Changes: Lilah Morgan

Revision as of 14:29, 28 January 2011

Lilah Morgan: “Look, I've been doing this a long damn time. I've had to be better and smarter and quicker than every man at Wolfram and Hart.”

Angel: “So it's a feminist thing. [...]”

Lilah Morgan: “It's a survival thing. I made a lot of devil's bargains and I stuck to them. As a result I live somewhat dangerously and quite comfortably. And my mother, who no longer recognizes me, has the best room in the clinic. I get up every morning, put on my game face and do what I have to.”

— Lilah Morgan and Angel^[src]

Lilah Morgan was a lawyer at Wolfram & Hart.

Biography

Season One

Lilah is a lawyer working for the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart. In her first appearance, she tries (and fails) to persuade Angel to work for her employers by buying his contract when he is captured by a demon fight ring. She offers him his freedom if he agrees to look the other way and 'pick the battles [he] could win'. Angel informs her that there are far too many reasons they couldn't work together, and he prefers to return to the ring than gain his freedom that way. He is returned to the ring, and she then works to kill Angel; she is co-architect of a plan to hire renegade Slayer Faith in order to do just that. Over time, Lilah and another lawyer, Lindsey McDonald, compete against each other for the favor of their bosses.

Season Two

The vampire Darla is resurrected as a human by Wolfram & Hart and ultimately turned back into a vampire by Drusilla. Darla and Drusilla massacre a group of Wolfram & Hart lawyers in Holland Manners' wine cellar. Only Lilah and Lindsey are spared, and with only the two of them left on Wolfram & Hart's Special Projects Team, their rivalry reaches an all-time high as they start a power struggle for the vice-presidency of the team, as well as for survival. Eventually, Lindsey is offered the promotion, but he elects to leave the firm, disillusioned by the extent of its evil. He tosses his promotion to Lilah, effectively saving her life.

Season Three

In the third season, Lilah ups the ante in her vendetta with Angel, and blackmails him into freeing a mysterious young man, Billy Blim, from a Hell dimension by torturing Cordelia Chase. In the episode "Billy," the effects of these actions come back to haunt Lilah. As it turns out, Billy is a half-demon misogynist, and has the ability to bring out primordial violence in men simply by touching them. He touches Lilah's newest rival, Gavin Park, causing Gavin to beat her severely. Lilah hides herself and her bruises in her apartment for a time, and refuses to assist Angel when he comes to her for help in sending Billy back to Hell. Later on, Cordelia also comes to ask for aid in ending the evil Lilah helped begin, and Lilah again refuses. "I am not Lindsey McDonald. I don't switch [sides] whenever it gets tough." In response, Cordelia calls her a "vicious bitch." Lilah shrugs. "So you know me." Cordelia responds that no one deserving of the title of "vicious bitch" would allow Billy to get away with what he did, and Lilah eventually gives in and reveals Billy's whereabouts. The confrontation among Billy, Cordelia, and Angel takes place on the runway of a private airport, and Lilah arrives at the eleventh hour to fire the fatal shot, killing Billy and regaining her own sense of self-worth. It is around that time that she also receives a new boss, Linwood Murrow, who desires to kidnap Angel's newborn son, Connor.

Lilah herself investigates the return of Daniel Holtz, an old enemy of Angel's. Holtz has broken away from his partnership with the demon Sahjhan, who wishes to eliminate Angel for his own reasons, and he seeks out Wolfram & Hart. He brokers a deal with Lilah, a deal that ultimately results in Connor and Holtz being lost into the Quor-Toth dimension.

At the end of the third season, Lilah begins sleeping with Wesley Wyndam-Pryce after his betrayal of Angel and ejection from Angel Investigations. She tries to convince him to join Wolfram & Hart, but he refuses her advances.

Season Four

Lilah's relationship with Wesley, which begins as a series of one-night stands, continues throughout the fourth season, through the emergence of The Beast and the destruction of the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart that results in the death of all employees present except for Lilah, who is able to escape with Wesley's help. Shortly before that time, she kills Linwood during a board meeting, thereby assuming his position.

Lilah is killed shortly after the re-emergence of Angelus, stabbed to death by Cordelia (who is under the possession of the being later known as Jasmine) and left for Angelus to drink from. Wesley is forced to behead Lilah, as he believes she could rise again as a vampire. When Wesley prepares to decapitate her body, a haunting vision of Lilah appears. Wesley laments that he was unable to save Lilah from herself. Lilah suggests that she loved Wesley, but Wesley refuses to believe it, and with the decapitating swing of his axe, the vision is gone.

As shown earlier in the series with Holland Manners, an employment contract with Wolfram & Hart does not terminate with death, and Lilah returns at the end of the fourth season wearing a scarf around her neck to hide the scar from Wesley's axe. She presents Angel with a tempting offer: full control of the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart with all its resources. During a tour of the facilities intended to seduce Angel Investigations into accepting the offer, Wesley attempts to burn Lilah's contract in order to give her peace. Though the contract cannot be destroyed, Lilah is touched by the act.

Angel takes Lilah's offer in an attempt to save his son Connor from a life of misery, and Lilah apparently returns to the Hell division of Wolfram & Hart. In the fifth season, Eve takes over as liaison for the Senior Partners, Cordelia referring to Eve during her brief return as 'Lilah Junior'.

Characteristics

Like her fellow Wolfram & Hart employees, Lilah has virtually no sense of morality whatsoever. This is unusual given the general themes of feminism in Joss Whedon's Buffyverse. In Lilah's case, her ruthlessness is attributed to the corporate glass ceiling; her gender forces her to be "quicker, smarter, faster than any man at Wolfram & Hart." She is shown talking on the phone with her forgetful mother (implied to have Alzheimer's), and later remarks to Angel that her high salary ensures that her mother can have "the best room at the clinic".

Behind the Scenes

She was portrayed by Stephanie Romanov.

She was the most frequent recurring character on the show, with a total of 36 episodes.

Appearances

Angel Season 1

Angel Season 2

Angel Season 3

Angel Season 4

"Deep Down"
"Ground State"
"Slouching Toward Bethlehem"
"Supersymmetry"
"Apocalypse, Nowish"
"Habeas Corpses"
"Calvary" Template:Killed
"Salvage" (in Wesley's imagination)
"Peace Out"
"Home"

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 |Classification  = Human
 |Affiliation     = [[Wolfram and Hart]]
-|Known relatives = Mom that has Alzheimer's
+|Known relatives = [[Mrs. Morgan|Mom]] that has Alzheimer's
 |Powers          = <br/>
 * Exceptional knowledge of the law