I should have posted my thoughts on Spike before Sleepers because I was sort of right but there’s no fun in being sort of right if no-one knows it. But, for the record, I had theorised there were two Spikes. I just had them in the same body in a whole Ben/Glory deal, assuming that Buffy would be faced with a repeat of her previous dilemmas.

The point of the season seems to be to present the characters with situations they’ve been through before and see if they’ve learnt the lessons of the past. It would be fitting, then, to present Buff with the problem of Evil being contained in the body of an innocent, especially one she has feelings for: she killed Angel, she let Ben live. Faced with the problem of killing a good person to destroy the evil within, will she discover a third way? I still think this could happen.

However, the reason I thought Spike was doing the killings was because everything suggested he now has two distinct states:

• When in human form, he suffers the guilt, the remorse etc. The chip works (not only in Beneath You but also Help and Sleeper). His voice is posher, closer to that of William the Bloody Awful Poet but less whiney. He uses words like ‘fetching’!


• When in vamp form, he is season 2’s “plain dealing villain”. The chip doesn’t work (and Sleeper doesn’t resolve this). He’s all south-of-the-river rough trade, even down to still having that habit of wiping his bottom lip with his thumb when he has fed. (should I be worried that I recognise that as a habit?)

Add to that details such as him saying, when Buffy first sees him in Lessons, ”no one comes down here, there’s just the three of us” and talking about himself in the third person. I thought the Big Morphic Evil was somehow triggering the emergence of the demonic Spike, for whatever its nefarious purposes are i.e. it really was Spike killing/turning people.

OK, so I was slightly out in that when Spike said ”the three of us” he was talking about Morphic Spike but I’d like points for thinking Spike was the killer and not going into de Nile…

Now, all this soulboy/demon business leads to inevitable comparisons between William/Spike and Angel/Angelus. I got more theory there…but I’ll post that later (albeit before the next episode of Buffy so I can dance about and say “yay me!” if I’m right).