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crack_van2003-10-08 02:44 am
thefakeheadline.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2003-10-08 02:44 am
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Angel the Series: an overview
Why you should watch this show, in a nutshell: This show, on its best days, is like Buffy's smarter, more stylish and complicated older sister. The dialogue is funny and clever, the characters constantly evolving, the moral issues more complex, and the acting nearly always pitch-perfect. And even on its bad days, it will still have a lot of entertainment value as a Big Gay Soap Opera. And also? Many, many pretty people.
I must say I'm afraid I've gotten pretty...wordy, with this thing. It's a spin-off, and also a very arc-heavy show, so there's a lot of history to the characters. Sorry?
The characters: (includes only the pre-show history of the characters)
REGULARS, in order of appearance:
Angel - Our Hero. Took on name of Angelus while he was an evil vampire. In about 1900 or so, he killed a Gypsy girl and her tribe cursed him by returning his soul. Cue a century-long guilt trip. In the mid-1990's he was led by the Powers That Be (a group of vaguely benevolent beings who apparently try to keep a balance between good and evil in the world or something) to slayer Buffy Summers and he fell in love at first sight. (She was roughly fifteen at the time. ew.) Followed her to Sunnydale to help her fight the Master, a really powerful and old vamp. Slept with her; it turns out his gypsy curse gets taken off if he has a moment of perfect happiness. Whoops. Went evil and tried to destroy the world; Buffy had to send him to Hell shortly after Buffy's witch friend Willow re-souled him. Came back by the intervention of TPTB. Had to leave because he wanted Buffy to have a normal life (fat chance), and ended up in LA.
Doyle - An Irish half-demon who's not so happy about the demon side.
Cordelia Chase - Former Queen Bitch of Sunnydale. Mellowed after Buffy et al saved her a bunch of times, and ended up helping them. Went to LA to pursue an acting career.
Spike - (Doesn't actually become a regular until season 5, but has a few early guest appearances.) Turned by Drusilla and mentored by Angelus, Spike spent the better part of a century as a happy-go-lucky soulless creature traveling the world with his crazy girlfriend/sire. After Dru leaves him, he ends up in Sunnydale thinking of ways to kill Buffy. Before he can get too far, though, he's captured and experimented on by a military group called the Initiative. They put a chip in his head that kept him from hurting humans, and since he need to vent his destructive tendencies somehow, he starts killing vampires and other demons. Gradually he begins working closer and closer with Buffy and her friends, and discovers - to his horror - that he's a little bit in love with her. He helps them fight a hell god, and sticks around to protect Buffy's sister after her death. When she's resurrected, they start up a mutually destructive affair, culminating in a brutal beating (by Buffy) and an attempted rape (by Spike). Realizing that she'll never really love him unless he has a soul, he goes to get it back. This makes him a little crazy and susceptible to manipulation by the First Evil. But he overcomes it, and he and Buffy start to get along before the final battle with the First, in which Spike dies to stop its plan.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce - Former watcher (person who trains and keeps an eye on a slayer). Sent to Sunnydale to serve as watcher for new slayer Faith. Fired by the Council because of Faith's misbehavior, he traveled the country as a "rogue demon hunter."
Gunn - Leads a group of kids and teens that fights demons on the streets of LA.
Lorne/The Host - A refugee from the dimension of Pylea. His people are mostly big on the ass-kicking, but Lorne loves music and glitter. Has the ability to read people's auras and tell their fortune when they're singing. Runs a club for demons called Caritas.
Fred Burkle - A physics graduate student from Texas. Was sucked into Pylea by a dimensional portal; humans are called "cows" and used as slaves there.
Connor - Angel's son. We'll get into that later.
RECURRING CHARACTERS:
Darla - Angel's sire. Left him after he got his soul back and went all weepy. Headed back to help her sire, the Master, who'd become trapped under Sunnydale. Staked by Angel in BtVS season one.
Drusilla - Tortured and driven mad, then vamped, by Angelus. She has powers of hypnosis and can sometimes see the future. Sired Spike in the 1860's or so. They went to Sunnydale after the death of the Master to have some evil fun. She and Spike left after Angelus's 'destroy the world' plan failed, and she broke up with Spike soon after.
Faith - Slayer (person who kills vampires good). Went to Sunnydale in BtVS season three to get help fighting an especially tough vamp. Stayed because she was totally in love with Buffy. And I guess she had nowhere else to be, also. Accidentally killed a man while on patrol with Buffy. Went kind of nuts. Joined up with the season's big bad and tried to kill Angel. Buffy puts her into a coma at the end of the season.
Lindsey McDonald and Lilah Morgan - Lawyers who work for the evil firm of Wolfram and Hart. They're vaguely conflicted about this. Both *entirely* fabulous.
The plot:
Season one:
Angel meets Doyle, who's getting visions from TPTB of people Angel's supposed to help. They run into Cordelia while on the trail of their first bad guy. Angel and Doyle save her and she joins the newly formed Angel Investigations as a not-terribly-effective secretary. The group bonds and Cordy and Doyle get flirty – but Doyle dies protecting other half-demons before anything can come of it. Before dying, he kisses Cordy and transfers the vision power to her. Wesley coincidentally shows up on the trail of a demon, and attaches himself to Angel Investigations. Faith awakens from her coma and is hired by Wolfram and Hart to kill Angel. She kidnaps Wesley and tortures him. Angel finds them and fights her; it turns out she'd only accepted the job in hopes that he'd kill her. Angel calms her down and takes her under his protection. Wesley's admiring crush on Angel, needless to say, is dampened. But when the Watchers' Council tries to get his help in bringing her in, he instead stays loyal to Angel. Faith eventually turns herself in on a murder charge, but not before Buffy (who'd come to LA after her) and Angel have a major falling out. Angel meets Charles Gunn, who tries to kill him before Angel proves he's a good vampire. Wolfram and Hart discovers that Angel will play a major part in the upcoming apocalypse, but it's not clear if he'll be good or evil. Their plan shifts to just trying to make him evil. To piss him off, they drive Cordy temporarily nuts by making her feel the pain of pretty much everyone in the world and put a bomb in Wesley's office. Angel goes to kick ass, and chops off Lindsey's hand in the battle. It turns out the firm was really trying to distract him from a ritual they were doing to bring his sire Darla back to life. Wesley discovers a prophetic scroll that mentions Angel which says that he will "shansu" when he has achieved redemption - become human.
Season two:
Gunn joins Angel Investigations officially. (Because he and Wesley are soinlove.) The group’s base of operations becomes the Hyperion Hotel. Angel soon discovers that Darla has been brought back - as a human. She tries to get him to vamp her because she can't stand the guilt for her past deeds. (Stupid, inconvenient souls.) He refuses, and stops her when she tries to get someone else to do it. She accepts having to stay human, but oops! It turns out she's brought back in exactly the condition she was in when she was first vamped, and thus is dying of syphilis. Angel goes through a Trial to save her life, and succeeds. But since Darla has already been brought back once, she can't be saved again. Darla accepts that it's her time to really die, but oops again! Lindsey, who's fallen in love with her and *hasn't* accepted that she’s really dying, finds Drusilla. She vamps Darla. Darla and Dru kill some Wolfram and Hart lawyers, and Angel lets them. Cordy, Wesley and Gunn confront him about this, and he - fires them. They regroup at Caritas and decide to fight evil without Angel's help. Angel becomes overwhelmed by the impossibility of making up for all of his wrongs, and has sex with Darla in an attempt to get rid of his soul. (I love being able to type that sentence in a summary, by the by.) Instead he has an epiphany: his mission shouldn't be about redemption for himself, but helping others as much as he can. Darla leaves town, *really* offended that she couldn't give Angel "perfect happiness." Angel is taken back by the others. Cordelia gets sucked into Lorne's home dimension of Pylea. Her visions make her a special “cow” so they make her a princess. She gives this up, and also her pretty new boytoy Groosalug, to go back to L.A. with the others. They rescue Fred and take her back with them. When they get back to the Hyperion, Willow's waiting there with baaad news - Buffy's dead. (Again.) Angel leaves L.A. to mourn.
Season three:
Angel returns. He and Cordy start some hard-core flirting, and Wesley and Gunn start competing for Fred's attention. Darla comes back with a bizarre surprise - she's pregnant. It is later explained that the life Angel won in The Trial made this possible. She stakes herself to save the baby's life. Cordelia becomes a half-demon courtesy of TPTB to reduce the pain of her visions and gets Plot Contrivance-y Powers. Meanwhile, Holtz (a guy who hates Angelus and Darla for murdering his family) is time-traveled to the present. He starts bugging the hell out of Angel, and naturally plots to do something to baby Connor. At about this time, Fred hooks up with Gunn and the Groosalug comes to their dimension to be with Cordelia. Thus most of the characters are majorly distracted. The guy who brought Holtz forward in time plants a prophecy in one of Wesley's books that translates to "The father will kill the son." Wes is naturally horrified, and there's no one around that he trust to talk to about it. So he kidnaps Connor. After he does so, though, one of Holtz's minions snatches Connor and cuts Wes's throat. Holtz escapes to a hell dimension with Connor. Wes nearly bleeds to death, and then Angel tries to smother him in the hospital for the whole kidnapping thing. Everyone shuns Wes. The hell dimension's time naturally goes way faster than ours, and Connor comes back something like 6 eps later as an 18 year old. He has magical fighting powers and was raised to hate Angel. Wes is courted by Wolfram and Hart, and more specifically by Lilah. He doesn't join the firm, but they do have lots of sex, so that's all right. Holtz frames Angel for his murder to make Connor hate Angel even more at about the same time Angel and Cordy are about to confess their Twu Wuv. Cordy gets ascended to a Higher Plane (no, really) as Connor locks Angel in a box and puts him under the sea (no, really.)
Season four:
Wes searches for Angel under the sea with the (unwilling) help of Holtz's minion. Connor had moved into the hotel with Gunn and Fred, and they fight crime. But Wes soon finds Angel, so Connor's patricidal ass gets kicked out. Cordy comes back human but without her memory. Amnesia!Cordy ends up bonding with Connor and she stays with him even after her memory comes back. A demon called The Beast shows up and causes a rain of fire on LA, then kicks pretty much everyone's ass. Cordy has apocalypse pity sex with Connor, which Angel accidentally witnesses. He tells both of them not to speak to him. The Beast attacks Wolfram and Hart, killing everyone except Lilah. His real objective was to kill this demony totem that was in the building. Once he kills all of the totems, the sun disappears. (Only in LA, for some inexplicable reason.) Wes figures the only way to beat the Beast is to get the only person they know who's fought it: Angelus. Angel gets his soul sucked out and put in a jar. The only useful info they get is that the Beast is only a lackey to a scarier demon. The soul jar disappears, and everyone freaks. Lilah shows up at the Hyperion about then, so everyone suspects her. Cordy gets a vision of a spell to re-soul Angel, and they let him out - and find out the spell didn't work. Everyone but the injured Cordy and Lilah go to look for him. Angelus naturally doubles back and almost kills them both, but they manage to fight him off. It’s then revealed that Cordy is evil, and she kills Lilah. The real Cordelia had never come back from being ascended, and the evil! version had just been sowing confusion and distrust among the group. She was also behind the Beast’s plans. (Insert your own Beastmaster joke here.) Everyone thinks Angelus killed Lilah because evil!Cordy stabbed her in the neck. Evil!Cordy is crafty. Wes decides to break Faith out of jail to help bring Angelus in. They succeed, but Faith and Angelus are comatose at the end of the battle. Willow comes in to re-soul Angel and Faith wakes up. Everyone has a moment of happy. Evil!Cordy then, naturally, tells everyone she's pregnant. And they know it can’t be a human baby, because she’s almost to term already. They corner her, but she escapes with Connor's help. She convinces Connor that everyone's against them, and that he needs to kill a virgin for her so she can deliver the baby early. The baby's born as an energy being that transforms into a naked and very attractive woman. Anyone who sees her or hears her voice is instantly put in thrall. They're not even very concerned that Cordy fell into a coma after Jasmine's birth. Jasmine tells the group she's one of TPTB and she's manipulated all the events that led up to her birth. She gets injured in a fight with some demons, and some of her blood gets into Fred's system. She sees Jasmine's true form: a writhing pile of maggots. Fred goes on the run and eventually manages to get Jasmine's blood into the rest of the group. Connor is still on Jasmine’s side; he saw her as she was all along and didn't mind. He also doesn’t seem to mind that she eats people to stay alive and in human form. Angel goes to another dimension to find out Jasmine's true name so that the whole world will see her as she is. Jasmine gets pissed and decides to destroy the world. Before she gets the chance, Connor manages to kill her – by punching her *right through* the head. This is the thing that finally breaks Connor's brain, and he rigs himself and a bunch of innocent people with bombs. Lilah, meanwhile, has become reanimated and offers Angel and Co. a deal - they get the reconstructed LA branch of Wolfram and Hart. Everyone's suspicious and kind of reluctant. Lilah throws in an extra: Angel will be able to save Connor. He does so by killing him, activating a spell that writes over Connor’s memory with happy normal family memories. None of Angel’s friends remember that Connor ever existed.
Season Five:
Angel and the others slowly adapt to their roles at Wolfram and Hart, and Gunn allows his brain to be messed with to give him legal know-how, allowing them to win the cases the firm needs in order to stay in business. Just as they've gotten settled in, though, a mysterious amulet shows up - and out of the locket pops a ghostly Spike. (Yes, I know, he's the ghost of a vampire. Just go with it.) No one knows why he's there or who sent the amulet, including Spike himself. Spike is tied to the building, and comes to terms with being ghostly and unable to go anywhere else until *another* mysterious package shows up. This one makes him corporeal (as a vampire) again, and the presence of a second souled vampire champion makes things mystically unstable - a "tear in the universe" is the exact phrase. Eve, the new liason from the Senior Partners, tells them that this is because, now, no one's sure which one the Shansu Prophecy is about. A researcher at Wolfram and Hart tells them that the prophecy states that the true vampire champion has to drink from the "cup of perpetual torment" to put things back in balance. Angel and Spike find the cup, and smack each other around to decide who gets to drink from it. Spike wins and discovers that the cup was actually full of Mountain Dew. They figure out that the cup was just the researcher messing with them, and the intervention of the Senior Partners is the only thing able to temporarily stabilize the universe. (All this instability stuff comes from the not-terribly-trustworthy Eve, who's involved with Lindsey, the mastermind of the whole return-of-Spike thing.) Angel is distressed and self-doubt-y because he realizes that this means Spike wanted to win and be the champion more than he did. Cordelia wakes up from her coma briefly to alert Angel et al to Lindsey and his plotting and Eve's association with him. She helps them remove the mystical tattoos that are protecting Lindsey from the Senior Partners, and he's sent to hell. Cordelia gives Angel one last kiss, then reveals that her conveniently-timed awakening was allowed by the Powers only if she died right after. Fred and Wesley hook up, juuust in time for her to be possessed by an ancient powerful Power named Illyria that actually burns up her soul in the process of taking over her body. Wesley finally snaps, and when he finds out Gunn signed a paper to get the Power's vessel out of customs, he stabs him in the gut. Illyria turns out to be not so much evil as powerful and confused and has most of Fred's memories, and she and Wesley do some odd and almost certainly unhealthy boinding. Angel decides he needs some info on what the Senior Partners have planned and busts Lindsey out of hell - but someone needs to take his place, and Gunn volunteers as he feels rather overly guilty about Fred's death. Lindsey tells Angel that the apocalyse is already happening, but slowly, and Angel's new job is just a distraction. Connor comes back and has to fight Sahjhan as that prophecy had said; in the process, his and Wesley's memories are restored. Apparently the happy fake memories are comforting enough to keep him from snapping. Illyria rescues Gunn from hell to make Wesley happy. Her powers prove to be unstable and threaten to cause a planet-destroying explosion, so the team finds a way to reduce it. Angel abruptly discovers a previously unmentioned powerful cabal called the Black Thorn, and pretends to sell out to join them and stuff. He convinces the team to take on a suicide mission to destoy the group. Angel signs away his Shansu, Wesley dies fighting one of the Black Thorn and Gunn is badly wounded, and Connor briefly shows up to help. We close on Angel, Spike, Gunn and Illyria mid-fight with the forces of the Senior Partners.
Sites of interest:
Fanfiction:
The Angel Slash Archive
Big Sexy Man, for all your Gunn fanfiction needs.
Buffy Fiction Archive, a fabulous research that'll let you search in roughly a zillion ways. <3
Cordy Slash
Double Indemnity, home to stories that make my Wes/Lilah shipping self happy.
Unconventional Relationshippers, among the first and biggest archives for Jossverse (a term that refers to show creator Joss Whedon, by the by) fanfiction.
Media:
Romance on BtVS, which has the best caps of new Angel episodes on the net, and has them up *fast.* I worship it.
YesWes, which has a little of everything Wesley-related. The screencaps and episode guide are quite exhaustive.
Quotes, summaries and/or episode guides:
Angel's Acolyte
BuffyWorld.com has episode guides and transcripts for both series.
Flights of Angel
I must say I'm afraid I've gotten pretty...wordy, with this thing. It's a spin-off, and also a very arc-heavy show, so there's a lot of history to the characters. Sorry?
The characters: (includes only the pre-show history of the characters)
REGULARS, in order of appearance:
Angel - Our Hero. Took on name of Angelus while he was an evil vampire. In about 1900 or so, he killed a Gypsy girl and her tribe cursed him by returning his soul. Cue a century-long guilt trip. In the mid-1990's he was led by the Powers That Be (a group of vaguely benevolent beings who apparently try to keep a balance between good and evil in the world or something) to slayer Buffy Summers and he fell in love at first sight. (She was roughly fifteen at the time. ew.) Followed her to Sunnydale to help her fight the Master, a really powerful and old vamp. Slept with her; it turns out his gypsy curse gets taken off if he has a moment of perfect happiness. Whoops. Went evil and tried to destroy the world; Buffy had to send him to Hell shortly after Buffy's witch friend Willow re-souled him. Came back by the intervention of TPTB. Had to leave because he wanted Buffy to have a normal life (fat chance), and ended up in LA. Doyle - An Irish half-demon who's not so happy about the demon side. Cordelia Chase - Former Queen Bitch of Sunnydale. Mellowed after Buffy et al saved her a bunch of times, and ended up helping them. Went to LA to pursue an acting career. Spike - (Doesn't actually become a regular until season 5, but has a few early guest appearances.) Turned by Drusilla and mentored by Angelus, Spike spent the better part of a century as a happy-go-lucky soulless creature traveling the world with his crazy girlfriend/sire. After Dru leaves him, he ends up in Sunnydale thinking of ways to kill Buffy. Before he can get too far, though, he's captured and experimented on by a military group called the Initiative. They put a chip in his head that kept him from hurting humans, and since he need to vent his destructive tendencies somehow, he starts killing vampires and other demons. Gradually he begins working closer and closer with Buffy and her friends, and discovers - to his horror - that he's a little bit in love with her. He helps them fight a hell god, and sticks around to protect Buffy's sister after her death. When she's resurrected, they start up a mutually destructive affair, culminating in a brutal beating (by Buffy) and an attempted rape (by Spike). Realizing that she'll never really love him unless he has a soul, he goes to get it back. This makes him a little crazy and susceptible to manipulation by the First Evil. But he overcomes it, and he and Buffy start to get along before the final battle with the First, in which Spike dies to stop its plan. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce - Former watcher (person who trains and keeps an eye on a slayer). Sent to Sunnydale to serve as watcher for new slayer Faith. Fired by the Council because of Faith's misbehavior, he traveled the country as a "rogue demon hunter." Gunn - Leads a group of kids and teens that fights demons on the streets of LA. Lorne/The Host - A refugee from the dimension of Pylea. His people are mostly big on the ass-kicking, but Lorne loves music and glitter. Has the ability to read people's auras and tell their fortune when they're singing. Runs a club for demons called Caritas. Fred Burkle - A physics graduate student from Texas. Was sucked into Pylea by a dimensional portal; humans are called "cows" and used as slaves there. Connor - Angel's son. We'll get into that later.RECURRING CHARACTERS:
Darla - Angel's sire. Left him after he got his soul back and went all weepy. Headed back to help her sire, the Master, who'd become trapped under Sunnydale. Staked by Angel in BtVS season one. Drusilla - Tortured and driven mad, then vamped, by Angelus. She has powers of hypnosis and can sometimes see the future. Sired Spike in the 1860's or so. They went to Sunnydale after the death of the Master to have some evil fun. She and Spike left after Angelus's 'destroy the world' plan failed, and she broke up with Spike soon after. Faith - Slayer (person who kills vampires good). Went to Sunnydale in BtVS season three to get help fighting an especially tough vamp. Stayed because she was totally in love with Buffy. And I guess she had nowhere else to be, also. Accidentally killed a man while on patrol with Buffy. Went kind of nuts. Joined up with the season's big bad and tried to kill Angel. Buffy puts her into a coma at the end of the season. Lindsey McDonald and Lilah Morgan - Lawyers who work for the evil firm of Wolfram and Hart. They're vaguely conflicted about this. Both *entirely* fabulous.The plot:
Season one:
Angel meets Doyle, who's getting visions from TPTB of people Angel's supposed to help. They run into Cordelia while on the trail of their first bad guy. Angel and Doyle save her and she joins the newly formed Angel Investigations as a not-terribly-effective secretary. The group bonds and Cordy and Doyle get flirty – but Doyle dies protecting other half-demons before anything can come of it. Before dying, he kisses Cordy and transfers the vision power to her. Wesley coincidentally shows up on the trail of a demon, and attaches himself to Angel Investigations. Faith awakens from her coma and is hired by Wolfram and Hart to kill Angel. She kidnaps Wesley and tortures him. Angel finds them and fights her; it turns out she'd only accepted the job in hopes that he'd kill her. Angel calms her down and takes her under his protection. Wesley's admiring crush on Angel, needless to say, is dampened. But when the Watchers' Council tries to get his help in bringing her in, he instead stays loyal to Angel. Faith eventually turns herself in on a murder charge, but not before Buffy (who'd come to LA after her) and Angel have a major falling out. Angel meets Charles Gunn, who tries to kill him before Angel proves he's a good vampire. Wolfram and Hart discovers that Angel will play a major part in the upcoming apocalypse, but it's not clear if he'll be good or evil. Their plan shifts to just trying to make him evil. To piss him off, they drive Cordy temporarily nuts by making her feel the pain of pretty much everyone in the world and put a bomb in Wesley's office. Angel goes to kick ass, and chops off Lindsey's hand in the battle. It turns out the firm was really trying to distract him from a ritual they were doing to bring his sire Darla back to life. Wesley discovers a prophetic scroll that mentions Angel which says that he will "shansu" when he has achieved redemption - become human.
Season two:
Gunn joins Angel Investigations officially. (Because he and Wesley are soinlove.) The group’s base of operations becomes the Hyperion Hotel. Angel soon discovers that Darla has been brought back - as a human. She tries to get him to vamp her because she can't stand the guilt for her past deeds. (Stupid, inconvenient souls.) He refuses, and stops her when she tries to get someone else to do it. She accepts having to stay human, but oops! It turns out she's brought back in exactly the condition she was in when she was first vamped, and thus is dying of syphilis. Angel goes through a Trial to save her life, and succeeds. But since Darla has already been brought back once, she can't be saved again. Darla accepts that it's her time to really die, but oops again! Lindsey, who's fallen in love with her and *hasn't* accepted that she’s really dying, finds Drusilla. She vamps Darla. Darla and Dru kill some Wolfram and Hart lawyers, and Angel lets them. Cordy, Wesley and Gunn confront him about this, and he - fires them. They regroup at Caritas and decide to fight evil without Angel's help. Angel becomes overwhelmed by the impossibility of making up for all of his wrongs, and has sex with Darla in an attempt to get rid of his soul. (I love being able to type that sentence in a summary, by the by.) Instead he has an epiphany: his mission shouldn't be about redemption for himself, but helping others as much as he can. Darla leaves town, *really* offended that she couldn't give Angel "perfect happiness." Angel is taken back by the others. Cordelia gets sucked into Lorne's home dimension of Pylea. Her visions make her a special “cow” so they make her a princess. She gives this up, and also her pretty new boytoy Groosalug, to go back to L.A. with the others. They rescue Fred and take her back with them. When they get back to the Hyperion, Willow's waiting there with baaad news - Buffy's dead. (Again.) Angel leaves L.A. to mourn.
Season three:
Angel returns. He and Cordy start some hard-core flirting, and Wesley and Gunn start competing for Fred's attention. Darla comes back with a bizarre surprise - she's pregnant. It is later explained that the life Angel won in The Trial made this possible. She stakes herself to save the baby's life. Cordelia becomes a half-demon courtesy of TPTB to reduce the pain of her visions and gets Plot Contrivance-y Powers. Meanwhile, Holtz (a guy who hates Angelus and Darla for murdering his family) is time-traveled to the present. He starts bugging the hell out of Angel, and naturally plots to do something to baby Connor. At about this time, Fred hooks up with Gunn and the Groosalug comes to their dimension to be with Cordelia. Thus most of the characters are majorly distracted. The guy who brought Holtz forward in time plants a prophecy in one of Wesley's books that translates to "The father will kill the son." Wes is naturally horrified, and there's no one around that he trust to talk to about it. So he kidnaps Connor. After he does so, though, one of Holtz's minions snatches Connor and cuts Wes's throat. Holtz escapes to a hell dimension with Connor. Wes nearly bleeds to death, and then Angel tries to smother him in the hospital for the whole kidnapping thing. Everyone shuns Wes. The hell dimension's time naturally goes way faster than ours, and Connor comes back something like 6 eps later as an 18 year old. He has magical fighting powers and was raised to hate Angel. Wes is courted by Wolfram and Hart, and more specifically by Lilah. He doesn't join the firm, but they do have lots of sex, so that's all right. Holtz frames Angel for his murder to make Connor hate Angel even more at about the same time Angel and Cordy are about to confess their Twu Wuv. Cordy gets ascended to a Higher Plane (no, really) as Connor locks Angel in a box and puts him under the sea (no, really.)
Season four:
Wes searches for Angel under the sea with the (unwilling) help of Holtz's minion. Connor had moved into the hotel with Gunn and Fred, and they fight crime. But Wes soon finds Angel, so Connor's patricidal ass gets kicked out. Cordy comes back human but without her memory. Amnesia!Cordy ends up bonding with Connor and she stays with him even after her memory comes back. A demon called The Beast shows up and causes a rain of fire on LA, then kicks pretty much everyone's ass. Cordy has apocalypse pity sex with Connor, which Angel accidentally witnesses. He tells both of them not to speak to him. The Beast attacks Wolfram and Hart, killing everyone except Lilah. His real objective was to kill this demony totem that was in the building. Once he kills all of the totems, the sun disappears. (Only in LA, for some inexplicable reason.) Wes figures the only way to beat the Beast is to get the only person they know who's fought it: Angelus. Angel gets his soul sucked out and put in a jar. The only useful info they get is that the Beast is only a lackey to a scarier demon. The soul jar disappears, and everyone freaks. Lilah shows up at the Hyperion about then, so everyone suspects her. Cordy gets a vision of a spell to re-soul Angel, and they let him out - and find out the spell didn't work. Everyone but the injured Cordy and Lilah go to look for him. Angelus naturally doubles back and almost kills them both, but they manage to fight him off. It’s then revealed that Cordy is evil, and she kills Lilah. The real Cordelia had never come back from being ascended, and the evil! version had just been sowing confusion and distrust among the group. She was also behind the Beast’s plans. (Insert your own Beastmaster joke here.) Everyone thinks Angelus killed Lilah because evil!Cordy stabbed her in the neck. Evil!Cordy is crafty. Wes decides to break Faith out of jail to help bring Angelus in. They succeed, but Faith and Angelus are comatose at the end of the battle. Willow comes in to re-soul Angel and Faith wakes up. Everyone has a moment of happy. Evil!Cordy then, naturally, tells everyone she's pregnant. And they know it can’t be a human baby, because she’s almost to term already. They corner her, but she escapes with Connor's help. She convinces Connor that everyone's against them, and that he needs to kill a virgin for her so she can deliver the baby early. The baby's born as an energy being that transforms into a naked and very attractive woman. Anyone who sees her or hears her voice is instantly put in thrall. They're not even very concerned that Cordy fell into a coma after Jasmine's birth. Jasmine tells the group she's one of TPTB and she's manipulated all the events that led up to her birth. She gets injured in a fight with some demons, and some of her blood gets into Fred's system. She sees Jasmine's true form: a writhing pile of maggots. Fred goes on the run and eventually manages to get Jasmine's blood into the rest of the group. Connor is still on Jasmine’s side; he saw her as she was all along and didn't mind. He also doesn’t seem to mind that she eats people to stay alive and in human form. Angel goes to another dimension to find out Jasmine's true name so that the whole world will see her as she is. Jasmine gets pissed and decides to destroy the world. Before she gets the chance, Connor manages to kill her – by punching her *right through* the head. This is the thing that finally breaks Connor's brain, and he rigs himself and a bunch of innocent people with bombs. Lilah, meanwhile, has become reanimated and offers Angel and Co. a deal - they get the reconstructed LA branch of Wolfram and Hart. Everyone's suspicious and kind of reluctant. Lilah throws in an extra: Angel will be able to save Connor. He does so by killing him, activating a spell that writes over Connor’s memory with happy normal family memories. None of Angel’s friends remember that Connor ever existed.
Season Five:
Angel and the others slowly adapt to their roles at Wolfram and Hart, and Gunn allows his brain to be messed with to give him legal know-how, allowing them to win the cases the firm needs in order to stay in business. Just as they've gotten settled in, though, a mysterious amulet shows up - and out of the locket pops a ghostly Spike. (Yes, I know, he's the ghost of a vampire. Just go with it.) No one knows why he's there or who sent the amulet, including Spike himself. Spike is tied to the building, and comes to terms with being ghostly and unable to go anywhere else until *another* mysterious package shows up. This one makes him corporeal (as a vampire) again, and the presence of a second souled vampire champion makes things mystically unstable - a "tear in the universe" is the exact phrase. Eve, the new liason from the Senior Partners, tells them that this is because, now, no one's sure which one the Shansu Prophecy is about. A researcher at Wolfram and Hart tells them that the prophecy states that the true vampire champion has to drink from the "cup of perpetual torment" to put things back in balance. Angel and Spike find the cup, and smack each other around to decide who gets to drink from it. Spike wins and discovers that the cup was actually full of Mountain Dew. They figure out that the cup was just the researcher messing with them, and the intervention of the Senior Partners is the only thing able to temporarily stabilize the universe. (All this instability stuff comes from the not-terribly-trustworthy Eve, who's involved with Lindsey, the mastermind of the whole return-of-Spike thing.) Angel is distressed and self-doubt-y because he realizes that this means Spike wanted to win and be the champion more than he did. Cordelia wakes up from her coma briefly to alert Angel et al to Lindsey and his plotting and Eve's association with him. She helps them remove the mystical tattoos that are protecting Lindsey from the Senior Partners, and he's sent to hell. Cordelia gives Angel one last kiss, then reveals that her conveniently-timed awakening was allowed by the Powers only if she died right after. Fred and Wesley hook up, juuust in time for her to be possessed by an ancient powerful Power named Illyria that actually burns up her soul in the process of taking over her body. Wesley finally snaps, and when he finds out Gunn signed a paper to get the Power's vessel out of customs, he stabs him in the gut. Illyria turns out to be not so much evil as powerful and confused and has most of Fred's memories, and she and Wesley do some odd and almost certainly unhealthy boinding. Angel decides he needs some info on what the Senior Partners have planned and busts Lindsey out of hell - but someone needs to take his place, and Gunn volunteers as he feels rather overly guilty about Fred's death. Lindsey tells Angel that the apocalyse is already happening, but slowly, and Angel's new job is just a distraction. Connor comes back and has to fight Sahjhan as that prophecy had said; in the process, his and Wesley's memories are restored. Apparently the happy fake memories are comforting enough to keep him from snapping. Illyria rescues Gunn from hell to make Wesley happy. Her powers prove to be unstable and threaten to cause a planet-destroying explosion, so the team finds a way to reduce it. Angel abruptly discovers a previously unmentioned powerful cabal called the Black Thorn, and pretends to sell out to join them and stuff. He convinces the team to take on a suicide mission to destoy the group. Angel signs away his Shansu, Wesley dies fighting one of the Black Thorn and Gunn is badly wounded, and Connor briefly shows up to help. We close on Angel, Spike, Gunn and Illyria mid-fight with the forces of the Senior Partners.
Sites of interest:
Fanfiction:
The Angel Slash Archive
Big Sexy Man, for all your Gunn fanfiction needs.
Buffy Fiction Archive, a fabulous research that'll let you search in roughly a zillion ways. <3
Cordy Slash
Double Indemnity, home to stories that make my Wes/Lilah shipping self happy.
Unconventional Relationshippers, among the first and biggest archives for Jossverse (a term that refers to show creator Joss Whedon, by the by) fanfiction.
Media:
Romance on BtVS, which has the best caps of new Angel episodes on the net, and has them up *fast.* I worship it.
YesWes, which has a little of everything Wesley-related. The screencaps and episode guide are quite exhaustive.
Quotes, summaries and/or episode guides:
Angel's Acolyte
BuffyWorld.com has episode guides and transcripts for both series.
Flights of Angel
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