Buffy that it was the best night of his life, just holding her.

In the final battle inside the Hellmouth, Spike, wearing a mystical amulet, sacrifices himself to destroy the First's army of Turok-Hans (pure demon übervampires) and close the Hellmouth. The amulet mystically channels sunlight that turns the Turok-Hans to dust and collapses the cavern containing the Hellmouth, sealing the Hellmouth and creating a crater which swallows the entire town of Sunnydale. Spike is incinerated in the process, but not before Buffy says "I love you." He replies, "No, you don't — but thanks for saying it." Even as he burns and crumbles to dust he laughs and revels in the destruction before him, glad to be there for the end. Through this act, he becomes a Champion, dying at the Hellmouth for Buffy. Even though he didn't believe that she loved him, and he didn't think anyone cared for him, Spike still gave up his life to save the world.
But still, he also got better from that.

Spike, parte I

Spike (né William Pratt, aka William The Bloody), is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon for the cult television programs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. The character is portrayed by James Marsters. He is considered a breakout character.

Character history:

William Pratt before his siring
William Pratt was born circa 1853 in London to Anne Pratt and an as yet unnamed husband. William's surname was not revealed in the series and for years was widely accepted to be "Walthrop" in the fandom, which made it fanon. However, creator Joss Whedon recently revealed it to be "Pratt". William Pratt was the birth name of legendary horror actor Boris Karloff.

Since the actor who plays him is 5'11" (1.80 meters), it's safe to say the character shares the same height.

In 1880, at approximately 25 to 30 years of age, William was a brown-haired, ineffectual gentleman who lived with his mother and wrote poetry. He was called "William the Bloody" behind his back by his peers, because his poetry was so "bloody awful." This nickname (with more deadly connotations) would follow him in the future as a vampire. While he traveled in society circles, he found little in common with his peers and felt a general disconnect from their interests and discussions. He preferred creating things of beauty rather than dwelling on the scandalous and seedy elements of existence, and he showed a strong capacity for loyalty and devoted love, which would also follow him after his siring. After his romantic overtures were rejected by the aristocratic Cecily, a despondent William accepted comfort in the arms of Drusilla only to be bitten and transformed into a vampire. He had always been very close to his mother, and after he became a vampire he also turned her into a vampire to prevent her from dying from an illness (while new vampires in the Buffy universe typically turn completely evil and delight in killing their families, Spike was a notable exception and was as single-mindedly devoted to his mother as ever.)

Unfortunately his mother as a soulless vampire proved to be a truly evil creature, taunting Spike that she had despised him all along, and insinuating that Spike had always had a sexual fascination with her. Unlike Spike, who had retained many elements of his own personality, the creature she had become seemed to have retained little of her original self (as Spike later remarked upon in "Lies My Parents Told Me"). He ended up reluctantly staking her, because he could not bear to see his mother in such a twisted, unnatural, abusive form. He wrote a poem about the experience entitled "The Wanton Folly of Me Mum", the text of which was never actually presented. The entire matricidal experience was a terrible trauma for Spike, and it would later be exploited by an evil force as a hypnotic trigger. After staking his mother, Spike began a new life with Drusilla. Euphoric with his new-found vampiric abilities, and hungry for revenge on his peers, he abandoned the genteel hypocrisy of Victorian life. He became a rebel, adopting a working class accent and becoming prone to impulsiveness and violence. He adopted the nom de guerre "Spike" because of a habit of torturing people with railroad spikes. It should be noted that one of his detractors in his human days exclaimed he'd rather "have a railroad spike driven through [his] head" than listen to William's poetry, a possible inspiration for the torture.

In the company of Drusilla, her sire Angelus and Angelus's sire Darla, Spike terrorized Europe and Asia for almost two decades. Utterly devoted to Drusilla, Spike had a strained relationship with Angelus, rather like two rival brothers. Although Angelus did enjoy the company of another male vampire in their travels, he found Spike's eagerness for battle to be an unnecessary risk and unbecoming, since Angelus regarded killing as an art, not a sport, and while Angel killed for the sheer act of evil in itself Spike did it for amusement and the rush. Tensions also arose surrounding Angelus's ongoing sexual relationship with Drusilla, which continued despite Spike's strong disapproval.

Spike kills his first Slayer
In 1900, in one of his proudest moments, Spike killed Xin Rong, a Chinese Slayer, during the Boxer Rebellion; it was her blessed sword that gave him the scar on his left eyebrow, which remains a century later. Shortly afterward, Spike and Drusilla lost touch with Darla and Angelus (who, unknown to Spike or Drusilla, had recently been cursed with a soul), and the couple wandered the world seeking amusement and mayhem, occasionally separating to pursue separate interests but always reuniting. During World War II, Spike was captured by Nazis for experimentation and transported aboard a submarine which was in turn seized by Americans; after Spike and two other vampires killed most of the crew, Angel made Spike and another vampire Angel had just sired, leave the sub, by forcing them to swim to shore before the submarine reached the United States. By the 1950's, Spike, having reunited with Drusilla, spent some time in Italy.

At some point in a century or so of being his own boss, Spike employed a pair of Fyarl Demons as muscle, which is noteworthy since in the Buffyverse vampires and demons rarely get along; Spike would continue this diversity in friendships throughout his unlife. He attended Woodstock, where he drank blood from a flower child and spent the next several hours watching his own hand move. Spike frequently challenges vampire conventions and limitations. For example, Spike often treats his vulnerability to the sun as an inconvenience, rather than a limitation; he drives in broad daylight in vehicles with blacked-out windows, and he regularly travels outside during the day, using a blanket for cover. Spike also embraced certain elements of humanity, such as love and loyalty, that would be considered too human, and therefore offensive or impure, to other vampires.

Spike's story before he appears in Sunnydale unfolds in flashbacks scattered among numerous episodes of both "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel". They were not presented in chronological order. A guide to finding the flashback or flashbacks to a particular event is at Angel, Darla, Spike and Dru: Before 1997.

Spike & Buffy

Where Do We Go From Here?

Dawn:
Where do we go from here

Buffy & Spike:
Where do we go from here

Giles:
The battle's done,
And we kinda won.

Giles & Tara:
So we sound our victory cheer.
Where do we go from here.

Anya & Xander:
Why is the path unclear,
When we know home is near.
Understand we'll go hand in hand,
But we'll walk alone in fear. (Tell me)
Tell me where do we go from here.

All:
When does the end appear,

Spike: (spoken)
Bugger this.

All:
When do the trumpets cheer.
The curtain's close, on a kiss god knows,
We can tell the end is near...

Buffy: (spoken)
Hey.

Spike: (spoken)
You should go back inside
Finish the group sing,
Get your kumbayaya's out.

Buffy: (spoken)
I don't want to.

Spike: (spoken)
The day you sus out what you do want,
There'll probably be a parade.
76 bloody trombones.

Buffy: (spoken)
Spike.

Spike: (spoken)
Look, you don't have to say anything.

(Buffy & Spike same time)
Buffy:
I touch the fire and it freezes me.
I look into it and its black.
Why can't I feel?
My skin shoul crak and peel
Spike:
I died so many years ago,
you can make me feel

All:
Where do we go from here.

Artist: Buffy Musical Episode
Song: Where Do We Go From Here?

Frase Televisiva

Hoy he visto una entrevista al actor James Masters, sobre el papel que ha interpretado durante más tiempo: el vampiro Spike (uno de mis personajes de ficción favoritos). Durante la entrevista habla de muchas cosas, tanto sobre el argumento de la serie como sobre lo que sucedía detrás de las cámaras, pero lo que más me ha gustado ha sido una de sus frases. Él la dijo en su momento sin intención alguna, refiriéndose simplemente a cómo era trabajar en "Buffy Cazavampiros", pero la frase me ha encantado porque creo que se puede aplicar a más de una cosa en la vida (el trabajo, las relaciones, etc) y a más de una vida (la mía, la tuya, la de los demás...).
Voy a poner primero la frase en inglés, para que la leáis en su contexto original (imaginadla con un fuerte acento británico, aunque el de Masters sea fingido) y luego su traducción al español.
Me gustaría que comentáseis qué os parece...

Frase Original: "If we are not getting scared to shit once a year, we are not working hard enought"

Traducción: "Si no nos cagamos de miedo una vez al año, es que no estamos trabajando lo bastante duro"

Angel, parte IV

Angel vs. Angelus
Whilst Liam is human and Angelus is a vampire, Angel is a third, unique persona, a demon burdened with a human soul. A hybrid of man and vampire, he constantly deals with vampiric urges, and the human conscience that prevents him from ever forgetting his past misdeeds. Though the early seasons of Buffy expressed the view that when a human becomes a vampire "You die, and a demon sets up shop in your old home; it walks like you and it talks like you - but it's not you" ("Lie to Me"), later seasons of Buffy and Angel had the relationship between Angelus and Angel far more intertwined. Angelus frequently referred to himself as "Angel" during Seasons 1 and 2 of Buffy (possibly to torment Buffy). It would seem that even before he was ensouled, "Angel" was something of an 'affectionate' nickname that Angelus was known by (or indeed a mere translation; before being cursed he had traveled in many countries and it is likely that he was generally known by the equivalent of Angel in the local language). Similarly, Angel had almost always said "I" when speaking of Angelus; they clearly share the same memories, and it is noteworthy that he never resumed the name of his human original, Liam (except while amnesiac in "Spin the Bottle"). Also it must be remembered that, in Season 1's "Eternity", Angel reverts back to his evil self without even losing his soul. This suggests that in a subconscious state that Angel's true nature is allowed to appear. Spike's character arc implied that a soul was not the "person", but rather just that person's humanity and conscience; suggesting that Angel and Angelus are not different beings, but rather the opposing id and ego of the same person. Angel hints at this when he tells Buffy that it's not the demon in him who is responsible for his acts. Darla also states that Angelus' evil was innate, suggesting that Liam initially had a far greater potential for darkness than was first apparent.

Angel: Look, I'm weak. I've never been anything else. It's not the demon in me that needs killing, Buffy. It's the man. (Episode 3.10 (Buffy) "Amends")

Angel: ...there is no guilt, there is no torment, no consequences... It's pure. I remember what that was like. Sometimes I miss that clarity.
Cordelia: But not the trying to kill your friends and family part, right? Just checking! (Episode 1.21 "Blind Date")

Cordelia: What I remember when I was a higher being... I remember seeing you. Your past. When you were Angelus.
Angel: I've never tried to hide who I was. Or what I've done. You already knew.
Cordelia: Knowing's different than living it. When I was up there, I could look back and see everyting you did as Angelus. More than see. I felt it. Not just their fear and pain. I felt you. And how much you enjoyed making them suffer... (Episode 4.07 "Apocalypse, Nowish")

In the context of the primary theme of the Angel series, redemption, this makes the most sense, which is possibly the reason for the writers returning to the "blurred" relationship between Angel/Angelus in Angel Season Five. It would also explain Angel's occasional lapses into darkness while still retaining Angel's brooding nature instead of reverting to Angelus' sadism, notably in Season 2 where he condones the massacre of Wolfram & Hart employees at the hands of Darla and Drusilla, and Season 3 where he attempts to smother Wesley Wyndam-Pryce with a pillow for abducting his son. Angelus's strength and cunning make him exceptionally lethal. Angel and Angelus can be considered as different sides of the same person - rather than thinking of one as "the Demon" and the other as "the Soul". When ensouled, the ego that has come to be known as "Angel" is dominant; without his soul, he reverts to his id, the "Angelus" persona. Both personas are controlled by his own thoughts, emotions, and actions, however, making him just as responsible for what Angelus does as he is for his actions as Angel. This is also supported by the fact that both personas do battle for Angel's mind before his soul can be restored in "Orpheus". An alternative view is that they are indeed separate beings but, having a single shared memory, have strong feelings of having been the other at the times when the other was dominant. Although Angelus' bodycount was vast, his capacity for psychological intimidation was substantially above contemporary real-life serial killers. During his time with Darla, he committed some of the most atrocious and despicably evil acts of his time. He is prone to brutal displays of what he would see as affection, one such incident involved him nailing a puppy to a wall, though a full explanation of this was never given as Buffy interrupted Giles with "Skip it, I don't have a puppy. So skip it." Another example of Angelus' brutal acts was when he brought Dru a still warm human heart on Valentine's Day. Angelus' mean streak does not stop there. He always had an obsession with death being an art form; every kill a work of art to be savored and appreciated. When he captured Giles for torture in "Becoming, Part Two (Buffy episode)", he mentions in passing that the last time he tortured someone, they hadn't even invented the chainsaw. In the episode "Amends", The First Evil references him killing a man's three children then propping them up in bed so that they appeared to be sleeping. It was only after the father kissed one of them good night that he felt how cold they were. This is similar to when Angelus placed the recently killed body of Jenny at Giles' apartment, making Giles believe she had set up a romantic evening for them. Angelus also had a weakness in that he was prone to excessive talking, and had a need to attempt psychological destruction of his victims before physically killing them. This streak of sadism sometimes gave potential victims time to either possibly escape or attempt to fight back (although it made little difference as he almost always got them in the end). Spike once observed to Angel "you bloody well talk them to death before you kill them!"

Angel, parte III

Powers & Abilities
Angel has the usual powers and weaknesses of a vampire, along with some abilities which may be unique to him. Some of his vampiric powers are greater than average, because of his age and perhaps his bloodline. His talents may be divided into three main categories: physical, sensory, and mental. He is also skilled in a number of different areas.

Angel’s entire physiology is of superhuman quality. His strength, though ill-defined, is far beyond that of normal humans: he can punch through wooden walls, leap 15 feet straight up, rip apart bicycle chains, throw a man across the lobby of the Hyperion when angered, and so forth. His motor skills and reflexes far surpass those of humans, for example he once spun around and caught a crossbow bolt fired at his back from no more than fifteen feet away and has (As Angelus) evaded multiple point-blank shotgun blasts. He also has standard vampire durability against most forms of mundane physical damage; he once jumped down from a four-story rooftop without sustaining any apparent injury, and has described being shot as feeling "like a bee sting." Nonetheless, Angel is not indestructible. He has all the vulnerabilities of a Buffyverse vampire: direct sunlight will cause combustion that would eventually kill him if he stays out in the sun's rays for more than a few seconds. A stake through the heart and decapitation would instantly kill him. In addition, certain objects of religious significance to Christians — specifically Bibles, crucifixes, and holy water — can burn his flesh. He can be rendered unconscious by poisons and tranquilizers, though he has survived dosages that would be fatal to a human. Also, Angel, like all Buffyverse vampires, can not enter a person's home unless he's invited by one of the occupants, though this rule does not extend to the home of non-human entities, public facilities, and temporary lodgings like a motel room or an abandoned house. At least two of Angel’s senses — his smell and hearing — are also superhumanly acute. On many occasions he has tracked people through the streets (or even sewers) of Los Angeles by smell alone; his olfactory talents are apparently superior to dogs, as he does not need to sniff the ground to track in this manner. Like all Buffyverse vampires, Angel can also smell fear. He can also tell when two people have had sex; in the episode "Ground State", he tells Lilah Morgan, "I can smell you and Wesley all over each other." He, at one point in the series, was also quickly able to smell that Wesley had sex with a bleached blonde the night before. His hearing is so sensitive that he once was able to eavesdrop on a conversation happening in the lobby of a hotel while confined in the hotel’s basement. As vampires are primarily nocturnal, his sight may also be of superhuman quality, though this is less certain; he has been noticed using night-vision goggles, for instance. Through Angel and Spike, the viewer learns the differences between human and vampire senses of taste: while the episode "I Will Remember You" reveals that a vampire's ability to taste conventional human food is dulled, we also learn that vampires can easily taste subtleties in blood (fear makes a person's blood taste pleasantly salty; Slayer blood is an aphrodisiac and stimulant; cold, hot, and warm blood all have different tastes; human blood is preferable to otter blood, which in turn is preferable to pig blood, etc.) According to Spike, blood smells "metallic, sorta", like pennies ("Damage") .

Angel possesses at least two superhuman cognitive abilities. One is a photographic memory; he is able to recall visual impressions in great detail and fidelity (it is unclear whether this ability is unique to Angel; it is possible that he possessed it as a human being and it carried over into his unlife, or it could be one of the effects of the Gypsy curse designed for him to suffer for his past sins). Angel has also displayed a receptive "psychic connection" to vampires he has sired, though this appears to depend on his relationship with them. For instance he never experienced any visions of Drusilla's activities yet he did with Penn. Despite being part of a collective with Drusilla for a while, he appears to be closest to her when tormenting her as a human, his limited affections reserved for his sire Darla who possessed such a close connection to Angel. Penn was treated more as a child and was trained specifically by Angelus for a period of time. This ability was not further developed to explain its true extent and was never displayed with his other progeny, Lawson, with whom he did not have a long or important relationship.

Angel is a highly skilled combatant. Generally he prefers to fight unarmed, using a style that seems to blend several different disciplines and to take advantage of his superhuman strength and speed. Angel uses a lot of circular attacks such as spinning kicks and spinning back hands. He, unlike Buffy, likes to stay grounded in his attacks and rarely does any jumping moves. He has been said to be equal to Buffy in terms of fighting and slightly better than Spike. Finally, Angel's great weakness is his love of talking, a weakness which he shared with Angelus. In other fights, Angel clearly displays his skill at fighting. He was able to defeat Marcus Hamilton in the final fight at Wolfram and Hart. Prior to the episode "Destiny", Angel fought Spike from time to time, displaying clear dominance throughout the nineteenth century, until Spike's ensoulment, which changed him dramatically. When the two battled for the Cup of Perpetual Torment, Spike defeated a severely demoralised Angel, going so far as to drive a stake into Angel's shoulder, showing that he could have killed him if he wanted. It must be said though that during this fight, Angel was feeling depressed and lacked self-confidence due to his position at Wolfram and Hart and the loss of his best friend and the woman he loved, Cordelia Chase. After "Destiny" however, and following his getting over the depression and regaining his confidence, Angel did show a slight dominance over Spike in several mostly inconclusive encounters, even going as far as to violently pummel Spike in an elevator while in puppet form, although it remains open to debate just how seriously Spike was taking that particular fight. Though Angelus has admitted to a disdain for fights in which his victory is not certain, a mindset which most likely contributed to his failure to match Spike's record at defeating Slayers, he has certainly proven himself possessed of the necessary skill, going so far as to dominate the combat for significant portions of his battles against both Buffy and Faith. As Angel, his mentality (And in some cases, his personal connection with the Slayer in question, as with Faith.) is much more given to defensive fighting when faced with human opponents, but has repeatedly managed to hold his own in spite of this limitation, such as when he fought with and executed a plan to subdue the rogue Slayer Dana in short order. He has mastered many varieties of weapons, favoring broadswords and axes. As Angelus, he once demonstrated proficiency with a shotgun; it’s not clear whether Angel’s ensouled persona also possesses this skill. His arguably greatest asset as a combatant is his self-confidence and determination, coupled with his ability to seize any advantage. While Angel lacks Spike's uncanny ability to sense an opponent's weakness, he has far greater ability to remain calm, and follow a plan. Angel is also quick to adapt to his foes' abilities, as he did in defeating Marcus Hamiliton. He also possesses some skills in magic, on several occasions demonstrating impressive ability in spells and wizardry. In conjunction with his drinking of Marcus Hamilton's Senior Partner-infused blood in the final episode, all of Angel's abilities may have increased dramatically. Whether the effects of his blood-imbued strength boost are temporary or not remain unseen. As Angelus, he displays a considerable skill in manipulating others emotional states to devastating affect, able to provoke full blown arguments with a few carefully chosen words and, with time and effort, drive the emotionally unstable to insanity. He is also an expert at both physical and psychological torture. Angel will probably not use these 'talents' if he still has them; however, it is possible that he may have done so during the time between "Reunion" and "Epiphany," as even Darla did not recognize him as either Angel or Angelus, and the full extent of the actions he was capable of committing at that time were unknown. In the episode "You're Welcome", Cordelia passed on her visions to Angel in the same way that she had originally been granted them by Doyle. Angel was given a psychic connection to the Powers That Be, allowing him precognitive visions that he utilised in the last few episodes of the series. As he told Connor, he has "very nice handwriting." During the episode "Lovers Walk", he is also seen reading La Nausée by Jean-Paul Sartre. The fact that the cover features the original French title suggests Angel is proficient enough with French to read the book in its original language. While not arrogant in any sense of the word, Angel is fully aware of his incredible abilities. In one episode he tells an opponent "If you're lucky, you'll last ten minutes, tops. Really lucky, you'll be unconscious for the last five."

Angel, parte II

Los Angeles
Less than a year later, Angel is unexpectedly released from Hell, reappearing in his mansion in a feral state. Buffy aids him in secret, fostering his rehabilitation. Having regained his senses, Angel realizes that his return from Hell was not accidental, and that he must be meant to serve some higher purpose. Haunted by The First, taking on the appearances of those he killed as Angelus, Angel almost kills himself out of the guilt he feels. He makes the difficult decision to leave Sunnydale and Buffy, in an effort to protect them both and lend whatever normality to Buffy's chaotic life he can. He then moves to Los Angeles, where he attempts to redeem himself in the service of others. He finds support from Doyle, a half-demon sent by The Powers That Be, and Cordelia Chase, a former classmate of Buffy's who has moved to L.A. to find wealth and fame. The trio form Angel Investigations, a shoe-string operation with the mission statement of protecting those who cannot defend themselves and helping lost souls find their way.
Doyle, Angel's trusted friend and sole connection to the Powers, is killed in the line of duty, leading Angel to become even more protective of those he holds dear. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, who had briefly served as Watcher to both Buffy and Faith in Sunnydale, arrives in L.A. working as a "rogue demon hunter," but stays to assist Angel and Cordelia in their mission. A few months later, they are joined by lifelong demon fighter Charles Gunn. The AI Team also enlists the help of demon karaoke bar-owner Lorne, known initially only as The Host, an Anagogic demon who can read the futures of humans and demons when they sing.

Cordelia, Gunn, and Angel, 3 members of Angel Investigations.
As Angel continues to help the helpless in Los Angeles, his good deeds begin to disrupt the plans of the evil inter-dimensional law firm, Wolfram & Hart. In an attempt to control him, W&H resurrect his sire and former lover, Darla, but bring her back as a human rather than a vampire. W&H then bring forth Drusilla, who turns Darla into a vampire again, causing Angel to feel that he has failed to save her. He then fires his crew and embarks on a bitter, ruthless vendetta against W&H (going as far as consciously allowing the murder of a very large group of W&H employees) and the newly reunited Darla and Drusilla. In a moment of perfect despair, Angel attempts to remove his soul by having sex with Darla, but instead finds a moment of clarity following the desperate act, realizing his purpose is still for good. Horrified at Angel's epiphany, Darla flees Los Angeles. After a difficult reconciliation that involves Wesley taking over the official position of leader of the group, the AI team then find themselves transported to Lorne's home dimension, Pylea. Eventually they return with a new team member, Winifred Burkle, in tow, and to the news that the love of Angel's life, Buffy, has died.
Despite Buffy's miraculous resurrection a few months later, Angel finds that his previously platonic love for Cordelia has grown to be romantic. Before he has a chance to confess his feelings, however, Darla returns, pregnant with his son, to be named Connor. False prophecies, time travelers and betrayal lead to Angel losing his infant son to an old enemy, Holtz, who abducts Connor soon after his birth, taking him to a hell dimension (Quor-Toth) where time passes differently. When Connor returns days later, he is a young man who has been raised by Holtz to believe that Angel is a soulless monster. Connor vows to make Angel pay for the suffering he had once caused, and he acts out his retribution by sending him to the bottom of the ocean in a steel coffin. At the same time, Cordelia ascends to a higher plane, the feelings shared between her and Angel still left unspoken.
Rescued by Wesley from his watery prison, Angel's relationship with Connor is strained. It is complicated further by the return of an amnesiac Cordelia. When a very powerful demon known only as the Beast arrives and begins an attempt to bring forth an apocalypse, Angel's worst fears are realized when he has to strip himself of his soul and revert to his evil alter ego in order to defeat it. Angelus does indeed overcome the Beast, and is also deft enough to realize that the Beast was a mere "flunkie" serving an even deeper evil. Although he is momentarily free to wreak a little havoc of his own, Angelus is recaptured and re-ensouled with the help of Faith (who almost dies in her quest to capture Angelus) and Willow. After his soul is restored, Angel figures out that the enemy he has been battling is a little closer to home than the group had previously considered, realizing that whatever the Beast's "boss" is, it is using Cordelia's body to carry out its plans. After battling and defeating the divine being known as Jasmine, Angel is offered the L.A. branch of W&H on the grounds that he ended world peace, despite the fact that "world peace" meant no free will and the sacrifice of thousands of lives at the hands of Jasmine, who had to literally devour people to stay alive. Angel acts against all of his instincts and makes a deal with his sworn enemy, in exchange for W&H erasing Connor’s memories and giving him a normal life.
Angel's year spent running W&H is one marred with challenge and self-doubt. Trying to battle evil from within the belly of the beast proves to be more difficult than even he imagined, with the lines of good and evil becoming ever more grey with every action taken.
Shortly after Angel assumes control of the law firm, matters are further complicated when Spike appears as a ghost, emerging from a familiar amulet sent to Angel in the mail. Sharing a complicated history of murder and mayhem, they had spent more than a century as rivals in everything. Now both possessing souls, and both still in love with Buffy, they had evolved into very different heroes in the war against evil. Forced to co-exist, they wage a protracted, insidious battle of wits, ending when they finally come to an understanding and acceptance of their unique brotherhood on their journey to redemption. Though it must be said that Spike never felt the need to prove his redemption as Angel did - it was clear that all Spike had done, he had done for the love of Buffy. In both of the series he appeared in, it was always clear that, unlike Angel, who saw himself as seeking redemption (since he got his own series), Spike wasn't as openly concerned about that (though it must be mentioned that originally, Angel only started to help people because of Buffy, it's highly doubtful that Angel would have ever become a champion without her influence). What he had done as a soulless vampire does come to haunt Spike, as he tells Angel in the episode "Damage." Also, in the episode "Destiny," when they prepare to do battle over the Cup of Perpetual Torment, Spike tells Angel "You had a soul forced on you. As a curse. Make you suffer for all the horrible things you've done. Me, I fought for my soul, went through the demon trials, almost did me in a dozen times over, but I kept fighting. Because I knew it was the right thing to do. It's my destiny." Then Spike defeats Angel for the first time in their century plus association. This was due to Angel's emotional problems, lack of self confidence and concerns over his chance at redemption through the Shanshu, as on four other occasions over the course of the year Angel did show a slight dominance, in terms of fighting, over Spike again. An example being that Spike was beaten twice, in two fights, with the vampire slayer Dana while Angel was able to beat her and restrain her in his first encounter with her. This clearly shows that Angel is a slightly better fighter in that he could beat a slayer that Spike, who was an expert in fighting slayers, couldn't. Another factor in the "Destiny" fight, that worked in Spike's favour, was that Spike wanted to fight while Angel didn't. Angel just wanted to get to the cup. When Angel finally started fighting for real, and not just throwing random punches and kicks, he had a slight domination over Spike but the damage caused by Spike earlier in the fight, when Angel wasn't trying, showed as Spike had just enough left at the end to win. Despite this, Spike and Angel come to an understanding that lets Spike stand loyally beside Angel in their last battle against the forces of the Senior Partners.

The surviving members make their final stand against Wolfram & Hart.
Angel finally understands that he will never be able to completely stop the forces of evil, but that he can temporarily sever the Senior Partners' hold on Earth.
Together with his comrades, Angel prepares to suicidally incur the apocalyptic wrath of the Senior Partners as a way of going out in a blaze of glory. They assassinate the members of the Circle of the Black Thorn, the Senior Partners' instruments on Earth for pulling all the political and economic strings. In this effort, Gunn is badly wounded, and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is killed. Gunn manages to make it to the meeting point, the alley behind the Hyperion Hotel, and together with Angel, Spike, and Illyria, proceeds to engage in battle with the dark armies that the Senior Partners have sent against them.
Series creator Joss Whedon has stated that he had originally intended Angel to survive this battle and go on into a sixth season. However, this was his original intention prior to the show being cancelled and prior to his writing the final episode.
Angel definitely did survive in the continuity according to the IDW comics The Curse and Old Friends. In these publications, Angel, as well as Spike, Illyria and Gunn all survived the final battle.

Ángel, parte I

Angel (born 1727 in Galway, Ireland) is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt for the television programs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. The character is portrayed by David Boreanaz.

Character history
Angel was born as Liam, to an Irish merchant, in 1727. By 1753, at the age of 26, he had developed a taste for alcohol, women and sloth. Though not a bad man, Liam was a hedonist whose only real ambition lay in seeing the world. For the lazy Irishman, that seemed a laughable dream, especially after he was expelled from his father's household, but he had caught the eye of an affluent woman — actually a vampire — named Darla. She lured him into an alley, and, promising him a world full of excitement and travel, transformed him into a vampire.

Angelus during the 18th cenutry.
The loss of his soul meant Liam no longer possessed any restraint over his darker impulses. On the night he rose from his grave, and in response to Darla's claim that he could have anyone in the village, he set about slaughtering the entire community. When he came to slaughter his own family, he found no problem in entering, his little sister inviting him in without hesitation or suspicion. Before killing his father, he would tell him mockingly, "[My sister] thought that I'd returned to her. An angel. She was wrong." For generations Darla and Liam, now known as Angelus, terrorized humankind, murdering and torturing anyone who crossed their path. Angelus sired the vampires Penn (who indulged his blood lust by becoming a serial killer), and Drusilla, a young woman driven insane by Angelus before he finally sired her. Drusilla, in turn, sired Spike, for whom Angelus largely served as a mentor and "role model." Spike would go so far as to call the elder vampire his "Yoda".
According to Angel in the episode "City of", he had been around for 14 wars. And "Vietnam doesn't count; they never declared it."

Re-ensoulment
In 1898, Angelus slew the favorite daughter of a tribe of Gypsies, the Kalderash Clan. To avenge her death, they cursed him by restoring his human soul, thus afflicting him with a conscience and condemning him to an eternity of remorse. He tried and failed to resume his life with Darla. After he was unable to kill a baby during the Boxer Rebellion to prove himself to Darla, Angelus fled (presumably to the United States). There he lived an isolated life avoiding humanity, and the temptation to feed, living in a dark apartment.
Angel arrived in New York via Ellis Island 1902 (Angel Season 4 Episode 15 Orpheus)
During WWII, Angel was recruited by The Demon Research Initiative who sunk him to the bottom of the ocean to rescue an American submarine crew from Nazi captured vampires (including Spike). The American crew had stolen the German submarine. Angel sired Lawson here.
In 1952, Los Angeles, Angel was a resident at the Hyperion Hotel, the building which would one day become the future base of Angel Investigations. During this time, Angel was attempting to stay to himself, avoiding interaction with other patrons and looking the other way when his help was required, even despite the numerous strange incidents of murders and suicides running rampant throughout the hotel. After his meeting with a young woman named Judy, he was forced to disarm a man chasing her but then immediately ended any interaction with her soon after. However her repeated attempts to contact him managed to help him build a, luke-warm at best, relationship with her while the hotel continued to become corrupted around him. Though he didn't understand why, Angel felt compelled to help the human residents of the hotel by defeating the Paranoia demon affecting them, but by the time he had obtained the items he required, the entire hotel had been overcome with paranoia and not only did Judy betray him in order to save herself, but the hotel residents beat and then hanged him. This was a turning point in Angel's life where he got close to a human and tried to selflessly help her and the other residents, but in the end decided it was not worth saving them, bitter at their actions against him. He returns many decades later to find Judy an old woman, having been trapped in the Hyperion all this time feeling guilt at Angel's apparent death by hanging because of her accusations. Angel forgives her and remembers her fondly as one of his first few friends.
In New York during the 1970s, Angel came upon a robbery at a doughnut shop. After the robber killed the employee and fled, Angel stayed with the man as he died. Unable to resist the urge to feed from a warm human, Angel fed on the man and then grew disgusted with himself. He exiled himself to a life of homelessness, living in alleyways and feeding off of stray rats. A shadow of his former self, a reclusive and emotionally tortured Angel eventually met a demon named Whistler in 1996, who persuaded him to join the fight against the evil that had corrupted him and to help the newly called Vampire Slayer, Buffy Summers. When he and Buffy finally meet in Sunnydale, CA, he introduces himself not as Angelus, but as Angel.

Angel's doomed romance with Buffy is a centerpiece of the show.
Angel's story before he met Buffy unfolds in flashbacks scattered among numerous episodes of both "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel". They were not presented in chronological order. A guide to finding the flashback or flashbacks to a particular event is at Angel, Darla, Spike and Dru: Before 1997.
Over time, Buffy and Angel fall in love. Though they try to deny their feelings, they cannot resist the passion growing between them. When they finally consummate their relationship, Angel experiences the one moment of pure happiness needed to break his curse. Without the humanity and conscience that was instilled by his soul, Angel quickly returns to his former, evil self.
After Angel transforms back into Angelus, he allies himself again with Spike and Drusilla, who had recently settled in Sunnydale. Angelus finds immense pleasure in tormenting Buffy and her friends. He goes on to kill Jenny Calendar, who had been a core member of Buffy's group, just after she manages to successfully decipher the lost Gypsy curse which would restore Angelus' soul. He then attempts to awaken the demon Acathla in an attempt to bring about the apocalypse. Buffy, however, is determined to stop him despite their deeply emotional history. Fighting him in one-on-one combat, Buffy is able to overcome Angelus, but before Acathla consumes him, Angel is cursed again by Buffy's friend and comrade Willow Rosenberg, his soul restored moments before Buffy has to kill him and, in doing so, save the world.