The final episode of BtVS bent over backwards to have a tidy ending, and the incredible plot contrivances in order to accomplish that were painfully obvious. "Angel" made no such compromises. Whether Angel and the gang win or lose is almost less important than that they fought knowing that the fight itself is what mattered.

You know, I disliked the finale when I watched in on Wed. night because I still couldn't see why Angel was bringing about this apocalypse. But after talking to some of my friends and family members (who all loved it) and reading the posts on this board and then watching it again - it finally all clicked in my mind last night.

When Angel gave that speech to Connor in Deep Down about heroes living the way the world should be, he believed it, but TPTB spent the rest of 4th season taking everything away from Angel and then having him be the instrument for returning the world to the status quo. After the misery and failure of season four, it made perfect sense that he believed that working for an evil corporation (working in the system, using the system's power) was now the only way to affect change.

But then, starting with You're Welcome, and especially in Underneath, I think he realized that not only has he been playing their game since he took over W&H, but maybe he's been playing it all along. If he just walked away from W&H and went back to Angel Investigations he'd still be accepting the world on their terms. (It ties in to what Connor said in Peace Out about Angel liking the Harshness and Cruelty because it gives him purpose.)

I'm actually sort of loving the fact that Angel finally decided to change how the battle is fought and maybe go out in a blaze of glory. He brought what was underneath right to the surface and was no longer accepting the way the world works.

but since there won't be another season, I have to kill them now."

But coupled with the sentences about their disappointment over the cancellation making it into the finale, it reads more as "I HAD an uplifting finale planned, but I only got 110 episodes instead of 132, so therefore I'm gonna kill everyone to reflect how pissed off I am."

I mean, dude. He has every right to kill everyone if he wants to, and I'm not overly unhappy with the end of "Not Fade Away." I just don't think it's appropriate to let professional disappointment (a meta-issue if there ever was one) dictate onscreen events. The network doesn't care, so it only hurts the fans.

(I'm not saying I think fans "deserved" a happy ending, just that I dislike the "we gave you a downbeat ending because we were canceled" concept. If he'd kept his mouth shut, I wouldn't care.)

LJ, where's that brutal quote from? Because, without context, I don't see anything wrong with it.

Meta-issues dictate onscreen events all the time, and I don't see where the fans got hurt anyway.

If he just walked away from W&H and went back to Angel Investigations he'd still be accepting the world on their terms.

Should Anne go out, buy an Uzi, and go on a Bad Guys Of The Neighborhood-killing rampage?

But coupled with the sentences about their disappointment over the cancellation making it into the finale, it reads more as "I HAD an uplifting finale planned, but I only got 110 episodes instead of 132, so therefore I'm gonna kill everyone to reflect how pissed off I am."

But where are you getting that there was ever going to be an uplifting ending? S5 was always supposed to end this way -- with the MoG killing the Black Thorn and bringing down the wrath of the Senior Partners.

Should Anne go out, buy an Uzi, and go on a Bad Guys Of The Neighborhood-killing rampage?

Yes.

Yes.

Hee. Okay, that's consistent, then.

Hee. Okay, that's consistent, then.

Yeah, I know, it doesn't really make sense, but it's the only way I can sort of understand what Angel was trying to do.

Edited to attempt clarity.

I dislike the "we gave you a downbeat ending because we were canceled"

I don't think that's what he was saying, partly I've never seen him sacrifice his fans to such petty circumstances. He's no Sorkin.

skipping 300 posts so I can get something out while it is still fresh in my mind...and before I read everyone else's thoughts and decide mine have already been covered :-)

Lorne never wanted to fight, never wanted to be involved. Back in the day, he didn't even use his name, when he was The Hist, all surface, aloof, ruler of a tiny little kingdom where violence wa not allowed.

He's been drawn to the MoG because he grew to care about them and now he's been drawn into fighting, and killing, and not only that but killing someone he knows, personally. (I have no doubt that killing Lindsey was on Angel's orders. Lorne accepted that it needed doing, and knowing that having a mission means doing thiongs like killing people who need killing is what makes him want not to be part of a mission) Maybe seeing into people's auras gave him too much sympathy for them, mixed with disgust. Everyone who sang for them, he knew their inner selves, good and bad, usually without knowing their surface selves. That probably contributed to his aloofness.

And taht's why he's bitter, not out of disappointment with Angel, but at how far he has drifted from where he wanted to be, and sadness at losing so many of the few people he genuinely cared about, and really knew in a day to day way.

I see him heading into his own version of Angel's eating rats and living in alleys days.

I remember back in Season 1, I think it was the end of 5x5, when I realized that Angel had a harder job than Buffy, because she just had to slay her foes, Angel was out to save them. That's really been his mission - taking out the irredeemable, yes, but redemption was always the plan. The hope. And that's why he doesn't stake Harmony - he still has hope for her, despite everything. No time to help her right now, but hope.

But I digress. I was trying to go towards the idea that in taking ot the Evil Pricks, Angel is finally taking Spike's advice and playing his game, not Wolfram & Hart's. W&H are doing the apocalypse by degrees, boiling the frog slowly (which reminds me of a non-Buffista friend's comment on the end of Angel: "dragon? He should've gone after the frog") - fighting that has never been Angel's game (excetp in teh saving one soul at a time sense, and being CEO of W&H(LA), no help with that). Worming his wayinto the secret society, that's an oppotunit that can justify joining W&H (and it all about justification in a deterministic world, but I haven't finished wankingworking that thesis out).

Signing away the Shanshu, I loved that so much. It's a big part of my personal morality that doing good with no expectation of reward, expecting punishment, even, is the highest form of goodness. That said, I have my doubts that signing a document can invalidate a prophecy. All the evidence in teh Buffyverse points to prophecies being inviolate, nothing can make them not happen. I don't buy that the Black Thorn have really found a way around that.

But I do think that Angel sincerely believed he was signing away the pissibility of his Shanshu. And I love that. It was always "that would be nice" for him, not the thing that got him out of bed to go kick some evil butt.

I don't know that they're all dead. I think they certainly expect to be dead. But what's coming at them in that last scene isn't a bunch of superpowerful demons or extradimensional senior partners (at least , I don't think so), they're just monsters. And monsters, even in large numbers, our gang might be able to handle. Maybe expecially because they aren't really planning on surviving.

Should Illyria survive (and if I'm right about the monsters, no reason why she shouldn't), I am intensely curious as to what she will do next.

Also wondering if it's a problem that the Deeper Well no longer has a guardian.

How much do I love that Illyria's confrontation isn't seen at all, all we get is Illyria rightbefore, and then her walking away from teh destruction she has wrought. Beautiful.

Wes. Oh Wes. Taking evisceration calmly enough to try one last desperate and doomed magical effort to kill the sorceror. And only then allowing himself to believe the twin lies that Vail is dead and Fred is holding him. Poor poor Wes. He deserves more words than I have right now.