ESSAY: Him For All In All: Angel, from “Becoming” to “Not Fade Away”
AUTHOR: Kita


Him For All In All


The character of Angel was initially created by Joss Whedon to serve as a metaphor for the struggle between good vs. evil that exists inside of us all. Angel was introduced as an ancient demon "with the face of an angel", a serial killer who'd been born again, the original Whedonverse vampire with a soul. He was, in fact, supposed to be a disposable antagonist/love interest for the heroine, a symbol of what she had to fight against lest she become. But Angel proved too popular to kill off as originally planned. So, the story goes, the heroine fell in love with him. And Angel kissed the princess.

But Angel, both inside of the Whedonverse and meta-textually, has always belonged to something greater than himself. His intentions and desires are constantly thwarted by the needs and the actions of others. Angel is the universe's bitch. He is the archetype of an endlessly dying god, a model of fallibility and sacrifice, a vehicle to tell a larger story.

Angel's own story is one of redemption through action, not grace; it is about the failures of a man who desperately wants to become more than a monster, it is the journey of a reluctant hero.


"I can walk like a man, but I'm not one."
-Angel, to Buffy, in “Angel”, BtVS, Season 1

Over the course of eight seasons, the audience comes to know Angel intimately as a vampire. His humanity, however, is shown only via brief flashbacks. As a young man in 1753, Liam is the eldest son of an Irish Catholic merchant. He is a drunkard, a thief, and a womanizer, who despises his father's small-minded goals and pretensions of wealth and class.

Liam is on his way to a whorehouse with silver he has stolen from his father, when he meets a mysterious woman in an alleyway . She issues him an invitation, and he goes with her willingly. "Show me your world," he says (“Becoming”, BtVS, S1). Liam's lust consigns him to Hell; the beautiful woman kills him. For Angel, this is an often-repeated theme.

As his Sire, Darla says, "what we are informs everything we become" (“Becoming”, BtVS, S1). Liam died a would-be aristocrat, an alcoholic, a misogynist, an 18th century frat boy. Risking redundancy, imagine that man without a soul. Hello, Angelus.

Angelus is the name Liam takes as a vampire, either because of his disdain for the Catholic Church (The Angelus is the evening call to Mass, and a Catholic prayer in memory of Mary's total surrender to the will of God ), because he was said to have an “angelic face” (this via Watcher Council reports, “Angel”, BtVS, S1) or because when his little sister first sees him re-awakened as a vampire, she thinks he has returned to life and to her, as an “angel” (“Becoming”, BtVS, S1).

No matter the source, his name becomes legendary. His violence and lust for the perfect kill exceed even Darla's expectations. Other vampires have been shown to be disoriented and afraid upon waking up in their graves  , but Angelus rises with a smile on his face. When Darla asks him who in the village he wants to kill first, he says, "I thought I'd take the village" (“Becoming”, BtVS, S1).

As a man, Liam despised his father, and adored his child sister; his relationship with his mother was never well defined, although she was shown as somewhat subordinate to the will of her husband. The first thing Liam does as Angelus is kill them all. It leaves him unsatisfied. He spends the next hundred years seeking satisfaction, and in so doing, becomes a murderer unparalleled in vampire history. He becomes so infamous, The Watcher's Council takes to calling him the "Scourge of Europe" (“Buffy: The Watchers Guide”, Nancy Holder, et al).

But links to Liam, and what he once was, remain. Angel takes on Darla's father figure, The Master, and wins her away from him (“Darla”, AtS, S2). And Angelus' "masterpiece" is the torture and turning of a young novice with the power of sight, Drusilla. He spends months killing her family and making her insane, before making her into a vampire against even Darla's wishes. Like Drusilla's name  indicates, she is sister-daughter to Angelus, and to another male vampire whom she turns years later, when she decides that "Daddy" is no longer paying her the attention she deserves.

Angel will spend his entire existence as a souled vampire trying to escape this family he has created, much as Liam tried to escape his own. Not only will he inevitably fail, but he will also recreate similar dynamics with everyone whom he becomes intimate. Angel's significant relationships will be discussed in greater detail further on in this essay, however, the following pattern is of primary importance:

-The petite, blonde woman who can destroy him: Darla, who kisses him, kills him and damns him, and Buffy who- also does that. In all incarnations, Angel is a creature easily distracted by the wrong head. And for Angel, sex with these women is always, always epic. Sometimes it destroys him, sometimes it saves him, and sometimes, it does both.

These are the women who will have some kind of relationship with Angel across all of his incarnations, and will thererfore be focused on in the most depth throughout this essay.

-The dark haired, visionary, sister-figure who names him: As Liam, his young sister Kathy first calls him “an angel”.  As Angelus, he turns Drusilla partially because of her ability to see the future. She is the first to call him Angel when he regains his soul. And as Angel, Cordelia becomes his Seer, his link to the Powers that Be and his humanity, and the first human to call him "family" (“To Shanshu in LA”, AtS, S1).

Cordelia is also the only woman to ever represent two archetypes to Angel; she begins as sister-figure, but later in the series, when she takes on special powers (and blonde hair), the Cordelia/Angel romantic relationship is born. Not unexpectedly, it also ends in tragedy.

-The would-be-warrior, brother-son-figure: A younger male whom Angelus (William, aka Spike) or Angel (Wesley) takes under his wing in some way, who will then jostle for the position of Alpha Male in the family. Both these boys begin as fools, but both become warriors in their own right, in some ways surpassing Angel himself. (In some respects, Angel's son, Connor, also fits into this pattern, particularly when compared/contrasted with Spike ).

It should be noted that these male/male relationships also have a distinct sexualized component, albeit more subextual.  Angel’s apparent bisexuality is a topic far too broad for the confines of this essay. Suffice it to say that his tendencies are commented upon numerous times throughout the series, by multiple characters, either covertly or out right, and that Angel himself never denies the allegation.

Liam loses his first family when he dies and returns from the dead to kill them. Angelus loses his demonic family when he is cursed. As punishment for killing a young Gypsy girl, her clan returns Angelus' soul to him, along with all the memories, guilt, and remorse of a man. By series end, Angel would not be the only demon in Whedonverse to experience this kind of torture, but he remains the only vampire who was ever essentially raped with a soul. The remorse for what he has done as a vampire is all consuming and immediate. He finds himself unable to kill, even to survive. He calls himself a monster (“Darla”, AtS, S1).

The soul gives Angel an industrial strength guilt complex, a hundred years worth of self-hatred, and possibly, the taste for rat's blood. What the soul does not give him is the desire to become a hero, it merely sets him on the classic hero’s journey: Having been sufficiently humbled, a creature with an incomplete and unsatisfactory early life, and some measure of supernatural power, will have a rapid and perhaps involuntary rise to prominence, and be required to fight evil. The hero himself is often too weak to stay on the true path without assistance, and will be surrounded by tutors who assist him. His primary fallibility will be the sin of pride, or hubris, and this will lead to his downfall. The death and rebirth of this hero figure is an eternally recurring theme. He does not have one true success which ends his fight for good, but rather, his birth-death-existence is cyclical. (“Man and His Symbols,” Carl Jung).

Angel becomes the only one of his species when the Gypsies curse him; Darla spurns him immediately as "filthy" (“Darla”, AtS, S2), and he leaves her under threat of staking. Alone and desperate, he tries to return to her once, two years later, but is still unable to be the monster she fell in lust with. After that, Angel spends the better part of the next century isolating himself from the world. As Liam and Angelus, he was a social creature, one who surrounded himself with beautiful people and precious things. As a vampire with a brand new soul, his own form of self-torture includes this kind of enforced isolation for many reasons. He neither likes nor trusts humanity at first, and he most certainly hates and mistrusts himself. Considering his brief interactions with humans in the 1950's end with Angel being hung (“Are You Now or Have You Ever Been”, AtS, S2), and in the 1970's with Angel feeding off the body of a dying man (“Orpheus”, AtS, S4), one could say his harsh judgment of interpersonal relationships at the time is actually fairly sound. Having learned that lesson time and again the hard way, Angel then spends the remainder of the twentieth century living in alleyways and feeding off rats, determined not to interact at all with the living.

But, as mentioned earlier, Angel has never belonged to himself, and his desires carry little weight in the scheme of things. The Buffyverse audience sees this play out for the first time in the pivotal episode "Becoming" (BtVS, S1), where a filthy Angel is dragged bitching and moaning by Whistler (Angel’s quasi-fairy god mother, in the form of a male, benevolent demon) to see a young girl. The girl is tiny, blonde, and the Slayer, but she looks young and helpless, and Angel is of course, smitten. He decides, for the first time, to become someone in order to help her. He decides to come out of the shadows. If this were a typical fairy tale, the monster would become a man when he kissed the pretty girl, and maybe they would live happily ever after. But this is Angel.

Buffy falls in love with him, yes, wholly and unconditionally. Despite the fact that her sworn duty is to kill vampires, she allows herself to be courted by him, kisses him while he is in demon face, defends him to her friends and her Watcher, and eventually, gives him her virginity. Which is when the fairy tale goes ass over the tea kettle and the would-be-man turns back into a beast. Having felt forgiveness, and therefore a moment of 'perfect happiness', Angel loses his soul, reverts back to Angelus, and tries once again to "take the village." The heroine is forced to send her lover to Hell at the point of her sword in order to save the world. The wheel turns.


"It's not the demon in me that needs killing, Buffy, it's the man."
-Angel, to Buffy, in “Amends”, BtVS, S3

Angel returns from Hell to his own confusion, Buffy's tears, and some benevolent snow. Who or What exactly saved him from eternal torment is never disclosed. But from this point on, it is clearer than ever that Angel is intended for some greater purpose. Not coincidentally, it is when he leaves Sunnydale to find this purpose (and his own show) that he develops more fully as a character and an archetype in his own right, rather than just a love interest or shadow-self for Buffy.

In the Buffyverse, a vampire is not considered at all equivalent to its human host, rather, it is "the thing that killed [the body]” (“Welcome to The Hellmouth”, BtVS, S1).  In Angelverse, the audience learns how simplified a version of events this Watcher Council party line can be. Throughout all of his incarnations, Angel displays very similar personality traits.

First and foremost, he has never been a terribly nice guy. Liam is a lazy n'eer do well who would have likely died of syphilis had he not been turned into a vampire. Angelus is the ultimate evil, with "not a drop of humanity" left inside of him (“Surprise”, BtVS, S2). And Angel, for all his desperate desire to do good deeds, to be forgiven, and to be loved, is not only an unlikely hero, but a reluctant one. Early in his new life in Los Angeles, he re-encounters another boy he sired while he was still soulless. He dreams in great detail of Penn murdering and feeding off of young women in his city. In the end, Angel stakes Penn, but afterward, he confesses to Cordelia "I enjoyed the dreams" (“Somnambulist”, AtS, S1).

Despite the soul, Angel continues to find violence attractive, and to resort to it even with those he loves. When Angel begins to lose his sense of purpose in Season 2, he physically threatens Cordelia (“Reprise”, AtS, S2), after the infant Connor is kidnapped, Angel tries to smother Wesley in revenge (“Forgiving”, AtS, S3), and numerous times throughout Seasons 3 and 4, he responds to a teen aged Connor with greater levels of physical violence than is called for. Angel fully admits to longing for "the simplicity" of his soulless life (“To Shanshu in LA”, AtS, S1).

Angel is vain, autocratic, and can be phenomenally petty. Liam wanted all the finer things, Angelus took them. Angel, for all his self-sacrifice, still enjoys beautiful clothes, classic cars and pricey establishments. He may dress head to toe in symbolic black, but the labels are all designer. He often makes decisions for others based solely on what he thinks is best, like leaving Sunnydale so Buffy could have a "normal life" and turning back time in order to give up his humanity- both despite Buffy's desires to the contrary, and erasing the memory of Connor from his friends. He revels in being Alpha Male, and he is not above letting jealousy affect his judgment, such as neglecting to tell Wesley that Spike got a soul.

With a soul, his flaws and sins are certainly those of a man: lust, anger, greed, and of course, pride. Angel is a man who becomes a hero not because of himself, but despite himself. Angel has to work for it.

The initial metaphor the show writers used for Angel on his own was one of a recovering alcoholic. Angel needed to do certain work in order to ensure that he didn't fall off the wagon of good deeds, because left to his own devices, he was incapable of remaining 'sober' . In fact, in the original script of the premiere episode, a despondent Angel drinks the blood of a dead girl whom he tried valiantly but failed to save. The WB felt it was too dark to air, and the scene was cut. This is unfortunate, because as scripted, it is a perfect encapsulation of everything Angel- the character, the show, and the universe- is about: Angel finds the damsel in distress too late, she is dead by the hands of nothing more than a vampire just like him. There is a fresh wound on her neck. He reaches out to touch her and apologize for letting her down, but instead he lets his demon face out, then stuffs his bloody fingers into his mouth. He realizes immediately what he has done, howls, turns back into a man, and leaves her. Later on, he succeeds in saving another girl, but the image of the first one he lost will forever haunt him. It's a deceptively simple formula: Angel tries.  Angel fucks up. Angel tries again.

But it's the unwillingness to admit defeat, even if he does require ongoing encouragement to do so, that demonstrates Angel's inherent heroic qualities. Angel may not always be nice, but he can most certainly be good.

He is capable of great generosity, particularly to those he loves. He can overcome jealousy and pettiness, and put aside his own happiness for the sake of others , such as giving Cordelia a large sum of money to go away with her boyfriend at the time, despite being in love with her himself (“Couplet”, AtS, S3). He is willing to go to the mat even for people whom others deem unworthy, such as the on-the-run-from-the-law-Slayer, Faith, and a recently resurrected human Darla, for whom he was willing to die in order to give her a second chance at humanity (“Sanctuary”, and “The Trial”, AtS, S1 & 2). He accepts the consequences for these kinds of choices, and stands by them, saying, "We don't get to decide who's worth saving and who's not," (“Sanctuary”, AtS S1). This desire to save others is certainly tied to his own desire for redemption, but it also is typically borne out- both Faith and Darla prove themselves 'worthy' in the end.

Despite the fact that Angel remains drawn to darkness, he carries with him a deep sense of shame around who and what he is. Angel thinks of himself as a monster, first and foremost, and he tends to view most of humanity as good, and/or innocent. "I see people being good, I see people try," he says to Bethany, (“Untouched’, AtS S1) when she is convinced the world is filled with evil.

He considers a recently called Slayer who went on to kill indiscriminately "an innocent," a victim of circumstance. It is only Spike who points out that both he and Angel were the same, "once upon a time" (“Damage”, AtS, S5). Angel looks stunned for a moment before quietly agreeing. It would never occur to Angel to consider himself, in any incarnation, innocent.

Angel is horrified when Buffy first sees him in demon face, and apologizes, saying, "You shouldn't have to see me like this" ("What's My Line", BtVS, S2). He is very reluctant to drink even pig's blood from a cup in front of his human friends, and often has to be coaxed into doing so . In fact, it is a very telling moment in Angel's slide toward darkness in Season 2 of Angel the Series, when he is shown to be drinking in front of the Angel Investigations  team with no hesitation.

Angel romanticizes normalcy and humanity. Humans are for saving, they are otherwise untouchable. It is interesting to note that the women he chooses for himself are never 'normal'; he sees that type of relationship as beyond his reach, and not something he is worthy of deserving. He left Buffy under the misguided notion that she could have a normal life, with someone who could "walk (with her) in the light" (“The Prom”, BtVS, S3). His relationship with Cordelia did not develop beyond friendship until she took on aspects of a demon in order to keep the visions from killing her. Even his latest, casual, girlfriend of choice is a werewolf.

Angel considers being normal, being just a man surrounded by people he loves, to be the brass ring- something he longs for, strives for, but ultimately considers himself unworthy of having because of who he is and what he has done. Through centuries of suffering which includes a hundred or so years spent in Hell, we will see Angel cry on screen only twice : when he gives up mortality and sends Buffy away for good in “I Will Remember You” (AtS, S1), and then months later, when a human actress he barely knows sits on his lap and asks if he is lonely (“Eternity”, AtS, S1).

When he becomes human accidentally after being bitten by a demon, he cannot allow himself to keep the gift, because he feels as if he didn't earn it yet (“I Will Remember You”, AtS, S1). Similarly, he destroys a ring Buffy sends him that has the power to make him totally immortal. He tells Doyle that using it would be taking the "easy way out" (“In the Dark”, AtS, S1). He also cannot trust himself with that kind of power; should he lose his soul, Angelus with the ring of Amara would be unstoppable .

In the Buffyverse, the characters often referred to "Angelus" vs. "Angel", "him" rather than "you". Occasionally, despite their promise, the Angel Investigations team does the same. Angel does not. There is a definite schism inside of him; in contrast to Angel, Angelus is completely Id, incapable and unwilling to be anything but evil. Angel works hard to be the opposite of his unsouled self- he dresses in dark colors, he rarely curses, he is quiet, withdrawn, and tends toward a sort of outdated chivalry. But it's clearly work for him.

Angel has to bite his tongue to avoid cruelty, has to keep himself surrounded by people who give him a reason to go on fighting, or simply not to give in and just kill them. Doyle (Angel’s second fairy godmother-type demon/tutor) realizes this upon first meeting Angel, and tells him in the first episode (“City Of”), that Angel needs to stay connected  to the people he intends to save and to humanity in general. Otherwise, he warns, Angel is likely to slip and think to himself: "So what if I kill and eat this one, I saved so many, I'm still ahead by the numbers."

Angel places great importance on the ability of his friends to control him, should the need arise. In fact, he chooses his friends based on their promise to *not* trust him, to always acknowledge what he is, and to promise to kill him if he loses his soul. All primary members of the Angel Investigation team have made this commitment to him at one point or another. Angel never forgets what he is, and he would rather no one around him did either.

This connection to his demon, to his dark side, is a double-edged sword. Angel refers to Angelus as "I", he feels personal responsibility for the atrocities he committed while soulless. While this keeps his soul anchored in guilt, and therefore to some extent prevents him from losing control, it also creates a dangerous split. Unintegrated this way, Angel spends a great deal of energy on self-flagellation over things he never had control over ("We were innocents once upon a time") and he risks simple fatigue and frustration leading him to despair. And when Angel despairs, bad things happen. A good portion of Season 2, when Angel gave up his hope and slept with Darla in a failed soul-suicide attempt was spent with him learning this lesson. The consequences of these actions reached to encompass everyone in his life, and lasted past the series' end. Angel, not his demon, is more often than not, his own worst enemy.

Angel's internal struggle often manifests as a self-centered, arrogant streak. Certainly, Liam was egotistical, and Angelus demonstrated a desire to be the baddest motherfucker in the valley from the moment he awoke. Angel enjoys being "special" almost as much as he abhors it; the happiness clause of his curse allows him the perfect excuse to isolate himself, which then allows him to continue to suffer. Angel is a masochist and the perfect martyr, one who truly believes that the path to peace and redemption is through physical and emotional suffering. It is a rare episode where Angel is not beaten, broken or tortured in some way, usually in grand dramatic fashion, and often using visuals and symbols meant to evoke Christian themes. Even a casual watcher of Angel the Series could not help but notice the amount of times he is strung up, cruciform.

In truth, Angel himself is not symbolic of the latter day Christian god of Resurrection. Christ, or the Sun God, dies gloriously, once and for all time, and his return ensures the immortality of all other creatures. Angel, as mentioned earlier, is a perpetually dying god, and his death, and subsequent inevitable resurrection, does not necessarily herald happily ever afters.

Angel hearkens to the older gods, Osiris, Lord of the Underworld, and Odin, the Hanged God of War. Much like these deities, he rails in vain against fate, learns most lessons through grievous suffering, and faces his most brutal downfall at the hands of his family or loved ones.

Angel is, however, perfectly aware of his own importance, and it would be easy to label him as shamelessly narcissistic, but for one important catch. Angel may not be mistaken in his assumption that he is, in some respects, the center of the universe- after all, the nameless Powers of both good and evil are constantly fighting to have him on their side, his existence and deeds were prophesized by ancients, and the fate of the world occasionally depends on his orgasms. That's enough to give any good Catholic boy a martyr complex.

This connection to spirituality, God and religion is something his soulless self despises, and defames every chance he gets. Angelus will always hate anything that makes Angel feel human, be it romantic love or agape.


"Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love, the clarity of hatred, and the ecstasy of grief. Without passion, we would truly be dead."
-Angelus, monologue, “Passion”, BtVS, S2

The most unremitting paradox for Angel remains intimacy. Angel needs human contact, human love, in order to avoid giving in to the  monster inside of him. But for Angel, the thing that saves him is also the very thing that can damn him- one pure moment of feeling loved and forgiven can also lead to the loss of his soul. This curse defines Angel's every relationship in some significant way.

The primary romantic relationships that span Angel's various incarnations are his sire Darla, and Buffy. As mentioned earlier, both are petite, blonde women who can kick his ass. Clearly, Angel has a type.

Angelus and Darla never use the word 'love' to describe the hundred or so years they spend together, but the likeness to a marriage is obvious. They share a passion and an affection, despite the involvement of others in their sexual activities they consistently return to one another, and they take on definite parental roles to the younger vampires who travel with them . Even after he is souled and she torments him, Angel kills Darla only when he is forced to save Buffy from her. Darla's later resurrection at the hands of Wolfram and Hart begins Angel's descent into madness and his eventual downfall: The first time Liam was intimate with Darla she damned him to life as a soulless vampire. When she returns to him as human, years later, Angel is so determined to save her from a fate similar to his own, he loses himself once more in the process. This time, however, the act of sex with her saves him. He does not lose his soul, but rather, he realizes he has been choosing the wrong path, and he sends her away. It is telling too, that this time, he does not kill her ("Epiphany", AtS, S2).

Sex with Buffy also damns Angel, as in the moment of perfect happiness he loses his soul. Afterward, there is no chance of the two of them being together sexually, despite of- *because of* their deep love for one another. Angel's relationship with Buffy is therefore one of forced chivalry, with Buffy remaining a shining symbol of the grail Angel can never quite reach. One assumes that Angel is also old fashioned enough to have at least briefly considered the virgin/whore paradigm inherent in the comparison between these two love relationships.

Liam was a womanizer who was fond of easy girls and professional whores, Angelus spent a hundred years more or less devoted to the once-prostitute, Darla, who turned him, but also building his reputation on rape and murder. Throughout the course of both series, Angel is often assumed to be functionally celibate, and is in fact called a "eunuch" more than once (“Guise Will Be Guise”, AtS, S2). While the writers of the show eventually play with the perfect happiness clause enough to acknowledge that it is not necessarily the act of sex which leads to Angel's perfect happiness , nonetheless, for Angel, sex with a woman he truly loves is a dangerous act which can have consequences for the entire world. This enforced celibacy and hearkening to chivalrous love is not accidental on the part of Whedon. It is, rather, another way to draw the comparison between Angel and classic historical heroes, such as King Arthur's Knights, and the Asian warrior-monks of old. It also makes for damn good dramatic tension.

Angel, for all his tendency to isolate himself from the world, has a keen knack for choosing to draw near the people who need him most. Angel Investigations  in LA becomes a haven for the cast-offs from Sunnydale, and other unpleasant places; it is an island of misfit toys. Angel creates a family out of people who, much like himself, have no one else. They are all people making a break from who they were in a past life.

Cordelia, ex-cheerleader, ex-rich girl, ex-stuck-up brat, is in the beginning, Angel's primary link to both his past, and to his future. Doyle, the half demon with a sketchy past and an ex-wife, tells Angel in "City Of" (AtS, S1) that Cordelia will keep Angel grounded in his humanity. For the first several seasons, Angel and Cordelia have a definite sibling vibe that includes protectiveness and affection and an equal amount of exasperation. Doyle and Angel share a similar relationship for a brief time, until Doyle's death in "Hero" (AtS, S1). Then, Wesley, recently fired from the Watcher's Council, comes to LA and Angel, and the immediate sense of  family and home is obvious from the first time they all sit down to breakfast together. Angel, who doesn't need to eat, makes them all eggs. The theme of family harmony around a bountiful table is also often-repeated in Angelverse, as a visual symbol of Angel's deepest wish .

This desperate longing for family and normalcy is given name and tangibility later on in the first season, with the discovery of the Shanshu prophecy, and the foretelling that the vampire with a soul, should he survive the coming battles, will one day become human ("To Shanshu in LA", AtS, S1). But, like everything else in Angel's life, this promise is both a reward and a curse.

In trying to escape what he was, Angel is instead constantly confronted with the evidence of what he still is; Wolfram and Hart use his demon family and his continued feelings for them in order to manipulate him for their own ends. They resurrect Darla, knowing he will be willing to die trying to save her, and knowing he will eventually fail to do either. When he does fail, they bring back Drusilla, Angelus' "masterpiece" and Angel's greatest sin. While Angel is held down and forced to watch, she turns Darla back into a vampire ("The Trial", AtS, S2). Angel is karma's bitch too.

But for Angel, there is also a lesson to be learned inside the convoluted path that fate seems to take him down against his will: his best intentions often bring about his worst failures, but his darkest moments can also bring him the most unexpected gifts. This is never more true than when by trying to lose his soul in Darla's bed, he instead not only has an epiphany and returns to the good fight, but also somehow creates a child with her. This is  apparently completely unheard of by any occult standards in Angelverse, as both Angel and Darla are told time and again that this baby is not meant to be (“Heartthrob”, “Offspring” and “Quickening”, AtS, S3). In classical mythology, however, the miracle birth is pretty standard, and once again Angel’s story parallels that of an ancient, dark warrior god.

The child, Connor, becomes a victim of Angel's past, suffers horribly for the sins of his father when he is kidnapped and taken to a hell dimension by a victim of Angelus' who was long assumed dead (“Sleep Tight”, AtS, S3).  Odin, the Scandinavian deity of war, has a miracle son who is impervious to all manner of poison, except mistletoe. He is killed by this plant, (which is most notably a symbol for Love) and taken to the kingdom of the dead. His father is helpless to prevent this, despite being a lord over that kingdom (“Scandinavian Mythology”, H.R Davidson).

When Connor manages to return from the underworld, years older, and horribly warped, he makes Angel suffer unimaginably as well. He locks Angel in a box, and casts him to the bottom of the ocean, to remain there for eternity. The brother of Osiris, the Lord of the Dead, also cut Osiris’ body to pieces and cast him into the sea (“The Qablalistic Tarot”, Robert Wang). All of Osiris’ parts were found and reassembled, with the exception of his manhood, hence he became lord over the barren, the dead. The obvious connection to Angel’s curse is difficult to miss12.

Ultimately, however, the boy Connor becomes the most defining relationship in Angel's life, a walking, breathing symbol of hope and humanity, and, some would argue the living embodiment of Angel's Shanshu.

Through Connor, Angel's physical body and spirit will live on. One's child is, after all, one's true immortality. And how human is it for a father's dreams to be realized through his son? But for Angel, the path to such a prize can never be easy.

To risk love is to risk loss.  At the end of the series, Angel is the only member of the original Angel Investigations team standing in the alley alive. The lesson he must, and does, learn once and for all after the deaths of Doyle, Cordy, Fred, Wesley, and likely soon thereafter, Gunn, is to not give into despair. To not let losses stop the good fight.

In order to save Connor's life, Angel had to kill him. In order for Connor to be a "real boy"13, Angel now has to let him go forever. And, in order for Angel to ally himself with Wolfram and Hart's bosses, The Black Thorn, and therefore be able to destroy them once and for all, Angel must sign away all rights to any hope of becoming human himself. It is by giving up his reward that Angel finally proves himself worthy of it. And it is Angel and Connor's ability to come to a sort of understanding before Angel goes off to presumably die in this final battle, that is Angel's one true moment of grace ("Not Fade Away", AtS, S5).


"If you don't wanna face your own demons, you're gonna have to face mine."
-Angel, to random bad guy, Five By Five, AtS, S2

Before Angel gets to that final battle, he has other lessons he must learn as well, not the least of which is the integration of man and demon. Angel's guilt over the demon which lives inside of him detracts from his ability to be an effective warrior for the side of good. Angel uses his demon face for intimidation, his demon strength to physically fight, and his other demon powers to get various unpleasant jobs done, but because of his issues around the separation of church and state if you will, he is never truly comfortable inside of his own skin. This hesitancy becomes a dangerous dance of one step forward two steps back, and leaves Angel vulnerable to various powers who wish to manipulate him to their own ends, such as Wolfram and Hart, who want him "dark" and therefore on their side for the apocalypse ("Dear Boy", AtS, S2). Real change comes slowly, and over the course of several seasons in the series. But two key moments signal a turning point for Angel:

First, near the end of Season 4, the AI team convinces him to let his soul be loosened in order to get more information from Angelus about the Beast that heralds the End of Days. This is pivotal to their plan of taking down Wolfram and Hart, and the powers of evil that guide them. While free of his soul, Angel of course wreaks general havoc, hurting all of his friends emotionally and physically in the process (“Soulless “, “Calvary”,  “Salvage” & ‘Release”, AtS, S4). However, when his soul is returned, unlike every other time Angelus has been freed even by artificial means, Angel refuses to apologize for his soulless self. He clearly draws a line between what Angelus says and does, and what he feels for the people he loves and humanity in general when he is in possession of his soul (“Orpheus’, AtS, S4). While this may seem like the antithesis of integration, for Angel it is in fact a crucial step toward accepting the continuum of good and evil that lies inside of him. This episode also marks the first time Angel and Angelus "meet" face to face, in Angel's subconscious while he is high on a synthetic drug fed to him by Faith. Angel takes on his soulless counterpart, and wins, also saving Faith's life in the process14 (“Orpheus”, AtS, S4).

Second, in the series finale, the last creature standing in Angel's way before the final battle is a "liaison" to the Senior Partners, the larger evil behind Wolfram and Hart.

The man, Hamilton, taunts Angel, saying "You cannot beat me. I am a part of them. The Wolf, Ram, and Hart. Their strength flows through my veins. My blood is filled with their ancient power." And Angel, who has fought for years not to drink blood from the source, even an evil source, realizes the key to winning this fight is to give in, and do just that. Hamilton survives the assault when Angel drinks from him, but Angel now has that ancient power coursing through him.

When Hamilton says, "You don't really think you're gonna win this, do you? You don't stand a chance. We are legion15. We are forever," Angel replies that "forever just got a hell of a lot shorter." With his new and improved demonic powers, Angel dispatches the man easily (“Not Fade Away”, AtS, S5).

The key to winning is for Angel to realize that in the world he inhabits, humanity alone is not enough to fight. When Angel learns to use all the powers of the demon, to embrace it as a part of him while also being able to maintain control over his soul, he can truly move forward, and win not just the battle, but the war.

Angel himself has been a part of this war between good and evil since the moment he regained his soul. He just didn't know it until he met Buffy. In Buffy's world, he was a foot soldier, a warrior who fought with her and for her. Once he struck out on his own, he needed to learn how to become much more than that. Angel had to learn to be the General.

Angel has never been shown to hesitate when sacrifices need to be made; he will take on insurmountable odds for a good cause, and he will give up everything in order to save those he loves, or the world at large. But Angel has a great deal of difficulty accepting the consequences for those kinds of choices. He is, as stated earlier, a perfect martyr, willing to suffer for his sins and the sins of mankind. What he cannot stand, however, is to be called on his choices, to have them debated or declared wrong. Angel is not fond of the type of leadership which requires making decisions for others that they may then take issue with. It is partly for this reason that he does not tell Buffy about the lost day when he was human, or his friends about his decision to kill Connor and erase him from everyone's memories. The key, of course, is that Angel himself retains memories of Buffy and of Connor. Angel suffers alone. It is impossible to successfully lead a team this way.

Angel gives up leadership of the Angel Investigations team altogether after sleeping with Darla in Season 2. He allows Wesley to make the daily decisions, and Wesley proves himself to be an adequate leader in LA, and a fantastic leader in Pylea, where he plans and executes an attack which he knows will kill many of his soldiers. Wesley also tells Angel, " we know you're a man with a demon inside - not the other way around. We know you have the strength to do what needs to be done, and you will come back to us," so that Angel will allow his demon out in order to fight. Later, Wesley tells Gunn that in fact, he does not believe this, rather, he said it only so Angel would believe it, and do what Wesley needed him to (“There's No Place Like Pltz Glrb", AtS, S3). A General's job is to make these kinds of impossible decisions, to motivate their foot soldiers to carry them out, and to accept the consequences for them.

Angel becomes the leader when his team takes over Wolfram and Hart, but it takes him until the very end to learn to be the General. When he finally embraces this role, however, he succeeds spectacularly. 

In military-speak, the most important ideas as related to the apocalyptic battle in the Angelverse are "1. Strategy  - (a) The science and art of using all the forces available to execute plans as effectively as possible. (b) The science and art of military command as applied to the overall planning and conduct of large-scale combat operations. 2. Operation - A military action or campaign. 3. Tactics - (a) The technique or science of securing the objectives designated by strategy, esp. the art of deploying and directing troops in coordinated maneuvers against an enemy. (b) The skill or art of using all available means to achieve an end. (Emphasis mine). 

The corresponding descriptors, strategic, operational, and tactical, are used to signify the three layers of planning, coordination and execution that are required for the three different levels of warfighting.

Taking down the Circle of the Black Thorn in hand to hand combat is a dangerous maneuver. But it’s also warfighting at all three levels – Take the strategy that the Powers have designated with Cordelia's final vision, sent to Angel with a kiss. Take the resources that owning the LA Branch offers, and gain the intelligence to plan an operation. Use the available means to conduct a specific mission. The mission is to use the enemy against itself. The Circle of the Black Thorn is a bridge. The bridge is on a road. The road is a key transportation route. Without it, the enemy has no ingress, no egress. The ultimate enemy is not knowable, but the bridge is. In the long run, the difference they make may be all the difference that’s needed. They all might die. If they do, it’s a minor failure in the overall war. But if they succeed while dying, it is a spectacular military success" (Ros_Fod, 'The Soundness of Angel's Military Strategy', Essays: Slashing the Angel).

Angel makes the decision to fight the battle this way, asks his team for their support, and gets it. He tells them clearly he expects they will all die, and they continue to support his decision. He gives them each a specific objective, one more difficult than the next, and they still continue to support him. Finally, we see each member of the team set about performing their specified task. One dies. One is dying at the battle's end. And one, on Angel's orders, kills another member of the operation. Angel has definite, and arguably militarily sound reasons for making the plans and giving the orders he did. And still, many of those decisions can and should be called into question. Angel is aware that should any of them survive, he will have to deal with this as well. But the point is that Angel makes the necessary choices, and is able to motivate a very strong-minded team to follow him into a battle with horrible odds. Angel is confronted in the alleyway with the harsh consequences of his strategy, but continues to fight, and so does his team. Illyria, herself an ancient god-king, refers to Angel as “[Your] ruler” (“Power Play”, AtS, S5). Angel has learned what it means to be truly in command, to be a leader, to be a General.

Once again, Angel is also representative of the archetype warrior god. Odin is referred to by his people as “The Leader of The Lost Cause”; he and his followers meet the worst fates with not fear, but rather a fierce delight. Even the knowledge that they are destined to lose does not deter them from taking up the battle. The term “berserkers” originated with the cult of Odin, as it was said that he was able to inspire his followers to a kind of frenzied ecstasy in battle (“Scandinavian Mythology”).

By integrating his demon and taking clear charge of the current war, Angel has also finally stopped being a pawn for the Powers That Be- whether good or evil. He uses the visions given to him by the benevolent Powers for his own strategy, and does not rely on their continued support. He works to terminate every remaining link to the malevolent powers, including Lindsey, who for years has attempted to manipulate Angel and his team for his own, darker agenda. In the end, Angel relies only on those he trusts, and who clearly trust him in return. And he works to fulfill a vow he made much earlier: "To kill them. To kill them all" (“Angel”, BtVS, S1).

Of note, when Angel makes that comment to Buffy in the very beginning of their relationship, he is  referring to vampires, including the ones who murdered his family. Of course, it was Angel himself who did that, before he gained a soul. Always inherent in Angel’s promise to avenge the dead, is the implicit statement that he is  willing, and even eager, to die trying.

Overall, Angel does not fight to reap rewards, and he is not destined to receive any grace for his efforts. The character of Angel is an ideal within the “Cult of Kings”, the battle weary leaders who fight so that others can enter the promised land.  And, like King David, Angel will never build a temple, will likely not even live to see the fruits of his labors.

The story of Angel himself is one of tragedy. But it is also one of hope. With his resolve to Not Fade Away, the creature with the heart of a demon struggles to become a man, and in so doing, becomes a hero.


"I saw him once; he was a goodly king.   
He was a man, take him for all in all,   
I shall not look upon his like again."
Hamlet, Act 1- Scene 2


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