Fool for love no more?
I preface the following with the statement that I am a Spike fan, Spike is the character I care about more than any other in the Buffyverse. I know this is not the way that the show or the comics are supposed to be viewed - they are primarily the story of Buffy and all the other characters are there to serve her story first and foremost. However, his story is the one I care most about and it is with that lens that I view the whole and because of this I do spend time contemplating the good ship Spuffy.
Let me try and explain my issues with the story of Spike and Buffy as it’s been presented.
At the end of season 7 Buffy’s final words to Spike are to tell him she loves him and he tells her he doesn’t believe her. Throughout season 5 of Angel the Buffy issue is mostly side-stepped. Spike’s first impulse is to go out and find her but at first he can’t and when he finally can he decides against it, explaining to Harmony that he thinks it’d spoil his heroic death. Spike later asks Andrew to keep his existence secret from Buffy and the whole thing doesn’t seem to amount to anything until “The Girl in Question” which leaves Spike failing to actually see Buffy and being given a pep talk by Andrew about Buffy moving on.
For the first three quarters of season 8 Spike essentially has never existed. He appears in a couple of dream sequences, always with Angel, and that’s it. Buffy never speaks of him, and neither do any of the characters. His absence is such that some fans even considered that maybe there was some significance in how he’d been removed from Buffy’s thoughts. We discover that she has in fact known he’s alive though no details as to when she discovered this or her actual reaction to the news, other than it was not to try and contact him. Once Spike actually shows up she treats him with a mix of out and out rudeness (and no, the comic feels no need to provide any reason for this) and at best in a matter of fact manner as someone who can help her. Along the way there’s a bit of erotic fantasy but how to deal with this is complicated by disagreements as to what actually happened and what was fantasy but my interpretation tends to the thinking that there was no actual conversation that touched on anything personal. So I can conclude she still is sexually attracted to Spike but I find it very hard to get much further than that. I am left with a Buffy who may harbour all sorts of feelings for Spike but is not going to share them with him (to be expected) but also isn’t going to share them with the audience. Online the view of how Buffy feels about Spike all comes down to how you view Buffy going in and what works for each reader as the most obvious way to fill in the gaps in the story. As a result it really is no surprise that there is very little consensus as to what Buffy feels with regard to Spike.
I would argue we’re just as stuck when it comes to what Spike feels about Buffy. He seems immune to her rudeness and is happy to still play the role of her back-up guy even if she shows no interest in whether he does or doesn’t bother. He’ll still give her ego a boost by assuring her she’s perfect because it does seem that in Spike’s view Buffy can never really be wrong because she’s special. I honestly think if Buffy went on a rampage through the streets of San Francisco gunning down all in her way Spike would still tell her it wasn’t her fault and no one has the right to criticise her. How Spike got from AtS season 5 to here I’ve no idea and what I’ve read from the IDW comics hasn’t helped as that Spike was equally warped beyond recognition to me. All I’m left with is that somewhere along the line Spike learned to lock down all his emotions and be ‘all about the mission’ even when there isn’t an apocalypse looming. No one seems to have any interest in telling us how Spike got this way and honestly without insight into what’s going on inside his head this incarnation of Spike is pretty tedious to me. I don’t know what he wants or how he feels about anything. He’s a cardboard cut out white-hat with a side order of snark.
I accept that the Spike series currently running may have something to say about this as it supposedly leads up to Spike’s appearance in season 8 and will include Willow and Spike meeting up. I have to say I’ve no great hopes for this but in theory they could use this to tell the audience a little about what happened post-Chosen and pre-season 8. It’ll look like a sop to fandom but there are times when you just have to take what you can get I suppose. Having said that from what I’ve seen (and I’ll admit I can’t actually bring myself to buy the Spike comic as the plot has sounded so stupid and the characterisation so off) I’m not expecting much to come from this.
So I’m faced with a Buffy who doesn’t have any specific feelings for Spike when he’s not with her and annoyance at him when he is with a side order of erotic when it’s all safely in her head and she doesn’t actually have to deal with the real thing. Spike is also a pretty closed book. He seems more than happy to be Buffy’s back-up regardless of how she treats him with no glimpse of the volatile, heart on his sleeve Spike of old.
If I were to predict the plan for season 9 I’d say they’ll stay in this mould, there’ll be snark (because that’s what the fans love), and Spike will turn up to provide exposition when required and assistance in battle when required and we’ll end up no further forward. They’ll never actually explore the emotions between these two and just let the fans believe whatever they want about it because it’s all to be as ambiguous as possible - Spuffy is in many ways the cut to black scene in Chosen forever - fans can make up whatever they like for what is going on between the two of them and the text will do its best never to get in the way by actually having anything happen. So if you like that and you’re happy to fill in the gaps then it’ll probably be a great season. I will also predict that Spike will continue to have no meaningful scenes with any other characters whose feelings about Spike we will all be free to assume as we please.