TV Zone - Who do you kill for fun around here? - Januar 2002


He may be a monster, but let's face it: for many of us, he's also The Man. Of all the regular characters in Buffy - heroes and villains - Spike may be the one with the most consistent and vocal following. It's something of a paradox, not because (whatever his current status) he was originally introduced as a villain, but because he's gone through so many changes since being introduced that he hardly seems like one character at all. There are several Spikes, and on the surface the only thing they seem to have in common is that they are all played by James Marsters. In the second season, Spike was the laconically stylish half of a villainous couple, and the Slayer-killer of legend. Later, he was the bitter, rejected and pitiful creature of the third season's Lover's Walk, and the frustrated, neutered puppy of the fourth season, forced to join the Scooby Gang out of necessity and convenience. Now his concern and - apparently - love for Buffy has made him an anxious and attentive friend as well as (if and when he gets the chance) a sex bomb. Even in a series that prides itself on character development, no other character has travelled so far - even Angel, and he's been (literally) to Hell and back.

In this light it's easy to neglect the earliest Spike - the one we first met in the second season's School Hard, and the one most suited to the 'villain' category. It's certainly true that there was nothing particularly special about his motives or methods back then. Although there was an extra element of threat in the knowledge that he had killed Slayers before, we could always be fairly confident that he wasn't going to kill this one, no matter how many demons or societies of assassins he conjured up to help him. Nevertheless, Spike was special, if only for the fact that he was paired with Drusilla. She, of course, was as nutty as a fruitcake, and her insanity didn't really become properly disturbing until her re-emergence in Angel. What was interesting was that Spike was clearly devoted to her, in a way that we wouldn't nearly expect from a supposedly soulless vampire. As the Judge in the two-part Surprise and Innocence made clear, with few exceptions (such as Angelus) there was some Humanity even in vampires, and in Spike's case it was focused firmly on Drusilla. The chemistry between them added extra interest to several plots that would otherwise have seemed routine, as well as making Spike just that little bit sympathetic.

The other aspect of Spike that put him into the premier league of villainy was the personal charisma, and a refreshing lack of pretension. His opening gambit on arrival in Sunnydale - "Who do you kill for fun around here?" - is followed by a brief alliance with the Anointed One, the young boy blessed by the first season villain, The Master. At the end of School Hard, Spike's casual killing of the boy is a refreshingly direct way of ending a dull, self-important story line, and confounds our expectation that the second season would somehow continue the story arc of the first. Instead Spike and Dru bring a breath of fresh air to proceedings and usher in a younger, sexier and wittier style of evil - complete with the brand of pseudo-English pseudo-swearing that we've all come to know and love. From that point on, whenever there was a danger that Buffy was becoming too grand, poetic or just plain pants, Spike was the character we could trust to come in and knock it on the head. It's a role, of course, that befits a man who's been somewhat oversold by his pre-publicity: despite his track record of Slayer-killing, when it came to Buffy - inevitably - he couldn't seem to deliver.

Frustration and impotence became the dominant characteristics of Spike after Lovers Walk, the pivotal episode that revealed there were other things that could be done with the character. The manner of Spike's return was a result of necessity rather than invention, as Juliet Landau wasn't available to play Drusilla: instead the decision was taken to bring back Spike and explain that he'd been jilted. Consequently, the Spike we see in Lover's Walk occupied a very different role to the second season version. On one level, the actions he took were still those of a villain - capturing Xander and Willow and forcing the latter to perform as spell. But his motive was a pathetic one - to get Drusilla back - and most of his scenes were played for comedy rather than drama. In one particular highlight, he waited at Buffy's home and confessed all to a sympathetic Joyce, while Angel - unable to come in without an invite - looked on in baffled horror. James Marsters, of course, played the whole thing perfectly and paved the way for the direction Spike takes from here on.

The opening line of The Harsh Light of Day - "the big bad is back" - implied that Spike was here for the same purpose as in School Hard, to bring the season arc (in this case, the Initiative) to a premature end. To the chagrin of many, no doubt, what happened instead was very nearly the reverse. Though Spike escaped the Initiative some episodes later, they had implanted a microchip in his brain that prevented him from harming any living thing. In retrospect of course this looks very much like a convenient method of having Spike join the Scooby gang, since the only harm he can do is to other vampires and demons. In reality though, it's not quite so straightforward. Since the chip was implanted we've had several reminders - both in actions and words - of Spike's true nature, and the fact that his motives for sticking around have been anything but altruistic. Throughout the fifth season his relationship with the others - particularly Xander - has presented the audience with a neat ambiguity, inviting us at once to trust this apparently reformed character, while occasionally reminding us of the true nature he once had, and which still lies under the surface.

Then, of course, there's Buffy. Since we saw Spike wake up from his first erotic dream involving the Slayer, it's become increasingly clear that there's more to this obsession than physical attraction - although the fact that this is part of it was made uncomfortably clear once he got his hands on the Buffy robot. Certainly his concern for the Slayer, and for Dawn, seems to be genuine - and to have given rise to a real desire to become a better man, one worthy of Buffy's affections. But how, we may ask, can this possibly be? In common with all vampires, Spike is meant to be a creature without a soul, without Humanity: his relationship with Dru, who sired him, is one thing, but is a soulless creature capable of falling in love with someone new? If so, then whatever soulless means, it seems that vampires are capable of the full range of human emotion, and therefore capable of doing good as well as evil. In turn, this makes the unspoken moral certainty of Buffy - that the undead fall into the "okay to kill" category - look decidedly less certain.

One answer to this is that Spike isn't in love at all: as James Marsters put it in his TV Zone interview a couple of months ago. He's "hot for Buffy", and that's it. For those of us who'd rather believe that his feelings are genuine, there are clues to another possible answer, not in Buffy but in its sister series Angel. In The Prodigal, Darla tells Angel that "what we once were informs all that we have become. The same love will infect our hearts, even if they no longer beat." When he was alive, remember, Spike (William) was a poet, hopelessly in love with a woman (Cecily) who gave him only ridicule in return. In other words, frustration, rejection and romanticising are a part of Spike's essential psyche - just as they were a part of William's - and falling hopelessly in love with the woman most likely to reject him is far from out of character. Unfortunately, what is also in character is the violent, murderous and mysogynistic streak that led him to kill two Slayers in the last century, and which is only being suppressed by artificial means. If the theory hold true, then Spike's current behaviour doesn't imply for a moment that his old, villainous self has really gone anywhere at all - and, with a little luck, he'll be back to the surface before long.