By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fans often debate the funniest, saddest, etc. However, the biggest question about these beloved heroes and bad guys is the one that few fans Never You have trouble asking: which character has the best arc? According to Buffy Creator Joss Whedon, the surprising answer to this is Spike, the wicked vampire whose arc in the show ended with him sacrificing his life to save the whole world.
Spike gets the best arc
Given the incredible journey that Buffy herself undergoes, it may seem a little surprising that Whedon thinks that Spike has the best arc of all. His logic, however, is quite simple: as the showrunner said SCI-FI TV, Spike did everything possible to win his soul in an attempt to become a better man. Whedon contrasts directly with Angel, who claims “had a soul that made him a hundred years and made a moped on this subject”.
THE Buffy Creator’s comparison is quite inevitable. Angel and Spike had very Similar narrative arcs, which makes it almost impossible not to compare them. Angel’s entire agreement, of course, is that he was cursed from a soul by the Kalderash people after having killed their most loved daughter. The curse was intended to ensure that Angel feels immense guilt on all those he had killed as a vampire, forcing him to live a life without life of misery and shame before his bow met him Buffy and become A champion against evil.
While he had been there since season 2, it was Buffy The Vampire SlayerThe sixth season which set up the main arc of Spike by revealing the character at the bottom. It was the season when he and Buffy (newly resurrected from the dead) had a toxic but physically passionate relationship, with a raw sex that literally killed the house. But towards the end of the season, Spike tries to rape Buffy, a horizon of moral event which, for many fans, meant that this character was beyond redemption.
Indeed, it seemed that Buffy The Vampire Slayer I could never buy Spike after that, but Joss Whedon gave him an arc in season 7 to do that exactly. We discover that Spike has taken a series of difficult trials in order to obtain a soul, his love for Buffy motivating him to become the kind of man who ultimately sacrifices his life to save the world. It was an arc that took the Fandom by surprise, but he should really have had because Whedon had laid his bases since years.
For example, Buffy has always presented Spike as a character whose arc pivots around love. Back in season 2, Spike actually helped Buffy save the world largely because he was fed up with his girlfriend Drusilla suspended everywhere in Angel. This bizarre buffy (“You need my help, because your girlfriend is a big ho?”), But this incident cemented this tip, in the language of meat bread, would do anything for love.
Speaking of this, the episode of season 5 “Fool for Love” revealed that when he was still a human, Spike (or William the Bloody, so named for his “bloody poetry”) was a huge simple for a Lady named Cecily. She was indeed her muse, inspiring poems which she rejected later with Spike himself, declaring that the intermediate poet was below her. It sets up his conversion in the hands of Drusilla, but it also proves that Spike has always been … Well, a fool of love long before he was a sucking of immortal blood, and he is always been more motivated by romance than anything else.
For all the sarcasm full of spirit Buffy The Vampire Slayer is known for, Spike’s arc reveals the serious emotional nucleus of the whole show: the revelation that really likes do conquer everything. Love convinces a soulless rapist of a massing vampire of mass to become a hero who gives his life in the last episode to save the world. Going from the lower depths to such dizzying peaks, Spike has unexpectedly obtained the best arc of character of the Wedonverse, as provided by others than Joss Whedon himself.
