“Buffy” continues to go from strength to strength this season. I’ve already enjoyed the first two episodes about twice as much as the first ten episodes of the previous season (not counting the musical.) That final image of Spike on the cross will be seared (no pun intended) into the minds of all Buffy fans.
However…I find that I’m starting to have some confusion about Anya and the whole soul thing.
The rationale that the series has used for Buffy’s methodical extinction of demons is that they don’t have souls. Least that’s how I’ve always understood it. They’re not “real” life. Which means, by that criteria, that Buffy should be able to snap Anya’s neck and give it no thought whatsoever because she’s now a souless creature like the rest of them. Anya even said specifically that she was once a magic user who was transformed into a demon, giving us to believe she has mortal roots.
So here’s the thing: When Anya first lost her demonic abilities/status in season 3, does that mean she reacquired *her* soul? If so, why wasn’t she as tortured as Angel and Spike are. She certainly inflicted enough torment. Instead she never seem perturbed by it at all; indeed, she looked back upon her demon days with nostalgia. So does that mean that she actually *never* had a soul even when she was human? In that case, what the hëll *was* she? And certainly Xander’s actions become even more understandable. We know demons can love; Dru even said it. “We can love quite well.” But without a soul, there’s no spiritual core to the relationship. Xander would have sensed on some level that the marriage was doomed, because Anya wasn’t truly human. She was just this…this thing in the shape of a human. But if she *does* have a soul, then that calls into question the entire notion of souless demons.
Joss? A little help?
PAD
• 
Last night’s Buffy was great. I l LOVED the Alias rip-off in the beginning. (As was discussed here last week, the chick with the pink hair was clearly a Slayer-in-waiting.)
PAD, you bring up an interesting question. I really think that Anya has been a “thing.” No soul, but no powers.
Speaking of souls, I’m confused. End of last season, I thought Spike went to Africa to have the chip removed and getting his soul back was just sort of a bad joke played on him by the big nasty. Now, Spike is saying he went away specifically to get his soul back. Huh? I just watched the rerun of that episode a few weeks ago and that’s not how I understood it. A little help?
That sort of murkiness — I won’t call it inconsistency yet because it may be Whedon’s worked this out and just hasn’t told us — has always bothered me.
Angel is a souled vampire. Angel, before being a vampire, was a bum. Angel, “cursed” with a soul, becomes heroic. So — was the soul inflicted by the Gypsy curse the original one, or did some other soul — created or recruited by the Gypsy curse — get installed?
On a related comics note, Kevin Smith had Green Arrow active with no sense of emotional, mental or psychic deficit for several issues before we discover he has no soul. Oliver Queen’s “husk” and soul then have an argument, and seem evenly matched. The only changes brought by the soul and the body merging are that Ollie can’t be possessed and that he got the memories of his prior life back.
And now to the movies, anyone remember the boardroom scene in “Monty Python’s Meaning of Life” just before the roving Life Assurance company attacks? They start talking about souls. One guy asks a question I always liked: do souls exist from the get go, or are they planted and grown by a series of choices and experiences?
I suspect this message board won’t be able to tolerate soul-based discussions for long without PAD et al coming to a new understanding of why Greta Garbo crossed religion off her list of conversational topics.
Actually I think the teaser was more of an homage to RUN LOLA RUN, down to the red hair, the Germany setting, and the techno music playing in the background.
Joss and Jane Espenson have said in interviews that they were being deliberately misleading as to Spike’s motivations at the end of last season, that he really wanted his soul back, not the chip out of his head. But I don’t think that fits with the way Spike acted and the things he said in those Africa scenes. My rationalization for this is, now that he has a soul, he wants to convince himself that that’s really what he wanted all along. Spike-with-a-soul wants to believe he had more noble intentioins.
Corey
Mitch wrote:
“So — was the soul inflicted by the Gypsy curse the original one, or did some other soul — created or recruited by the Gypsy curse — get installed?”
The latest Angel comic miniseries, co-written by Joss, deals with this very issue.
Corey
In watching the reruns, I’m convinced that, yes, Spike really did go for the specific purpose of getting his soul back. That Whedon is on the level about that. The phrasing is *so* careful. “I want to be what I once was.” “I want her to get what she deserves.” “Things are going to be different.” Never once does he actually mention the chip or wanting to do harm.
PAD
I’ll be good and stay away from the Tremors jokes.
The Bugs Bunny line about making awrong turn in Alberquerqie (sp?) leaped into my head during the teaser.
This episode was a good reminder that James Marsters is one helluva actor too. He displayed quite a bit of range last night. Looks like he’s having fun with the role.
I’m definitely intrigued by this season.
Bobby
“I want to be what I once was.”
But he was never a vampire with a soul. But he once was a vampire without a chip. And then there was his angry attitude, “Bìŧçh gets what she deserves.”
Corey
About Spike: I think he didn’t know what he wanted last season. At a conscious level, he only knew that he was neither a whole man or a whole demon. At the subconscious, though, I think he knew what he was seeking.
About demons: This has always been fuzzy, especially since we have met a wide array of demons with many motivations. We know that vampires are soul-less, but are also odd hybrids of human and demon, looked down upon by demons as inferior. We don’t know much else about demons, but can you say that Lorne or Doyle or Clem are soul-less things?
My suspicion is that we are supposed to wonder about easy definitions. Are you merely what you are born (or re-born) as? Can you transcend that state? Does that state even need transcending? And at the root of it all, we have questions of the nature of evil and the nature of fighting evil.
So much to ponder, even if there are inconsistencies in the storytelling. Me, I’m wondering if Anya got a new amulet to replace the one that the alternate Giles destroyed in “The Wish.”
Corey, I wish mosquito larvae in your shorts. Tell me it’s been answered but don’t tell me _what_….
Sheesh!
So, for the benefit of myself and people like myself (we’re everywhere. We look normal….), I raided http://www.deja.com.
elurio@aol.com (ELurio) wrote in message news:<20020718131020.28504.00000308@mb-fv.aol.com>…
> The answer about the vamps and zombies is simple.
>
> Angel’s soul isn’t Angel’s SOUL. Angel died back in the 18th century and it was
> replaced by a demon.
>
> The soul that he got a hundred years later and the one a century after that
> wasn’t the original one.
You can find the thread from there. However, I feel a bitgypped that we didn’t get to see t this addressed in the series, much the same way I feel robbed that we didn’t get to see Jerry Doyle and Walter Koenig act the final showdown between Garibaldi and Bester.
Oh blast!
I pasted in the dialogue from http://www.deja.com to give the original poster credit and provide a link to his post — now I see that the link to deja.com is missing, but the guy’s email addy is a live link!
Maybe not a big blunder, since the poster’s email address could also be accessed at the original post at http://www.deja.com. but it’s the sort of thing that makes me wish I’d hit “preview” before “post…”
If I gaffed, could the list maintainer fix? Thanks in advance.
Mitch wrote:
“Angel is a souled vampire. Angel, before being a vampire, was a bum. Angel, “cursed” with a soul, becomes heroic. So — was the soul inflicted by the Gypsy curse the original one, or did some other soul — created or recruited by the Gypsy curse — get installed?”
I know Joss tried to raise this issue in the Angel comic miniseries (and elsewhere?) but IIRC the Orb that Jenny Calendar was to use to restore Angel’s soul was specifically supposed to find and transfer the original owner’s actual soul — or at least, that’s how they believed the magic to work.
As far as Angel pre- and post-vampire, pre-vamp Liam was a jerk and re-souled Angel was a crazy, tortured mess, eating rats until Whistler convinced him he was something more (letting him become heroic). No surprise that poet William would be even more of a crazy, tortured mess with a soul, only in this case he’s got _somthing_ working to make him nuttier rather than to help him find peace. There’s also something clearly special about a vampire with a soul that those above and below take notice of — I don’t think Buffy’s use of the word “Champion” last night was coincidence. If the First really are here for Spike already, can the Powers be far behind? Their Champion is, after all, still indisposed…
Just my thoughts,
Scott
Well I didn’t want to spoil the Angel comic story on this board (it was just released as a TPB; Angel: Long Night’s Journey). The comic doesn’t provide any definitive answers about Angel’s soul, it just opens up possibilities…
Corey
I’ve never put a lot of conscious thought into this, just let things percolate in the background, but it seems to me…
Some demons do have souls, and that it’s not a situation unique to humans. Angel has pretty much established that the ‘reality’ is pretty much like the Myth series–demons are more dimensional travellers than anything else (Pylea was just another world, not really a mystical or hëll dimension). Angel goes a long way toward ‘demons are people, too.’ If they don’t have souls, at least they’re fully functional beings.
My view of vampires in the Buffyverse is that the original soul of the person is gone. They’re dead and moved on. They are then possessed by a demon of some sort that patterns the behavior of the vampire on its previous personality to some extent. The real question I have here is whether this is an aspect or piece of a single demon or entity, or if there’s a queue in some other dimension of vampire demons just waiting to get a chance to inhabit a human body. Vampires always seem to wake up with knowledge of what they are and what they can do (even the one stuck in his grave was aware of what he was).
In Angel (and now Spike’s) case, I’ve always assumed it was the original soul that was yanked back. Not only does that soul have to contend with what Buffy went through (assuming they went to a similar place after death), but now they have to deal with the memory of what the demon has done AND the fact that the demon is still there. I took a lot of Spike’s ramblings to mean that his demon was still in his head and he was having trouble dealing with that.
Now, for the Anya situation…after she lost her power, she was trapped as what she appeared: a teenage girl. She’s made several comments over the years that she feels the need to do things, but doesn’t understand why she needs those things (why she had to go to the prom with Xander, for instance). The nature of her body compelled her to do those things. Does that mean that when she assumed the shape of a teenage girl again, she also gained a soul? Good question.
She was human initially–that was established fairly early on. Willow was made the same offer at one point.
As to her lack of bad feelings–the nature of vengeance demons tends to be ‘justified’ badness. To Anya, anything she’s done, she’s done out of her sense of justice. I don’t see why that would cause her qualms even after she became human. Her lack of motivation these days is because, I think, that she understands the other side much more and still harbors her feelings for Xander.
Anyhow, that’s my rambling thoughts on the various issues.
D. Eric Carpenter
My $.02…
Angel was a lout before he was a vampire, he had issues with his dad, but he wasn’t a “bad guy” by any stretch… when he got his soul back, he had to deal with centuries of being Angelus and being a really evil bášŧárd, and it got to him.
Spike was a poet and a sad sack, but definitely not evil… as a vampire, he revelled in the power, and was in some ways more evil than Angelus. Now that he’s got his William-soul back, he has a LOT to deal with…
Anya was a person before she was a demon, but we’ve never been given any indication that she was a NICE person… in fact, the opposite, she turned her boyfriend into a troll as her “audition” to become a vengeance demon! I do think she went soul-less as a demon, I just don’t think she minded too much… and even when she got her soul back, she didn’t regret the things she did as a demon ’cause they were things she probably would’ve enjoyed doing anyway… now, she’s soulless again, but (like Spike last season) has had enough of a brush with goodness to be really conflicted as a demon…
The more confusing demons, for me, are people like Lorne on Angel or the dog-boy (whose name escapes me) from Buffy last season… those are examples of demons who seem to be genuinely nice, good-intentioned beings… they “gray up” the whole soul/no soul thing more to me than Anya does…
Interesting thought about vampires all being possessed by pieces of the same demon. There’s evidence in the series that would contradict that, most particularly Spike (post-chip and pre-soul) beating on other vamps and demons, mostly (at first, at least) to vent his feelings of frustration.
If my understanding is correct, this season’s fifth episode focuses on Anya. I don’t know that this will clear up any of the issues mentioned here (although it will evidently explain why Anya’s afraid of bunnies; priorities, people!).
Given Anya’s reaction in ep 7.2 (last night’s ep, but since people may read this on days other than 2002/10/02…), I’d be inclined to say Anya doesn’t have a soul; didn’t get one when she lost her powers, didn’t lose one when she regained them. Why else would she be so focused on how he got his back. Surprise was not unreasonable; but she tuned out everything to try to get him to tell her “how”.
And, btw, I agree w/ Eric that she does still care about Xander, and I hope that that story is not over.
As a side note, J.J. Abhams (sp?) has stated that he wrote the pilot for Alias with the soundtrack for Run Lola Run playing on continuous loop at high volume.
Yes, I also was thinking until the episode’s bad made its first appearance that it might have meant to take a left turn at Albequerque. Sorts surprised Xander didn’t make said comment. Was amusing when he and Spike looked at each other when Nancy made the “Have any of you *not* slept with each other?”.
I was a bit surprised when Spike showed up at Buffy’s with a new dye job and haircut seemingly all together again. Until Anya spotted his soul, I was thinking it was the shapechanging evil infiltrating the Scoobies as Spike.
Btw, we now have three separate and distinct ways of getting a vampire a soul; the curse with the Orb, African demon guy giving you one, and the sacrifice of five vampires to restore a slain vampire as human with soul (Darla, over on Angel).
I do hope we get some sort of delving into this with Anya. Just from what we saw way back when she became human, I’d lean to her being soulless even then. The smashing of her amulet, after all, seemed as if it were mostly depowering and trapping her in the life she’d presumably set up to get close to Cordy and any other nummy angstful Sunnydale gal. With that in mind, there’s no reason for her to have been given a soul, only denied her powers and ‘stuck’. I wish I had the episode where originally begged for her powers back a few seasons ago, to see the exact dialogue there, though.
Hmmm. Buffy’s not tried to really stop Anya yet, just like she never simply staked chipped Spike. I wonder if any of that’s out of remembered guilt at having to throw Angel into hëll. It’s very possible she’s giving demons that she can rationalize as safe or mostly harmless extra leeway so that she doesn’t have to recall the feelings of condemning good-Angel.
Jon
I don’t care if Anya has a soul or not… I wouldn’t kick her out of bed either way…
(Sorry about that, but this was getting far too cerebral for an Internet message board. Somebody has to maintain the established tone for these discussions.)
>>Btw, we now have three separate and distinct ways of getting a vampire a soul; the curse with the Orb, African demon guy giving you one, and the sacrifice of five vampires to restore a slain vampire as human with soul (Darla, over on Angel).<<
Locking yourself in a room and listening to nothing but James Brown for a year will also do it.
PAD
Wow. As coincidence would have it, I was randomly thinking about the issue of souls in the Buffy-verse myself.
We know that vamps retain the original human’s memories (canon), that their personalities are derived at least in part from the original’s traits (implied subtext, “Doppelgangland” (3.16)), and that vamps have emotions and feelings. So the main thing that seems to differentiate vamps from their previous human state is a lack of good/evil decision making powers.
But then, there are some humans like that, too (both in and out of the Buffy-verse). Do they have souls? Hmmm… The complexity abounds.
I have to say that watching Spike in the last few minutes of Buffy last night actually moved me.
We do know it is possible (in the Buffyverse) for a human to be born without a soul. Remember the little boy in the first season of Angel that was so evil, the possession demon was imprisoned inside him?
I started to get confused when Spike fell in love with Buffy. The lines really started to blur concerning the range of emotions a vampire was capable of. I mean, he was even crying when she died in the fifth season finale. I figured that without a soul, one was capable of feelings of possession at most. I think that in the beginning, Joss used the whole without-a-soul thing to make it easier to justify Buffy killing her enemies every episode. You know, it’s okay, they’re evil creatures, not like humans. Kind of like killing robots. It’s easier to seperate ourselves from the bad guys if they are just unfeeling monsters who only seek to do harm, and when you kill them, they turn into a cloud of dust. Joss said he was glad to be doing the show with UPN because it allowed him to get away with a lot more. Now, the boundaries aren’t as obvious, and not everyone is all good or all evil. Hey, some of the humans on Angel are more evil than a lot of the demons, and they’re probably still carrying around their souls.
Josh
>>Locking yourself in a room and listening to nothing but James Brown for a year will also do it [restore a vampire’s soul].<<
And I suppose, given what we’ve seen of the consequences of the other three methods to the newly-souled with memories of what they did as soulless, the James Brown method would be prefered.
Since, after all, you’d expect a James Brown ensouled vampire to feel GOOD!
Btw, re: demons with or without souls, should Cordy in the latter half of last season’s Angel have still had hers?
<>
That’s the Host’s recommended method.
<>
I missed the episode of Angel where Cordy became half-demon, but she appears to be part angel to me. Hëll, the finale gives it away. Which doesn’t answer your question, but….
I think Anya does in fact have a soul. Her character has always been sort of curious to me, what with the being reduced to a “normal” young woman after centuries of “wish dishing” as a vengance demon. Granted she’s always walked a little closer to the line between good vs. evil than some of the other characters, but I think her time as a human, and loving Xander has been something of a metamorphisis. She doesn’t show remorse for the vengance because, as a formerly and now currently embittered ex-girlfriend she’s become very good at justifying it. Speaking of post-demon heroics, she did after all take more than a few lumps, and react QUITE emotionally during the season finalie when Giles was hurt and dying. Anya is pragmatic, emotionally inaccessable, and doesn’t quite get the emotions she does have, even now, but I think definitley the owner of a slightly used soul all the same.
G
The full text of the gypsy curse,
taken from “Passion”
“As the orb is round in nature,
as the earth, is round in nature
so is the soul. Return from
whence you were banished, using
this orb as your guide — penetrate every ounce of the
flesh, every sinew of the body,
and every tissue of the heart.
Make what lays before you more
than the empty vessel that is
animal, that is beast — make it
man as God created when he
seperated the firament of the
heaven from the Earth. Come forth
now, return, return. As this orb
burns, let life burn.”
That certainly doesn’t sound like
the ceremony to summon a random
soul.
Regarding Spike, I’m convinced that he did indeed want his soul back, even if maybe he wasn’t consciously aware of it at the time. What convinced me of it is the demon’s line before restoring Spike’s soul: “I’ll give you what you want.” Now, what reason would he have to lie at that point? I’d also like to point out that now that Spike has a soul, Joss has a great deal more freedom in dealing with Angel. Before it was always understood that Angel would be around until the final Confrontation, if the prophecies were to be true; now that Spike also has a soul the prophecies might refer to him instead. And I like that this shows how Spike is better than Angelus; Angelus was cursed with a human soul, while Spike asked for his back (something I had hoped would happen ever since he fell in love with Buffy, that Love would get him his soul back, while Hate (the gypsies’) is what got Angel’s).
About demons and souls, I think that Anya always had her soul, in fact I think that maybe all demons have souls, yes, even vampires. Now, bear with me for a moment here, one can have a soul and still be incredibly evil, there are plenty of examples of this around, both in the Buffyverse and in real life. So maybe the demons who possess humans to become vampires are just the bottom of the barrel ones who can’t manifest on their own; this would explain why other demons look down on them, and also why they’re so evil: too much pent up rage mixed with the need to prove themselves, kind of like bullied people who may become bullies themselves once they get some power. Usually vampires never get past this level, however when Spike was “defanged” by the chip he suddenly found himself spending more and more time with people who didn’t enable his behavior and who eventually stopped rejecting him; this made him slowly begin to care (I guess you could say that his demon soul began to blossom). That’s why he was able to truly love, which eventually led him to go back after his human soul. However, this may cause some extra problems for Spike, if his demon soul has developed and grown, then it might fight with the human soul for some elbow room in the body, which would explain the multiple personality he seems to be displaying. This could be interesting, to see how the conflict between Spike and William is handled.
Sorry about making this so long, I didn’t mean to but once I started writing it I just couldn’t stop; much of it had never even occurred to me before now.
Btw, I also thought and hoped that the monster would turn out to be a demonic bunny.
Raphy
Something else just came to me while in the shower, maybe Xander left Anya not because he picked up on some level that she didn’t have a soul, but rather because he picked up that she never showed any remorse for her actions as a demon, and it can be very hard to forgive someone who never asks for forgiveness.
And about Angel, when he first got his soul back he felt very guilty, but still stayed with Darla, Spike and Dru for many years after that, as shown in the flashback to the Boxer Rebellion in China in the year 1900. He even still killed to feed back then (murderers and thieves, but still…). It was probably the events then that made him realize what he had become. And he didn’t start becoming a hero until Whistler showed him Buffy and he fell in Love with her. I’m sure that’s why, at first at least, he kept doing it after he moved to LA, because that’s what Buffy would want. Even now however he still has a mean streak, he let Darla and Dru kill all those lawyers, and he was ready to kill Wesley in this last season. Angel is less a hero than a man seeking atonement for his sins. When he became human again in the first season of “Angel”, he was ready to accept it as a sign that he had been forgiven and go on with his life, until he found out that it would eventually lead to Buffy’s death.
I never thought about this before, but Love seems to be the prime moving force in the Buffyverse, as evidenced by the examples above as well as many others.
Raphy
Spike: I agree with someone’s statements that he was only half a vampire when he went to Africa. He wnated to be what he was, and I belive the demon or whoever even mentioned the chip (if spike didn’t). The force decided to be evil (hey it’s what it is) and gave him his soul back. From what I could make out from his rants he’s 3 people. William, Spike, and something else, probably whatever he will be when it’s all over, a merge of the two.
Angel: Angel was a bum, a party person. From what was said though he didn’t give a dámņ about others and it pretty much showed. When the gypsies gave him back a soul they gave him back the guilt that supposedly went along with those actions. Driving Dru mad, nailing a puppy to the door, etc. All that guilt at once supposedly drove him mad for awhile, probably the same thing going on with Spike (being forced to deal with his inhumanity all at once).
Anya: She turned her bf into a Troll, that’s what got her her job in the first place. Remember though, men are pigs. Why should she really feel guilty about what happened to them? They got what they (in her mind) deserved. Someone once told me that as a human you stay emotionally mad for a few seconds, anything longer then that is because you want to be mad. yeah I know new age drivvel for the most part but imagine staying mad at men for over 1,000 years, keeping that hatred focused. Remember what was said by Helfranke last season, some vegence demons seem to focus on certain issues, for anya it was wronged women. Soul or not those men got what they deservered so why worry about it?
Oh, and regarding to the comment about Demon’s have souls. I agree.
Something that may not have been mentioned is “Dark Ages” (2nd season). Willow comes up with the idea to have the demon jump into Angel’s body since he’s dead and it’d him before any of the others (supposedly). We see Angel fighting for possession of his body and makes a comment to the effect (iirc) that his human side has been battling the demon half for almost a century, implying that he still HAS that demon soul in him it’s just the human one that has control.
Just a quick note on Anya’s pendant: I’ve noticed that ever since her return to Sunnydale as a vengeance demon, Anya has taken to wearing blouses and dresses with very high necklines. So if she’s wearing a pendant, it’s under her clothes. Halfrek, by contrast, continues to flaunt her pendant.
There is a point to this — Joss wouldn’t defer such an important detail to Emma and the costume designer. Perhaps Anya is afraid that if anyone does see the pendant, they could grab it and smash it all over again.
As for Spike: I think what he has now is his original soul, “a little worse for lack of use.” But even as an unchipped full-on vamp, he had both a fixation on Buffy and a love for the world (reference his willingness to stop Angelus from awakening Acathla).
Re: Anya, demons, souls, and whatnot…
We’ve seen different types of demons on the show, but one thing seems consistent: Vampires are among the worst. Clem probably doesn’t have a soul but he doesn’t seem to thrive on evil, nor do vengeance demons. What they do is evil, certainly, but it’s fueled by a bizarre form of compassion for people scorned as they were — something I doubt a vampire would even consider.
Vampires seem to not only lack a human soul but to possess a “soul” that thrives on evil. The warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you see a newborn baby? They get that same feeling from eating the baby. The feeling you get from helping a friend in need? They get the same feeling from betraying that friend.
In many ways, Spike’s amorality in most of Season Five and Season Six was an *achievement.* I had problems with his “love” for Buffy, because I don’t think a vampire should be capable of love (Spike loved Dru but it was an “evil” love — there were hints of torture (“you and the branding iron!”), after all — possessive and selfish). If Spike could love Buffy without a soul, then it begged the question of what happened to Angel in “Innocence”? Why did he suddenly detest Buffy? Wouldn’t he have still “loved” her (as Spike loved her) but just be incapable of being good enough for her or of expressing that love compassionately?
But I digress…
In a roundabout way, I think Anya, while soulless, is not “evil.” She’s just incapable of being good. However, the “taint” of humanity is with her more than it was in “The Wish,” but I think this was because she had been inhuman for so long in that episode.
As for why she didn’t go bonkers like Spike and Angel when she got her soul was that, for one thing, she became human. Still being a monster but with a human soul must be horrific.