Lately I’ve been re-watching my all-time favourite TV show(s) and a staple of my must-watch viewing (back when I watched TV) from my teens and early 20s, namely Buffy The Vampire Slayer and its spin-off show, Angel. I thought both shows were awesome when I was viewing them the first time round and now I’m a little older, a little wiser and a lot more educated I’m finding myself loving them all over again but also noticing just how deep they run, thematically.

I’m not really updating to wax-poetic about my favourite TV shows. I’m updating to ask a question that ‘Angel’ raised at the end of its 4th and penultimate season. The existential, moral and ethical dilemma was not lost on me back when I viewed this show for the first time but, hey, I didn’t have an online blog then. I just kinda wanted to pose this to my… errmm…. “many readers…”

Towards the end of the season the Big Bad finally emerges from behind the scenes. In the “Buffyverse” (that’s the general term for the fictionalised version of reality that Joss Whedon’s Buffy-related works exist) the concept of divinity is left very vague, but it certainly exists. These forces are referred to informally as “The Powers That Be” (occasionally abbreviated to “The Powers” or “The PTB!”) The being that appears towards the end of Angel’s 4th season is a “Fallen Power,” appearing as a graceful, elegant and ubiquitously adored woman named Jasmine. Her physical presence casts an instant glamour on all who see her, causing all to become besotted with her to the literal point of worship. The glamour can only be broken by those whose blood becomes mixed with her own. They see her for what her physical form truly is: decayed and horrific, and lose all sense of devotion and bliss that her power casts over them.

Basically the city of L.A. (where ‘Angel’ is set, for obvious reasons) falls under her thrall and the world is threatened to follow. The thing is under her thrall people are blissfully happy and at peace. Everyone feels loved, valued, special and all crime, all violence, all suffering, comes to an end. The price is that people are no longer under their own free will. They are forcefully enraptured by this being, she is a living god in their midst. Oh, that and the fact that she consumes between 6 to 12 people a day to maintain herself. As in she devours their life-force, killing them.

The thing is when the good guys eventually take her down they end World Peace. Under her thrall everyone was blissfully happy. And, although she happily devoured a handful of people a day, she is never portrayed as being insincere in her desire to give humanity love, peace and happiness. She truly wants that for “her people” and, in her own way, genuinely seems to love humanity. She simply expresses her belief that Free Will does nothing for mankind but cause misery. Under her humanity knew no pain. During the arc itself the eerie bliss, obvious brain-washing and sinister undertones leave us with little doubt she is evil and needs to be stopped. But once the finale rolls round she doesn’t drop her loving persona. She doesn’t reveal how it was all a ruse to rule people. She states till the end how all she wants is for humanity to find peace and what does submission to her really mean compared to complete happiness? Even the handful of people she devours a day, what are they compared to the millions of lives that are saved across the world in her utopic vision? As she states, without her help “humanity is doomed to drown in it’s own blood.” Once she is gone the question is raised, unsettling the heroes and the viewer: did they do the right thing? Would the world have been better off left under her rule?

I remember feeling a really uncomfortable sense of ‘greyness’ when I watched it for the first time. Deep down we all want to identify right and wrong, good and evil, black and white. It’s unsettling to realise that we can’t always make that call. The good guys assert that surrendering free will, being held in emotional and mental bondage, is no way to exist, not to mention that the murders of even a handful of people are too high a price to pay. As is usually the case with these shows I love I find myself on the same general ethical and moral page as the creators (and thus the heroes.) But not without some serious food for thought.

If there was such a choice; if you could surrender free will in exchange for pure happiness, pure bliss and a complete end to world suffering and pain and the only cost, other than your right to self-determination, was the daily deaths of a handful of random people (bearing in mind they could be people you know and love… or not, and many, many more lives would be saved through this choice) would you take it? Would such a world be ‘right?’

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