Angel was one of the most famous vampires, legendary for both his villainy and his heroism. Born Liam in 1727 in Galway, Ireland, he was sired by Darla in 1753 and changed his name to Angelus and was dubbed The Scourge of Europe, earning notoriety for being one of the most sadistic and brutal demons in history, and the most evil vampire ever recorded. Both The Master and the First Evil recognized how purely evil Angelus was. He was also known as The Demon with the Face of an Angel or The One with the Angelic Face because of his physical beauty. However, in 1898, Angelus was cursed by the members of Clan Kalderash as vengeance for killing a member of their clan. They returned his soul, forcing him to live eternally in guilt over the countless crimes he had committed.
In the late 20th century, Angel, as he began calling himself, became an ally and lover of the current Slayer, Buffy Summers. After the two were forced to realize their limitations as a couple, Angel left Buffy and moved to Los Angeles, where he became a Champion of the Powers That Be and dedicated himself to "helping the helpless" in the hope of achieving atonement.
Eventually, Angel adopted the identity of Twilight and gathered a cabal of humans and demons who had become wary of the rise of multiple Slayers. As Twilight, Angel sought to keep these forces distracted as well as make Buffy grow more focused and stronger, and at the same time, try to keep the Slayers' deaths as low as he could.
Liam meets Darla in a dark alley promising him to show him the world.
1727: Angel was born as a human named Liam in Galway, Ireland. His overbearing father was a linen and silk merchant. At the age of 18, Liam had a relationship with a noblewoman named Sarah Gilfried. Liam became disillusioned with the women of his era, especially showing distaste for the noblewomen whom he found to be "dull, simpering morons"; he wished he could meet someone "exciting" and "interesting". By his twenties, he had developed a taste for alcohol, tavern brawls, whoring and sloth. Liam's only real ambition lay in seeing the world. Despite his strained relationship with his parents, he had great affection for his little sister, Kathy.
1753: At the age of 26, after a night of drunken debauchery and attempts to seduce Anna, the family's only maidservant, Liam was expelled from his home by his father, who labeled him a "terrible disappointment". During a tavern brawl, the drunken Liam caught the eye of what seemed to be an affluent woman, but who was actually a vampire named Darla. After being kicked out of the tavern, he ploted to steal his father's silver, but instead, Darla lured him into an alley, and, promising him a world full of excitement and travel, transformed him into a vampire. He quickly became one of the cruelest vampires who ever existed. The price was the loss of his human soul, along with his conscience, creating a demon that would act upon Liam's darkest impulses.[1]
Angelus
1753: On the night he rose from his grave, and in response to Darla's assertion that he could have anyone in the village, he set about slaughtering the entire community. First, however, he murdered his own family, which he said was "the sweetest blood of all". He had no problem entering his former house, as his little sister Kathy invited him in without hesitation or suspicion; according to Liam, "She thought that I'd returned to her. An angel." His own mother was the next victim. When killing his father, Liam told him how he had made something of himself after all. However, while gloating over his father's corpse, Darla cruelly deflated him, claiming that his father won because his disapproval would haunt Liam for the rest of his life.[2]
Angelus kills his family. His little sister thought he had returned to her an angel.
“You told me I wasn't a man. You told me I was nothing. And I believed you. You said I'd never amount to anything. Well, you were wrong. You see, father? I have made something of myself after all.”
Liam took the name "Angelus", presumably inspired by his sister's mistaken belief that he was an angel. He was later described in historical volumes as "the one with the angelic face"[3] and "the demon with the face of an angel".[4] After leaving Ireland, Angelus and Darla cut a bloody swath through Wales and northern England before finally reaching London in 1760. During Angelus' first meeting with Darla's sire, the Master, he openly mocked the older vampire, showing no fear despite his greater age, power, and authority, and confronted Darla about her decision to remain underground with him when she could be traveling the world with him. Won over by his bold fearlessness, Darla chose to live with Angelus, abandoning the Master's leadership temporarily.[5]
Known as "the one with the angelic face", Angelus became known as one of the most sadistic vampires in history.
1764: In May, Angelus and Darla killed the wife and infant son of vampire hunter Daniel Holtz, and turned his young daughter into a vampire, forcing him to destroy her.[6] Holtz then devoted himself to capturing Angelus and Darla, chasing them across Europe and killing almost 400 other vampires in the process.
1765: Angelus and Darla had a near miss in Arles after making too much noise by ordering room service and then eating the waiters. Darla fled to Vienna, knocking out and abandoning Angelus in a burning barn and riding off on their only horse. After meeting again in Vienna and eating a troubadour in Madrid, Angelus and Darla sired[citation needed] the vampires James and Elisabeth.
1767: Holtz tracked them down in Marseilles and managed to put numerous arrows in Angelus.[7] After voyaging to Morocco, Holtz briefly lost them in northern Africa.
1771: Holtz tracked Angelus to Rome and captured him. With the assistance of Monsignor Rivalli, Holtz tortured Angelus while trying to figure out how to get Angelus to help him to capture Darla. But instead, Darla came to the rescue with a horde of vampires. Darla declines to kill Holtz, telling Angelus that she was having too much fun tormenting him and he was now "like family".
1773: Holtz then abandoned his hunt and retired to York until 1773 when a demon named Sahjhan offered to take him to the future in exchange for his promise to kill Angel and Darla at that time.[8]
1786[9]: Angelus sired a Puritan by the name of Penn, who mimicked Angelus by wreaking havoc on his father and killing his family. Over time, he began copying Angelus' "signature" of the time, carving a cross-shaped mark on the face of his victims in order to spite God.[4]
1789: A lone Angelus encountered The Beast in Prussia, standing in a field of bodies. The Beast sought Angelus' aid in killing the Svear Priestesses, a group who wished to banish the Beast and who could be killed by a vampire but not by the Beast. When Angelus declined to assist the Beast, he was violently attacked, but a group of Svear priestesses banished the Beast while Angelus was passing out.[10]
1838: On Christmas Eve, Angelus won a card game and took his winnings by killing his opponent, a man named Daniel, in Dublin, Ireland. Daniel was to be married the next day.
Of all of Angelus' atrocities, Drusilla was his worst. Angelus uses Drusilla to teach William a lesson.
1860: A young woman named Drusilla from London, England, caught the attention of Darla, who then brought him to the attention of Angelus, as a gift. Drusilla was "cursed" with the "sight", something her mother saw as "an affront to the Lord". Drusilla and her sisters were all noted to be virgins, and Drusilla was described as being "sweet, pure and chaste." While posing as her priest in order to torment her, Angelus killed her family in front of her, which caused Drusilla to flee to a convent. On the day she was to take her holy orders, Angelus massacred the convent. After having sex with Darla practically on top of Drusilla, Angelus finally pushed her over the edge into insanity. It was at that point that he turned her into a vampire. Drusilla was Angelus' "masterpiece", an everlasting testament of his finest cruelty, as her immortality meant that her torment would never end.[11][1][12]
1880: When Drusilla turned the wimpy mama's boy and poet, William, into a vampire, Angelus served as a mentor and role model.[13] William went so far as to consider the elder vampire his sire.[14] Angelus taught William about the art of mass slaughter, including an incident during a wedding party where Angelus beat the groom to death with his own arm. When he realized how much William cared for Drusilla, Angelus had sex with her just to hurt him, an action William would never forgive.[15]
1883: Angelus killed a female servant named Margaret during a luxurious Christmas party in London. The woman had a young son.
1888: Spike got himself, Angelus, Darla, and Drusilla chased out of London, England and into an abandoned mine shaft in Yorkshire, England by an angry mob. Angelus, wondering why they hadn't killed him yet, threateningly warned William, who had taken the alias of "Spike", not to attract the unwanted attention of angry mobs or the Slayer.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; invalid names, e.g. too many
1890: Angelus attended a production of Giselle by the Blinnikov, a Russian ballet troupe run by Count Kurskov. Despite being evil, he was moved to tears during the performance.[16] The same year, Angelus and Spike used a trick that involved them holding hands and beheading their enemies with a length of wire in St. Petersburg, Russia.[16]
1894: Angelus and Spike were captured in Rome, Italy by henchmen of The Immortal, a mysterious and seductive being with whom they both had a fierce rivalry. The two male vampires were tortured while The Immortal had a threesome with Darla and Drusilla, something that, incidentally, the female vampires never allowed Angelus and Spike to do. Angelus and Spike attempted to take revenge on the Immortal, but failed miserably.[17]
Curse and soul
“You don't remember. Everything you've done. For a hundred years. In a moment, you will. The face of everyone you have killed — our daughter's face — they will haunt you and you will know what true suffering is.”
Angelus' sins come back to haunt him when gypsies curse him with his human soul.
1898: Angelus raped and murdered the favorite daughter of a tribe of gypsies, the Kalderash clan in Borşa, Romania.[18] To avenge her death, the Kalderash cursed him by restoring his human soul, thus afflicting him with a conscience and condemning him to an eternity of remorse for the crimes he'd committed as the soulless Angelus.[1] Bedraggled and dirty, looking like a beggar, he attacks and tries to feed on a woman, but is unable to.
1900: During the Boxer Rebellion, "Angelus" tried to resume his life with Darla, but found himself able to kill only animals, murderers, and rapists. A final break between himself and Darla occurred when he refused to eat a baby to prove himself to Darla, and instead rescued the child.[5]
The ensouled Angelus follows Darla to China at the time of the Boxer Rebellion.
1902: Angel fled and lived in self-imposed isolation, controlling the temptation to feed by avoiding humans altogether. He traveled to the United States, arriving in New York via Ellis Island in 1902.
1915: During the First World War, Angel found himself in the trenches, and was nearly killed by Watcher Geoffrey Wyndam-Pryce before he escaped into a river. Discovering that the powerful vampire Kakistos was working with the Germans, Angel and Geoffrey were forced into an uncertain alliance to destroy Kakistos's cult, Kakistos being apparently killed in a subsequent plane crash. Although he never learned that Angel was anything more than another vampire, Geoffrey allowed him to leave after the cult was destroyed in recognition of his assistance.
1920s: In this period, he spent some time in Chicago, where he saved a little lap dog from being run over by a car; however, he was tempted to feed on the dog's owner, a young woman who tried to seduce Angel, only to be harshly rejected.[19] In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Angel had a disagreement with a demon named Boone over a señorita, for which Boone called him out. Angel fought Boone for 3 1/2 hours until the sun came up and Boone honorably let him go.[20] Angel then spent time in Missoula, Montana during the Great Depression.[21]
1943: During World War II, Angel was coerced into undertaking a secret mission by the Demon Research Initiative. They sank him to the bottom of the ocean to rescue an American submarine crew from three vampires the Nazis had captured as part of their paranormal research activities: Spike, Nostroyev and The Prince of Lies. After the American crew had captured the German submarine, the vampires had escaped their bonds and murdered most of the crew; the few survivors sought refuge behind a locked hatch. After the submarine suffered damage from a depth charge, Angel was forced to sire a mortally wounded Ensign Sam Lawson, as he was the only person who was able to repair the damage, and while Angel didn't care about the mission, he needed to have it succeed to get the US government to leave him alone, and he needed the submarine so he would not get trapped on the ocean floor. Proceeding these events, Angel went underground until the war was over.[22]
1952: In Los Angeles, Angel was a resident of the Hyperion Hotel. During this time, Angel attempted to stay to himself, avoiding interaction with other residents and patrons. Despite the numerous strange incidents, murders and suicides running rampant throughout the hotel (caused by a demon), he looked the other way when his help would have made a difference. After finding a young woman named Judy Kovacs hiding in his room, Angel tried to preserve his isolation, first by disarming and removing the man chasing her, then by ejecting Judy. However, her repeated attempts to interact with him allowed the two to form a budding friendship — very surprising and rare for Angel at that time in his life. Meanwhile, hotel staff and residents, including Judy, continued to become warped and Angel decided to help. He discovered the presence of a Thesulac Demon, a paranoia demon affecting the humans in the hotel, but by the time Angel learned how to defeat it and obtained the items required, the entire hotel was overcome with pathological paranoia. Mad with demon-induced hysteria, the hotel residents and staff turned on Judy after their suspicions were raised by a private detective. To save herself, Angel's new friend pointed the mob in his direction, saying he had been found with blood. With rabid fury, they ambushed Angel, beat him, and then hanged him. Embittered by the consequences of becoming close to a human, Angel abandoned Judy and everyone else. Instead of destroying the Thesulac as it was in his power to do, even when the demon gave him the opportunity, he personally gave the vicious demon free reign to prey upon and ravage them unhindered.[23]
1970s: In New York during the late 1970s, Angel witnessed a robbery at a doughnut shop. After the robber shot the employee and fled, Angel stayed with the man as he died. Unable to resist the sight and smell of the clerk's still-warm blood, Angel succumbed to his urges and fed on the body. Deeply disgusted by his own weakness, Angel fled the shop, and then exiled himself to a life of homelessness, living in alleyways and feeding on rats.[19]
1996: Two decades later, a shadow of his former self, the reclusive and emotionally tortured Angel was sought out by a demon named Whistler, who persuaded him to join the fight against the evil that had corrupted him and to help the newly-activated Slayer, Buffy Summers. Angel traveled to Hemery High School in Los Angeles, where he witnessed Buffy being called as the Slayer and her initial training under her Watcher, Merrick, as well as her emotional suffering over her new duties and her parents' deteriorating marriage. Filled with a new purpose in life, Angel resolved to help the Slayer, with whom he had fallen in love. The following year, when Buffy finally met him in Sunnydale, he introduced himself, not as Angelus, but as Angel.[1]
“I wanna help her. I wanna become somebody.”
―Angel is motivated to become a force for good[src]
Angel is inspired to do good by Buffy, with whom he falls in love.
Sunnydale
“A vampire in love with a Slayer. It's rather poetic... in a maudlin sort of way.”
1997: Angel fell in love with Buffy the first time he saw her on that fateful day in L.A. when she first was called. However, Angel didn't show himself until after her move to Sunnydale, and after her first day at Sunnydale High. Buffy did not realize Angel was a vampire until several weeks later, but by then she had fallen in love with him in turn. Though they tried to deny their feelings, they could not resist the passion growing between them and began dating. Angel gave Buffy a physical token of his love, a Claddagh ring, as was traditional in Ireland.
1998: When Buffy and Angel finally consummated their relationship, Angel experienced a moment of pure happiness, at which time he learned about a second aspect to the Gypsy curse: if he ever were to experience a moment of pure happiness, he would lose his soul and revert to his former evil self, Angelus, who had no humanity left in him. Angelus despised Buffy for forcing him to experience the love between herself and Angel.
Angel, now Angelus, allied himself once again with Spike and Drusilla, who had recently settled in Sunnydale. Resenting the humiliation he felt because Buffy had made Angel feel like a human being, Angelus took immense pleasure in tormenting the Slayer and her friends. First, he helped Spike and Dru deploy a powerful demon known as the Judge. After Buffy destroyed the Judge, Angelus embarked on a guerrilla campaign, lurking in the shadows, preying on Buffy's classmates, sending her gruesome messages, even drawing pictures of her as she slept and leaving them in her bedroom.
Angelus threatens Willow.
Angelus' reign of terror culminated in his murder of Jenny Calendar, which served him in two ways. First, he eliminated an enemy (Jenny was born Janna of the Kalderash clan) and destroyed her work just as she had managed to successfully decipher the lost Gypsy curse which could be used to restore Angel's soul. Second, Angelus used Jenny's death to viciously torment Giles, Jenny's paramour and the person on whom Buffy depended most. After Angelus orchestrated this masterpiece of terror, Drusilla drew his attention to a new opportunity for destruction and chaos. Angelus widened his focus and began a scheme to awaken the demon Acathla and bring about the end of the world. Buffy was determined to stop him despite their history. In their final fight, Angelus defeated Buffy, but continues to torment her rather than kill her, allowing her to stage one last counterattack. In her anger, the Slayer was able to overcome Angelus, but just as Acathla opened the vortex into his hell dimension, Buffy's friend and comrade, Willow, used the ritual Jenny had rediscovered and preserved to restore Angel's soul. Since Acathla could only be stopped by the blood of the individual who activated him, Buffy was forced to sacrifice her beloved Angel rather than the demon Angelus to save the world. Impaled on the Slayer's enchanted sword, Angel appeared to shrink into the distance until Acathla's vortex suddenly snapped closed.
Buffy kills Angel in order to save the world, sending him to hell for a hundred years.
Angel returns from Acathla's hell in a feral state.
A few months later, Angel was unexpectedly released from Acathla's hell, reappearing in his mansion in a feral state. Because time can run differently between dimensions, he had experienced a century of brutal torment and was little more than a dumb animal in behavior. Buffy aided him in secret, fostering his rehabilitation. Angel remained insane, but came to Buffy's rescue when one of her classmates turned into a monster and attacked her. Angel killed him and finally recognized Buffy afterward, and regained his sanity. The means by which he returned are still unknown - all that is known is that it happened after Buffy placed her Claddagh ring near the spot where he was sucked into Hell. When they discovered that Angel had returned and Buffy had not told them, the other Scoobies were disgusted and furious, though Angel managed to win back some good faith and acceptance in the gang after he saved Willow from being killed by the corrupt former Watcher Gwendolyn Post. Angel began to suspect that his return from Hell was not accidental, that he must be meant to serve some unknown purpose. That fear -- that this purpose was not for the cause of good -- grew in Angel's mind as he began to experience what he believed to be hallucinations. However, he was actually being haunted by the First Evil, who claimed to be the one that freed him from Acathla's world (a claim that remains unconfirmed). The First, able to adopt the appearances of Angelus' victims, drove Angel ever closer to the brink of madness by lashing him with guilt and, ultimately, tempting him to end it all by losing his soul once again and killing Buffy in the throes of passion. In despair, Angel chose to kill himself by waiting outside for the sun to rise, rather than risk his beloved Slayer. To Angel's shock and consternation, an apparent miracle occurred and it snowed so heavily that Christmas morning that the sun was blotted out all day. From that moment, he began to entertain the hope that his return might have some purpose for good after all.
When the latest Slayer, Faith Lehane, began to go rogue after accidentally killing a human, Angel attempted to rehabilitate her and nearly succeeded, but his chances at redeeming her were ruined by the interference of Buffy's new Watcher, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, and a special ops team sent by the Council, who only succeeded in driving Faith even farther down the path of darkness. Later, when Faith began working for the Mayor as a double agent, the duo attempted to force Angel to revert to Angelus once again and appeared to succeed; fortunately, this was in fact revealed to be an elaborate ruse masterminded by Buffy and Angel, with some help from Giles, to expose Faith's new loyalties.
1999: After that miraculous snowy day in southern California, Angel and Buffy tried to build an actual relationship, taking in the occasional movie, getting away on more scenic patrols, and enjoying moonlit picnics in the cemetery. But it was not to be. Even before their one and only night together, Angel had worried about Buffy's future with him, his inability to give her a family, or even a remotely normal human life. Upon hearing his own concerns reflected back to him from such disparate sources as Mayor Wilkins and Joyce Summers, Angel at last made the difficult decision to leave Sunnydale and to leave Buffy, hoping to give her some semblance of a normal life. Angel broke up with Buffy in the sewer right before prom, but went to the dance to let Buffy have her perfect high school moment.
Angel shows up at Buffy's prom despite having broken up with her.
Before the Ascension, Faith infected Angel with the "Killer of the Dead", a poison specifically designed to kill vampires that could only be cured by the blood of a Slayer, in order to distract Buffy. Having failed to bring a dead Faith to Angel to cure him, Buffy forced Angel to feed from her. Angel rushed Buffy to a hospital where he stopped the grieving Mayor from smothering Buffy.
Angel promised Buffy that he would stay until Sunnydale High's Graduation Day, to help avert the Mayor's Ascension. He also warned her that, if they survived the ordeal, he would leave without saying goodbye, as it would be too painful to do so. They survived, and Angel, with a last, long look at the Slayer, kept his final promise and departed for Los Angeles.
Los Angeles
Angel Investigations
Angel in L.A.
1999: In L.A., Angel spent a few months alone, patrolling dives and dark alleys, battling vampires who hunt there and fighting the blood lust that had been reawakened when he fed from Buffy by not getting close to the humans he was trying to help. Soon enough, he received support in his attempts to redeem himself in the service of others. First, Doyle, a half-Brachen demon and fellow Irishman with precognitive abilities, was sent by The Powers That Be. Almost immediately thereafter, Angel ran into Cordelia Chase, a former classmate of Buffy's who had moved to L.A. to find wealth and fame. The trio formed Angel Investigations, a private investigation firm whose mission statement was to "Help the Helpless."
The trio managed to do a lot of good, but when Doyle had a vision of Buffy in danger at Thanksgiving, Angel immediately returned to Sunnydale to help against Hus, a Native American vengeance spirit accidentally set free by Xander's construction crew. However, Angel made his presence to known all of the Scoobies except Buffy under the belief that his presence would only distract and endanger her even more[24]. Upon discovering the truth, Buffy, hurt that Angel never revealed his presence to her, immediately traveled to Los Angeles to confront him, and the two agreed to stay away from one another for the time being. Just as she was about to leave, however, the two were attacked by a Mohra Demon. Though the duo succeeded in wounding it, the Mohra escaped, and Buffy and Angel immediately tracked it down in the sewers. The two became separated, and Angel seemingly killed the demon, and in doing so, its blood mixed with his own and turned him human and alive again. Buffy and Angel reveled in finally being able to be happy together, but Angel soon discovered that the Powers That Be had not yet offered him forgiveness as he had not sufficiently atoned. When Angel was nearly killed by the regenerated Mohra, Buffy managed to slay it with his help. Upon discovering that Buffy would die much sooner if he remained human, Angel made an impossibly painful decision: he had the Oraclesrewind time to reverse his transformation into a human, leaving no one but himself with any memory of the incident[25].
2000: Doyle, Angel's trusted friend and sole connection to the Powers That Be, sacrificed himself to save others, leading Angel to become even more protective of those few he held dear. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, who had briefly served as Watcher to both Buffy and Faith Lehane in Sunnydale, arrived in L.A. around that time, claiming to be a "rogue demon hunter," a lone wolf sort who only worked solo. After their first case, however, Wesley was eager to stay and assist Angel and Cordelia in their mission. A few months later, they were joined by lifelong demon fighter Charles Gunn. The Angel Investigations team also enlisted the help of demon karaoke bar-owner Lorne, known initially only as The Host. Both prescient and empathic, Lorne could sense the futures of humans and demons when they sang. During this time, three young Wolfram & Hart associates, Lindsey McDonald, Lee Mercer, and Lilah Morgan, attempted to have Angel killed by rogue vampire slayer Faith. Angel defeated Faith, but refused to kill her, having discovered that Faith really wanted help. Even as Buffy, the Watchers' Council, and the L.A.P.D. pursued Faith, Angel continued to help her. When Faith gave herself up to the police, he and Buffy got into an argument, during which Buffy used her relationship with her new boyfriend to attack him. In response, Angel launched a tirade against Buffy, reminding her that, while it was great that she had moved on, he himself could not and had no one to share his pain, culminating in him telling Buffy that she didn't know him anymore and that she had no right to just show up with her "great new life" and tell him how to do things before harshly ordering her to go back to Sunnydale. Immediately afterward, Angel regretted his words and traveled to Sunnydale to make amends. Though he ran afoul of Riley and the Initiative in the process, he managed to get to Buffy and apologize, who also apologized for butting into his life, and Angel departed after informing Buffy that he didn't like Riley, much to Buffy's amusement.
To Angel's shock, Wolfram & Hart brings back Darla as a human.
As Angel continued to help the helpless in Los Angeles, his good deeds began seriously to disrupt the plans of the evil inter-dimensional law firm Wolfram & Hart. In an attempt to control him, the firm resurrected his sire and former lover, Darla, though she came back as a human rather than as a vampire. Wolfram & Hart then summoned Drusilla, who turned Darla into a vampire again. Angel felt such deep anguish at his failure to save Darla, and such intense fury at Wolfram & Hart for their machinations, that he fired his crew and embarked on a bitter, ruthless vendetta against both the law firm and the newly reunited Darla and Drusilla. At his darkest moment, Angel helped Drusilla and Darla to slaughter a core group of Wolfram & Hart employees. In spiritual agony beyond his endurance, Angel attempted to shed his soul by having sex with Darla, but instead of happiness, found despair. An epiphany followed the desperate act, and Angel realized that his purpose was still to do all the good he could, even if he couldn't do all the good he wanted to. Having hoped to get Angelus back, Darla was disgusted and infuriated by Angel's epiphany, and fled Los Angeles. The group finally reconciled, and Wesley was appointed the official leader. But Angel's relationship with his teammates, particularly Cordelia, was strained, though things improved rather quickly.
2001: After the death of Buffy's mother, Angel returned to Sunnydale to comfort Buffy, and the two spent a night discussing how life would continue after Joyce's death. Angel assured Buffy that she was strong and would find her way over time, and offered to stay in Sunnydale as long as she needed him, though she knew that he could not stay for long. Nonetheless, Buffy appreciated that he came, and he remained with her until sunrise.
Afterward, Cordelia was sucked into Lorne's home dimension of Pylea, and the A.I. team followed her. Eventually, after Angel defeated the undefeated Champion of Pylea, the Groosalugg, they returned with a new team member, Winifred "Fred" Burkle, in tow, and learned that the former love of Angel's life, Buffy, had died.
Devastated by Buffy's death, Angel spent several months mourning her in a Tibetan monastery in Sri Lanka, returning despondent and believing that he had betrayed Buffy by continuing to live while she was dead, though Cordelia assured him that he was in fact honoring her memory by continuing to fight the good fight in Buffy's stead. Despite Buffy's miraculous resurrection a few months later, Angel found that his previously platonic love for Cordelia had grown to be romantic. Before he had a chance to confess his feelings, however, Darla returned, pregnant with his son. In order to birth their son, Darla killed herself. Angel was overcome with parental love, and named their child Connor, in recognition of his Irish heritage.
2002: False prophecies, time travelers and betrayal led to Angel losing his infant son to an old enemy, Holtz, who abducted Connor soon after his birth, taking him to the hell dimensionQuor'toth, where time passed differently. Wesley unintentionally brought about the kidnapping, and Angel attempted to kill him in the hospital; Wesley was subsequently fired from Angel Investigations, while Angel resumed his position as the team's leader. Unexpectedly, Connor returned days later, a young man of 18 or so who has been raised by Holtz to be a warrior and to believe that Angel was a soulless monster. Holtz took his own life in such a way that Connor was led to believe he was killed by Angel, making Connor hate his father and be determined to make him pay for the suffering he had caused Holtz and others. Connor then sank his father to the bottom of the ocean in a steel coffin, while Cordelia ascended to a higher plane, the feelings shared between her and Angel still left unspoken.
Angel continually tries to do the best for his son Connor.
Rescued by Wesley from his watery prison, Angel's relationship with Connor was strained. It was complicated further by the return of an amnesiac Cordelia, who preferred to stay with Connor because he told her the truth while the others lied to her (albeit because they thought it was for her own good).
2003: When a very powerful demon known only as the Beast arrived and began an attempt to bring forth an apocalypse, Angel's worst fears were realized when he had to strip himself of his soul and revert to his evil alter ego in order to defeat it. Angelus did indeed overcome the Beast, and was also deft enough to realize that the Beast was a mere "flunky" serving an even deeper evil; the Beast he knew was only interested in smashing and slaughter, and it was unlikely that the Beast would have become smarter in the yars since his initial encounter with Angelus.
Angelus returns and taunts from within his cage.
Although he was momentarily free to wreak a little havoc of his own, Angelus was recaptured and re-ensouled after he defeated and drank from Faith, who had injected herself with a powerful drug. Faith (who had almost died in her quest to capture Angelus) and Willow helped to accomplish Angel's restoration via a brief but violent mental battle between Angel and Angelus. After his soul was restored, Angel figured out that the enemy he had been battling was a little closer to home than the group had previously considered. He realized that whatever the Beast's "boss" was, it was using Cordelia's body to carry out its plans, and it had seduced Angel's son Connor over to its side, warping the youth further and increasing the gap between Angel and his son. After battling and defeating the divine being known as Jasmine, Angel was offered the L.A. branch of Wolfram & Hart as their thanks for ending world peace by killing Jasmine. Angel acted against all of his instincts and made a deal with his sworn enemy in exchange for them erasing Connor’s memories and giving him a normal life, and trying to find a way to cure Cordelia.
Soon after the events in Los Angeles, Angel traveled to Sunnydale to give Buffy an amulet that he had obtained from Wolfram & Hart because he was told that it would play a role in the upcoming battle with The First Evil and had to be worn by someone with a soul, but more than human - a champion. He saved Buffy from getting killed by Caleb, but she insisted that she finish the fight on her own. After the fight concluded, they shared a kiss while being unknowingly watched by Spike, along with The First Evil. Angel wished to fight with her in the battle, but Buffy told him to go prepare his crew for a second front in case the Scoobies failed to stop the First. Angel then discussed with Buffy Spike, the return of his soul, her feelings for him, the future and if he had a place in it with her. She told him that it would be a long time, if ever, but she sometimes saw a future with him. Accepting, Angel returned to Los Angeles to prepare the second front, hoping he would not have to use it, and told Buffy, "I ain't getting any older."
Wolfram & Hart
Angel's year spent running Wolfram & Hart was one marred with challenge and self-doubt. Trying to battle evil from within the belly of the beast proved to be more difficult than even he had imagined, with the lines of good and evil becoming ever more gray with every action taken, and he soon discovered that his friends and allies in the Scooby Gang, including Buffy, had deemed him untrustworthy. Shortly after Angel assumed control of the law firm, matters were further complicated when Spike appeared as a ghost, emerging from the amulet Angel had given Buffy and that was then sent back to Angel in the mail. Sharing a complicated history of murder and mayhem, they had spent more than a century as rivals in everything. Now both possessed souls, and both were still in love with Buffy; they had evolved into very different heroes in the war against evil. Forced to co-exist, they waged a protracted, insidious battle of wills, ending when they finally came to an understanding and accepted their unique brotherhood on their journey to redemption.
When they battle over the Cup of Perpetual Torment, Spike tells Angel "You had a soul forced on you. As a curse. Make you suffer for all the horrible things you've done. Me, I fought for my soul, went through the demon trials, almost did me in a dozen times over, but I kept fighting. Because I knew it was the right thing to do. It's my destiny." Then, Spike defeats Angel for the first time in their century-plus association (Although it should be noted that Spike was the only combatant taking the fight seriously, with Angel spending most of the fight simply trying to get to the Cup, the elder vampire actually managing to do some damage to Spike when he began to effectively fight back despite his weaker physical condition at that time). Despite this, Spike and Angel come to an understanding that lets the two of them operate as a lethal team when the two end up fighting side-by-side, using their long experience of each other's skills to operate in near-perfect tandem.
2004: While investigating the sinister children's program, Smile Time, Angel was turned into a puppet. Puppet Angel managed to stop Smile Times plans and save the children of Los Angeles. He remained a puppet for several days until the spell wore off. It was around this time that he realized werewolf Nina Ash was attracted to him, and the pair started dating.
Angel finally understands that he will never be able to completely stop the forces of evil, but that he can temporarily sever the Senior Partners' hold on Earth and stop their apocalyptic plans. Together with his comrades, Angel prepares to suicidally incur the wrath of the Senior Partners, probably going out in a blaze of glory in doing it. They assassinate the members of the Circle of the Black Thorn, the Senior Partners' instruments on Earth. In this effort, Gunn is badly wounded (probably mortally), and Wesley is killed. Gunn manages to make it to the meeting point, the alley behind the Hyperion Hotel, where he, Angel, Spike and Illyria engage in battle with the dark armies that the Senior Partners have sent against them. The last words spoken on screen are, "Let's go to work."
Fall of Los Angeles
The Senior Partners render Angel human, leaving him vulnerable to mortal injuries.
During the battle, Angel was teleported away from Gunn and towards the dragon he later befriended, who had been tricked in fighting for Wolfram & Hart; Gunn was dragged away and subsequently turned into a vampire.[26] The Senior Partners sent all of Los Angeles to a hell dimension between moments of time, turning the city into an apocalyptic battlefield full of demons. At the same moment, they rendered Angel human to deprive him of his strength and immortality when he needed it most; unaware of the change, he leapt off a rooftop, breaking his legs and back. He was discovered by Wesley, resurrected as a ghost to act as liaison between Angel and the Senior Partners.[27] The dragon took Angel back to W&H, where he relied on neo-primitive healing salves and incantations to repair his broken body. The process took months, and Angel spent every second awake and in agony; to endure the pain, he spoke to an imaginary Cordelia. Believing he was talking to him, the dragon came to believe its own name was Cordelia.[28] With his body healed, Angel began patrolling the hell-ridden city with "Cordelia", rescuing citizens and sending them, anonymously, to a safe-house run by Connor, Nina, and Gwen. His mission was complicated by the Demon Lords who had taken control over areas of Los Angeles.[29] Angel declared war on the Demon Lords, challenging them to a battle to liberate the city.[30] Initially alone in the fight, he was soon aided by his old friends Spike, Illyria, Connor, Gwen, Nina, Groosalugg, Lorne, and Wesley,[31] and successfully tricked the Lords into killing themselves with the Hagan Shafts.[32]
Angel is horrified by a vision of his role in the Shanshu Prophecy.
Following their victory, Team Angel returned to their old base, the Hyperion Hotel,[32] where Angel resumed his patrols of the city. After killing a nest of vampires, Illyria revealed to the group that Angel was no longer a vampire, leaving Connor feeling angry and betrayed. When he asked Illyria to seek out the most powerful vampire in Hell-A, Angel was horrified when she led him to Gunn.[33] Defeating Angel in battle, Gunn undid the magicks keeping Angel alive, reopening every wound he had suffered since turning human.[34] Visited by the spirit of Cordelia, Angel resigns himself to death after receiving a vision from the Senior Partners regarding his role in the Shanshu Prophecy; himself standing alone surrounded by bodies.[28] However, last-minute encouragement from Connor inspired him to keep fighting.[35] Angel's friends healed his injuries, but at the same time, Gunn caused Illyria to revert to her true form.[36] As Illyria prepared to end all existence, Angel devised a plan to stop her; he had Betta George telepathically force Spike and Wesley's memories of Fred into Illyria's mind. The distracted Illyria was then taken down by the Senior Partners' forces. Meanwhile, Connor was mortally wounded by Gunn and died in his father's arms.[37] Realizing that the Senior Partners needed him to fulfill the Shanshu Prophecy, Angel provoked Gunn into decapitating him with the Flaming Sword. As planned, the Senior Partners reset the timeline to the last point Angel was alive, the moment before Los Angeles was sent to Hell. This time, Angel rescued Gunn before he was sired and took him to a hospital, and tearfully reunited with a resurrected Connor. However, the Wolfram & Hart building had mysteriously vanished from existence, and everybody remembered their time in Hell, making Angel a city-wide celebrity recognized for his heroism.[38] Giving Cordelia the dragon over to Groosalugg to remain as inconspicuous as possible, Angel reopened Angel Investigations.[39]
“All this time, I did what I did because of the Shanshu Prophecy. Well. Time to start doing what I do despite it.”
―Angel[src]
Back to Earth
“Back to the beginning. Back when I used to do some good.”
As his friends went their separate ways, Angel reunited with Kate Lockley for the first time in over three years. Kate had changed dramatically since their last meeting and invited herself to join the new Angel Investigations alongside Connor. Angel's new-found fame proved difficult for the agency, with many potential cases turning out to be just people who wanted to see Angel. Angel also had to put up with constant assassination attempts from the Demon Lords, who had been resurrected in the restoration of L.A.[40] One of these assassins, the feline shapeshifterDez, quickly became an ally to the team.[41] Angel also befriended James, a Potentate who abandoned his fellow warrior angels when they began killing humans.[42]
One of Angel's missions took him to the San Diego Sci-Fi Festival, a comic book convention where he viewed a preview of Last Angel in Hell, a Hollywood adaption of the Fall of Los Angeles. Angel was disappointed by the inaccuracy of the film, in which his character, Angel Cartwright, was played by Nicholas Cage.[43] When contacted by a corporation about the possibility of turning their clients into vampires to grant them immortality, Angel was abducted and kept prisoner after he rejected their offer, stating that his "condition" was not something that could be passed on, the organization studying him to try and develop a means of duplicating his status of an immortal with a soul [44] However, Illyria was able to find Angel after the lab's premature unveiling- having been unable to establish that the soul had been successfully returned to their clients despite their best efforts-, informing him that she had decided to continue fighting for humanity if he would help to serve as her moral compass- due to the similarity between the two as demons "afflicted" with a human conscience-, simultaneously asking for his permission to "court" Connor as she approached a once-in-a-millennium breeding stage and seeking Connor to be the father of her potential offspring [45].
Following his and Illyria's escape, the group found themselves with a new problem when new team member Laura Kay Weathermill revealed that James was not an angel, but was in fact an unidentified higher demonic power investigating Earth to prepare for his conquest of it. Prior to his departure from the Hyperion, James left Laura in a coma and ripped off Angel's hands and feet, only for the amputated limbs to start growing back. Wondering at this sudden change in vampire powers, the team learned that it was an indication that some powerful supernatural upheaval was about to take place [46]. This attack was foreshadowed by James attempting to eliminate Angel and Spike by summoning a soul-eating demon known as Liss[47], but this attempt was interrupted when Liss revealed that Spike does not actually have a soul[48]. Despite this shock, Angel and the group managed to defeat Liss, Angel agreeing with the other group's comments that Spike had changed recently, expressing disinterest in having Spike revert to his crazy basement-inhabiting self, although he concluded that Spike could stay around so long as they kept an eye on him, Spike reaffirming that he was still on their side[49]. Following a confrontation with a demonic sisterhood that sought Connor's blood for unspecified reasons, Angel has decided to take a temporary leave from the agency in order to give Connor a chance to find out who he is on his own without following in his father's footsteps[50].
James's Future
Just as he is leaving Los Angelus, Angel is 'summoned' into the future by Darrow, an agent of the Senior Partners, who shows him the world that James has created, only for Angel to leap off the building into the city rather than remain and be forced to help the Senior Partners again[51]. While exploring the city, Angel discovered that his original offices have been turned into a museum dedicated to his memory- including a statue of him-, allowing him to re-arm himself before he is forced to retreat to the sewers with Darrow to escape James. Before he can learn Darrow's plan, however, Darrow is found unconcious, only for Angel to learn that Darrow's attacker is actually Illyria[52]. Having convinced Illyria that he is only there to help take down James, regardless of what other plans Wolfram & Hart have for him, Angel, Illyria and Darrow sneak into James's main office, only to discover that James has been decapitated by his 'sister'[53]. As Illyria clashes with James's sister, Darrow, fatally injured in the fight, admits to Angel that he has a great role in the past that will see him acting in ways he never imagined, but dies before he can fully explain this comment. Although James's sister offers Angel control of this Earth, granting him freedom to run it any way he likes so long as he continues to provide her with her armies, Angel rejects the offer due to his experience with trying to run Wolfram & Hart that way, asking that Illyria send him back to the past so that he can confront James[54].
Twilight
Angel disguises himself as "Twilight".
“Powerful people -- governments -- lining up to wipe out the "terrorists" you created. Demons weren't thrilled either. I put on a mask, talk about "Master Plans"... distract them. Keep the body count as low as I can while I push.”
―Angel explains the Twilight ruse.[src]
At some point, Angel gained new abilities after a meeting with a shapeshifting higher power, including flight and invulnerability, which he quickly used to save a damaged airplane.[55] With governments and demons fearful of the new Slayers created by Buffy and plotting to destroy them, Angel was approached by Whistler, the very same demon who originally put him on his heroic path, who presented him with numerous possible future scenarios, those of which that depict Angel fighting alongside Buffy ending with both of them dying in battle, and insisted that the only way for Angel to save them both was to fight against Buffy.[56] Though not particularly happy about this, Angel assumed the identity of "Twilight" and gathered a cabal of those most likely to oppose the Slayer army, consisting of several demons, members of the United States military such as General Voll, Lieutenant Moulter and an unidentified General, as well as Buffy's old enemies Warren Mears and Amy Madison, and her ex-boyfriend Riley Finn, the latter of whom was acting as a double agent for Buffy, though "Twilight" was aware of this fact. His supposed goal was to bring about the end of magic and eliminate all Slayers. However, his true goal was to keep the anti-Slayer forces distracted with his supposed "Master Plan", thus allowing him to coordinate the anti-Slayer movement and limit the potential damage that might result had these factions struck independently, while at the same time give Buffy a concrete threat to fight against, keeping her focused and ready for the challenge that lay ahead, while also guiding her into a position where she would somehow acquire powers similar to his.
As Twilight, Angel orchestrated the training of rogue Slayer Genevieve Savidge by the warlock Roden, which resulted in the deaths of both threats to Buffy, a mystical missile attack on the HQ of the Slayer Organization and full scale siege on the Tibetan sanctuary set up by Daniel Osbourne and his wife Bayarmaa. During the siege, Twilight left behind his "seconds" - Amy, Warren and the General - to kidnap Giles, Faith and Andrew (Although he had some trouble recognizing Andrew, most likely due to the brevity of their previous contact). He took them to his "Villain HQ", which was magically cloaked three seconds in the future, though Buffy tracked him down when the cloak was undone by Willow and Amy. Confronted by Buffy- now possessing strength, invulnerability and flight like his own-, Twilight chose to reveal his true identity to Buffy. Though initially enraged by this, Buffy is moved when Angel explained his plan, and kissed him, the two subsequently finding themselves in a pocket dimension while Giles explains to the others that the current events tie in to a prophecy of a supernatural upheaval where the world shall be recreated after a Slayer changes everything in the world, with Buffy and Angel having been selected to serve as the catalysts of that change [57]. However, upon witnessing her friends and family fighting the resulting demonic hordes, Buffy rejects Angel's plan to go along with the proposed "evolution" to go back at help her friends, Angel agreeing to join her, only for the fight to be interrupted when Spike appears claiming to have the answer to the current crisis[58]. Given Angel's currently tense relationship with Spike- as well as the Scoobies' current hostility towards him-, Buffy asked Angel to help protect the Slayers from the currently-attacking demons while she went with Spike to investigate his claims[55].
While in the midst of doing so, however, Angel encountered the same higher power who granted him his new powers, this time in the form of a winged lion. The power revealed itself to be the very dimension, itself called 'Twilight', that Buffy and Angel chose to abandon, and insisted that Angel and Buffy finish what they started. To this end, Twilight seemingly possessed Angel and sent him to the ruins of Sunnydale to stop the Scoobies and Spike. Although Buffy was able to keep Angel occupied long enough to destroy the Seed of Wonder, Angel killed Giles before he was returned to normal[59]. Following this, Angel has been reduced to an apparently catatonic state, with Faith taking care of him in an apartment that Giles left to her as she feels that she is the only person who will not judge Angel for his actions as Twilight due to her past experience with redemption[60].
Appearance
Giles: “There's mention over two hundred years ago in Ireland of Angelus, the one with the angelic face.”
Angel has a very distinct appearance and style of dress, traditionally wearing full-length, black wool dusters, a light brown trench coat, or a shorter leather jacket, black trousers and black dress shoes. Although his dress shirts tend to vary in color, they are often in gem tones and other dark colors. While he initially wore untucked white button down shirts with black dress jackets and a black leather bomber jacket (which he gave to Buffy), he began wearing white undershirts, white and black wife beaters, a red velvet shirt, gray and black soft pullovers and long-sleeved dress shirts in colors such as blue and red. The notable exceptions to this rule were in "Sense & Sensitivity", when Angel wore a Hawaiian shirt while undercover, a cream pullover identical to his darker ones to make a customer more comfortable in "I Fall to Pieces", an uncharacteristic white and yellow striped dress shirt while under Jasmine's thrall and a loud Italian sports jacket in "The Girl in Question" (although this last was only because his usual clothes were damaged by a bomb planted by the Immortal and there was nothing else available for him to wear). Angel's most readily identifiable characteristic is his hair, which, although it varies somewhat in length, is consistently spiked upward at the front with styling product (a fact that he was apparently unaware of, due to his reaction upon seeing his reflection in a mirror during a trip to Pylea). Virtually the only times in either series that Angel is not shown with some variation of this trademark hairstyle are during flashback sequences where he often sports either long, shoulder-length hair (either in a loose ponytail or down) or a short style slicked with a side part. During Season 2 of Buffy, Angelus was fond of wearing black leather pants and black eyeliner.
While in the Twilight persona, Angel wore a black leather duster along with metal chest armor, black pants, black gloves, black boots and a red, black and gold mask.
Powers and abilities
“You get lucky, you might last ten minutes. Really lucky, and you're unconscious for the last five.”
Angel has the standard powers (albeit at much higher levels) and vulnerabilities of a Buffyverse vampire. He has demonstrated enhanced speed in episodes such as "Blood Money", "Reprise", "Release" and "That Vision Thing", crossing several meters in the blink of an eye. He is a highly skilled combatant and generally fights unarmed, using circular attacks such as spinning kicks and back hands. In addition to his proficiency in many forms of martial arts, he has mastered many varieties of weapons, favoring the axe and the broadsword. During his lifetime, Angel and Angelus have both successfully stood up to a wide variety of opponents, Angelus surviving various confrontations with Angel's allies such as Buffy Summers, Faith and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce- albeit by exploiting Angel's knowledge of their traditional fighting styles and the fact that none of them really wanted to kill him-, while Angel has even survived a hand-to-hand fight with the ancient vampire Kakistos on one occasion despite living in seclusion for over a decade by the time of their fight, as well as confrontations with such powerful foes as Russell Winters and Marcus Hamilton.
Angel also possesses some cognitive abilities; he has a photographic memory ("Habeas Corpses") and has displayed a psychic connection to those he has sired on at least one occasion ("Somnambulist"). In "Power Play", he reveals that Cordelia passed on her visions to him earlier that season in "You're Welcome"; however, he believes that this was a "one-shot deal", suggesting that this ability is not permanent. Because of his age, Angel has immense knowledge of both demonology and history (on occasion rivaling that of Giles and Wesley). Angel also has some experience in magic, able to perform spells, exorcisms, and glamours, although he prefers to rely on others' expertise if the option is available rather than doing them himself. As Angelus, he displays considerable skill in manipulating others' emotional states and has driven his victims insane, as seen with Drusilla. He is also an expert in torture as both Angel and Angelus. Additionally, Angel is highly intelligent, possessing strong leadership skills and having a natural flair for strategies and tactical planning. Angel also appears to be a master of intimidation; in "Deep Down", when Connor breaks free of his restraints and beats down Gunn and Fred, Angel, despite his weakened condition after three months trapped at the bottom of the ocean and only a limited amount of recently-ingested blood to restore himself, quickly stands up to Connor and orders him to sit down, which he does after only a slight hesitation.
He has "very nice handwriting" and is a gifted artist, using charcoal crayon and China ink to draw portraits. He can drive, owning a black 1967 Plymouth GTX and a Dodge Viper, along with an entire garage full of other cars as W&H CEO. He can speak several languages, including English, Korean, Tibetan, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Belarusian, Romanian, and German, and attempted to learn the language of the Vinji and Sahrvin demons via an instruction tape. Angel is competent, but uncomfortable, with modern technology; he frequently struggles to understand cellphones (once claiming that they must have been invented by a "bored warlock") and confuses computer terminology such as "chatty rooms." He is shown changing diapers, but claims to be more familiar with pins than the "new-fangled fasteners" of disposable brands ("Dad"). He is also a convincing improvisational actor, deceiving Faith as well as the Circle of the Black Thorn and his own allies into believing that he has either reverted to Angelus or gone corrupt on his own, but has no talent for singing.
Following the Fall of Los Angeles, Angel was turned into a human by the Senior Partners as a way of deprive him of his strength when he most needed it. He used various enchantments to keep up the appearance that he was still a vampire and heal the worst of his injuries. However, following the Temporal Fold performed by the Senior Partners, Angel regained his vampire abilities and handicaps. Recently, he has demonstrated a new ability to regenerate limbs, his hands and feet growing back after the traitorous James tore them off during his escape, the team speculating that this change in vampire abilities hints at an upcoming supernatural event.
As Twilight, Angel had obtained new abilities, including flight and invulnerability. The precise source and limit of his new abilities are unknown, but he has survived having a tree thrown at him without any apparent side-effects, the tree simply splintering off his chest. He also shows immunity to sunlight and all vampire weaknesses, and his abilities also seem to have altered the conditions of his Gypsy curse, as he has sex with Buffy without losing his soul. His pre-existing abilities, such as his strength, speed, agility, reflexes, and senses, are also greatly enhanced. It is unclear to what extent he has retained these abilities following the destruction of the Seed of Wonder and the 'death' of Twilight.
Relationships
Romantic interests
Darla: The vampire who turned Liam into Angelus, Angelus and Darla were lovers for over a century- Darla even leaving the Master to live with her 'dear boy'- until Angelus' transformation into Angel drove them apart. Although he briefly tried to redeem himself in her eyes by continuing to kill humans- Angel even admits that he initially sought Darla rather than redemption after he first gained his soul-, he eventually left her when he was forced to accept that he didn't have it in him to kill innocents any more. Because Darla sired Angel, he sees her as something of a maternal figure, even feeling something for her when his soul was restored, although he nevertheless denies any claims that he loved her as Angelus as he regards his demon as being incapable of feeling love. During Darla's brief moments of humanity - when she is resurrected by Wolfram & Hart - Angel goes above and beyond in trying to help her atone, but later admits to her and himself that this was more out of a desire to prove that he could save himself rather than a desire to save Darla. When Darla becomes pregnant with her and Angel's son, Connor, Darla tells Angel that their son is "the only good thing" that they ever did together; she then stakes herself in order to allow Connor to be born.
Buffy Summers: When Angel first sees Buffy, he realizes that he wants to be someone and his faith in humanity is inspired. When they sleep together for the first time, Angel loses his soul, becoming Angelus. Buffy is forced to kill him, to save the world, even though Willow has just ensouled him. After he returns from Hell, he and Buffy still love each other, and attempt a relationship. After realizing this relationship is unfair to Buffy and he needs to begin his path to redemption, he leaves. Buffy comes to L.A., and for a brief time, Angel becomes human and they spend one blissful day together; but ultimately, he has to rewind the day because his humanity will eventually lead to Buffy's death and undermine their attempts at helping people. After he is turned back, only Angel himself has any memory of their day together and what they could have had. Later on, their relationship becomes strained, partly because of Buffy's new boyfriend but also because of the fact that Angel tries to help Faith, the ex-rogue slayer. When Buffy's mother died during season five of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Angel came to comfort her and they shared a kiss before he left again, much to the pain of both of them. After Buffy dies in the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel spends months away at a monastery in Asia, feeling guilty that her death has not ended him. Also, shortly after Buffy's resurrection, they met somewhere between Los Angeles and Sunnydale as they both felt they needed to see one another - this, however, occurs off-screen. Buffy would describe this encounter as "intense." He comes to help Buffy in the Buffy series finale and provides aid to Buffy in the final fight against Caleb. He gives her an amulet that proves important in the final confrontation with the First. He goes to seek Buffy out in Italy during the last season of Angel, albeit unsuccessfully. Angel and Spike's relationships with Buffy are left on even grounds with Andrew saying Buffy loves them both. Buffy stated in "Selfless", "I loved Angel more than I will ever love anything in this life." She also expresses that she sometimes still thinks about a future with Angel in "Chosen", but it will be years, if ever. When Angel meets her again after his identity as Twilight is exposed, he implies that there is a reason for their feelings for each other, stating that they have such a connection that they will never be able to be happy with anyone else, although his subsequent period under Twilight's control leaves their relationship in greater trouble.
Kate Lockley: Kate serves as Angel's contact in the police force as he starts his private detective business. The strong possibility of a relationship is hinted at, but ultimately doesn't materialize as she is unable to accept her discovery of his vampire nature, blaming him for the death of her father when her father was killed by vampires and wouldn't invite Angel in to help. The two eventually reconcile when Angel saves her life after she attempts to commit suicide after losing her job at the L.A.P.D., Kate going on to become a member of the reformed Angel Investigations after the Fall of Los Angeles has been undone. Although she and Angel nearly have sex at one point- Kate suggesting that they just do it to resolve their sexual tension-, this was merely the result of Illyria's attempts to seduce Connor creating a psychic 'heat' in the Hyperion, with Angel and Kate promising to never bring the incident up again when Illyria's influence fades.
Rebecca Lowell: A short-lived love interest introduced in the episode "Eternity," Rebecca is an actress who hires Angel as her bodyguard. Learning about his vampire nature, she tries to convince him to sire her, not wanting to become old and unattractive, but her attempts only result in Angel briefly reverting to Angelus when she drugs his drink, inducing a feeling of bliss. After this, she leaves the office and is never seen again.
Cordelia Chase: Friends for years, Angel and Cordelia eventually realize that they have fallen in love with one another, only to be torn apart by her ascension and transformation and his imprisonment underwater by Connor before they can tell each other. Upon their subsequent returns, they do not pursue the relationship; Cordelia instead, under the control of Jasmine, forms a relationship with Angel's son, which results in her falling into a coma when Jasmine uses her body to create an independent host for itself. In Angel's perfect day dream-sequence, Angel ends it by consummating the relationship, but calls out "Buffy!" as he is losing his soul. Later, Cordelia returns to put Angel back on track to stopping the Apocalypse. She does this and just before she dies, Cordelia and Angel share their first and only real kiss. In doing so, one last vision (which is only a one-shot deal) showing Angel that the Circle of the Black Thorn are the Senior Partners' most powerful agents on Earth, is passed to him, helping him to stop the Apocalypse from the inside.
Nina Ash: A werewolf who Angel saves from being eaten, she develops feelings for Angel and he is eventually convinced to give a relationship a shot. This relationship establishes that Angel is able to have positive sex (unlike his "perfect despair" moment with Darla) and still keep his soul. The two break up when Angel attempts to send her away to save her from the Senior Partners' inevitable revenge.
Intimate liaisons
Drusilla: Angelus tormented the human Drusilla, sired her and kept her on as a companion afterward; Angelus regarded her as his greatest work. The two might have resumed a sexual relationship in Season Two of Buffy after Angel loses his soul.
Spike: Spike mentions in the fifth season episode, "Power Play", that "Angel and me have never been intimate. Except that one--" Whedon has confirmed the possibility of a sexual encounter, and in the DVD commentary for the episode "A Hole In The World", he says: "You know, um, I just wanna say Angel and Spike, they were hanging out, uh, for years and years and years, they were in, you know, all kinds of deviant, they were vampires... Are we thinking they never...? Come on, people! I'm just sayin'. I'm just sayin'. You know, they're open-minded guys. They may be evil but, you know, they're not bigoted or closed-minded." In Season Eight story "Last Gleaming", Buffy says "I liked it better when you were kissing" (referring to her fantasy), to which Spike replies "I'm fairly certain I never mentioned...", confirming their past intimacy.
Aside from this one implied encounter, their relationship throughout the series is generally that of antagonistic rivals- Angel commenting in Monster Island that Spike is jealous as every action he has taken, ranging from his relationship to Dru to the chip in his head, links back to him wanting to be Angel-, Spike's brutal simplicity contrasting with Angel/Angelus's more subtle approach, although by Season Five of Angel the two have progressed to a point where they can effectively fight alongside each other thanks to their long experience with ech other's skills.
The Transuding Furies: The Furies are the three beautiful, powerful beings who cast the anti-demon-violence spell on Lorne's bar, Caritas. When Angel needs the spell removed to fight Gunn's rogue former gang, the Furies tell Cordelia that they will require 'payment' for such an act, and only Angel is 'equipped' to repay the debt (whenever he is mentioned, all three of them say, "Mmm... Angel"). The general tone seems to imply a past sexual relationship between the Furies and Angel.
Gwen Raiden: A thief with command over electricity, Angel shares a kiss with Gwen after she gives him an electro-shock that (temporarily) reawakens his dead heart. He subsequently flirts with her to make Cordelia jealous while they are trying to protect the Ra-Tet from The Beast, but later seems to develop a slight affection for her; he almost appears jealous when she asks for Gunn's help over his.
Eve: Angel's liaison to the Senior Partners, she and Angel have a one-time encounter at Wolfram & Hart's Halloween party, when Lorne loses control of his empathic powers and he begins to unintentionally write destinies instead of reading them (he tells Angel and Eve to "get a room", saying that "you could cut the sexual tension with a knife"). When Angel thinks they should talk about it, Eve remarks, "It's not as if this is the first time I've had sex under mystical influence. I went to UC Santa Cruz". After this, however, their relationship becomes increasingly hostile due to Eve's relationship with Angel's old foe Lindsey, particularly following her attempt to infect Angel with a dream-inducing parasite.
Other
Faith Lehane — When Faith first crosses the line by killing a man, Angel is the first person to attempt to rehabilitate her. However, he is interrupted when Wesley tries to hand her over to the Watchers' Council. While working for Mayor Wilkins, Faith attempts to remove Angel's soul by seducing him. At this point, Faith harbors a sexual interest to Angel, but this is likely out of jealousy toward Buffy. In order to gain inside information about the Mayor's plans, Giles has a dark shaman fake the removal of Angel's soul and Angel as "Angelus" pretends to become romantically involved with Faith. Weeks after the exposure of this ruse, Faith's last act in the Mayor's employ is to shoot Angel with a poison called the Killer of the Dead, and it is this that leads to her near-fatal confrontation with Buffy - the only cure being the blood of a Slayer. After awakening from her coma and fleeing Sunnydale, Faith goes to Los Angeles. Shortly after her arrival, Wolfram & Hart hire Faith to kill Angel. After she tortures Wesley, Angel confronts Faith, and during the fight he realizes what Faith really wants; she wants Angel to kill her. He refuses, and again tries to help her, defending her from both Buffy and agents of the Watchers' Council. Thanks to Angel's help, Faith starts down the path to redemption by confessing to her crimes and going to prison. He visits her to make sure she is alright and prison is where she stays for several years. She later breaks out, but only because Angel needs her help, due to Angelus having been restored. Despite the difficulties involved in such a task, Faith makes sure he is brought in and protected so he can be re-ensouled by Willow, even defeating Connor to prevent him from staking his father. The two share a strong bond based on their mutual desire for redemption; Faith also states that Angel is the one person that has never given up on her, a factor that doubtless plays an important role in her decision to fight so hard to save him, to the point that Faith takes it upon herself to care for Angel when he is reduced to a catatonic state after his period under Twilight's control despite the fact that he killed Giles.
Willow Rosenberg - Angel shares deep affection and mutual confidence with Willow, and not just because she restored his soul not once, but twice; in several occasions he asks for her help, looking at her as a reliable ally and friend. During his initial time in Sunnydale, after Buffy, Willow was probably Angel's closest friend in the Scooby Gang, although, as with all the team, his relationship with her was somewhat strained after he came back from Hell. At the end of episode "Orpheus" (the last time they meet on-screen), they hug as old friends.
Winifred Burkle: When Angel saves Fred from Pylea, he "vamps out", but rather than his face changing as usual, the demon inside of him comes out completely. After killing two guards, it tries to kill Gunn and Wesley - until Fred, her right hand soaked in blood, lures the demon back to her cave. Fred cares for Angel as he recovers, and remains the only person who wasn't scared by Angel's demon after learning about his vampire nature. When Angel brings Fred back to L.A., he takes her in and is the only member of the group who doesn't seem unnerved by her state of mind. She has a crush on him for a time after her arrival, often saying "handsome man saved me from the monsters", but eventually gets over it when she learns about the curse on his soul. Though their relationship isn't romantic, Fred did kiss him once to fool passersby into thinking they were just a random couple when they were on the run from Jasmine's followers. When she asked if he thought they bought it, he replied "I did". Outside of this, the two were generally close, Fred being the only other member of the team present when Darla staked herself so that she could give birth to Connor.
Illyria: Although his relationship with Illyria was initially adversarial, Illyria has gone on to develop considerable respect for Angel, agreeing to follow his orders and plans in combat, and recently requesting for him to act as her moral guide as she attempts to become a hero her way. Her respect for Angel is so great that, even in a possible future where their enemy James has conquered the world, the Illyria of that time swiftly agrees to work with a time-displaced Angel after he is brought to that time by Wolfram & Hart, noting that his motives are as noble as always.
Angel vs. Angelus
“Look, I'm weak. I've never been anything else. It's not the demon in me that needs killing, Buffy. It's the man.”
While Liam is a human and Angelus is a vampire, Angel is something else: a demon with a human soul, a hybrid of man and vampire (Making him a significant contrast to Spike, the other vampire with a soul, whose personality appears to remain fundamentally the same with or without his soul, barring his soulled self feeling somewhat guiltier about his past than his demon would). With the exception of "Spin the Bottle" while amnesiac, Angel has not taken back his birth name of Liam, although Spike occasionally calls him this in order to aggravate him. As Angelus, he considers both the physical and mental destruction of a human being to be artistic, while as Angel, he frequently struggles with his vampiric urges.
Angelus is several times referred to as perhaps the most evil and brutal vampire in existence, even surpassing his comrades in The Whirlwind, murdering more people in his first hundred years of activity then any of them in their entire lives. Angel once told Lindsey McDonald "I'm the greatest mass murderer you've ever met," despite the fact that Lindsey had previously met all the former members of the Whirlwind, who had all been actively killing for far longer than Angelus, and the members of the Circle of the Black Thorn[61]. Even The Master, an ancient vampire known for his evil, once commented that Angelus was "the most vicious creature he had ever met"[62]. Besides being a mass murderer, Angelus is also a violent rapist, known for sexually assaulting many of his female victims, such as the Gypsy girl that lead to his being cursed, and possibly Drusilla. He is also known to use the threat of rape as a psychological weapon, shown when he, while locked in a cage, gleefully reveals that "they're not a lot of things I wouldn't mind doing to that (Cordelia's) body. Other than the obvious."
Angel, by contrast, is nearly the complete antithesis of this. He enjoys the feeling of helping people and doing what is right, and desperately desires to atone for the atrocities he committed as Angelus. His soul provides him with constant torment with memories of his past, as his photographic memory allows him to recall, in perfect detail, every single one of the faces of his past victims. While once fighting because he believed he was making a difference in the battle between good and evil, and that he would gain measure of redemption upon completion of this task, he has since altered this view after having an epiphany about his fight, and altered his reasons. He once explained these reasons to Kate Lockley by saying "All I want to do is help. I want to help because I don't think people should suffer as they do, because if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world."[63]). He does not always seem to believe it is actually possible for him to gain redemption for his evil actions, once telling Spike that he believes his escape from Acathla's hell was not an escape, but only a "short reprieve", and that he still believes he will go to hell if/when he dies.
The distinction between Angel and Angelus is somewhat blurred. Immediately after regaining his soul, 'Angel' initially appeared unaware of what he had done as Angelus, later simply acting like Angelus with a conscience- showing horror at his past crimes without otherwise acting differently from his vampire persona-, before he fully accepted his new status as a vampire with with a soul, refusing to kill an innocent baby and instead taking the child away from Darla. By the 1950s, Angel had developed to a point where he was compared to "Angelus without the sadism", possessing a cynical view of the world and generally uninterested in social interaction without actually wanting to kill anybody. At one point he briefly attempted to help a young woman escape prosecution for her mixed-race heritage before she turned on him in a panic under the influence of a Thesulac demon, Angel subsequently abandoning the hotel to the demon's influence even after it offered him the chance to kill it (although he eventually atoned for this action by returning to the hotel to eliminate it once and for all[64]).
As shown in "Becoming, Part One" and "Becoming, Part Two", it takes a few moments for Angel to remember Angelus' actions whenever the curse takes effect. In "Eternity", Angel reverts to Angelus without his curse being broken, due to having been secretly fed a happy pill that tricked him into believing that he had experienced perfect happiness. In "Orpheus", the two are indeed shown to be separate personas, both struggling within Angel's mind for control. When all reference to the Beast was erased from this dimension, Angel was also affected, while Angelus was not, as he did not technically exist when the spell was cast.
Oftentimes, when speaking of Angelus's crimes, Angel will refer to him in the first person, but will, at other times, refer to him as a separate entity. For example, when being taunted by the First Evil in "Amends", Angel cries out, "It wasn't me!" Though the names "Angel" and "Angelus" are typically used synonymously, there is a distinction, which Buffy noticed in "Innocence": when Angelus tried to taunt her by claiming that Angel never really loved her, Buffy adamantly stated, "That doesn't work anymore. You're not Angel." However, he appears to have gone by the name of Angel long before meeting Buffy face to face; in "Why We Fight", he corrects the Demon Research Initiative when they refer to him as Angelus. At one point during Buffy Season Two, Angelus does refer to himself as Angel ("Wrong. I am Angel. At last.")- although this could just mean that he regards himself as the true personality while Angel is "just something that [he is] forced to wear"- and is constantly referred to as "Angel" by both Drusilla and Spike, suggesting that Angelus, before being ensouled, considered the name to belong to him (indeed, as The Master points out, "angelus" is just the Latin version of "angel"). It is Jenny Calender who first makes an on-screen distinction between the two personalities (the Scooby Gang always refer to him as Angel, although Angel Investigations- with the exception of Connor- drew a clearer distinction between the two identities), Jenny stating that "Angelus is back" when learning about the true nature of his curse.
Angelus has been shown to resent many of Angel's habits and is disgusted by them, such as his love for Buffy, his loyalty and compassion towards his teammates with both the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations, his twenty-year period of feeding on rat blood after accidentally drinking from a murder victim, and his enjoyment of Barry Manilow and ice hockey. Additionally, due to Angel's relationship with Buffy, Angelus is greatly disgusted by her: when Buffy and Angelus are possessed by the ghosts of a murder-suicide couple and freed from their influence after the ghosts reaffirm their love and kiss[65], Angelus is so horrified and disgusted by this intimate contact with Buffy that he immediately ran off and frantically scrubbed himself raw in the fountain of the Crawford Street Mansion, remarking that Buffy had "violated" him and deciding that he needed "a really vile kill" to completely cleanse himself. However, Angelus does not truly hate Buffy, as he bizarrely does not feel pure hatred towards anything, and even seems to lack the ability to do so. This is shared by Angel, who once commented that he had "given up on hate a long time ago", and that Angelus never killed purely out of anger, but rather because of his shear sadism.[66] Indeed, unlike Angel, Angelus is unaffected by the Judge, a demon who can incinerate any being with "humanity" (more specifically an emotional capacity), thus proving that Angelus is seemingly incapable of actual emotion. Nonetheless, Angel's seeming inability to hate makes him the only being immune to the misogyny-inducing touch of Billy Blim.
Angelus, despite being purely evil, is capable of great sadness on rare occasions. Ballet in particular have this effect on him, as he was moved to tears by a performance of Giselle which he attended in 1890. Angel also shares this quirk, and still remains in awe of the ballet.[16]
Both have shown themselves to be skilled improvisational actors, Angelus easily able to win the trust of his victims while Angel has managed to fool such opponents as a random Wolfram & Hart lawyer to the entire Circle of the Black Thorn into believing that he belongs there. Each possess essentially the same combat style- although Angelus tends to taunt his opponents to put them off-guard, such as when he fought Buffy and the Beast, while Angel is generally a silent combatant unless the other person talks to him first-, and have demonstrated a skilled use of psychology outside of battle; Angel retains Angelus's understanding of the psychosis of such criminals as stalkers, giving him a unique insight into many of his enemies, while Angelus regularly exploits Angel's knowledge of his allies to play on their weaknesses, with Cordelia commenting that Angelus is dangerous because he "lies with the truth" (providing enough information to turn his enemies against each other while withholding some crucial details like Angel's own feelings about the topics Angelus is discussing). Despite this shared awareness of each other's thoughts, Angelus is still incapable of understanding why Angel does what he does, commenting in his and Angel's only simultaneous on-screen appearance that he fails to understand Angel's concern with the "human condition", regarding humans' only purpose as being to suffer and die, while Cordelia- albeit when possessed by 'Jasmine'- noted that Angelus appears to have a greater understanding of opponents like the Beast than Angel does, despite the two sharing the same memory.
Another key difference between Angel and Angelus is that Angelus, though pure evil and incapable of feeling love, is known for brutal acts of love, such as nailing a puppy to a tree (an event that has never been gone into in detail) and giving Drusilla a fresh human heart as a Valentine's Day gift ("Passion"). Additionally, he has been shown to use others' relationships to torment his enemies; in "Passion", for example, he places the recently-slain body of Jenny Calendar in Giles' bed, along with a few clues to make it appear as though Jenny had set up a romantic evening for them, and also repeatedly breaks into the homes of Buffy and Willow to watch them sleep and draw pictures of them, also killing all of Willow's pet fish and impaling the corpses on a string for Willow to find. One of Angelus' most notorious crimes, as described in "Amends", is when he killed three children and set them all up in bed to make them appear to be sleeping, and their father didn't realize the truth until he kissed one of them good night and noticed how cold they were.
Angel, by contrast, is often aware of the importance of love even if he often shies away from it because of both his guilt about his past and the curse on his soul, forming strong familial bonds with his teammates at Angel Investigations- to the point where he described his relationship with Cordelia as 'family' only a few months after they started to work together [67]- and giving Buffy a cross, a claddagh ring and a book of poetry for her birthday during their three years of dating respectively.
Additionally, Angelus is not only an expert in torture, but a complete sadist. When contemplating torturing Giles for information on how to awaken Acathla, Angelus remarked that the last time that he had tortured someone, they hadn't even invented the chainsaw, and even told Giles that he hoped that he wouldn't reveal the information just so he would have the opportunity to torture him. Indeed, Giles later remarked that Angelus had in fact tortured him for several hours largely for his own amusement. While Angel possesses Angelus's knowledge of torture, and has been shown to be implied to use it on occasion, such as when he tortured Linwood Murrow to try and learn how to open a portal to Quor'toth, typically he acquires information by intimidating those enemies who know about his past as Angelus into thinking that he will torture them rather than actually resorting to such measures.
Another difference between the two is their views on killing humans. While Angelus doesn't hesitate to kill humans and in fact enjoys it, Angel tries not to as much as possible. Angel will kill an evil human if the need arises, shown in his willingness to kill people such as Vanessa Brewer, but will not kill under other circumstances unless he is certain that he has to, as shown most keenly by the fact that he generally avoided killing anyone at Wolfram & Hart directly himself regardless of the valid reasons and varied opportunities he possessed to do so. After Angel got his soul back the first time and was trying to convince Darla to let him rejoin her, she revealed that while he had been killing again, it had only been rapists, thieves and murderers, in short, only evil humans.
Angelus's Achilles' heel is his own narcissism and ego: he is prone to excessive talking, and his constant need to taunt his opponents or brag about his accomplishments when he has them on the ropes has often been used against him by his victims, either to try to escape or fight back. Spike once remarked that Angelus "bloody well talk[s] them to death before [he] kill[s] them!" Although Angel is equally aware of his combat skills and reputation, he typically talks with his opponents prior to battles rather than during, exploiting opportunities to end a fight where Angelus would have allowed his foe to live so that he could mock them before delivering the killing blow.
Angel was supposed to be a one-time character until David Boreanaz was found.[68] David had already been cast at the time of the Unaired Buffy pilot, but did not appear.
In the Angel season three episode "Carpe Noctem", in which Angel was victim of a body-switch, he was played by Rance Howard.
Throughout his time on Buffy, Angel was the only non-human member of the Scooby Gang, a role taken over sometime after his departure by Spike.
Angel is the second and last vampiric Big Bad of Buffy.
Angel's tattoo
Angel has a tattoo on his shoulder-blade of a griffin from The Book of Kells[69], with the addition of the letter 'A' beneath it.
The first time it was planned that Angel would lose his soul, Joss Whedon was doubtful of David Boreanaz being capable of portraying the cruelty of Angelus; however, Whedon would later come to state that David scared him in "Becoming, Part Two".
Angel is a "Fanilow" (a fan of Barry Manilow), particularly loving the song "Mandy". As he quotes, "I think it's kinda pretty." He is also a fan of actor Charlton Heston.
Angel has appeared in by far the most episodes in the Buffyverse, for a total of 167 episodes. Buffy and Willow are next, with 146 and 147 episodes respectively. He has also appeared in the most seasons of the Buffyverse (all seasons of Buffy and Angel except for Buffy season 6) for a total of 11. He is also the only character to appear in the pilots and finales of both Buffy and Angel.
After Angel was revealed to be Twilight, he became the only character to be a Big Bad in two different seasons.
Angel is a fan of ice hockey (we see him watching the game in "Life of the Party") and he hoped Connor would grow up playing ice hockey, one of the reasons being that it is a sport where most games are played indoors, and at night (allowing for vampires to spectate).
Angel's human name, Liam, is the Irish form of the name William.
Though Twilight was introduced at the height of the popularity of Stephanie Meyers' Twilight vampire romance franchise, he is in no way a reference to it. Joss Whedon had never heard of Twilight when he chose the villain's name[70] (Although reference to Twilight was included when Twilight was unmasked, Buffy commenting that she had done the vampire thing first and that her vampire was better, Angel subsequently agreeing after his mask was removed).
Twilight's secret identity was leaked on the Internet months prior to the publication of issue 33.
Angel/Angelus was first of three members of The Whirlwind to be ensouled (in 1898). Darla and Spike are the other two members.
Angel holds the record of most deaths in the Buffyverse with 6 (However, 4 of them were in either alternate universes or dreams).
Angel's Expanded Universe
Barbary Coast
This title depicts Angel's quest during the Boxer Rebellion era.
↑ 16.016.116.2"Waiting in the Wings" Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "WitW" defined multiple times with different contentCite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "WitW" defined multiple times with different content
