I'm still trying to find the words for what happened to Cordelia Chase. She was a teen drama archetype: the hot, rich, mean girl with a slew of sycophantic followers. But instead of stagnating at 17 like so many pop culture high school queen bees before and after, Cordelia blossomed into someone dynamic and fascinating.
She was self-centered, with a mean streak that never entirely went away, but she was also brave, generous, and surprisingly tender. She wasn't always likable, but she was wholly her own person. Cordy's growth over three seasons of Buffy and three seasons of Angel is one of the most engaging character arcs on either show and in the whole of the Whedonverse. She begins as a reluctant ally against evil, bemoaning the stains left on her clothes when she's held hostage by vampires, and develops into a daring, capable fighter.
What tethers Cordy to the fight on Angel are the visions of people in trouble. They plague her. They're overwhelming and physically painful, and at first she tries to get rid of them, to return to normal. But as she realizes how important helping the helpless is to her, she becomes willing to make sacrifices in order to keep her visions.
By the end of Angel 's third season, Cordelia proves herself worthy of ascending to a higher plane, becoming more than human. I'll never forget how Cordelia Chase, the beauty queen with the backbone, the most independent, ambitious woman in the entire run of Angel , was destroyed.
Season 4 turned Cordelia into a villain, but not the way Willow Alyson Hannigan became a villain on Buffy , surrendering in a moment of anguish to all her long-established character flaws. I could have loved that version of evil Cordy: one whose frustrated ambitions and hard-won empathy exploded into violence. I would have followed that Cordy happily to the dark side. Instead, we got the methodical dismantling of everything Cordelia was.
Her sometimes painful honesty became deception and manipulation. Her love for Angel, which had grown slowly over the span of six years and two different shows, was abandoned in favor of seducing his son let's not even touch the plot twists that took Connor from newborn to young adult in a single season.
And instead of delving into the human reasons that would cause a once-righteous character to take a dark turn as the show did with Wesley, played by Alexis Denisof, around the same time , the show explained Cordelia's villainy with a contrived demonic possession storyline.
Cordelia had been taken over by the dark entity Jasmine Gina Torres , which got pregnant so it could give birth to itself. Season 4 rewrote much of Cordelia's previous character arc, reframing her growth and agency as deliberate maneuvering to bring her under Jasmine's influence. Puh-lease," said the demon who reveals the diabolical plan. It's a slap to the viewers who loved her, as well as to Cordelia herself.
You were stupid, the show said, to think Cordy could be a champion. Cordelia fell into a coma giving birth to Jasmine, and a season later she died offscreen in a hospital bed, the events leading up to her death erased from history. Action Drama Fantasy Thriller. Add content advisory. Did you know Edit. Trivia The crossover episode Fool for Love aired earlier the same night: November 14, Complementing each other, the Buffy episode features flashbacks to the events at the Boxer rebellion from Spike's point of view.
However, the episode also has a shot that mirrors a shot from the previous Buffy episode, No Place Like Home , where Buffy jumps through a high window with the dying monk in her arms to protect him from Glory. The Angel episode has a shot of Angel jumping through a window, carrying the missionaries' baby while fleeing from Darla. Goofs In the flashback scene where Angelus catches up with Darla in China during the Boxer rebellion, Darla draws a knife and holds it to Angelus' throat.
In the next angle from over Darla's shoulder the knife is replaced by what looks like a threaded metal rod only for it to be a knife again in subsequent angles. Quotes [Darla has smashed all the mirrors in her apartment] Angel : It makes sense. User reviews 7 Review. Details Edit. Release date November 14, United States.
United States. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 44 minutes. Because of her dislike of religion, she scoffed at a priest who came to her deathbed, despite having called for one the previous night in her delirium. When asked to beg for God's forgiveness, she claimed her soul was well past saving and that the Devil may take it.
The priest then revealed his true identity: the Master, leader of the elite cult of vampires known as the Order of Aurelius. Believing he was Death, she was corrected by the Master who told her that he was in fact her savior. He sired her and at some point gave her the name "Darla," Gaelic for "dear one. By , Darla was out exploring the world and wreaking havoc, during which time she visited a village in Galway, Ireland.
There she found a handsome young man named Liam, who was drinking and whoring his way through a rather uneventful life. Admiring him from afar, Darla lured Liam into an alley where she seduced him by offering to show him things he had never imagined. In , after cutting a bloody swath across Wales and England, Darla brought her new consort back to the Master in London. However, Angelus had no interest in the Order of Aurelius and its tenets of underground dwelling and tribute to the Old Ones.
Being told to choose between her sire and the pleasures Angelus offered her, Darla chose her lover and left with him. In , Angelus and Darla were back in York, where they were hunted down by Daniel Holtz , a vampire hunter. The lovers decided to punish Holtz by luring him to an empty cottage, leaving behind the message "How do you hope to save others, when you can't save your own? Holtz managed to trap the pair within a burning barn, at which point Darla hit Angelus with a shovel and escaped on the only horse left.
Angelus followed Darla all the way to Vienna, where he made her "pay for [Darla's] sins. Again and again.
In , Darla and Angelus joined a couple of young vampire lovers, James and Elisabeth , in Marseilles. The couples burned the village of Comte de Leon to the ground, which attracted the attention of Holtz. While Darla and Elisabeth escaped to the ship that would take the four vampires to Morocco, James and Angelus stayed behind to face the vampire hunter. Angelus revealed his lover's whereabouts to save his own life, just as Darla had previously acted to save herself.
Darla reunited with Angelus as the two traveled through North Africa trying to escape Holtz. The pair were in Rome when the relentless Holtz found them in Holtz managed to capture Angelus with the aid of a traditionalist Catholic sect known as Inquisitore , although with the aid of a group of local vampires, Darla saved her lover from Holtz's torture. Angelus wondered if they should kill Holtz, but Darla answered that it was much more fun to continue to ruin his life.
Aboard the ship Galene, Darla had been trying to take a jeweled beetle for her collection, seducing the owner into discovering its hiding place, only to be interrupted by a jealous Angelus. Future Angel explained Fred he remembered the travel had been odd, with rumors that someone had brought a real treasure on-board, a mystical cursed piece of jewelry.
Fred then discovered where the owner had been hiding it, but was found by Darla and Angelus, who attacked her in attempt to take the beetle. Darla and Angelus escaped under a boat flipped boat, protected from the sun, [13] until they arrived at a Pacific island. There, facing Angel, Fred, and Illyria once again, Darla confronted the time-travelers and questioned their identity, but the interrogation was interrupted by the attack of the infected sailors, [14] and Illyria sent the couple to a safe place before anything was revealed.
Back in London, the "family" of Darla and Angelus grew in , when Darla showed him Drusilla , a young, pious girl blessed with visions, whom Angelus stalked and tortured into insanity before siring her. Around the same time William was turned, Darla had a fight with Angelus and returned to the side of the Master.
The foursome fled all the way to Yorkshire where they were forced to hide in abandoned mines, much to Darla's dismay. By , the foursome had traveled to Rome where they crossed paths with the Immortal , a mysterious being who had already met the vampires in Frankfurt and saved a group of nuns from Angelus.
A few years later, the four vampires traveled to Budapest, enjoying the chaos during an earthquake. In , the Whirlwind traveled to Borsa, Romania. There, Darla gave Angelus a gift that would alter their lives forever — the favorite daughter of Clan Kalderash , a tribe of Roma.
Angelus had his way with the girl for a night while Darla watched. His actions incurred the wrath of the Kalderash Elders, however, and one of their women performed a curse to restore Angelus' human soul. Angelus sought Darla's help, only to be rejected for having a "filthy soul. Nevertheless, Darla took Spike and Drusilla to massacre the Kalderash. As the two lovers slaughtered everyone they found, Darla tried to reason with the Kalderash Elder and convince him to have Angelus' soul removed in exchange for sparing the lives of his wife and daughters.
Darla's leverage was lost when they saw that Spike had already killed the Elder's family. Without further hope, Darla snapped the Elder's neck and ordered the two to massacre the entire tribe.
Darla, who had developed a taste for religious wars, took Spike and Drusilla to China in where the trio found themselves in the midst of the Boxer Rebellion. Angelus, who had followed them, begged Darla to accept him again, hoping to prove to his former lover and himself that he could still be part of the Whirlwind.
However, Angelus limited himself to killing thieves, murderers, and rapists. He even tried to save a missionary family. Darla discovered the family — a father, mother, daughter, and infant child — killing all but the baby, whom she kept as a test for Angelus. Incapable of killing an innocent, Angelus fled with the baby, forever renouncing Darla.
In , Darla and Angelus crossed paths once more in Budapest. By October , Darla was living in Berlin, Germany. In September , Darla had moved to England.
After so many centuries, Darla still lured her victims by pretending to be a timid, innocent young woman, even adding a schoolgirl uniform to her act. One of those she killed was Chris Boal , an ex-student that she drained on the grounds of Sunnydale High School.
It was the inadvertent warning sign for Buffy Summers — the Slayer — that vampires were active in Sunnydale. Despite facing Buffy, however, Darla managed to take Jesse underground thanks to the intervention of Luke , the Master's leading acolyte. The following night, Darla joined Luke, the newly sired Jesse, and other vampires in their attack against the Bronze , where Luke intended to perform the Harvest in order to release the Master from his mystical prison.
For weeks, Darla laid low while several members of the Order — including Zachary — fell to Buffy's stake. She offered to kill the Slayer as an offering for her sire, but he sent The Three , a trio of ancient vampire warriors, instead. However, the Three failed due to the intervention of Darla's former lover Angelus, who had renamed himself "Angel" and allied himself with the Slayer. As penance, the Three offered their lives to the Master, and he allowed Darla to dust them, a task she gladly carried out.
Understanding that brute force wouldn't be enough to kill Buffy, Darla devised a plan to turn her against Angel, and force one to kill the other, though she hoped Angel would kill Buffy in self-defense and, having experienced killing once again, return to her side.
Darla pretended to be a classmate of Buffy's in order to be invited to the Summers residence. Once inside, she attacked Joyce Summers , Buffy's mother, biting her and leaving her in Angel's arms. As Darla had planned, Buffy arrived to see her injured mother held by Angel in vampire face, and concluded that Angel was drinking from her mother. The vampire and the Slayer faced each other in the Bronze, but Buffy eventually realized that Angel was not responsible.
Darla, carrying a pair of pistols with her, arrived to ensure Buffy would die. However, Darla's plan turned against her, as Angel staked her in order to protect Buffy. Soon she learned that she was dying of the disease that had almost killed her before she was sired; syphilis.
It made her even more desperate to be turned into a vampire, but instead, Angel, through acts of bravery and nobility, finally convinced her to live out her remaining days as human. Angel then went through the trials to win Darla a new chance at life. Though he endured, it was for naught as Darla had already gotten her second chance at life, and Angel reassured her that he would be there for her.
After Darla rose again, she was initially upset over becoming a vampire again and attacked Drusilla. However, she quickly embraced it once more. Darla and Drusilla massacred most of the staff attending the party out of revenge for being used as pawns. Afterward, Darla and Drusilla attempted to recruit a gang of demons in order to take over Los Angeles, though they were all slaughtered by Angel.
Shortly afterwards, Angel, descending into darkness due to having failed to rescue Darla, set both women on fire, though they did not die but were severely injured. Returning home, he realized Darla was laying in wait for him. Desperate to end his pain by losing his soul, he roughed her up and they had sex, with Darla gleefully expecting him to lose his soul, as the curse breaks when Angel experiences a moment of perfect happiness such as when he made love to Buffy Summers.
The next morning, Angel still had his soul; sex with Darla made him experience perfect despair, rather than perfect happiness. Apologizing to Darla for his 'failure' to save her, Angel admitted that a part of him had seen it as part of his efforts to save himself — since she had created him, he had hoped that redeeming her would prove him worthy of redemption — but he then recognized that she was nothing to him, unable to even hate her. Surprised, angry, and upset, Darla attempted to stake Angel after he rejected her offer of a "repeat performance" to "get it right," only for Angel to grab the stake, informing Darla that he would allow her to live in gratitude for what she had done for him, but vowing that he would kill her next time he met her.
As a result, Darla left Los Angeles. However, the unthinkable had happened: Darla had become pregnant as a result of Angel winning a life by enduring the trials in an attempt to save her when she was dying.
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