Our long international nightmare has ended. For two decades, fans across the globe have agonized over one question: "Does Buffy belong with Angel, the tortured vampire with a soul, or Spike, the, well, other tortured vampire with a soul?"
Now, one hero has stepped up to put an end to the torturous debate. Angel himself, David Boreanaz, weighed in on the Buffy/Angel/Spike love triangle, giving his definitive take on the iconic Buffy the Vampire Slayer relationships. And I am happy to report that he is 100% correct.
"True love is first love and first love is true love. Drop the mic. End of story," Boreanaz said in a recent interview with The Wrap. "I don't think we need to continue. I mean, it's pretty simple right?" Again, the actor, who played Angel on Buffy for three seasons before moving to the spinoff series, Angel, is correct. We don't need to continue...
... But, I will anyways.
Buffy and Angel's tortured romance was your classic good girl-bad guy tragedy. She was a slayer/high school student destined to turn vamps into dust with Mr. Pointy when she wasn't rushing to homeroom; he was a centuries-old vampire so monstrous gypsies cursed him with a soul so that he would never know happiness. Against all odds, they fell in love, and not even literal trips to hell could keep them apart. (Sure, there was the whole sex-breaks-the-curse-and-turns-Angel-evil thing, but he grew out of that!) All in all, Buffy never loved anyone else the way she loved Angel. Not her human college BF, Riley, and no, not Spike.
By the time Buffy and Spike got together in Season 6, they were more like volatile friends with benefits than lovers. The emotional imbalance was stark: she was often ashamed at being attracted to a vampire who had spent years trying to kill her; he was dangerously more into it than she was. (Lest we forget the episode in which Buffy rebuffs Spike, and he tries to rape her.) Fundamentally, they were never really comfortable with their relationship.
Really, the best thing one can say about Buffy and Spike is that Stacey Abrams ships them. As she recently explained in a tweet on Nov. 9, "Angel was the right boyfriend for Buffy coming into her power. Spike was the right man to be with as she became the power." (To which Boreanaz responded directly, "All due respect Stacey Abrams, I disagree.")
At the time, Sarah Michelle Gellar responded to Abrams' tweet with an enthusiastic Instagram Story, but let the record show it was by no means an endorsement. In fact, history has shown that Gellar is firmly Team Angel, telling Entertainment Weekly in 2017, "There was something so beautiful to me about the Buffy and Angel story." Though she admitted that she could see the appeal of Buffy's relationship with Spike, which flourished in the last few seasons of the show, saying, "I think that Spike understood a different part of who Buffy was and I think she needed to understand that and discover. But for me as Buffy, I think Angel."
But when it comes down to the facts, you can't deny what both real Buffy and Angel believe — that they are endgame. And while Abrams is entitled to her opinion, us Angel-Buffy shippers must remain firm. Even saviors of American democracy can be wrong.
Image: Screenshot via Amazon Prime Video