*Season 2 spoilers.*
A while back, I started an on-and-off rewatch of Buffy and Angel. I trailed off during season 4 of Buffy, because Whedon, but I imagine I’ll get back to it eventually. Today, though, I’m looking back at season 2 and the Angelus arc.
I’ll admit it: the first time I watched this show, I was enthralled by the second half of season 2. Buffy’s vampire boyfriend loses his soul and becomes the world’s cruelest and most vicious superpowered ex ever (at least until Jessica Jones and Killmonger came along)? It culminates in an intense swordfight, and to keep the world from being sucked into Hell, Buffy is forced to kill Angel just moments after his soul is unexpectedly restored? So help me, you could eat that angst with a spoon.
Now, I recognized issues with this storyline over the years. The creepiness of the immortal Angelus being obsessed with his 17-year-old ex-girlfriend—and really, their ages are a problem in the ship as a whole. The textbook fridging of Jenny Calendar. Xander’s choice (likely rooted in part in his ongoing jealousy of Angel) not to tell Buffy that Willow would be attempting to restore Angel’s soul as Buffy went into battle, blindsiding her when the critical switch happens after it’s already too late.
But as I rewatched the arc more recently, another issue leapt out at me. In its early years, Buffy uses its monsters as metaphors for adolescence, running with the whole “high school is hell, literally” angle. The Angelus storyline is no exception. The particulars of the Romani curse that gave the ruthless, sadistic vampire his soul back, forcing him to live with the guilt of all the inhuman cruelty he’d committed, dictate that his soul will be stripped away if he ever experiences a moment of “perfect happiness.” Generally speaking, the show (and Angel to follow) takes that to mean sex, especially sex with a partner he truly loves. That means that Angel loses his soul soon after having sex with Buffy, her first time.
The metaphor here is about girls who sleep with their “perfect guy,” at which point he suddenly changes on them: maybe growing cold or mean, maybe casually discarding her, maybe becoming possessive and controlling. In Buffy’s case, the change is especially brutal, as Angel becomes the unrepentant killer he’d been before the Romani curse. Not only does Angelus taunt her with memories of their past love, but he stalks her and her family, and Buffy feels an extra stab of guilt at every person he kills before she’s prepared to face him.
But here’s the thing. In the real world, those “perfect” boyfriends aren’t actually good guys. They know how to turn on the charm and fake sensitivity, pulling girls in and then dropping the routine once they get what they want, sex. It’s not the girls’ fault for sleeping with them. They were always toxic, and they tricked the girls into thinking otherwise.
With Angel and Buffy, Angel is a good guy. He’s been fighting alongside her to battle demons and other vampires. He trusts and respects her strength, he cares deeply about her, and he’s guided by a conscience weighed down by his past atrocities. In his case, sleeping with Buffy literally does turn him evil.
Now, I’m not saying that was the thesis Whedon set out to make with this storyline, but it does suggest that he didn’t look beyond a surface level at his metaphor. He saw Innocent Girls who lose their virginity and then lose the loving boyfriend they thought they knew. He identified sex as the catalyst for the change, but he didn’t delve into why and how that change happens. As a result, one of the show’s most iconic arcs is shaped around a clumsy moral about the perils of a young woman giving her heart (and her body) away.
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