Pulling Down the Pillars (AtS 5x22)

Actually, this is a post inspired by lasultrix. She mentions that the ending of Angel is wrong. That it happens at the very worst place that it could have for the characters.

Interestingly enough, I actually agree, despite my deep and abiding adoration of the finale. It does end abruptly and with more than a touch of evil and spite. Angel ends in the wrong place.

Which is why, in the end, it felt so right for me. Angel was about the jarring edge of wrongness hidden beneath the 'normal' world. It was about the search for truth and beauty in the midst of blood and chaos.

Angel was the home of the outcasts -- Angel, first and foremost. He was lost as a human, constantly searching for more as an evil vampire, and then mostly lost again as a good vampire. Any time when Angel found a resting place, it was pulled out from under him, usually with a good helping of blood and angst involved. Cordy thought she belonged, by dint of beauty, money, and authority. She loses both the money and authority during her association with the Scoobies and moves to LA to take advantage of the one thing that she knows she still has, her beauty. She then completely fails to become a famous actress. Doyle was half-demon, his own heritage a source of shame and self-hatred. Wesley wasn't good enough for his father, wasn't good enough for Faith, wasn't good enough for the Watcher's Council and wasn't good enough for Sunnydale. Gunn lost everything to vampires and fought for revenge and for the hope of the future. Lorne was a self-exile, outcast by choice and necessity. Fred was the too-smart girl thrown into worlds that she couldn't control, trying so hard to survive in places where her mind was disregarded. Connor was pushed into hatred and vengence and pain by forces that he had no say over, molded since infancy to be a killer. Spike was the perennial outcast on Buffy and even saving the world a time or two didn't put him inside the circle of Scoobies. Harmony's best years were high school. Illyria, too, was an outcast, lost and alone in a world that it had never predicted.

And the best of the villains and one-shots fit that mold as well. Lindsey, always striving to make a difference, to become more than he was. Darla, forever on the look-out for that view, for a window that would show her a world beautiful enough to matter.

L.A. was the town where no one belonged.

I used to wonder, before Angel ended, whether or not a happy ending was even possible. When you start out with dice stacked this way, is there any antidote powerful enough to heal what's broken?

But in the end, each one of these people tried. Angel was not about the broken ones -- it was about how people who had been broken by the world could still create beauty and end pain. Angel was about seeking the beauty in every lost soul and seeing that no matter how terrible a person's deeds may be, in the end, their beauty is too grand to be contained in a mere human shell. Each of us possess so much grace, and our society drains it away, pulls us away from that power in order to attempt to control us. Too much grace will destroy us, they say. Too much beauty will blind us.

Angel and his crew went down into the belly of the beast and gutted it from the inside out, ripping out the ribs and causing it to collapse inward onto themselves. They were Samson, brought low by Delilah, pulling the pillars down around their own heads, content to destroy themselves if in doing so, they destroyed their enemies. For Samson killed more in his suicide than he had in the rest of his lifetime (and Samson is such an apt comparision to Angel -- the judge, the slaughterer of thousands).

In the end and in many ways, they did become corrupt. Gunn signed something that he knew would hurt someone, somewhere. Wesley was willing to sacrifice almost anything and almost anyone in his attempts to revenge Fred.

Angel and Lorne killed Lindsey.

And they both hold responsibility for that act. Lorne's conduct is no less grey because he acted under orders and Angel's is no less because he didn't pull the trigger.
Angel decided that after Lindsey did his part of things, the risk would be greater than the reward. It was a decision born of their entire relationship. Lindsey was in the first episode, he was in the last. And from first to last, he watched Angel and accorded Angel respect, even as he hated him. Angel, on the other hand, showed disregard and disrespect to Lindsey at nearly every turn. Time and time again, Lindsey had shown that given the proper motivation, he will do good. For Angel, that isn't enough, not for Lindsey. He doesn't want Lindsey to do good, he wants him to do good for the right reasons.

Because he doesn't believe that to be possible for Lindsey, he has him killed. It's not just a grey act, it's a flat-out dark one. He doesn't kill Harmony and he doesn't kill Eve. He never has Dru killed or Lilah. As a general rule, women who walk the edge of the moral line are allowed to walk away from Angel. Men who do, aren't.

It's a very dark act and committing it may very well have destroyed Lorne and Lorne's trust and faith in Angel. Despite this and despite knowing this, Angel still asks it of him. Angel has no hopeful delusions and he still believes himself to be damned. His hair has long since been shorn and his calls to his moral authority go unanswered. There's no quick fix that Giles, Willow, or Buffy can provide.

He's blinded and chained, and he can hear the voices of his enemies all around him.

Some things don't change, and Angel has had one want that has driven him these long years.

He can only see one path left, the path that he's always seen.

Buffy and Angel, Welcome to the Hellmouth (BtVS 1x01):


"What do you want?"
"The same thing you do."
"Okay. What do I want?"
"To kill them. To kill them all."