Angel

About the series

Contains story spoilers.

Angel moves the vampire from Buffy the Vampire Slayer into Los Angeles, a city where helping strangers becomes his attempt to live with the harm he caused before regaining a soul. David Boreanaz plays a man who has immense physical power and no simple way to make his past disappear. The series mixes supernatural investigations with dark comedy, building an agency around people who also need a place to belong. Cordelia and Doyle become part of his new life, and saving someone is a practical job rather than proof that he has finally earned forgiveness.

“Hero” makes that commitment painfully specific. A group of Lister demons is trying to escape the Scourge, an army that persecutes beings with mixed human blood. Doyle carries the memory of failing to help others hunted by them and now works to get the refugees onto a ship. Angel infiltrates the attackers and learns about the Beacon, a weapon designed to kill anyone with human blood in them. The escape is betrayed, and the device is lowered into the ship's hold while the passengers are trapped. Doyle has been hiding his own half-demon identity from Cordelia, fearing what she will think of him. Once that secret is exposed, she still wants him to ask her out. Instead of getting the chance to build that relationship, he takes Angel's place at the weapon, kisses Cordelia and sacrifices himself to disable it. The people he once could not save become the reason he acts now.

The agency's purpose becomes less secure in “Reunion,” when Angel is pursuing Darla and Drusilla. Drusilla has turned Darla back into a vampire with the involvement of Wolfram & Hart, the law firm whose plans continually reach into Angel's life. He arrives too late to prevent her awakening, and the pair's renewed partnership becomes a killing spree. Holland Manners, one of the firm's lawyers, encourages them to terrorise Los Angeles, only for them to arrive at the gathering in his own wine cellar. Angel follows them there and faces a choice very different from failing to reach a victim in time. He deliberately locks the lawyers in with the vampires instead of protecting them. His companions are horrified when he describes what he has done and fear that he is abandoning the distinction between himself and the forces they fight. Angel responds by firing them. The rupture begins with his refusal to care whether these particular people survive.

By “Home,” the firm's temptation is directed at the whole group. An undead Lilah offers them control of Wolfram & Hart's Los Angeles branch, . Wesley finds a vast library, Fred encounters a science division she could run, and Lorne is shown the entertainment business. Angel initially resists, but his son Connor is in a desperate crisis, holding people hostage with explosives alongside the unconscious Cordelia. The offer becomes tied to the chance of giving his son a different life. After confronting Connor, Angel accepts the deal on everyone's behalf. His companions no longer appear to remember Connor, while Angel is allowed to see him living happily with another family and looking toward college. He walks away without joining them. The new agency rests on his decision to surrender that everyday relationship.

Working inside that machinery does not make the cases respectable. In “Smile Time,” children are being drained of life while watching a puppet programme. Angel's trip into the studio turns him into a puppet himself, leaving his colleagues trying to save the audience. Fred and Wesley discover that the programme's songs conceal messages telling children to touch their televisions, and breaking the spell around the stolen life forces saves them. Alongside the bizarre rescue, Gunn is frightened by the loss of the legal knowledge the firm implanted in him. Dr Sparrow offers to make it permanent if he signs a document clearing an unspecified shipment through customs. Gunn accepts. Fred, meanwhile, finally makes her feelings for Wesley unmistakable by kissing him. The episode brings together an absurd physical predicament, a genuine romantic opening and a small administrative favour whose contents Gunn has not understood.

That favour becomes devastating in “A Hole in the World.” The shipment is a sarcophagus containing the ancient demon Illyria. Fred breathes in what is released when she opens it and begins to die as the demon consumes her from within. Knox, who works beside her, reveals his devotion to Illyria and tells Gunn that his signature allowed the sarcophagus through customs. Angel and Spike travel to the Deeper Well in England, hoping to return the demon's essence there. They learn that drawing it out of Fred would kill everyone along its route from Los Angeles. Saving one beloved person would therefore mean sacrificing thousands of strangers, and they cannot make that choice. Wesley stays with Fred as she deteriorates, comforts her and holds her when she dies. Illyria rises in her body. The resources that promised to improve their work have helped make a catastrophe possible, and determination supplies no rescue this time.

The finale, “Not Fade Away,” ends with a deliberate strike against the Circle of the Black Thorn rather than a promise that the wider evil can be eliminated. Angel persuades the group to attack its members separately and asks them to spend the remaining hours as if they might be their last. Gunn helps at a shelter, Spike performs poetry, and Angel sees Connor, who now understands what his father did for him. Lorne kills Lindsey on Angel's orders and leaves, unwilling to remain part of this work. Wesley is fatally wounded by Cyrus Vail; Illyria comforts him in Fred's appearance before killing Vail. Connor helps Angel fight Hamilton, and Angel then sends his son away. The survivors meet in an alley, with Gunn badly hurt, as an army approaches. The television series ends before the battle's outcome. Their last action is to prepare to fight together, after losing people and choices they cannot recover.