maggie2 | Spike and Season 8

It's not so obvious to me that Spike isn't going to play a role in season 8

I’m under the impression that a lot of people assume that Spike will certainly not figure in season 8, and that Joss either never was interested in Spike (or Spuffy) or he views that story as settled and is just moving on. Of course, we won’t know until the tale is done, but it does seem to me that it would be very strange if the same writer who knew that Angel marked Buffy for life didn’t think that Spike, who played at least as major a role in Buffy’s story, could vanish from her story without trace. But all I want to argue for here is the proposition that based on what we have seen in the first 21 issues, there is plenty of room for Spike to enter the story, perhaps even in an important way.

Before getting to the text, it’s worth observing that Scott Allie has said (Slayalive Q&A #20, question 4) that Joss has the right to use the characters in Angel as much as he likes. There thus seems to be no contractual reason for Spike to remain offstage. All that will matter is what the story demands.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to argue that the story demands that Spike play a role, there is a fair amount of text at this point that would retrospectively set up his appearance.

1. Buffy is the main character of the series. (Duh). When last we saw her, Spike was arguably the most important person in her world – the one who was in her heart, the one with whom she shared the fiery hands of passion, the one whose name was the last word she spoke in the entire series, the one with whom she spent what could well have been her last night in the world, the one who stood by her when all her other significant folks kicked her out of her own house, etc. etc. etc. The status of Buffy’s relationship with the person who was so very important to her was left hanging at the end of the story. It matters how it is resolved. Really. Angel hung over her story for years. It’s unreasonable to think that Spike vanished without a trace in 18 months, or that the resolution of Buffy's story with Spike is insignficant.

And it’s not like the writers of season 8 are insensible of the fact that romantic story lines from season 7 need to be resolved in season 8. Pretty much the first thing we learn about Faith in #6 is that Robin ended up not surprising her – she’s still very much alone. It took a while, but we finally learn that Xander really did spend some serious time mourning Anya (#13). If Joss really wanted to close off the Spike/Buffy story line, he’d have done so much the way Faith/Robin got closed out. He didn’t.

2. On the contrary, one of the first things Joss tells us about Buffy is that she doesn’t know the significance of the Immortal to either Angel or Spike. It opens the door to the possibility that she does not know that they tried to track her down in TGIQ. Far from closing the story down, Joss offers a tantalizing detail that reminds us that we really don’t know where things stand between Buffy and Spike.

3. There is the mysterious absence of Spike from Buffy’s dream space (#3), where every other significant figure in her life is present. (With the possible exception of Hank). Angel is here, as is Riley. Tara, and Dawn, and Faith, and, Joyce, and all the major villains and the Scoobies. There are cubes from early in Buffy’s life through season 7 (Xander with an eye patch; Caleb). There are three ways I can think of to account for this fact. (a) The scenes and figures drawn were chosen by Jeanty and have no particular significance. But Enisy asked Allie about this, and Allie says that Joss did interact with Jeanty both about what should be there and about what should not be there (Slayalive Q&A #19, question 6). (b) Buffy really doesn’t see Spike as an important person in her life (beyond his usefulness in her erotic fantasies). That defies imagination. Whether it’s the fiery hands of passion or the bathroom scene, Spike has impacted Buffy enormously, both in good ways and in bad ways. (c) The absence is significant in a way that has yet to be revealed.

4. Buffy finally mentions Spike in A Beautiful Sunset sandwiched between Angel and Riley. As already noted, both Angel and Riley figured in her dream space. They’ve also both (now) appeared in the series. Angel in a nod to what lies firmly behind Buffy (#20); and Riley as either a villain or an undercover ally (#19). If two of the three major loves in Buffy’s life deserve a role in the series, it is even stranger that Joss couldn’t be arsed to close out a dangling thread about her most recent romantic involvement.

5. There are plenty of places where one can read resonances with Buffy’s history with Spike, things that could take on different shades if Spike turns out to be part of this story. In the first battle we are shown, Buffy is in a church killing a demon with a cross. The last time we saw Buffy in a church with a demon, the demon was draped on the cross in one of the most arresting images of the entire series. General Voll points to the crater at Sunnydale and says “look what she did to her hometown”. But when Buffy last had anything to say about what caused that crater, her answer was “Spike”. In Buffy’s dream about Xander, she promises to be gentle “this time”, yet knocks off Xander’s head and worries about being dark. There are resonances here with her not-so-gentle relationship with Spike, which was epitomized in the alley scene in Dead Things where she didn’t quite knock his head off. Buffy even says “oh balls” here, which is a line that comes from that scene in DT. Ethan’s entrance into her dream is teased as Spike (we just see his Spike-like clothes at the end of #2) and Buffy explicitly objects to him calling her “pet”. Skipping ahead, and going in less detail: Dracula’s relationship with Xander mirrors in some ways Spike’s relationship with Buffy (evil vampire crossing lines to help the good guys because of love); Willow tells Frey that the most important men in Buffy’s life are lurks (and that that fact makes it too simple to say that Buffy’s life is about eliminating them); and in the most recent issue we have Clem and Harmony allied, the two demons who were friendly with Spike during his time in Sunnydale. None of these allusions or references have to mean anything. But they are available to mean something if Spike turns out to figure in the story.

So we’ll see. It’s true that we’re nearly two years into the comics. But we’re also just over half way through the “season”. And in many of the seasons on Buffy, the real contours of the season aren’t revealed until the second half. It’s too soon to claim that Joss is going to pay no attention to Spike. Indeed, I tend to think that the strange absences and silences point to a larger role rather than a smaller one – since the failure to close out Spike/Buffy quickly seems to demand some sort of pay-off when the story finally is continued.

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From:

next_to_normal

Hmm... I certainly agree with you that Spike could show up, but that's based more on the fact that there's nothing that absolutely precludes it than any hunch I have that he will show up.

If Joss really wanted to close off the Spike/Buffy story line, he’d have done so much the way Faith/Robin got closed out. He didn’t.

As you pointed out, it's not like Spike hasn't been mentioned at all. Obviously, he appears in Buffy's threesome fantasies with Angel. And we did get "people who love me tend to die" with a particular reference to Spike. I wouldn't put it past Joss to think that "closes off" the Spuffy story line sufficiently - she still thinks about him occasionally, but clearly things between them are over enough that she's not going to find him or expecting him to show up, even though she apparently knows he's alive. Which brings me to point number two...

It opens the door to the possibility that she does not know that they tried to track her down in TGIQ.

According to Scott Allie, we can assume Buffy knows everything that anyone in her organization knows, including Andrew. (Personally, I think this is a ridiculous premise for a group that has been hellbent on keeping secrets from each other for seven years, but I'm not the editor.) That means she knows Spike's alive, and she knows he and Angel came to see her in Rome, and she apparently didn't do anything about it. That doesn't bode well for her still having feelings for him - and if she really is over him, then there's nothing to "close off," is there?

If two of the three major loves in Buffy’s life deserve a role in the series, it is even stranger that Joss couldn’t be arsed to close out a dangling thread about her most recent romantic involvement.

True, but Angel wasn't really there, as in his actual post-NFA (or post-ATF at this point) character showing up in the present day storyline. So even if Spike does make an appearance, there's no guarantee it will be him in the flesh and not a dream sequence or flashback or something else.

To be honest, I don't think any future appearance by Spike warrants this conspicuous absence in earlier issues. Would it be giving anything away for him to appear in her dream space? It's not like those cubes tell us how she feels about any of it, just that they're there in her mind somewhere. Would it really spoil anything to show that Buffy missed or grieved for him the way Xander mourned Anya? I think we all pretty much assume it happened (it's only natural), so it wouldn't be telling us anything we didn't sort of already know.

From:

2maggie2.livejournal.com

The closing off has to be more than just a mention that Spike exists. At the ending of The Chosen, Buffy's feelings about Spike were made deliberately ambiguous. The question about Buffy's feelings have weight beyond the shipping angle. Spike represented a closure to her whole vampire arc that began when Angel went bad and concluded when Spike gives himself up to save the world. This is all about Buffy's relationship to the dark side of herself, and we need to know how Buffy felt about it if we want to understand her. (Just like it would be impossible to understand Buffy in seasons 4-7 if we didn't know how things "resolved" with Angel).

The line about the Immortal in the opening pages of LWH directly contradicts Allie. Buffy does NOT know why Andrew wanted to set the fake slayer up with the Immortal. I agree that it's more likely than not that she knows the raw fact that Spike is back. But we still don't know how she understands that fact, since she's missing at least some information. The fact that it could go either way means that the story is open. And if the story is open, that means that there's a good chance that the resolution of that story (or the revelation of exactly how that story was resolved) will play a role in season 8.

I agree that we don't know whether Spike will make a flesh and blood appearance. But I think somehow the story about him will be important. And I do think it carries weight that Joss brings Angel up specifically in the context of a past to which Buffy can't return. It tells us a bit about how to understand the cookie dough speech, for example.

My point about Spike's absence in the dream space is not that it's meant to conceal something. Just that it's distinctly odd that he's not there, and that his absence of itself could well turn out to ber significant.