Angel could be a bit of a mess, but season 5 really ended the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff on a high note. Hearing everyone constantly say “you just have to get through season 4” made sense when I got to season 5. Why I loved it? Angel and Spike.
Every time Buffy would try to choose between Angel (David Boreanaz) and Spike (James Marsters), I would simply think of the meme from The Road to El Dorado and just say, “Both? Both.” With a shared past as vampires when they were Angelus and William the Bloody respectively, I just didn’t understand why Buffy never gave me the two working together in some form.
It’s because they were waiting to gift everyone with season 5 of Angel. Buffy and her friends from Sunnydale think that Spike is dead. He used the amulet to close the Hellmouth and sacrifice himself for their safety in the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We never got closure on his love for Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and it hurt to think of what could have been.
Then, his ghost rolls up to Angel, and pure beautiful chaos ensues. Did I long for the day when Angel and Spike, in their souled forms, would have to work together? Absolutely! So, getting to see as Spike’s ghost form was forced to be around Angel ruled. More than that, we got to see flashes of them as William and Angelus before they both got souls. What’s not to love?
It makes sense that it took Angel to get the two of them working as a team because it is more based on a monster of the week/procedural setting. Still, I have never been so happy seeing two angry vampires again!
I just always wanted them as a tag-team duo!
From the start, neither Angel nor Spike really wanted to be around each other. Spike wanted to torture him and Angel just wanted to forget his life as Angelus. Maybe it is the Buffy Summers of it all or maybe it’s simply that these two characters are forced to look at each other as two vampires with souls, but whatever the case, season 5 really highlights why they both are great.
The best episode for them is when both Angel and Spike have to go to Italy to stop a war. To be clear, neither of them wants to go until they find out that Buffy is dating the Immortal, a being who slept with both Darla (Julia Benz) and Drusilla (Juliet Landau) when they were all still together. Both Spike and Angel turn from hating each other to really just hating the Immortal, who is noted as someone who knows how to please the women he’s with.
Watching both Spike and Angel just act like jealous men together and not towards each other? Instantly hilarious. That, paired with them still trying to do a mission and trying to find Buffy, was all just what I always kind of wanted from them.
That energy where they’re both still Spike and Angel but have a goofier edge to them is why I understand Buffy’s attraction to them both. Angel might be broody, but then he went to Los Angeles and lost all sense of seriousness. Spike always had some snarky thing to say, and you put them both in the tone of Angel and it is absolutely hilarious.
I love them both so much and just want even more adventures of them. I can suspend my disbelief; get them back in action in a new series now!
(featured image: The CW)
