Do you think Spike’s chip is coming out? Do you think it has stopped working? Or do you thnk Spike will forever be a chipped and souled vampire?
I think that Spike’s chip has stopped working. Most likely permenantly. I don’t know why I think this, i just do.
Spike’s chip has stopped working, according to the last episode of Buffy.
Buffy: “When did your chip stop working?”
Spike: “I didn’t realize it had, actually.”
What about the evidence from Beneath You and Help that it is, indeed, working?
They were assuming his chip wasn’t working becaues they didn’t know 1)How he was being manipulated 2) why he was being manipulated 3)who was manipulating him. Therefore, they had every reason to assume the chip had stopped working. We don’t know that for sure though, because in earlier episodes, it was still working.
It would make sense, thematically, for Spike’s chip to stop working. It was a necessary step on his road to redemption (with a pit stop in ensoulment), but it’s served its purpose.
For redemption – or even failure to achieve redemption – to mean anything, the chip eventually has to come out/stop working. Until he’s got a full range of choices available, it’s impossible to make a definitive argument about his place in the moral universe.
I must admit that, much as I like Spike, I’d like see a souled vampire choose to continue down an evil path. (Although even that’s been approached by Angel before, when he fired the MoG. Poor Spike, always somewhat in the shadow of his Yoda-sire.)
I think it’s stopped working already. Remember when he got his soul back, there was that one beetle that went straight for his nostril? Chip-huntin’ bug. Subsequent bouts of apparent chip pain were either psychosomatic or inflicted on Spike by the First Evil to keep him off his guard.
Heh. Someone’s been watching Total Recall.
At this point, the chip is irrelevant. It almost never seems to be addressed or used as a plot point. The soul aspect seems to have taken over for it.