"It's All About Soul"

7.19: Empty Places
7.20: Touched
7.21: End of Days


Though overall the title "Touched" infers the sexual pairings that go on in this episode (Robin/Faith, Xander/Anya, and Willow/Kennedy), it's Spike and Buffy's calm, restful night together that is clearly the crucial one. Now devoid of the violence and bestiality of their encounters throughout Season 6 (which, as Roz Kaveney points out, did originate in a battle), the painful vacuum that has been their relationship since Spike was ensouled has at last been filled with something truly remarkable: trust. In spite of his repeated inadvertent activities worthy of any regular vampire at the top of his evil game, Buffy responded every time by repeatedly making every attempt to help him. In the episodes surrounding "Never Leave Me," she spent every effort on trying to determine and remove the source of his lapses into demonic behavior, which, when he was "himself," he appreciated far more than he could express.



Again, as when Angel had killed Jenny Calendar and others then mystically returned to life as a vampire with a soul in Season 3, Giles displayed no faith in either the ensouled vampire or Buffy's judgment. Claiming that her emotions were clouding her ability to make decisions, then with Angel and now with Spike, he deliberately goes headlong against his reasons for ever leaving Sunnydale in the first place. If he was ever really proud of Buffy's ability to "put her heart before everything" near the end of Season 5 and then was confident that he should get out of her way and return to England in Season 6, he clearly foreswore himself and failed her by conspiring with Wood to eliminate Spike.


As for the issue of the soul, it's actually the teenager Dawn who hit the crux of the matter; at the very beginning of the episode "Him," she discusses it with Buffy: "I'm just trying to understand. I mean, none of it makes sense. . . But to get a soul? Like that would make him a better man? Xander had a soul when he stood Anya up at the altar." Here we have, really, the "gray areas," the moral ambiguity that Kaveney spends a lot of time on in the introduction to "Reading the Vampire Slayer." Whether or not someone has a soul does not determine their actions, although it has a voice in the form of a conscience. Every character has, in some way or another, gone against his or her conscience in a big way since the beginning of the show. There is also a huge if subtle constant battle being waged between "wants" and "needs." As vampires, Angel and Spike need to drink blood, the easiest way of doing so to attack the weak humans. However, their wants become redetermined with the unstable re-installation of a soul. Even with the chip and not the soul, Spike's promise to Buffy to protect Dawn overcame his intrinsic desires as a vampire to join the raging demon mob in "Barganing, Pt. 2."


To re-state something that is frequently on the lips of strong figures in literature, it is not one's WISHES but one's CHOICES that define their character. This is a fairly obvious fact distilled from life. Though it may ever be Angel's inclination to bite Buffy's neck instead of kiss her lips—or both, which is perhaps more likely—he does not. Sometimes these choices constitute as a form of sacrifice, sometimes they don't. It is a natural reflection of the way people relate to one another and to their environment. While Buffy toys with sharing in Faith's autonomous behavior in "Bad Girls" from Season 3, Buffy can see that Faith is a living example of what would happen if she were to embrace it completely, and chooses not to—even though she is certainly equally capable. Buffy, Xander, Anya, and ultimately Giles see what has happened to Willow at the end of Season 6: like Glory, she abandoned the approach of the "choice" with the attitude that her power was above them (displaying quite a different personality than the timid high schooler dipping into magick who was spooked by the Anya, the new girl's, spell).