Why Spike?
It’s been a fair few years now since I first watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and though my perception of the show, its themes and characters has changed a lot in that time, the one thing that’s remained constant is my appreciation of Spike. As a vampire, he’s done terrible things, not least of which is his attempted rape of Buffy in Season 6, and while it’s tempting to morally handwave those crimes by pointing to his soullessness as a mitigating factor, it's disingenuous to do so if we’re also going to contend that all his good deeds somehow enabled him to transcend it. Or, put it another way: if we accept that soulless Spike has autonomy and responsibility when he does good things despite being soulless, then we must also accept that he has autonomy and responsibility when he does bad things. The only exception I’m willing to make is when he’s being brainwashed in Season 7, because he has no conscious control over his actions - but everything else is on him.
So, no: he’s far from morally perfect. But as a character - as an interesting, complex, three-dimensional entity - he is brilliant. In a show where almost nobody actually changes or grows up despite the relentlessly crazy shit they’re forced to endure, Spike is unique in occupying a series of wildly different roles whose transitions fundamentally alter his habits, behaviour, relationships and alliances. For seven whole seasons, Buffy remains emotionally arrested, unable to move beyond the initially established parameters of her romantic life: always messy, always conflicted, and always a bit fucked up. She’s not allowed to move past that phase, because let’s face it: we, the audience, want to keep watching the drama unfold, which means that the writing can never afford to let her grow beyond it. Though Giles’s role gets darker near the end, his character has always had that capacity; even in his own show, Angel is perennially brooding; Xander never really stops being himself despite acquiring new skills along the way; and while Willow briefly turns to the dark side, her core personality and role within the group is never really altered.
But every season, Spike is someone different. When he first appears in Season 2, he’s an archetypal bad boy villain in a decidedly non-archetypal loving, committed, romantic relationship. (The fact that it’s with an insane vampire prophetess is neither here nor there.) When injuries force him into a wheelchair, we see an instant power reversal: the frail Drusilla he’d previously cared for is now strong enough to care for him instead, and what’s more, he’s man enough to accept her help. Still, Spike’s jealousy of Dru and Angel is palpable, but when he switches sides in the crucial battle, it’s not just to reclaim his lover - it’s because he genuinely enjoys living. When he shows up again in Season 3, it’s as a broken, lovelorn drunk, alternately lashing out at old enemies and then sobbing on their shoulders.
In Season 4, his attempts at villainy are thwarted by the Initiative’s chip-implant. Spike becomes outcast, pathetic and lost, and eventually humbles himself by going to Buffy and the others for help - humiliation enough that he actually attempts suicide, only cheering up with the discovery that he can still enjoy violence by fighting alongside the Scoobies. But even so, that doesn’t mean he’s on their team: he still causes mayhem, trying to break up the group and aiding the Big Bad, and by the start of Season 5, he’s back to living on the fringes. His love for Buffy is both redemptive and destructive, profane and sacred; her death pushes him into genuine goodness in honour of her memory, but in Season 6, the conflict is back. All at once, Spike is tempting Buffy to the dark side while simultaneously trying to help her redeem herself, and the tension that breeds in both of them is palpable.
By now, we’ve started to learn his backstory - seen him as a poet in youth, a reckless scion of Drusilla and Angel, a merciless Slayer-hunter - all varied, well-developed roles. His attempted rape forces a crisis of conscience: for the first time in his soulless state, we see him fully comprehend the evil of his actions, which prompts him to reclaim his soul in pennance. At the start of Season 7, he’s effectively become a new Drusilla: a crazed prophet, but one who’s wretched and self-loathing. Though none of the other Scoobies ever trusts him again - it’s notable that Dawn, who once worshiped him, threatens to set him on fire - he eventually reclaims a tentative bond with Buffy and builds a weirdly hilarious rapport with, of all people, Andrew. And then, of course, the finale of self-sacrifice, where Spike dies so that all his former enemies can live. In Angel, he returns as a disembodied spirit of mischief, is reassembled, suffers for his sins at the hands of a mad Slayer, battles Angel for supremacy and finally - once again - sets out to save the world.
Romantically, Spike has more and varied relationships with other regulars in the Buffyverse than anyone else - Drusilla, Harmony, Anya and Buffy - and also boasts the most eclectic and touching peripheral friendships with Joyce, Clem, Dawn, Andrew and, arguably, Anya and Fred. He’s changed sides more than anyone else in the show and yet, when everyone else abandons her, he’s the only one to keep faith with Buffy. He’s been monstrous, villainous, piteous, hilarious, honest, duplicitous, self-serving, self-sacrificing, witty, speechless, faithless, dutiful, poetic, brutal, sympathetic, despicable, manipulative, manipulated, betrayed, betraying, dead, alive and everything in between - and all without it feeling either forced or contradictory. We’ve seen him panting his toenails, mad in a basement, murdering innocents, sacrificing himself for love, playing kitten poker, brainwashed, saving the day and heartbroken after losing it. He gets a significant portion of the best dialogue in the Buffyverse, both comic and serious, because more than anyone else, he lives in the space where those two things bleed together.
So, yes: he’s morally dubious, sometimes loathsome and far from a saint, but undeniably, Spike is interesting. He’s a character in constant and varied development in a medium where stasis is prized above all else. Love him or hate him, he’s impossible to ignore, and while I won’t deny my appreciation for his other, more physical charms, what really attracts me to Spike is his complexity: the fact that, unlike everyone else in the show, you never quite knew what he was going to do next.
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sarahreesbrennan said: I disagree with the characterisation of Buffy (her romantic life?) but agree about Spike! Interesting that the writers planned to kill him off… no story mapped out made him a wild card of a character in a fascinating way.
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