r/buffy • u/aceofspades85262 • Jul 19 '25
Content Warning Spike ruined the show for me.
This is going to be a very controversial opinion, considering Spike is the fandom darling by far, but his continued presence actively took him from a character I had enjoyed seeing pop up in the first 4 seasons to a character I wanted off my screen.
Going into the series, I knew 3 things, The lesbian dies, there was a musical episode, and that Spike was an incredibly popular character and Spuffy was a romance for the ages. I was very much anticipating when he would first show up, knowing he was so beloved and popular, and when he did, I wasn't disappointed.
In the 2nd and 3rd season of Btvs Spike is incredibly entertaining for how little screen time he has in total, he's funny, charming, and has a really interesting relationship with Drusilla, who definitely stands out amongst the waves of more generic vampires like early Spike with her speech and powers, and his comeback in season 3 made for one of the funniest episodes in the series and one of the funniest scenes, with Joyce comforting Spike.
Season 4 is where I feel Spike hits his peak, as a villain trying his best to maintain his villain status when his abilities to directly harm our heroes are taken away. For as strange and boring of a Villain Adam was, his plan, and partnership with Spike, was pretty interesting, and I love how Spike was able to pick on the insecurities of each Scooby, his crucial flaw being that he didn't think they would reconcile their differences, which I personally thought of as a really insightful character moment, a vampire so far apart from his old human self he can't imagine the scoobies reconciling when vampires would just leave or kill who they fell out with.
Season 5 is great, but in hindsight I feel like Season 7 taints how I view this season, and especially season 6, in terms of Spike. This is when we first get Spuffy, in a very one sided very toxic form. This is a great character moment for Spike and Buffy, it shows how his lack of a soul only leads him to a one sided obsession that can easily be mistaken for love, but doesn't come close to the true emotion.
This is built upon in season 6, where we go even further into their toxic relationship as Buffy starts sleeping with him as a way to cope with her depression, however, it is with seeing red that my issue with Spike truly begins to show.
I know a lot don't like this episode for what Spike does, claiming its out of character, I completely disagree, my issue lies entirely with what happens after, how Spike's attempted rape on Buffy focuses on his feelings, and glosses over hers. For Buffy, it might as well not have happened, her attempted rape serves only to develop Spike futher, into season 7.
I hate season 7 Spike, I strongly dislike the second half of this season in general, partially because of how everyone is pushed aside largely for him. The first 7 episodes are great, and remind me heavily of the first 3 seasons in the best way possible, but as any fan will tell you, this season goes off the rails rather quickly with the introduction of a bunch of characters that feel like 3 or 4 characters split into around 15 for Buffy to lecture to.
Soulled Spike is really interesting to me, for a while I disliked this development and thought it changed too much of what we knew about souls, but after further thought I've come to realize it fits in rather well, it's just that Angel and Spike have hundreds of years of difference in their time with a soul, and Spike is sure to change even more as he continues to live.
But enough about the lore of souls, Spike bends the entirety of this season around his existence, and there are two examples that particularly made me despise his character.
Robin Wood was such an interesting character idea, the first black character on Btvs to not be killed off soon after introduction, son of a slayer, so much room for his character to grow, to expand upon the theme of what it means to be a slayer, to show Buffy she could have some semblance of a normal life with a family and child, or to show her that for a slayer, the mission comes before children. But that's never done, instead, he serves as an obstacle for Spike to overcome, a roadblock in his way to becoming more like the "badass" Spike from the earlier seasons. To the point he flaunts his dead mother's coat, a trophy from a kill, despite all it clearly means. Robin was a character that had so much promise, only to be another stepping stone for Spike, and nothing more. And Buffy supports him for this, which leads me to my second point
This completely invalidates Buffy's arc in season 6. Buffy learning to open up to the people who truly care about her, promising to stop neglecting dawn, reconnecting with her friends, cutting out the negative coping mechanisms, its just, gone. Dawn is once again a footnote in Buffy's mind, when she makes a mistake with caleb, instead of visiting her now disabled friend in the hospital and talking things over with her most trusted people, she alone decides what they should do, and this is called out in conversations with dead people. She does view herself as superior and thinks her decisions matter more, and in a way, shes right, but in many other ways, she's also wrong, and its been her friends that have always been her strength, in season 4 they were literally used as parts of her in the fight against Adam.
But, Xander, Willow and Giles are no longer her most trusted people, they've all been replaced, by Spike. This season has permanently ruined the reputation of the scoobies, with many claiming their bad friends for not wanting to go to the place their friends just died and Xander got his eye gouged out. They didn't kick her out, they said they wouldn't follow her anymore, and she left. And of course, when Spike returns, he yells at them, and he becomes the only person who believes in Buffy.
Her isolation from her friends was the thing that had her running to Spike in season 6, and now in season 7, its the same thing, with entire arcs being ignored, in favor of the Spuffy ship.
Just like he said in season 6, hes the only one she can really rely on, but unlike then, its not a statement about their toxic relationship and her keeping feelings hidden from her loved ones, its a sad and true statement, because now Spike fills the role all the others used to occupy, he has become the thing the show revolves around.
Sorry for the long post, thanks for reading
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u/blackbuffysummers Jul 19 '25
I really appreciate you braving the Spuffy trenches of this subreddit and putting this together because it verbalizes one of my biggest issues with Spike: you can feel the show bend and contort itself around him to keep him around, both in terms of plot and in terms of in-universe rules re: how souls work. I can understand how Spike was popular because I do think James Marsters was a very handsome man who brought an entertaining British loverboy-turned-bad-boy character to life with his talent, but sometimes it felt as though the writers wrote to Spike's popularity and the wish fulfillment of that rather than the initial ethos of Buffy and how her friends set her apart from Slayers of the past.
I think you hit the nail on the head with speaking to how the idea of season 7 Spike being the person that truly understands her replaces the idea of her friends and family being her closest ones. I actually do appreciate some of the distance that develops for the Scoobies in season 7 as a narrative choice that prompts the almost militaristic approach Buffy had to adopt out of desperation and how it continues the distance of depression that was really felt prominently in the previous season 6 when Buffy comes back. But that then just circles back to the thing about Spuffy that I can never shake: Buffy's initial attraction/affection for Spike was rooted in Spike being the only person she could tolerate being around during the lowest mental health period of her life were Buffy felt empty inside, hated being alive, and barely felt like herself. Even when their connection in season 7 is less of Buffy arguably enacting emotional self-harm just to feel something and more of a mutually respectful relationship, it still feels a rapport that Buffy leans into to close herself off from all the other people in her life when she's not doing well. I'm not one who believes that all ships have to be "healthy" or non-toxic, I can certainly understand the appeal of Spike and by extension Spuffy; I just find it frustrating how much of it feels like Spike/Spuffy takes over Buffy/the show in a way that none of Buffy's other love interests did. I suppose that some could view that as evidence of their romantic compatibility, but even in moments in the show where Angel (not so much Riley, bless his heart) felt like Buffy's whole world, he never felt like her whole character narrative
On a more personal note as a Black fan of the show, I really appreciate your points about Spike and his influence on Robin's story. I do understand the context of Robin's emotions being counterintuitive to the last line of defense of Sunnydale vs the First and in some ways plays right into the First's plans, but it did give me the ick with how the narrative situated this Black character's trauma initiated through the hot white "redeemed" former monster fan fave's character development and the conclusion is not "I am guilty and I'm sorry for the harm I caused" but "Yeah, that's how it was and get over it bc my mommy loved me more than yours did"?????? It's interesting to juxtapose that plot point with the Angel Season 5 episode Damage (one of my favorites eps across both series) because THAT has the actual ensouled reckoning for the past that feels correct for Spike's redemption and atonement.
To circle back around to how Spike's presence on the show warps in-universe lore regarding souls, it never quite sat right with me how little difference there was between soulless Spike and ensouled Spike as a character. The way he able to still be so... glib? flippant? about his situation and what he's done short of a couple episodes of psychosis during early season 7 always felt off. I would imagine that time constraints of the show ending did not allow enough space for his guilt and reckoning to be really explored in BTVS, as well as his time spent with the chip and perhaps the nature of how he acquired his soul (which I do nottttttt like) were factors as well. People always complain about how Angel is broody and glum and it's like yeah, he SHOULD be! He's committed countless atrocities as Angelus and is always centering them as Angel as part of his atonement, whereas Spike in BTVS kinda got to breeze past that so we still get the Spike we know and love until he gets set over to Angel season 5.
This last bit doesn't flow as well, but it loops in some of the elements I spoke to earlier: in terms of warping the show's established rules around Spike and my experience of it as a Black viewer, I really cannot with how Spike can just.. go to * vaguely gestures * Africa and get back his soul. How did he get to Africa from a motorcycle in a short amount of time? Where in Africa is he? Why are we using Africa as a catch-all for mystical flair? How did he know that this can even be done? Are other vampires able to just go Africa and get their soul back? While I can't say that Spike ruined the show for me because the overall character is rich in ways that do align with some of the show's themes and James' performance is compelling, I do struggle with interacting with the fandom regarding Spike especially on this subreddit