I’m nearing the end of season five, and I’ve been thinking about this.
Most of the characters on the show, and a lot of the folks here on the SDMB seem to feel that Spike is still evil, and that the only reason he’s making any attempt at being nice to any of the Scoobies is because he has a chip in his head, can’t hurt them, needs cash, wants to shag Buffy. A few feel that, despite the fact that he is still basically evil, he ltruly loves Buffy.
I wonder how people can think that after watching Glory beat him bloody, trying to get him to tell her who the Key is. He didn’t talk, even though he was obviously in extreme pain, in that hands of a being who could eviscerate him with her bare hands. And his little chat with Buffy at the end of the episode, when he thinks he’s talking to the Buffy-bot, when he tells her that if anything h
appened to Dawn, it would destroy Buffy, and he couldn’t live knowing she was in that much pain.
I don’t hold with the notion that he’s only behaving himself because he has a chip in his head and an ulterior motive. It may have started off that way, but I think not being able to harm humans has given him room to rediscover his lost humanity. He seems to be evolving into a father-figure for Dawn- a role which I believe is more important to hs character than his relationship with Buffy. Being the freak (and the Scoobies’ abuse puppy) puts him in a position to have a real rapport with the Dawnster, who is questioning her own reality, and her place in the world, if she indeed has one.
Spike definitely has a heart, a good heart.
Now all he needs is a soul…
I can hardly wait to see how his character develops in Season Seven.
Well, since he’s getting a soul, I think that we’ll be able to see just how much of his actual heart we saw in the previous season, and how much of it was act. But I do think that he was, for the most part, sincere. Like Dru said, they can love, even if it is badly.
You know, at the end of Crush, Dru said something very interesting. Along the lines of “Not even I can save you now.” She is the one who “saved” him from his love of Cecily, she was the one who “saved” him from being completely unremarkable, and she literally saved him from death in Season 2. But I think it’s the first thing she saved him from—love–that she was referring to. I think it was a comment on how strong his love for Buffy really is.
I wouldn’t take too much stock in him getting beaten bloody as proof of “redemption”. You have to remember that he doesn’t really care if he lives or dies because of the chip. He risked death to get it out, because he’s not the same as he was.
Point one, it looked like Glory was planning on torturing him for a good long while before he managed to piss her off so she kicked him through the door so he could escape (well, he ended up getting rescued by Buffy, Buffy-bot, and the Scoobies.) I think that even if he didn’t really care if he died, he probably did care about not wanting to be in the kind of pain a Hellgod could inflict on him prior to death.
Point two- I think the reason he really doesn’t care if he lives or dies isn’t so much because of the chip rendering him powerless as it is some people that he’s gotten very fond of (despite his protestations to the contrary) hate his living guts. Or dead guts. Or whatever.
Point three- He loves Dawn, in a sort of quasi-paternal but also siblingy kind of way. He sees her, and she sees him, as sort of a kindred spirit. His feelings for Buffy aside, I think that alone would have kept him from telling Glory that she was the Key. Also, he helped Dawn snare the Gora demon’s egg so that she could do the resurrection spell to bring Joyce back, not to get in good with Buffy, but because he loved Joyce and wanted her back.
Point Four- Being willing to risk death is the same as not caring if you live or die. There are some things that are worth risking death for, and for Spike, one of those things is getting the chip out of his head. Or, more accurately, being what he was before so he can gve the Slayer what she deserves.
I think Spike is definitely showing signs of being a decent, um, human being.
If it wasn’t for his washbord abs and handsome face, you’d be calling the show irresponsible for showing such a character as having any redemming qualities.
SPOILER-ish for next season
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Just my theory. Season 6 was focused on showing the evils of humanity (Warren). Just because you have a soul doesn’t make you good.
Spike has his soul back which effectively makes him William… William the Bloody was weak, pathetic, and trivial. Now he’s been in the passenger seat for the last few hundred years observing what Spike has been up to (remember Spike is not William, Spike is a demon). Maybe William really liked the power which he saw SPike using. William is in control now… He doesn’t love Buffy. He doesn’t care about Dawn. I think William is going to be big bad for the season. While Spike the Demon is the happy alternative.
It will explore similar themes as Willows dark turn with the difference being that William isn’t evil out of pain and vengeance. William is evil for the power and ego trip.
What we have is a vampire with a soul – much like Angel. It would be likely that Spike will be tortured by remorse, in much the way Angel was when he got his soul.
FWIW, one of the constants about Spike (and William) was his romanticism. He’s always been with someone (even Harmony, for god’s sake). He definitely needs someone to love.
And there’s a difference between an attempted rapist and a rapist. Spike came to his senses, even though it was clear he could continue. It’s going to be a serious issue – no doubt about it – but it doesn’t make him evil. It will be a barrier to any relationship with Buffy, but I doubt it will cause her to want to dust him. In fact, it looks like Buffy was quite understanding; much more so than Dawn. Hell, if it didn’t stop Luke and Laura (which was an actual rape), it wouldn’t necessarily stop here.
Spike won’t be William, since William was a boring wimp. It’s hardly likely he’ll be evil, either, since that would go against the entire Buffy mythology. There will be much about the relationship between him and Buffy next year, but he won’t be the villain.
One interesting question, BTW, is whether Spike will remain a vampire at all . . …
I seem to recall there being a lot of begging and pleading accompanying that “attempted rape”, and once Buffy kicked him off, he didn’t try again, even though she was obviously injured and he could have overpowered her. It just hadn’t got through his thick skull that her “no” meant NO, not, “not just now” Buffy did, after all, admit that she still had feelings for him.
I don’t think he was so much trying to force himself on her as to wear down her resistance. And afterward, in the crypt, he was getting drunk and showing some obvious remorse. It wasn’t until he’d consumed much more alcohol and had finally let it sink in that Buffy truly didn’t want him that the anger set in.
I can’t see Spike/William as next season’s Big Bad- he’s already been the Little Bad, and I think that under a few layers of anger, he still loves Buffy and Dawn, and cares about the rest of the Scoobies.
Also, remember the second part of his request to Big Spooky Demon guy who put him through the trials- he wants to “give the Slayer what she deserves”. I think that given that the “Be what I was before” resulted in his being re-ensouled, rather than de-chipped, I think he’s going to end up giving Buffy what she truly deserves, not whan an angry, rejected Spike thinks she deserves.
…wow… Those are some pretty pathetic excuses to make up for Spike… Buffy kicked him off of her and said “Ask me again while I’ll never trust you.” and got to her feet. Buffy stopped him… He didn’t stop himself. Buffy would have fought him off had he tried again. Spike knew that. He seemed pretty pissed the whole time he was drinking in his crypt. At first it seemed remorseful but then he says, “Why did I stop?”
And like I said in my original post… SOUL doesn’t mean GOOD or even remorse. Did you watch this season?
anyway we’ve seen Angel… So why would they retread that story?
Yes SPIKE has needed someone… William was twitterpated over Cecily. We never saw William with anyone.
WILLIAM is not SPIKE. SPIKE is not WILLIAM.
Just like Angel is not Angelus. Get it?
So applying Spike’s feelings to William doesn’t make any sense.
Spike didn’t love Harmony, are you kidding me? He used her and then tossed her aside. Seeing Harmony walk in on Spike talking about the two great loves of his life, neither of whom was her, after all she’d done for him, etc., really hit home. Man, I’m a loser.
The main point is that I find it interesting that some people have to use the attempted rape as a reason to find Spike a bad guy, as if that is somehow worse that centuries of successful murders.
And how do you know Spike won’t be remorseful now that he has a soul? Isn’t that what made Angel remorseful? Or was that an aspect of his curse that won’t apply to Spike?
You know, I’ve been thinking about this. While I haven’t seen every single “love” scene between Spike and Buffy (missed most of season 6) the ones I have seen almost always began with Spike cajoling her. He would say “Come on” she would say “No.” He would say “but you want it” she would say “but I can’t” he would say “You know you want it” and she would say, “Ok”.
I think the bathroom scene, for once Buffy really meant no, and Spike didn’t realize it until she kicked him. She’s always sent him mixed signals, and I really can’t be too angry with him for acting the way he did.
Also, I thought about it somemore, and I realized he is the attempted rapist and murderer of imaginary people. Why should I get myself all worked up over it? It’s fantasy, and if I want to cheer for a bad guy, well, I can do that without necessarily reflecting my own character or moral code. Some people I know absolutely love Dark Willow…well, I love Spike. Murderous raping Spike, sweet puppy dog Spike, William the Bloody, “Big Bad”, all of it.
And only half of buffy viewers disagree…He never had a soul as a vampire, and the being agreed to honor his request to “be like I was before” so he’s now mortal. But the tortured thing, I think you’re dead on there. I think that his readjustment to humanity will be a major theme this season.
…and then she promptly took her beloved sister to that same attempted rapist to ask him to take care of her. Could anything possibly make it more obvious that Buffy has been sending Spike mixed signals all season (unintentionally)(mostly)??? Do we have to go back over the whole season episode by episode? Do I have to bring up “Dead Things”, in which Buffy lets Spike chain her up knowing full well he can hurt her despite the chip? She said she’d “never” trust him in that ep too.
If there’s one thing they’ve been pounding home all season, it’s that Buffy really doesn’t mean “no” when she says it to Spike. Sort of. I think these mixed signals and head games mitigate the attempted rape, but don’t excuse it, which I think is the point, to make Spike somewhat, but not entirely, redeemed.
My own little speculation for season 7? Souled Spike becomes something of a split personality. Sometimes he’s William, sometimes he’s Spike…sort of a Dr. Banner/Incredible Hulk type thing, just don’t get him angry…
We’ve seen big changes in Spike since his first appearance in Season 2, so I doubt that the show will throw all that character development away in order to make him a “big bad” again. No, as others have said, I believe that Spike’s nature has slowly changed—for the better-- through his adventures in Sunnydale.
While I won’t downplay the “attempted rape”, we can’t ignore that Buffy & Spike’s sexual escapades have always had an undercurrent of violence to them. But Spike did take things a bit too far in their last encounter. However, I don’t think that the writers were trying to say,* “Look—see how damn evil Spike is??!!?”*; instead I think they were trying to show us the depth of the torment Spike has sunk to due to his unrequited love for the Slayer. They wanted to show Spike hitting his absolute bottom in order to justify his tortuous quest to regain his soul.
If anything, part of the focus of Season 7 will be The Redemption of Spike. By the end of the season, we’ll all come to understand the Spike is the noblest of vampires–even a notch above Angel. After all, Angel regained his soul unwillingly through a curse. Spike on the other hand went through the most painful ordeal to regain his soul. And his did it willingly for the most noble of all human emotions–LOVE.
Perhaps he got his soul back because he thinks that having a soul would somehow circumvent the chip’s instruction set, thereby allowing him to hurt people.
I saw a repeat recently, from the period when Spike had just recently been chipped. He said something about wanting to get the soldier guys to “put me back the way I was before”. This would seem to indicate that, to Spike, “the way I was before” is “a regular, normal vampire”. Which seems to mean that that is that all he wanted was to get the chip removed or de-activated.
I don’t know if he’s now a moral human again, or if he’s now a vampire with a sole. But whichever, it does look as though all he wanted was to be de-chipped. Either for the purpose of returning to his accustomed vampire life, or in order to show Buffy that, even chip free, he could be a Scubby Supporter & all 'round good guy.