maggie2 | Buffy’s Dance with the Vamps: Why Spike’s Soul Matters

Buffy’s Dance with the Vamps: Why Spike’s Soul Matters

In response to some comments on my previous post, here's a four-page essay on the role Spike's soul plays in Buffy's story.

In the comments to my last post on multiple motivations, there was a lot of discussion about whether Spike’s soul matters, and if so how. The conversations are mostly about how Spike’s soul fits in with his own journey, but the dilemma comes with trying to figure out what the “soul” means in the ‘verse as a whole. I’ve tried for a long time to come up with one theory of the soul, but I can’t find one that does justice to both Angel’s story and to Spike’s. This is not to say that the individual stories aren’t compelling and insightful. But the “soul” seemed to shift around to fit the demands of the story at the moment. Sidebar: and let’s just get one thing off the table for good: whatever it is that “soul” means in the ‘verse, it has nothing to do with what a Christian would call a soul. But that’s a topic for another day.

candleanfeather observes in a comment that there are often ambiguities and tensions that crop up when we try to reconcile the multiple stories being told in the ‘verse. I agree with her, and would argue that it’s a feature and not a bug. Sidebar: another story for another day. But while I don’t think there’s one unifying principle that picks up all the details for all the stories in a way that is coherent, I do think there’s one primary story which actually does make sense, which drives the plotting involved with souls. And that’s the story of what the vampires with souls mean to Buffy and her journey. Cause as Joss has said, the question you always have to start with is “what’s the Buffy of it”.

The Buffy of the Vampire with Souls: The Basic Theory

Buffy is a human being who has been endowed with special powers that are at least associated with the demonic. One of her central projects in BtVS is coming to terms with the two sides of herself, finding a way to reconcile them. One way to dramatize Buffy’s internal struggle to reconcile the demonic with the human is to involve her in romances with creatures that have similar struggles. And what could serve that purpose better than a vampire with a soul, a demon who struggles with his humanity the way Buffy struggles with her demonic power? Enter Angel.

In falling in love with Angel, Buffy is falling in love with the singular creature in her acquaintance who has both demonic and human forces within him. His soul tames the demon and allows her to enter into a relationship with the demonic, which is a vehicle for coming to terms with the demonic within her. The demonic here is often understood as purely evil, but it’s clear that a domesticated version of it is good: it’s a source of strength and power and sheer exuberance. Sidebar: Angel is the antithesis of exuberant, of course; but check out Angelus!. When Buffy attempts an actual union with Angel, however, things fall apart in a devastating way. It turns out that for Angel, the price of loving Buffy is losing his own soul. Buffy’s first experience with trying to be in relationship with the demonic is traumatic and deeply scarring. After a yearlong coda wherein Buffy and Angel try to pretend that they can be together without being together, they separate, and Buffy retreats from the demonic side of herself. (Bad experiences with Faith are a part of this movement).

Buffy’s next move is to ignore the demonic side of herself by entering into a romantic relationship with Riley. Riley’s synthetic superpower makes this possible, I think, but the relationship is never fully satisfying to Buffy who needs to make peace with the genuine demonic within her. Two things happen that spell an end to Buffy’s relationship with Riley. First, the big spell at the end of season 4 unleashes the primitive slayer basically forcing Buffy to reengage with the project of coming to terms with the demonic origins of her own power. Second, Riley loses the synthetic power-up and ceases to be able to engage that side of Buffy in any way. Buffy has to stop pretending that she’s just a human, and that means she has to risk going into the dark, a journey which begins not remotely coincidentally in an episode called Into the Woods. Her refusal to engage and reconcile herself with her demonic side, which is the source of her power, but also a potential source of exuberance, is a big part of her growing death wish, I think.

But Buffy is not yet out of options. Spike is there, waiting for her in the dark. Now, Spike does NOT have a soul and is therefore NOT a fit companion for Buffy. What he does have, though, is some impulse towards the human in his demon. The judge remarked on that back in Surprise; it has been given room to grow by virtue of the chip which hindered Spike’s unfettered expression of his demonic self; and it has now manifested itself in the form of Spike’s love for Buffy. But though the demon in Spike is inclining towards the human, the absence of the soul still means he can’t mirror Buffy properly. It’s not unlike the way that Riley’s synthetic demonic powers were insufficient to mirror Buffy’s genuinely demonic side. Buffy is nonetheless drawn to Spike, but the result is that she is drawn further towards the demonic in herself, and risks losing her human side altogether. But where Angel’s love for Buffy cost him his soul, it turns out that Spike’s love for Buffy ultimately drives him to seek a soul.

This is huge. Where Buffy’s first effort to enter into her necessary dance with the dark ended in disaster, her second (reluctantly entered into) dance with the dark ends up with her having inspired a vampire to the unprecedented act of seeking a soul. Painful and ugly as their relationship often was, Spike’s quest for the soul turns Buffy’s dangerous dance with the dark into something quite beautiful. As a result of it, she now has a partner who can be the perfect mirror for her. He’s a vampire with a soul, but unlike Angel he’s the vampire who wanted the soul. Buffy’s reconciliation with Spike over the course of season seven reflects her own internal reconciliation with her own power. By the end, she and Spike have become very close, and she has become very confident and sure of herself as a human who can exercise demonic powers without being overwhelmed by them. It is only at this stage in her journey that Buffy can think about sharing her powers with others, and it’s no coincidence that Buffy comes to possess the scythe which is the vehicle for spreading her powers with the aid of the strength Spike gave her (End of Days). Spike’s quest for the soul is an essential moment in Buffy’s story.

Some Further Thoughts

1. Notice that Angel, the vampire who was cursed with a soul that his demonic self utterly loathes, serves as Buffy’s mirror during a stage in her journey when she regards her own calling as a slayer as a curse. In addition to the fact that she literally cannot be united with Angel without unleashing evil upon the world, Buffy needs to transcend Angel if she is ever to get to a stage where she can regard her slayer calling as a gift and not a curse or a burden. Bangel just is not a possible long run outcome on this account. Not without something earth shattering that would induce Angelus to actually seek a soul himself. Angel’s true story, which is now (appropriately) distinct from Buffy’s is about how one comes to terms with being human when one’s deepest nature is in rebellion against that project. Whether this is even possible remains an open question.

2. Spike’s acquisition of the soul is in service to Buffy’s story. But in terms of his own story it is also a good thing. As I argued above, there was always an inclination to the human present in Spike, and with the soul he steps into the full realization of that yearning. At the end of season 5, we see that Spike has come to see, even without the soul, that he aspires to be at least treated like a man. The acquisition of a soul which allows him to enter into an even deeper relationship with the human side of himself is just a fulfillment of that aspiration.

3. Because Spike has been such an essential part of Buffy’s story, we need to know how this relationship resolved in order to understand where Buffy is at. Does she still think that she loves Angel more? If so, she hasn’t embraced her demonic side as well as she might have, because this would represent a yearning to be with someone who has a big rift between his demonic side and his human side. Or does the apparent lack of peace Buffy is currently suffering reflect the way things finally resolved between them when Spike returned from the dead? The Buffy we saw at the end of The Chosen could have been done with this part of her journey. The Buffy we see now is not nearly so obviously done with that part of her journey. So what happened? We need to know. This is the second biggest reason why I think it would be strange if Joss didn’t tell us more about Spike in season 8. Sidebar: the first biggest reason is that he’d have closed out the story in a few bubbles if it were really over in his mind.

4. As should be obvious, Spike’s acquisition of the soul is NOT a weak echo of Angel’s story, but rather is the story redone in the right key. Buffy doesn’t need a demon cursed with a soul; she needs a demon who fought for one.

5. A good deal of the angst of Spuffy in season five and especially season six is because in the context of this framework things couldn’t work between Buffy and Spike until Spike had a soul. But it’s also the case that there’s an extra helping of angst because Buffy is working out her trauma with Angel in the context of her relationship with Spike. It would take a lot of space to elaborate on this, but a lot of the abuse Buffy heaps upon Spike strikes me as a projection of her anger at Angel onto Spike. I think that’s part of why emotionally, Buffy’s reconciliation with Spike serves also to heal her long-standing wounds from the debacle with Angel. Spike has given Buffy a great deal, including absorbing a lot of the suffering that was really due to Angel and not him. I think that’s intentional. Spike has made a huge gift to Buffy, sacrificing his whole self. Joss’s choice to let him die apparently in the full belief that his love was not returned (despite the fact that he’s absorbed the anger and pain caused by Angel) just underscores the gratuitous nature of what Spike has done for Buffy. Spike is a big hero here. Indeed, instead of complaining that Spike has been given short shrift by Whedon, the more live concern strikes me as being whether or not Spike’s role ends up outshining Buffy’s to the detriment of whatever feminist message the show is supposed to be conveying.

6. The standard story that we get from interviews with Whedon, other writers, and Marsters is that Spike was supposed to be killed off in season 2; was brought back in season 4 to take up the snarky truth-telling position vacated by Cordelia; and then (presumably because of the character’s popularity) got sucked into the role of being Buffy’s major romantic partner. That might well be true. But if you take this story that I’ve just told and read through from the very beginning you’ll find a shocking amount of supporting detail. Angelus as having no humanity in contrast to Spike’s humanity is established early on. Buffy’s insight into this is established as early as Lie to Me. There’s a long-standing sexual tension between the two, both in how the actors respond to one another and in things like their mutual expression of preference when it comes to who they want to fight (What’s My Line). [I’ve read recently that for years Jane Espenson had a note taped to her wall that said that Buffy has sex dreams about Spike.] In season four, there is an awful lot of detail that could be marshaled in support of the argument that Riley was always going to be an inadequate solution to Buffy’s problem and that Spike was going to end up being the answer no matter how unlikely that seemed to be on the surface. One example of many is Something Blue when it is exactly Buffy’s fear of being attracted to the dark Spike that moves her from utterly indifferent to Riley to thinking that’s a direction she wants to go. I’m not going to say that this story was planned from the get go. But I am saying that you can read the whole show as if it was planned from the get go. However that came about, the results are pretty cool. And if this is how Joss treats a character he doesn’t like, then I’m really glad that he didn’t like Spike.

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Thanks! Yeah, for me the getting of the soul makes all the difference. It was nice to see the bit of interview with Joss floating around where he says as much.

And Buffy's line "No, Spike, it's going to hurt a lot"? Sends chills down my spine every time I hear it.

Angel telling us that Spike's primary trait is that he doesn't give up.

The first thing we learn about Spike is that he's an unsouled demon who can love. Contrasts with the Angelus we're going to meet in mid-season.

And all the stuff you say.

And that's just School Hard.

Skip ahead to Becoming: How is it not total foreshadowing of my theory that Spike is the one who helps Buffy stop the apocalypse that Angel started? And there's plenty between those two episodes. And that's just season two.

But my official position is just that however it came about the text can be read as though this were intended -- not that it was actually intended.

It's interesting that you mention BSG, because that's a show I absolutely adore, even though they've been stringing us along for four seasons now. :) But I think there are some very vital differences in structure that make BSG work for me when season 8 doesn't.

First, the sheer awesomeness of the individual stories we get each episode is more than enough to distract me from the things that don't make sense. The same was often true with Buffy the TV show, but I've been vastly underwhelmed by the comics, so I'm focusing a lot more on the problems.

Second, I think BSG has a good way of doling out answers. We didn't start out the series with the big mysteries we have now - there was no big "who are the final five?" question, because we didn't know the final five would be important. There was no "who is behind all of this?" question because we didn't know there was anything to be behind. There was no question about the evolution of the Cylons, because we thought we knew that already. BSG is continually giving us answers - it's just that the answers always lead to more (and bigger) questions. BSG builds on its reveals; I don't get that with Buffy. I think the puzzle analogy is pretty apt in that sense - we're getting random pieces, but until we fit more of them together, they're not going to make any sense, and that's frustrating when the pieces are doled out so slowly.

The other thing that I think makes a big difference is that the big mysteries of BSG affect the way we view the universe and the story, but they don't affect the way we view the characters (except for Starbuck, I suppose, but she's always been special). It's not like we couldn't understand Tigh's actions until he was revealed as a Cylon; it's just that we understand him differently now. We thought we knew the context, and now the context has changed. But with Buffy, we don't even have a context to understand her actions, leaving us floundering. And that's particularly detrimental because she's the main character. Imagine if we'd gone through all of BSG not knowing what Adama's motivation was. We'd be completely lost.

Also, what makes BSG so awesome is that you can identify with the characters, because they don't know what the frak is going on, either. We're unraveling the mystery right along with them. But it seems like with Buffy, she ought to know what's going on - it's just the audience that's in the dark, and that creates distance between us and her.

Remembered another one. Spike's opening line is about crucifixion: "If every vampire who said he was at the crucifixion was actually there, it would have been like Woodstock!" The theme lies dormant till FFL where we get this image

as well as a scene in which Drusilla "makes" him in a place that looks like a manger. And then of course there are a lot of crucifixion references in Intervention, Beneath You and Chosen.

All interesting. But I was referring specifically to the leap forward when they jumped ahead a year or so. All of a sudden people were married and had kids and so on. Some of the key developments we didn't see weren't presented until the end of the season. The difference on that and what Joss is doing is mostly that it's taking much longer. Though I agree that it also maybe doesn't work so well in a comic book medium where the stories he tells in the mean time aren't as viscerally involving.

And Giles telling Spike he has a higher destiny in season 4. And the sacrificial pose he strikes at the end of his posing sequence in Giles' dream in Restless.

Ah, I see. And yeah, I'd say it's mostly the length of time it took for the reveal that makes the difference. But also, other than maybe the Kara/Lee stuff, I don't think there was anything held back that was really unexpected.

I remember his poses in Restless but I totally forgot about Giles' words! I have to rewatch season 4.

Damn, the show is so rich! So many years have passed and we still debate it...

Yeah in "Restless" in Giles' dream, he's making faux poses of a villain (in black and white/gray), and then ends with the paparazzi applauding him as he does his "on a cross" pose. I don't recall the dialogue between them though. Only that it is Spike who beckons Giles over to his crypt in the first place.

There are two bits of dialogue in "Becoming" Part 2 which cement the idea of Spike as Buffy's shadow-self, the dark side of her own nature:

WHISTLER: In the end, you're always by yourself. You're all you've got. That's the point.

And in the next scene:

BUFFY: I hate you.
SPIKE: And I'm all you've got.

The symbolism is pretty cool, when you think about it.

Exactly! It's all over the place if you're looking for it.

The Giles line about Spike's higher destiny is earlier in the season. Maybe in the scene where Giles comes to give Spike the money he owes him for helping in New Man.

I also don't remember the bit of dialogue in the dream.

I just went to the link about Joss saying that his interest in Spike at first had nothing to do with Buffy, but I actually don't think that's what he says. He tells the interviewer that Spike was always meant to be more than a cardboard villain so that he could become "thematically useful", which is pretty much exactly what I'm arguing here.

See? More and more evidence. :P

Joss says Spike has been conceived as an alternative to Master (who was cardboard) and even to Angel (who was "Lestat"). Pity that the interviewer doesn't ask about Buffy!

But - yes, it's a very revealing bit.

BUFFY: I hate you.
SPIKE: And I'm all you've got.

The symbolism is pretty cool, when you think about it.

Agree. Joss had shot this scene perfectly. There is a playground behind Buffy. There are surrealistically lit trees behind Spike - a magic forest of sort. The flasher on the police car conveys the nervous mood of the scene. I can rewatch this scene million times and never get tired.

Fantastic meta, Maggie. I'm with you on this again and in the hope that Spike's importance to Buffy is addressed in Season 8. Should we form a club? Have any ideas for a good name? 'Too hopeful for their own good', perhaps?

Thanks! Good idea about the club. I'll ponder good names, but "too hopeful for their own good" might have to be it.

Though actually (and she gets out a stick to beat that dead horse one. more. time.), I still just can't even begin to wrap my brain around the idea that Joss doesn't think he needs to say something about Spike. It makes no sense, and it would be out of character for Joss to think that it didn't matter. Yet, I obviously hold the minority view on this around here. Maybe it's the "not so cynical club". Or the "we still think Joss has at least the slightest clue about how to tell a story club".

"not so cynical club". Or the "we still think Joss has at least the slightest clue about how to tell a story club"

Bah! Yeah, I still have faith in Joss that he understands these story threads are waiting to be addressed. I don't think he's perfect, but this seems too big to leave lying on the narrative floor. He's left the door open and I believe he knows this. We'll see where it goes.

Some people have been theorizing that #23 Predators and Prey teaming Buffy up with Andrew in Italy will somehow address Spike and Angel visiting Andrew in TGIQ. And I just realized I'm a bit scared by this because the writer for that issue is...Drew Greenberg. The man who wrote Empty Places - one of the most hated episodes of the series. Frankly, the only people I want touching Spuffy if its going to happen during Season 8 are Joss or Jane.

I was watching the first half of season 4 a while back and I was just shocked at how many times there were details that foreshadowed that Buffy was going to end up with Spike, or that suggested that we should view Spike and Riley as rivals.

"It's okay. You did a good thing for your friend. Did uh, you and he use to go out...?"

:)

I just remembered this quote, by the way, which would seem to suggest that Buffy hasn't bridged the gap between her human side and her demonic side (hence the "I'll be gentle this time. I can be gentle", I guess):

Interviewer: After Buffy slept with another slayer [in Season 8] who had feelings for her despite knowing she couldn't return those feelings, some fans have commented this seems strange because Buffy has had so many bad experiences with being used or using someone for sex (such as Spike). What do you say to that?
Joss Whedon: It's something she's suffered from for a long time. Being a slayer and having sort of a bad run of it, she's the sort of person who has trouble connecting with people. [Her encounter with the slayer] wasn't abusive and twisted the way the Spike thing was, and actually it was quite sweet -- but ever since Angel turned on her, she's never really been the same.
But it isn't just that. It's also who she is, her relationship with her father and the fact of finding out she was a slayer when she was 15. She just feels a separateness from the people around her that she hasn't been able to overcome.

I deleted the Olivia parts to save space (though her crying over a baby that never was...intriguing)

GILES: Don't push me around. You know I have a great deal to do.

SPIKE: I've hired myself out as an attraction. (Strikes a threatening pose. The people ooh and ahh, camera flashes going off.)

(color)GILES: Sideshow freak?

(B&W shot: Spike flips up the collar of his coat.)
SPIKE: Well, at least it's showbiz. (Poses again.)

(Color)
GILES: (very confused) What am I supposed to do with all of this?

SPIKE: (off screen) You gotta make up your mind, Rupes.

(B&W shot of Spike.)
SPIKE: What are you wasting your time for? (Pose)Haven't you figured it all out yet, with your enormous squishy frontal lobes? (Another pose, more oohs, flashbulbs)

(Color: Giles walking across the crypt.)
GILES: I still think Buffy should have killed you.

(B&W: Spike looks annoyed. He strikes a Jesus on-the-cross pose. Very loud oohs, cameras flashing.)

GILES: Honestly, you meet the most appalling sorts of people.
(He walks on. In the background we see Spike still in Jesus pose, more flashbulbs going off.)

Now, what I just noticed? Giles is viewing Spike in a very black and white kind of way, even though he knows it's "part of a show," and he mentions that Buffy should have killed him, as he'll say in s7. Giles had to make up his mind...about Spike, and how much of a distraction (and attraction--pun intended) he is. As he walks away from Spike, Spike is still in black and white in his crucifixion pose. Foreshadow to LMPTM? (sorry for the long post, but the quotes were necessary)

Yeah. I totally think Joss can make mistakes or fail to develop things well. But this would be a mistake on a much more fundamental level.

#23 seems pretty obvious. Not just because Joss told us first thing that Andrew is holding back on at least some of this stuff with Buffy, but also because that'll be the first issue that's clear after AtF -- assuming they were waiting for that to wrap up before saying anything about Spike. But I have no investment in the when or the how -- just on the "that" (as in that it must happen one way or another).

For him, the unpleasant fact is that Buffy and the Slayerettes did not route the ubervamps themselves. Too bad, though. They didn't.

Yes, that's what I think - and I'm even more cross with myself today for still being upset about it. I probably need to take a complete fandom break.

Regarding the 'histories matter' thing - do you not think it possible that Joss may feel he's already dealt with Spike as part of Buffy's history with the Satsu story? It was before that we had our only mention of Spike (apart from the threesome pic) when Buffy was warning Satsu that bad things happen to people who love her. Joss may feel that the (relatively) untraumatic way the Buffy/Satsu story played out is enough reference to the past.

Naturally, I would like to think not.

A very interesting piece of meta which shows how the coherence of the show lies not in the technicality of the world JW created but rather in its mythological depths. Now are all the parallels we see in the story intentionnally there, I don't think so, but a big part of them is: after all JW's world is a world of metaphors and symbols. Parallels, mirror plays, doubles are an integral part of that writing arsenal and the writers sometimes pushed very far in that direction, if you want to look at how they used the costumes from time to time. About Spike, I doubt they had an idea of what they would do with him as soon as season 2, but what's interesting in JW's recent interview is how this character attracted his attention from the beginning (and somehow I think that's what permitted him to stay in the show rather than his single popularity) and how, as the show progressed they discovered new layers and new possibilities for him. How did they elaborated his story to give it such a coherence? Probably in several ways: planning in advance,sometimes using ideas that had previously cropped up during their work but hadn't been developped at the time being, always keeping a vey clear view of where the character was at the end of a season. In regard to Spike's development and how the writers worked, I think Restless is an important episode. There's a little piece of meta about it in my LJ if it interests you.

We don't know if she knows if he's alive. If she does know he's alive, we don't know how it developed that she knows but is still in Scotland. (And no, I'm not protesting that they're not together). We need to know why they aren't together. As I was telling Eowyn, nobody writing post-Chosen fanfic would think they could tell a story about Buffy without knowing in their minds whether their Buffy knew that Spike wasn't dead and without knowing in their minds how their Buffy felt, either about Spike's apparent death, or about his return. Even the most ardent anti-Spuffy would have to tell us about how Buffy heard Spike was back and said "I'm glad that idiot had enough sense not to get in touch with me". We are looking at a Buffy sitting out their feeling lonely and horny and we don't know if she's mourning a dead lover, or if she has options she's chosen for one reason or another not to take. Remember the cover of Buffy as an incomplete jigsaw puzzle? This is one of the missing pieces. And there's just no way that Spike was of so little weight in Buffy's life that Joss thinks it's a matter of indifference to Buffy's character such that we don't need to know just why Spike isn't in her life now.

I'll check out your piece on Restless. I think what we got is a mix of what they (vaguely) intended for the character and the way they wove an unanticipated but organic development into the fabric of what they'd already laid down. Which is just to say that I agree with you.

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Buffy’s Dance with the Vamps: Why Spike’s Soul Matters

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