Offspring
The Metaphysics of "Offspring"
The Nyazian prophecy and the Tro-Clon
Angel determines that the child has a heartbeat and infers that it must also have a soul. Cordelia comes to the same conclusion after she has a vision of children in an amusement center: Darla requires their "pure blood" to feed her child.
The Sanctorium spell, part 2: The Transuding Furies are at Caritas recasting their spell to make the club a sanctuary against violence. Only this time, they have two incantations, one that guards against human violence, and one that guards against demon violence. One spell begins:
Violence abounds, violence restrained, This space a sanctuary was and shall be again....
The raising ritual: In a temple below the streets of LA, a demon, Sahjhan, approaches a clay statue and says.
The weight of time is heavy on the world, and all men born must die. But there are worlds unknown, where dreamers dream and sleepers sleep and patiently await.
He throws a special powder on the statue throughout what follows:
As pledged in Caladan by Cod-She, one shall awaken in the first year of the final century, That one who lived before, and joined Cod-She in the great sleep, arise! As was promised and foretold, arise. Arise!
The temple starts to tremble and the statue cracks. Inside is Holtz, back to get vengeance on his vampire foes.
Vampires and breathing
Evil in "Offspring"
Darla arrives in L.A., once again an archetypal figure--not the spurned ex or the damsel in distress this time, but the woman who's been knocked-up and discarded. She wants Angel to help her destroy the mysterious creature inside her before it is born. The child has already brought her pain and insatiable hunger, who knows what the impossible fetus will do after it is born? After attacking Cordelia, Darla leaves Caritas and goes to an amusement center where she preys on a lost boy. Angel arrives before she can drink, but he is unable to kill her while she is carrying his child.
Moral Ambiguity "Offspring"
Gunn and Wesley sneak into a well-guarded house owned by a man who collects ancient magick relics. They "talk" the man into letting them borrow the Nyazian scroll by (1) threatening to tell the police he has Rohypnol, the date-rape drug (in fact, he has muselok trancing amalgam, which is indistinguishable from Rohypnol under a microscope) and (2) threatening to destroy his cyopian conjuring spheres.
Kye-rumption (Pylean; ki-rump'-tchun): When two warriors meet in battle and recognize their mutual fate. When Fred tells Angel he and Cordelia have kye-rumption, he knows she isn't just talking about their fighting maneuvers. Fred claims they have "Moira" as well--the attraction between two larger than life souls. Does Angel have feelings for Cordy, a woman he's known for six years and always been rather turned off by? Well, Cordy isn't the shallow Queen C anymore. She's getting her punching skills down. And Angel has always had a thing for a woman who can give him a swollen nose.
After Cordelia finds out that Angel slept with Darla, she is angry with him. Angelus she can accept, but she has always been rather unforgiving of souled Angel's weaknesses. Cordy has weaknesses of her own, though. She rushes to the pregnant Darla's aid--forgetting that this "helpless pregnant woman" is an evil vampire who'd just as soon feed on her as accept her help. After Angel gets Darla away from Cordelia and accepts responsibility for the child, Cordelia softens up on him just a bit.
Holtz: In 1771, Angelus and Darla are discovered in Rome by Holtz, a vampire hunter determined to make them pay for killing his family. After chasing Angelus through the sewers, Holtz ties him up and tortures him. He probably should have forgone the poetic justice and just staked the bastard, though, because Darla soon arrives with her vamp minions and saves Angelus. The vamps should have killed Holtz then, as well--because you can't keep a good vampire hunter down.
Quickening
Before you begin, take a peek at the bad-guy score card.
The Metaphysics of "Quickening"
The miracle child: Although Darla's unprecedented vampire pregnancy has yet to be explained, the child is clearly special and its arrival has been prophesied. Someone is also protecting it from danger--Darla has tried to abort it without success. Now, it is about to be born. Darla goes into contractions. The Angel Investigations team take her to the hospital for an illicit ultrasound examination. They discover that she and Angel are parents to a human boy. Darla starts to give birth to the baby in Angel's car. Is the child "the Tro-clon"?
Destiny: Holtz' original destiny was to die a bitter old man. The demon Sahjhan helped avert that by sending Holtz to the future to kill Darla and her child. This, Sahjhan says, is Holtz' new destiny. Is this true seeing, or just flattery? More on Holtz and prophecy.
Why does Sahjan need Holtz' help?
Dimension-hopping: Sahjhan has kept himself from aging by "dimension hopping"--traveling to dimensions where time moves more slowly than on Earth. Decades can go by on Earth while only days go by where Sahjhan is. A span of 227 years on Earth will seem like only a few years from Sahjhan's perspective.
Evil and Moral Ambiguity in "Quickening"
The bad-guy score card
"Do ya'll have a chart or something?" --Fred, Offspring
Lullaby
The Metaphysics of "Lullaby"
"Born out of darkness to bring darkness"
The Nyazian scrolls predict the arrival or arising of the Tro-clon, a confluence (coming together) of separate events that will bring about the ruination or purification of mankind. At first, the Angel Investigations gang worried that Darla and Angel's child "was" the Tro-clon because the scrolls describe a "birth" and Fred calculated different dates for the Tro-clon's arrival, one coinciding with the time Angel and Darla conceived the child and another coinciding with the time of Darla and the baby's arrival in L.A.
But the child is not by himself the Tro-clon. In "Quickening", Wesley tells the others that the tro-clon isn't a person, but a confluence of events. One of these events is no doubt the birth of Darla and Angel's "miracle child". However, the prophecies also say that the Tro-clon will "arise" or "come out of a deep sleep". Fred calculated that event would occur sometime on or around November 5, 2001 (during "Offspring"). Darla did not give birth on that date. Instead, Holtz arose from his centuries-spanning sleep.
A Wolfram and Hart translator reads the section of the scrolls describing the "birth" and tells Lilah that it says, in short, "there will be no birth, only death". Darla does die, but the baby remains alive, although it is not brought into the world by the usual means.
Unanswered question: Was the reign and defeat of Jasmine the "ruination/purification" of mankind predicted in the Nyazian prophecies?
Vampires and pregnancy: Darla is a vampire, a member of the living dead. A vampire's body functions well enough to keep her walking and talking, but it is not equipped to nurture an unborn human infant. Some unknown power has been keeping Darla's child alive within her despite all odds--probably by magic. As Darla prepares to give birth, however, the miraculous magicks protecting the child begin to fail.The gang has never been able to cut the baby out of Darla because of the mystical forces protecting the child, and that is not an option now, either.
Soul-having: Darla's labor involves more than labor pains. She starts to experience the pangs of love and conscience as well. How is this possible in a soulless demon like Darla? Well, she has a soul now. Sort of. The child within her is human and he has a soul. Apparently it doesn't matter "who's" soul it is--as long as it is in her body, that soul will effect the way she feels about things.
The fact that Darla can feel remorse even the though the soul inside her isn't "hers" has interesting implications for the metaphysics of Buffyverse "souls". It implies that the souls of individuals are not unique, but more like hearts or kidneys--replaceable parts. This sheds new light on the debate over whether, when Angelus was cursed, he received "Liam's soul" back or whether, when Darla was raised by Wolfram and Hart she got the soul of the 400-year old unnamed prostitute seen in the episode "Darla". It seems that it doesn't really matter. Same soul, different soul, it's having a soul--a conscience--that matters.
This is also further evidence that the things--memories, personality, consciousness etc.--that make a person a unique individual, different from other people, are not part of the Buffyverse "soul". Elsewhere, I have referred to them collectively as the Buffyverse "spirit" to differentiate them from the soul (conscience).
Alternate theory on the meaning of Darla's soul-having: the gift of grace
The double protection sanctorium spell: Lorne is working his tush off trying to get Caritas ready for the grand re-opening. But Arnie the contractor is dragging his feet installing the new security system. We are given few details about this system, but generally speaking, it binds the new sanctuary spells delivered by the Furies together to prevent both human and demon violence. Lorne gets the system working finally, only to have Caritas go up in flames after Holtz throws a barrel of gasoline and a grenade down the front steps.
Evil in "Lullaby"
Wolfram and Hart are not the power behind the Tro-Clon. They didn't know about Darla's pregnancy until they saw it for themselves, and now they don't know the identity of Holtz, the man who, with the aid of demon minions, has slain their special ops unit. But they scramble to find out. Lilah goes to the Hyperion hotel to see what happened after they lost contact with the special ops unit and finds the Nyazian scroll Wesley has been translating. Now it is in Wolfram and Hart's hands.
Darla and Angelus didn't merely kill the vampire hunter Holtz' family, Angelus raped his wife and Darla turned his beloved daughter into a vampire, forcing Holtz to kill her himself.
Moral Ambiguity in "Lullaby"
Darla: "We did so many terrible things together. So much destruction, so much pain. We can't make up for any of it. You know that, don't you?" Angel: "Yeah."
Angel is dumbfounded to see his old enemy Holtz in the Hyperion Hotel demanding justice after 200 years. But there can be no real justice for him. Nothing Angel can do (even dying) will atone for the amount of pain and evil Angelus caused Holtz. But that doesn't mean Angel can't try to keep Holtz from descending into darkness. Holtz' desire for revenge is neither unjustified nor out of proportion to the wrongs committed against him, but it is self-destructive. Angel thinks Holtz is being used by someone or something with darker purposes than Holtz is aware of. He tells Holtz that whatever brought him into the 21st century is using dark magic and is part of the Tro-clon. Holtz has been "raised up from darkness to bring darkness", and this will destroy or corrupt the good man Holtz is if he stays on the path of vengeance.
Darla tells Angel that the soul of the child inside her is affecting her, allowing her to love for the first time in her unlife. This is a woman who has never loved anything, even Angel(us). As soon as the baby is born, though, the soul will leave with the child, and Darla will be the evil undead again, at which point she will no doubt kill it. This is something she doesn't want to do.
After Holtz destroys Caritas, the gang punches through the wall of Lorne's bedroom and escapes into an alley. Angel lowers Darla to the ground. Darla is feeling remorse over what they did to Holtz, and for siring Angel(us), and for everything they did together. She tells Angel to tell their child that he was the only good thing the two of them ever did. Then she picks up a splinter of wood and stakes herself in the heart. The only thing that remains where she lay is a human infant crying in the rain. Angel gathers his son into his arms.
Masquerade's note: "Reprise" aired Feb 20, 2001. "Lullaby" aired Nov 19, 2001. Nine months, almost to the day.
The gift of grace
...Darla was given a gift, a gift of love, she finally understood why humans crave it, need it.... Darla in a sense was washed of her sins in the rain shower of that alley, she understood all that have evaded her before. That love isn't sex, it isn't power over another person to use them. Love is something worth preserving and dying for. ...As she staked herself she became ashes that were washed away leaving this child, a human child. A miracle. ...I think the prophesy missed out on the most important part, there was love for Darla for the first time, a gift, not because she deserved it, but because she needed it (Rufus, 12/12/01 17:33). ...Why did Darla get this gift? ...After being brought back by W&H, Darla was human; after finding she was dying from syphilis, her first thought was to be re-vamped. Ultimately, apparently inspired by Angel being willing to sacrifice his life for hers, she said she'd let the disease take its course rather that allow Angel to perish. More than that, she actually resisted being re-vamped when Dru showed up. These are the sort of actions in the Buffyverse that seem to have karmic repercussions. Darla's act of selflessness, her willingness to die for Angel, resulted in another chance--after the blood bath she instigated, she needed one...In the Buffyverse, a selfless act, even from an otherwise evil being, is ultimately rewarded by a chance for an encore. ..."grace," a free gift of God. ...grace is an opportunity, which usually occurs at a moment of violence and death ...to be selfless or to overcome self. Some accept this opportunity, and some don't. There is something of a parallel in the Buffyverse (LoriAnn, 12/13/01 2:46).
...Darla was given a gift, a gift of love, she finally understood why humans crave it, need it.... Darla in a sense was washed of her sins in the rain shower of that alley, she understood all that have evaded her before. That love isn't sex, it isn't power over another person to use them. Love is something worth preserving and dying for. ...As she staked herself she became ashes that were washed away leaving this child, a human child. A miracle. ...I think the prophesy missed out on the most important part, there was love for Darla for the first time, a gift, not because she deserved it, but because she needed it (Rufus, 12/12/01 17:33).
...Why did Darla get this gift? ...After being brought back by W&H, Darla was human; after finding she was dying from syphilis, her first thought was to be re-vamped. Ultimately, apparently inspired by Angel being willing to sacrifice his life for hers, she said she'd let the disease take its course rather that allow Angel to perish. More than that, she actually resisted being re-vamped when Dru showed up. These are the sort of actions in the Buffyverse that seem to have karmic repercussions. Darla's act of selflessness, her willingness to die for Angel, resulted in another chance--after the blood bath she instigated, she needed one...In the Buffyverse, a selfless act, even from an otherwise evil being, is ultimately rewarded by a chance for an encore. ..."grace," a free gift of God. ...grace is an opportunity, which usually occurs at a moment of violence and death ...to be selfless or to overcome self. Some accept this opportunity, and some don't. There is something of a parallel in the Buffyverse (LoriAnn, 12/13/01 2:46).
"The impression is that he's feeling compassion for Angel, but in reality he's not ready to kill Angel because he sees a way to make Angel suffer in the same way that he has suffered" (Tim Minear, Oct 2002).
Dad
The Metaphysics of "Dad"
Sahjhan has no physical substance. Holtz' fingers pass through him when he tries to choke him in Quickening and Sahjhan can't perform the Heimlich on the demon minions. Sahjhan needs Holtz to kill Angel and Darla because this limitation prevents him from doing it himself.
Sahjhan's origins
Vampire hunters: Is Justine Cooper a Slayer? No--at least, not a Slayer with a capital "S". She is a woman who hunts and kills vampires, but it is unlikely that Buffy's second death called another Slayer. In addition, Justine is too old (mid-twenties) to be a newly-called Slayer, and drunk or not, a genuine Vampire Slayer would have done a lot better against Holtz in a fight.
The Furies' protection spell on the Hyperion protects its occupants from attack by preventing anyone from getting in or out of the hotel. Only an emergency exit in the sewers--a mystical barrier that can be opened and closed with a password (the Pylean word for "hedgehog")--allows access.
Then the Lilliad demons come calling. These demons have pasty white faces and wear hooded robes. Their counter-spell allows them to break the force-field surrounding the hotel:
Vodis cocedite nostris, Vires mitte per unum totosque,
Mystical energy jumps from their fingers
et sine peona.
The force field shimmers and breaks open.
Good and Evil in "Dad"
After Lilah hunts down the identity of Holtz, she takes an interest in 18th century vampire hunter. The files and records clerk informs her that Holtz killed 378 vampires after the death of his family at the hands (fangs?) of Angelus and Darla. Lilah concludes that Holtz is "a single-minded vengeance machine with the blood lust to match." Linwood warns Lilah and Gavin that Wolfram and Hart must prepare for conflict with Holtz, because he intends to kill Angel and they have an interest in keeping Angel alive. Is recruiting Holtz for their own nefarious purposes one way to detract him from his mission?
Poetic justice? Why on Earth would Angel make Linwood-the-Wolfram-and-Hart-executive his son's godfather? To keep Linwood running scared. Angel promises that whatever harm comes to his son--whether Linwood caused it or not--will happen to Linwood as well. Better nix the vivisection plans.
The good of Gunn and Wesley
Moral Ambiguity in "Dad"
Dad: Angel has a serious "Mama-bear" vibe--he's determined not to let anything happen to his son and he shows it by keeping the baby close. Problem is, the kid won't stop crying. Lorne explains to Angel that Connor is picking up on Angel's anxiety over his safety. When Angel shows Connor a scary vamp face, though, the child quiets down. Perhaps Angel sends out less worry vibes in demon form. But as Cordelia points out, vampire or not, Angel can't do everything for his son, no matter how determined he is.
Sahjhan's desire to get rid of Angel and Darla seems rather urgent. Now the job is half finished, and he doesn't understand why Holtz doesn't simply stake Angel and be done with it. Holtz has had more than one opportunity to dust Angel and hasn't. He obviously has something more complex in mind. He kills Sahjhan's hired minions and uses the internet to seek out his own kind of help--human warriors willing to die for his cause. He finds his first recruit in a human woman named Justine Cooper.
Justine Cooper isn't a Slayer, killing out of duty; she's simply a tough, street-wise woman whose grief over her twin sister's death holds her in an endless cycle of vengeance against creatures of the night. Holtz takes on the task of honing her fighting skills, much like a watcher would a real Slayer. He wants her help killing Angel. She seems willing to be turned into an instrument of vengeance, but she doesn't know the extent of what Holtz intends for her.
The good guy's plan: Lorne hears an electronic humming with his demon-enhanced hearing. He figures out that it is coming from Gavin Park's surveillance system and slips Angel a note about it while subtly telling him to read it in the janitor's closet where Wolfram and Hart can't overhear or see. That night, when the Lilliad demons prepare to bring down the force field, Angel insists on taking Connor to safety. He slips out through the emergency exit with a baby-like bundle in his arms. In reality, the child isn't with him; Connor remains behind in the hotel.
The gang's angry, frightened words at Angel are also part of a plan to make Wolfram and Hart believe Angel is singularly foolish enough to run away with his child. But it is a set-up. Angel does not attempt to hide his car; in fact, he drives it right past the hotel. The demons, vampires, and humans bikers that are after the child follow him to an abandoned mine. Angel pretends to be trapped, then throws the "baby" to them and skitters up a long rope to the ground above. The "baby" is Connor's teddy bear with a bomb attached. Angel peels away in his car. Bye-bye bad guys.
Birthday
The Metaphysics of "Birthday"
The Retrieval Spell: A young girl, Cynthia, draws a pentagram on the floor with candles at the tips and stones in the center. She hasn't done this spell to retrieve her wayward father quite right, however; she spilled coke on the spell book and had to improvise. Lighting flares; a no-eyed three-mouthed monster appears in the center of the pentagram.
Cordelia's condition: Cordelia's vision of Cynthia and the monster turns out to be one vision too many--the damage to her brain that has been developing over the two years since Doyle bequeathed her the visions puts her into a coma. Wesley tells the others her brain is suffering from "wide-spread neuro-electrical deterioration". Bottom line: another vision will kill her.
Astral projection: After she faints, Cordelia's spiritual essence is separated from her still-living body. This "spirit" or "astral body" goes through solid objects and cannot be seen or heard by people around her. This is similar to the condition of Billy in Nightmares, except that Billy could be seen and heard. When Angel falls asleep during his vigil over Cordy, Cordelia enters his body. This allows her to manipulate physical objects so she can write down the information from her vision on the wall in Angel's bedroom. She gets the idea to do this from reading over Wesley's shoulder when he was investigating astral projection.
The Conduit: After Cordelia falls into a coma, Angel goes to a dim-lit cavern-like place that Lorne has told him is a conduit to talk to the Powers That Be (PTB). There he encounters disembodied voices. It is not clear if these voices are the PTB's or simply beings who serve as go-betweens for the PTB's.
Destiny: In what sense was Cordelia "meant" to have the visions?
(1) Skip calls the moment they were passed to her a "big cosmic whoops". By this he means that the Powers That Be did not intend it to happen. It is possible that Doyle didn't even know he was passing them; he simply kissed Cordelia before he died out of his feelings for her.
(2) However, Skip also explains that deep down inside we all have a "connection" to the PTB's, a connection which allows us to know our purpose in this world. When Actress Cordelia later gets the feeling Skip spoke of--the feeling like "she has somewhere else to be", she is in touch with that connection--she is realizing her true purpose is to be the bearer of the visions and an evil fighter, not an actress.
When Skip first mentions the PTB's, he says "We". They may mean is is one; it may also simply mean the that he works for them.
Cordelia's Test: Lorne tells the others that there is a mystical cause to Cordelia's coma, and he's right. The culprit? The Powers That Be themselves. They have chosen the last hours of Cordelia's life to present her with a choice; but not the one they initially offer. The initial choice is between death or a life she could have had--that of a famous actress. But this so-called new "life" is itself really a test. The purpose of the test is to give Cordelia a chance to chose the visions--and everything involved in having them--out of free will. While Cordelia's spirit hangs between the vision that put her in a coma and the vision that will kill her, Skip appears to her. He is her guide.
But he's not exactly honest with her. His job is to convince Cordelia to take the test--to choose the "Actress Life" without actually letting her know it is a test. First, Skip makes it sound as if the Actress Life is her "true" destiny, a destiny thwarted when she ran into Angel at a party two and a half years ago. Then he lets Cordelia hear a misleading segment of Angel's conversation with the Conduit, where a frustrated Angel calls Cordelia "a rich girl from Sunnydale who likes to play superhero" and "weak". Cordelia chooses the Actress Life.
Altered realities: Cordelia's actress life is not an alternate history like the one she created in "the Wish". It is a minor altering of the normal Buffyverse reality, much like what the monks did when they created false memories for the introduction of Dawn Summers into Sunnydale. Dawn's arrival also included changes in the physical surroundings (i.e., a bedroom complete with objects that match the false memories of her first 14 years). Likewise, the Hyperion and other things have been altered to give the appearance of what life would have been like if Cordelia had become an actress (see also "Superstar").
Actress Cordelia and the others have new memories to replace their memories of how the past two and a half years actually went. In this altered reality, Wesley, Gunn and Angel make up Angel Investigations and Doyle bequeathed the visions that guide them to Angel. Although part-demon himself, Angel has not been able to handle the visions on a psychological level and has descended into madness. Cordelia also has what Skip referred to earlier as "the nagging feeling she has to be some place else".
Cordelia has the choice to follow this feeling or ignore it in favor of her "new life". She follows the feeling. It takes her first to the Hyperion Hotel, and into the suite that would have been Angel's bedroom. The words she wrote on the wall are still there to guide her further if she chooses to follow them. She does. Because this test scenario is not an alternate history but merely a modification of on-going events and memories, when Skip puts the world back the way it should be, this does not erase the fact that the girl Cynthia was saved from the monster.
Good and Moral Ambiguity in "Birthday"
Cordelia has kept the pain and damage caused by her visions a secret out of fear. If her friends found out about it, they would insist she get rid of the visions. And without the visions, she worries that the Angel Investigations team wouldn't need her anymore. Even though she has been training, Cordelia is still a relatively unskilled fighter compared to some of her colleagues.
But fear isn't Cordelia's only motivator. She genuinely wants to do good and fight evil. After Cordelia goes into her coma, she tries repeatedly to give the gang the information from her vision. That is more important to her than getting back into her body. Later, when she is put into the Actress Life scenario, saving the life of Cynthia remains her priority, even over her acting career. At Cynthia house, Cordelia runs into Wesley and Gunn. They take her to see the now-deranged Angel. Moved by his plight, Cordelia kisses Angel, and in the process takes the visions from him and gets back her memories as well.
The time has come for her real choice. Cordelia has realized that the Actress Life wasn't her true calling. She asks to be given back her life with the visions. But it's too late for things to go back to normal; Cordelia is close to death. Skip tells her there is one way to get what she wants. She must choose to become part demon. The repercussions of this choice cannot be known at the moment she makes this decision--she must be willing to give up a chance at a normal human life, whatever that ends up meaning. Cordelia chooses to become part-demon.
Skip holds out his hand above her head. Cordelia finds herself in Angel's bedroom. She has had another vision. She begins to tell the others about it and discovers that she is floating above the ground.
Angel is angry at Cordelia for keeping the harm of her visions a secret. He wants to help her. He demands that Lorne use his connections in the demon world to find some way to contact the PTB's. Lorne gets the information. As resident champion, Angel is the only one who can go to the "Conduit" to the PTB's (see also "IWRY"). Angel requests that the PTB's take back Cordelia's visions before she dies of them. The Conduit replies that "The Powers owe nothing": What the PTB's did not give Cordelia in the first place they cannot take back. What the Conduit doesn't tell Angel is that the PTB's are doing what they can do--they are offering Cordelia a choice to become part demon so that she can withstand the visions.