Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 10 Things About Spike That Would Never Fly Today – Screen Rant

With his platinum hair, leather jacket, and confident attitude, Spike became one of the most memorable characters onBuffy the Vampire Slayer.So much so, that after Season 4, he seemed to completely dominate the storylines on the show, despite that it featured a dynamic ensemble cast including Buffy and her friends.

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As popular as Spike became, each progressing season revealed more and more meretricious aspects of his personality and behavior. Not only could he be incredibly emotionally manipulative, but he was prone to romantic obsession, as well as engaging in nothing but the most toxic relationships. Below are 10 things about Spike that would never fly today.

In "The Harsh Light of Day" in Season 4 of the series, Spike discovers (much to his horror) that he actually has a crush on The Slayer despite still dating Harmony. This causes him to start stalking her obsessively, and showing up unannounced outside her house in the middle of the night in Season 5.

While his angsty actions may have seemed romantic at the time,they crossed Buffy's personal boundaries and put The Slayer and her friends in danger. Not only were they not respectful, they drew Glory's attention to Dawn and nearly got her killed.

Over the course of Season 5, when Spike's obsession with Buffy took no heights, personal items started going missing from her home. First her leather jacket, then grooming supplies, and finally in "The Crush," her favorite cashmere sweater.

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Spike was actually breaking into her house and pilfering her effects to create a creepy shrine to The Slayer in the subterranean parts of his crypt. This sort of behavior was completely out of line and nearly ruined his chances of dating Buffy in a healthy way.

When his romantic affections were no longer being returned, Spike got incredibly territorial, possessive, and resentful of Buffy. He started to feel entitled to her time, her love, and even more inappropriately, her body.

In Season 6's episode "Seeing Red," he broke into Buffy's house and forced himself on her, resulting in them getting into a brutal physical altercation. Luckily Buffy was able to break free, but in a single act, fans' bad boy hero Spike managed to completely betray their trust just as much as Buffy's.

Spike took great pains in Season 5 to make his Crypt more like a comfortable living space. He put down Persian rugs, constructed a makeshift bar, and even went so far as to put a proper easy chair and television set in one corner to watchPassions.

Below his crypt, however, he devoted to a disturbing spectacle that seemed highly out of character: a Buffy shrine, completely with a mannequin outfitted in The Slayer's clothing he'd stolen from her house. His possessiveness extended to decorating it with sketches of her done by Angel, which she would never have allowed.

As William the Bloody, Spike's mortal form, he was known for being weak-willed and easily influenced. When he was turned into a vampire by Drusilla, he became an insatiable maniac who bathed in the blood of his victims and relished being a cold-blooded killer.

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Watching Spike brutally murder dozens of innocent victims and be a glutton for gore often took on a perverse quality, with sanguinary sensationalism taking precedent over any real character development.

Drusilla was Spike's sire, and as such he became entirely dependent on her in the early days of his vampiric transformation to hunt and survive. As their relationship progressed, Drusilla often emotionally manipulated Spike while she sought romantic attention from her own sire and other men.

Spike and Drusilla often came across as two people who understood each other's particular quirks and transgressions, but this quickly escalated into promoting unhealthy and toxic habits. They brought out the worst in each other, and it got tiresome to watch them hurt each other, week after week.

Spike had four seasons to sort out his feelings about Buffy, but even though he claimed to be devoted to her, he still couldn't handle the fact that she ended their relationship in Season 6. He used sexual antics to act as a salve for his heartbreak, and it only created it for others.

In "Entropy,"he slept with Anya at the Magic Box to try to "move on" from his rejection, but it only served to highlight how Spike had always had a wandering eye. He's painted as a tortured vampire who only wanted to be good enough for Buffy, but he had no problembetraying her and Xander's trust.

In Season 6, when Spike and Buffy's relationship was in its death throws, he tried to do anything he could to keep her interested in him. He became deeply jealous of the time she spent with her friends and tried to lure her away from them.

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He continuously tried to make her believe that only he understood her, and that she belonged with him "in the dark". He tried to make her believe that her friends were better offwithout her, so much so that in Season 7, the Scooby Gang was treated as a complete afterthought compared to the tension between Buffy and Spike.

When Buffy was resurrected in Season 6, she didn't return as the same person. She was disconnected, distant, and self-loathing. She turned to Spike for comfort, and he exploited her emotionally by making herbelieve that only he could love her, and that only he would be able to understand the disjointedness she felt.

He accomplished this same emotional blackmail with Harmony, whose intelligence he insulted and whose immature behavior he constantly berated. Watching him castigate women with a barrage of scorn always managed to erode whatever charm he had developed.

Despite Spike running away to Africa and getting a soul in Season 6, one heroic act wasn't enough to absolve him of all the atrocities he had committed over two hundred years. To say nothing of his homicidal rampages over the centuries, he had no problem hitting women (Buffy, Anya, Faith, etc), and he couldn't even be bothered to apologize to Principal Wood for murdering his mother.

Apparently, Spike never needed to atone for the heinous acts he'd committed because having a soul instantly made him a better person. The act desensitized fans to the fact that he was a killer and someone who had no qualms about physically violating Buffy.

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Kayleena has been raised on Star Wars and Indiana Jones from the crib. A film buff, she has a Western collection of 250+ titles and counting that she's particularly proud of. When she isn't writing for ScreenRant, CBR, or The Gamer, she's working on her fiction novel, lifting weights, going to synthwave concerts, or cosplaying. With degrees in anthropology and archaeology, she plans to continue pretending to be Lara Croft as long as she can.

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 10 Things About Spike That Would Never Fly Today - Screen Rant

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