Well, I’m going to trust Jane Espenson with this one, and she already said that Spike always met to get his soul back when he left for Africa. (She said so in an interview at Succubus, but I can’t seem to find the link, so feel free to ignore me…)
What? So now that he has his soul back, Spike (soul or no soul–he’s always gonna be Spike to me) you don’t think he’ll still love Buffy??? I don’t think you can be more wrong! The entire point of his long ordeal was to get his soul back in order to give Buffy “what she deserves”. He is madly in love with her, and just because he’s regained his soul won’t change that a bit!
You’re forgetting that William & Spike are virtual identical when it comes to love. William was a hopeless romantic, with a tendency to put the girl of his dreams on a pedestal. And Spike the Vampire is “love’s bitch”, after all. He never lost the hopeless romantic qualities of a poet, always placing his dream girl at the center of his world (Drucilla, Buffy).
Yes, Spike won’t be exactly the same when he returns to Sunnydale…but he won’t revert to the William of 200 years ago. Spike will still wear his leather duster, still have his droll sense of humor…he’ll just now have some “man” to go with his “monster”. Will Spike have to deal with the remorseful anguish that Angel has to endure? I doubt it. Sure Spike will feel some guilt for his long rampage. But I think his personality will allow him to shake it off a bit easier. I think he’ll have more of a “what’s done is done” attitude. Plus, it seems to me that the guilt & anguish were sort of “built in” in Angel’s original curse.
**
I know that this debate can go on and on. But I’m still firmly in the camp that says Spike wanted his soul back from the outset. The writers cleverly kept Spike’s intentions vague as a red-herring, deliberately misleading viewers into thinking Spike just wanted his chip out. But, if that was what Spike really wanted, I would think that he would have said something that pointed in that direction. But nothing was said about wanting to hurt anyone, everything was kept vague–allowing them to spring their final surprise on us…
::Sound somewhere between a snort and a chuckle:: The hell they did. How could anyone paying attention to the way Spike’s oft stated desire to “be like he was before” never included a specific mention of getting the chip out not figure it out. It was painfully obvious.
…apparently people need a primer on the established mythology of the Buffy-verse.
When a person gets vamped… THEY ARE NO LONGER that PERSON! A demon takes over that body BUT they have all that person’s memories so they seem like the same person. BUT they are not.
This is an established facet of vampirism in the world of Buffy.
THEREFORE… (as has already been established) If a Vampire gets their soul back… The demon ceases to be in control and the original person takes over. IE Angel/Angelus. They do however retain their vampiric qualities.
SO to make this even more crystal clear… Spike the demon in no longer in control of the body… William is… HE IS A DIFFERENT PERSON from Spike.
Spike loved Buffy (in a very sick way… but it was love sort of)
There is NO reason to assume that William does.
And finally… about the Trials. They did keep it very oblique so we can have something to talk about all summer.
IT was not clear that Spike meant getting his chip out OR getting his soul back or anything else.
If you feel strongly either way it is because you personally want it to be a certain way… But if you look at the episode objectively without trying to GUESS about next season… It is OBLIQUE.
My god, I never considered the possibility that Spike wouldnn’t love Buffy. The suckage involved in that scenario is more than I wanna think about…
So am I the only person who opened this thinking it was about Spike Milligan and William McGonagall, Scotland’s worst poet?
Carry on.
Arrrrgh! It’s not SPIKE! It’s William!
In regards to the idea that a vampire is no longer anything like the human he/she was:
I seem to remember something that would counterdict that in the episode where Vampire Willow crosses demensions into the current Sunnydale. I dont’ remember the exact words, but Willow was talking about some of Vampire Willow’s less appealing traits with Buffy and Angel. Buffy comforts her by reminding her that when a person becomes a vampire, they lose their soul and are no longer the same person. But then Angel starts to argue with her! Buffy gives him a whack to get him to shut-up, but I take this to mean the above statment is not completly true. I would imagine that it’s possible for a vampire to share many traits with the human they once were. (or a human to share traits with the vampire they once were)
I don’t know how strong the connection would be, but I’m sure that there is one.
What Spike meant by asking to be like he was before was intentionally ambiguous, as was his wanting to give Buffy “what she deserved”. Right now there is no correct answer. Even assuming that the writers had one or the other in mind, they could change their minds between now and next season. What effect the new soul will have is likewise only speculation.
Nothing in their previous relationship mitigates Spike’s attempted rape. In previous encounters he did managed to overcome Buffy’s reluctance and convince her to get it on with him, true. This is called seduction. The moment he attempted to use force when she denied consent it became a rape attempt. The fact that Buffy was able to fight him off does not in any way mitigate the attempt.
The difference here is that the woman he was attempting to rape was at least his equal physically and was able to fight him off. The victim fighting off the attacker to the point he breaks off the attack in no way, to no degree, mitigates the immorality of the act itself. Morally there is no difference.
Everything Spike did on the show up to the point he had the chip implanted was evil. The chip removes from the table his ability to continue his evil acts. He helps Buffy because he loves her, and by his own admission, he protects Dawn for the same reason. At no point have I seen Spike choose to do something good because it was the right thing to do. His positive actions all stem from the limitations placed on him by the chip and his love for Buffy.
Also, Spike was protecting his life by not telling Glory who the key was. Glory could not have killed him just by beating; the only ways to kill a vamp on Buffy are a stake through the heart, beheading, or exposure to sunlight. As long as he kept the secret, he had no fear of death. Pain, yes, death no. Once he revealed who the key was, Glory would have had no reason to keep him alive. Which isn’t to say that keeping the secret while being tortured wasn’t to some degree noble. It was to some degree, but it wasn’t entirely a selfless act.
Therein lies the difference between Spike and Angel. Angel chooses to do good as pennance for the evil acts committed by the demon who occupied his body. Spike is a demon who has never expressed any remorse for the people he’s killed, and from the time the chip was implanted often bemoaned that he couldn’t continue his evil ways. Being unable to choose evil isn’t the same as choosing good.
I wouldn’t get too hung up on any “Buffy Mythology”, Green Fool. Yes, Giles did explain the process of being “vamped” in the first episode…but it doesn’t really seem as though the show has maintained any consistency regarding this through the years. As others have pointed out, they’ve kind of waivered on this point for quite a while.
And while your scenario in which “William” will have absolutely no connection to the character of “Spike” could be interesting, I highly doubt that this will happen. Let’s not forget here that this is a television show. And as we’ve seen many times, they’ll gladly deviate from the established mythology for the sake of good storytelling!
Spike is Spike…that’s the character that viewers have gotten to know and like for the last 5 years. And while it might be nice to see how William would deal with this, it would be much more compelling to see how Spike deals with having his humanity restored. William has been gone for 200 years…and Spike has gone through great lengths to distance himself from that nancy-boy. While he won’t be exactly the same as before (obviously)…I’m fairly confindent that his personality will still be more “Spike” than “William”.
And we’ll know right away…I’ll bet you that when he opens his mouth we’ll hear a cockney accent rather than an upper-crust one…
(Mr. Frink bookmarks this thread to revisit in October)
It’s been posted in this thread that at least one of the show’s writers, Jane Espenson, has gone on record as to precisely what Spike’s intentions were.
Reluctance, eh? How about her telling him directly to stop, in “Dead Things”? He didn’t, and they did it, and they did it again later. And they’ve clearly had rough sex before. Remember what I said, she let him chain her up.
So…no might not really mean no. Her hitting him is foreplay. I say this does mitigate the attempted rape. Like I said, it doesn’t excuse it. But you can’t possibly compare this to, say, him hypothetically trying the same thing back when they were alone together in the basement of the Magic Box back in “All the Way”.
Yes but the thing is, Spike knows perfectly well that Buffy is stronger than he is, and can fight him off if she wants to. He can’t rape her. Is Spike really trying to do something he knows he can’t? So I really have a problem with that scene, they seem to all of a sudden be trying to make Buffy look like a helpless victim
Ahem. In “Becoming” he helps Buffy stop Angel from destroying the world. Yes, for his own selfish reasons, but it still contradicts your statement. Also, in the same ep, he makes an abortive attempt to help Buffy keep her secret from her mother. Yes, it’s a very minor, silly little thing, but it is still something that set him apart from the other vamps, even then.
Now this is one of my biggest pet peeves. I have brought this up time after time after time, and it just seems to slide right by people. If he was only protecting Dawn to further his chances of getting some from Buffy, why did he keep doing it after Buffy died?
Green Fool, I agree with you that we should hold off our “definitive” statements about whether James Marsters will be playing Spike, William or some Angeliffic combination of the two.
However, I think your Straight Dope About Buffyverse Vampires is too straightforward. Yes, Angel and Angelus are different, and both are distinct from Liam. But Angel clearly retains memories and emotions that Angelus had (from both times). Similarly, Angelus II has strong feelings for Buffy, despite never having encountered her as Angelus I. Ditto the whole “Vamp Willow’s kinda skanky and gay” exchange from Season The Third.
Giles’ explanations that a vampire is no longer human and is merely a shell have obvious reasons:
1 – A human being minus accountability and fear of mortality would be very, very different from that same human being with those things. It would be difficult at best, even with thousands of years of experience, to be able to say definitely, “This was Bob, but now it’s not any part of Bob except his memories.” The Watchers never had a test case like Angel or post-chip Spike to study before
2 – Take a teenage girl and tell her she needs to kill a whole lot of things that look almost exactly like people. Do you think the majority of Slayers down through the years have the necessary critical analysis faculties to make the moral judgment, “These are very, very bad people who need to be killed for the greater good.”? Or is it simply easier to say, “Nope, no humanity there. None at all. Not even a scoonch. It’s just a husk. Dust 'em.”
3 – Vampire Opal would be pretty much the same.
Maybe Season Seven will feature a lot of rumination on what the difference really is. After all, Angel had most of a century to become different from Angelus, so this is our first chance to see what an ex-vampire might be like from the start.
Perhaps a major theme of the next season will be whether or not it’s moral to slay vampires wholesale, when it has been shown that they are not only capable of love (even without a soul) but possibly capable of redemption.
Is it moral to destroy a creature that can get its soul back in at least two different ways?
Well, probably “yes”, since the chances of them getting their souls back are vanishingly small, and the chances of them murdering innocents is very very large. But surely this can cause some angst for Buffy, which the writers are always willing to do.
Speculation seems useless.
<< 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. >>
How been-there-done-that could they get? The only way to make it “new” is if William DOESN’T do the remorse-torture route.
Beside, this has to be different than simply “restoring his soul,” despite the season finale teaser. His request to the demon was “Make me like I was before” which has to mean (IMHO): human. Being a vampire with a soul is NOT what he was before.
Everyone knows you can be evil even if you have a soul (at least in the Buffyverse, even if you don’t believe in souls in real life 
) but can you be good without one?
Is a soul necessary to feel empathy? You can love someone without knowing how they feel…
Is a heroin dealer evil? How about an Afghan farmer who grows poppies because it’s the only thing he knows to do that can feed his family? How about a confused vampire who trades in demon eggs?
What about sadists? If they partner up with masochists? What’s so wrong about enjoying a little slap and tickle, emphasis on the slap?
Look at Spike’s life. He spent about 20 years being a confused, aristocratic goofball before becoming a vamp. He spent the next 180 years being a clear-thinking vamp-- even if all he thought about was enjoying power, drinking blood, and killing Slayers. Then he gets dumped by his girlfriend of 180 years, gets a behaviour-modification chip stuck in his head, and finds himself unable to do what he has been doing-- it’s like your job doesn’t exist anymore.
Ever since Marsters got himself into the opening credits, he’s been played a confused and tormented character, searching for clarity. Spike has already known the clarity that comes from being a demon. The only way for him to grow (and everyone on Buffy does grow in some fashion) is for him to learn the clarity of having a soul.
From Crush
Joyce: DId you do anything to lead him on.
Buffy: I beat him up a lot. That’s like 3rd base for Spike.
So, let’s see. They’ve always had a violent relationship, and sex has always been linked with that violence. Buffy is stronger than Spike–maybe they were closer to equal in season 2, but I would argue not anymore. She’s always protested, he’s always overcome that. I don’t think “No Spike” “Yes Buffy” “NO Spike” “YOU want it Buffy” “Oh ok” is seduction…I think it’s a game they play, and Spike didn’t realize they were no longer playing that game.
Because of these reasons and more, I refuse to see Buffy as a victim. Buffy IS the hero, not a victim. Therefore, I cannot see the scene as an attempted rape. NOt because I love Spike, but because I know what Buffy is and is not capable of, and I know the game she’s been playing with Spike all season.
This is honestly pathetic.
The episode established that Buffy was a little worse for wear after a night of slaying. She had already broken things off with Spike to the point that they were treated as exes.
Now apply this same equation to a real world scenario.
A girl is tired after a long days work. She comes home to take a bath. While undressing she discovers her EX-boyfriend is in her house and in the room with her. The ex tries to start something sexual with her. Being tired and assuming that he’ll listen to her she tells him to stop and even says “Not now.” (which doesn’t imply “later” it implies “I don’t want to deal with you right now”) The Ex doesn’t listen and tries to FORCE himself on her. She eventually has to physically push him away and tell him off before he will leave.
And you want to NOT call that attempted rape? So I guess date rape doesn’t exist where you live? Or that most rapists know their victims?
Sorry but you can make all the excuses you want but that doesn’t change the facts.
Buffy wasn’t a victim. She stopped Spike.
And the s/m couples I know, would honestly be offended if they heard you describe the Spike/Buffy relationship as one. There is no respect and trust there, only manipulation. You have to also take into acocunt Buffy’s mental state this season… She tried to kill her friends because an insane asylum world was the better option.
What I think is the most fascinating thing about this particular subject is that it forces people to defend rape in some fashion and defend rapists (oh it’s a game they play. or he’s done alot of good things to) because they like a character. It’s equivalent to defending an old friend who is accused of rape NOT because you don’t think he did it, but because he’s a cool guy.
And here’s where the analogy breaks down. If you can show me a real-world vampire/slayer couple who’s into BDSM, then I’ll accept that as an analogy. No, they’re not like the people you know who are into that sort of thing. I don’t know any women who have given their boyfriends invisible blow jobs, either.
Were Spike’s actions morally repugnant? Absolutely. That’s why he was repugged by them.
I said this before, and I’ll say it again, and I’ll agreee with the others… I would bet (and hope) that Spike loses his vamp-ness. Granted, it is possible that he will be a soulful vamp, because that really is what Buffy deserves, isn’t it? A comrade like Riley? Riley & Buffy was my favorite romance on the show. They fit each other perfectly. But Buffy always had to be guarded in some ways with Riley. She couldn’t open up all the way, and he couldn’t take the punishment she gave out even in sparring.
Not like Spike with a soul could. Not like Angel could.
So in this way, Spike could remain Spike and simply get his sould back. And it wouldn’t feel like a cop-out IMO. But let’s consider this for a moment… how would William prove he had his soul back to Buffy if he stayed a vamp?
For Buffy’s sake, she needs a vamp with a soul. Hell, I’ve always felt she should be a vamp and they should restore her sole with one of them Orbs of Thessela just so she oculd have stayed with Angel forever, but he had to be such a crybaby and take off. We know Spike has devotion, and we know he has no curse. And we know Buffy wants him. So, what Buffy deserves is clearly a vampire with a soul that she can love and who can love her.
But, “the way he was” was never like that, so this is almost a catch-22.
A catch-22 in that the writers can’t handle both of Spike’s requests completely without an inherent contradiction.