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Spike and 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.
no subject
One final comment on the subject of Spike's importance to Buffy. Of course, I agree with you that he was important at the time. If Joss hadn't thought so, or had listened to the fans who shouted loudest (the Bangels), Spike would have had a minimal role in season 7 or possibly just come back as a villain. Having said all which, I still think Joss considers Spike's story with Buffy to be over and that she already has all the people that really matter to her around her, ie. Willow (in particular), Xander and Dawn. Not being a big 'core four' fan (or 'core three' as I suppose it is now, since Giles has been more or less written out), this has greatly reduced my enjoyment of the comic right from the start. Buffy and her friends are back in this odd, incestuous little huddle and to me, that seems like a big step backwards, but I don't think Joss sees it that way at all. He sees Willow and Xander as being the two people who are most important in Buffy's life. Everyone else - even Angel - is a thing of the past. Ephermeral. And that includes Spike. I don't believe Joss has a big role for him in the story. I don't believe he even has a small one.
But we'll see.
Also, while I agree with you about the moral ambiguity of Angel in his own show being quite deliberate and Lynch having either totally failed to grasp it or chickened out of showing it in the comic, I don't think the same is true of Buffy. I do think Joss meant to show her as flawed and human, but I don't think he ever set out deliberately to show her as morally ambiguous.
no subject
I've never been a fan of the Scoobies either, but I did a fairly intensive rewatching of season 2 and the first half of season 3, and there's a lot more tension and distance and generic complexity than I picked up on to begin with. They are friends, but there's also a real hostility between Buffy on one side and Willow/Xander on the other. It reflects the tension ordinary folks have with heroes, who are needed but also feared (and resented). So I really don't mind revisiting them, especially if the purpose is to pull off the facade of the cozy chummy good old years of high school. And I tend to think we're going to get some facade pulling.
But of course, I'll always miss the vampires. I should add that I agree that it's unlikely that Spike will be back as a permanent fixture. I just think it would be astonishing if we didn't get more story about how Spike got (or gets) moved out of Buffy's life; and that Joss's refusal to tie this off quickly and painlessly signals that there's something in that transition that is important to Buffy's on-going story (even if Spike himself has no future in that story.)
no subject
And I'm afraid that I'll continue to believe that it's not so much a refusal as a failure to see Spike as being important to Buffy any more in any way whatsoever.
While of course hoping to be wrong.