Buffy season 8-- MAJOR SPOILERS-- Twilight reveal

CBR reveals the surprising identity of the Big Bad of Buffy season 8, the man behind the mask of Twilight--

Do not click link if you don't want spoilage (or perhaps it's foilage??)
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=24354

Spoiler: Twilight's Identity

Twilight is Angel (Angelus?), post After the Fall. Apparently there is a plan to keep all of this in continuity with IDW's Angel series.

I'm disapointed that it's revelaed this way rather than letting it be revealed as the comic is released. Marvel kept the lid on the death of Captain America right up until the day of the books release. Maybe it's an attempt to generate advance interest in the arc.

 

I wonder how Whedon would have kept that a secret if the show was still on, maybe electronically alter Twilights' voice?

Angel was a suspect when people realized that the IDW Angel series happened before Season 8.

 

I find this an interesting choice...and am looking forward to seeing how it all fits together and what Buffy's reaction is going to be.

 

Yeah, I saw the covers the other day, but like a lot of fans hoped it was just a mislead.
But after seeing today's articles it looks like the real deals.

Which this leads me to say that those folk at Dark Horse are TOTAL FUCKING RETARDS!

I mean seriously
The whole "who is Twilight" thing has been up there with "who is the Final Cylon" is my eyes for the last couple of years. And now its all just been blown out there, what a friggin joke. That'd be like Ron Moore saying after end of Season 4.0's finale Revelations...

Spoiler: Spoilers for BSG Season 4.5

Oh yeah, don't bother waiting for the final batch of new episodes next year, the Fifth Cylon is Ellen Tigh, I'll just tell you now.

The reveal at the end of Sometimes a Great Notion was such a brilliant "oh my god!" moment for having waited so long to finally find out the truth. So I was hoping for a similar experience with this, to turn a page of #33 and discover it that way.
But now its just all been ruined, and not even leaked out, but actually officially announced by the company.

I'd be interested to see how it plays out, and what the frak Angel is doing, but my faith that Season 8 is gonna have anything more than a "meh" ending has just gone down the toilet.

 

My understanding of the situation is that the cover for Buffy #33 - the issue in which Twilight's identity is revealed - was accidentally leaked or released, and that Joss wanted Dark Horse to address the situation in some fashion, which is what prompted confirmation of Twilight's identity in the manner that it has been (and which DH's Scott Allie has acknowledged was probably the wrong way to go about it).

 

Ha! Chris Ryall at IDW reacted quickly to the revelation and used it to push the new on-going Spike monthly.

http://ryalltime.blogspot.com/2010/01/canon-fire.html



And apparently Brian Lynch twittered that, "Yes, came up with the idea last night, Franco drew it today. Dude is great. Kudos to Chris and IDW for putting it together".

 

Dammit...I'm half asleep and clicked the link thinking it was going to be about that Obama-is-Twilight thing from a month ago. Dammit!



I have no one to blame but myself, ARGH! ...And maybe...maybe I just couldn't withstand the temptation to find out ahead of time.




...Oh, right the actual news? Personally, I'm hoping it's a cop-out, or shapeshifter, or fake news, or else I'm kind of going to have to get rid of my sig below. I mean, lets face it...this is kind of a big spit in the face to the entire show. "You know all that talk of heroics, and doing the right thing even if it didn't matter? Yeah fuck that, what it's really about is SUPERVILLAINY" He goes through all of the corruption of Wolfram and Hart and does the right thing, is lauded as a hero and it boils down to him being the bad guy so Buffy can have somebody to hit. This makes me a sad panda, and kind of makes me feel like the whole point of that character, of that spin-off, has been rendered hollow.

 

^ Well the events of After The Fall are still in line, and either Whedon or Scott Allie said Angel's appearace in Season 8 is worked out so it won't negate anything IDW are doing.

 

Twilight isn't the one robbing banks and hijacking submarines. Nor is he operating a heavily-armed extra-legal paramilitary force without oversight from any legitimate authority. Quite the opposite is the case. He's on the side of the Angels, here. He works for the American government, with all of the red tape that entails (admittedly, not much in this case) protecting the innocent from a major terrorist organization. If not for the fact that Buffy is the head of that terrorist organization, Twilight's righteousness would be obvious.

 

For me, all of this is no longer about the "who", but about the "why" and the "how". We don't know why Angel is doing this or how is doing it. Twilight seems to have powers that Angel doesn't. Did he somehow absorb Dracula's powers? Was that the point of that whole arc? Why would he do this to Buffy? What's his motivation? Is it a "This is for your own good" kind of thing? Does he know something we don't about the future? Is he trying to prevent a greater tragedy? Is he really trying to save Buffy?

Or has Angelus just gone bat-shit crazy?

Either way, I do have faith in the Joss.

At any rate, once all of this is done and over with, I'd like to see some cross-company action between Dark Horse and IDW. Perhaps an Angel mini telling the S8 story from Angel's perspective. Or better yet, a full-blown cross-cast Buffy/Angel/Spike (as he is getting his own book) team-up. Yeah. That's the ticket.

 

Angel is on the side of the angels. *heh*. Well, of course he is...

 

Oh, I don't think it negates anything in the IDW series--especially not "After The Fall." In fact, After The Fall explains, perfectly, why this is happening-

Spoiler: After The Fall and Shanshu

Angel ENDS the world. The Shanshu Prophecy came down on Angel being, well, the antichrist, despite the fact that with ever fiber of his being he's determined to be a hero and do the right thing. He's told he isn't the hero. Angel rejects this. The whole show is about that above all else--you can be told over and over again what you are, who you are, but it all comes down to your self determination. After the Fall Ends with Angel more or less saying that he's been told he's a horrible person who'll do horrible thing, but despite that, he's 'here to help.'

That's part of the reason this bugs me. Because it takes the character in the COMPLETE other way. Instead of being quite explicately anti-establishment (even when he WAS the establishment, he was still anti-establishment--what happened to the Angel who reasoned 'the system is bad, lets blow it up?'), he's now become something very anti-individualist. Sure, is Buffy's little terrorist group a problem? Yeah, sure, you can spin that, especially if the goal is "end of all magic," which would prevent what's seen in AtF. So I understand, on that level the mentality and 'why.' It's still the theme of the show--as Fred put it, Screw Destiny. It's the 'how' that seems to slap the face of the show. The things we've seen Twilight do are brutal--launch major offensives on the Slayers, killing quite a few of them? Hit Buffy with a church? Recruiting Amy and Warren, of all people, two of the most random sociopaths as his lieutenants? It seems too much in the 'ends justify the means' side of the scale. When did the guy who took out the Circle of the Black Thorn only because he could, refusing the compromise any further, be a guy who surrounds himself with people like that willingly, and funds their psychopathy? Even if he's got a good reason, there's a sizable chunk of that show which explores what is to be compromised in the form of the greater good. I liked that statement better.

Yes, Buffy's 'terrorist organization' could be called on abusing their power, but the way Twilight goes about doing this makes him a definitive villain. Sure, I can see that the season so far has been about Buffy being blinded by her (faulty) moral certainty, and Twilight offers perhaps a more reasonable solution--but he's still a mass murderer, and not in the 'oh I don't have a soul' way, in the very much 'I meant every part of this 'way. He's the villain of the piece and he's now done things that are, well...not things I'd have thought the character, for all his talk about not compromising in the face of evil, would ever do. For all his talk about valuing people, saving souls, for all the times he decided to do the right thing against godlike odds just because it was the right thing to do, he ends up a fascist supervillain? Eeh...leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Angel the series was all about what it takes to be a hero, the mistakes, the pitfalls, the hard choices, and living with them. But here he's not that, anymore. He can no longer be thought of as a hero, and that, well...stings a bit.

 

^Which brings us back to the "why?". I'm willing to see how it all plays out on both sides before simply labeling Angel as "the villain". There is still a lot of story to be told here.

 

Warren was never a psychopath. He was a guy who fucked up big time and made some incredibly bad decisions and they got his skin torn off. And Amy was a pretty nice and reasonable girl up until she was turned into a rat for three years.

Come on now, this is the guy who successfully rehabilitated both a rogue Slayer and an nigh-omnipotent Old One. He was always a magical walking second-chance dispenser willing to help anyone who asked for it without regard for their past.

And you're also forgetting something very important. Angel let Fred die. He could have saved her, but he didn't because he couldn't bring himself to condemn so many people to death. Sometimes the choice isn't between compromising or not. Sometimes the choice is between protecting your friend and letting millions of innocent people die, between a little compromise and a huge one.

If Angel knew that the Senior Partners were going to pull LA into hell, he would never have taken out the Circle of Black Thorn. He wouldn't have condemned so many innocent people to that torture just so that he could feel good about his choice. And if he did he'd feel very bad about it. He's not going to protect Buffy if doing so will cost the rest of humanity their lives. And in season 5 of Angel she basically told him to go fuck himself and the horse he rode in on (using Andrew to deliver the message, of all people), so its not like he has much of an chance to reason with her. .

 

I guess my issue isn't so much with the motivation as the meaning. I'm not too sold on Twilight's, well...massacre, yet. I mean, really, they might be able to justify some of what Twilight's done during the series so far--they could say that he's there more or less sabotaging Amy and Warren (maybe they would have done far worse damage to the Slayers) or maybe, like you said, they're on the redemption train and we just havn't seen it (From what we have seen, Warren's been more acting like the type of guy that Angel'd punch in the mouth. Then again, Buffy shacked up with Dracula...but didn't let him kill anyone but other vamps.), but the fact is, Twilight is the villain of the piece. You can't deny that. This is still Buffy's 'show,' after all.

Now to be honest, on a metatextual level, I freaking LOVE the idea of it coming down to Buffy vs Angel. "Power through being chosen and femininity" vs "power through choice and masculinity"--there's a lot of milage there. Whedon puts a lot of existentialist bullet points into his shows--even Buffy got a "it doesn't matter but we do it anyways" heroism speech in "Gingerbread"--but at her core Buffy gains her strength from being 'chosen' as The Slayer. She eventually owns up to it and makes it her own and decides to make everyone Chosen. The decides to choose--an important distinction. Meanwhile, Angel himself is a guy who likewise was chosen by destiny, but as they said in that show...a lot...he rejects it. He decides that his destiny is what he does--he is in control of his own fate despite even godlike beings making it out to seem otherwise. As you said, the guy's a walking redemption machine--he even housetrains an Old One! In a really weak way, it feels like determinism vs free will. Except...Angel's switched sides. Buffy's slayers are something bad yes, but...they're not irredeemable. They're not getting high on their power and the ones that are are being taken down by Buffy's group. Yes, they're setting it up so that they're more or less answerable to no one, and robbing 'insured' banks and these things are hypocritical--but they're hardly the unjust, fanatical rulers that Twilight's followers seem to think they are. So why would he raise an army to wipe them off the face of the earth?

A lot of people dislike this little revelation 'cause of the whole "Angel'd never hurt Buffy!" thing...yeah, I don't quite buy that. They'd have plenty of reasons to be at odds. But we don't see that. We don't see their falling out. We just see Angel going from a guy who embodies "you can always choose to do the right thing, no matter what your past" to a guy who decides he needs to slaughter thousands of teenage girls because they might become a wholly corrupt force in the future if they continue on their current path. Say what?

I'm interested to see if they spin it in the direction I'm starting to think it'll go into--Angel being on the side of humanity, so to speak, stating that it's time to get rid of all of these damn unstoppable forces--and Buffy being on the side of the demons, more or less, stating that magic NEEDS to stay--and they need to be the guardian of it by divine right. That they want to explore that--judging by the recent interviews this may be the way they're going--and see who, really, in that case, has the moral high ground. They're both doing questionable things, in their own way, to save the world--that's how I feel Buffy vs Angel SHOULD be handled--shippers can say what they want, but both of those characters are too well-rounded now to make Buffy vs Angel round two about Bangel; this could be a battle of messiahs, really. Which side would you choose--take out magic and face and uncertain future, or leave it to your betters and their proper place in the world?

Except that this is still Buffy's series...so she wins. And I can see why! For all of Buffy's moral infractions (theft, supernatural intimidation, laughing at and being above the laws of humans) she's yet to purposefully command and order wholesale slaughter. Even when they push her into a murderous rage and she tells her people not to soften their blows, she gets wishy washy and tells them to save enemy combatants anyways--because Slayers save lives. Twilight's forces don't care. Buffy does what is heroic--so did Angel. Twilight does what is neccessary. Now, I have a soft-spot for antagonists who shoulder all the evils of humanity in order to save it, as anyone who's seen me in a Gundam thread will attest (poor Char Aznable), so maybe I'll warm up to the idea in time, and switch Angel from the duly-appointed "Big Damn Hero" spot in my fictional pantheon to the "Crafty Anti-Hero" one. But...

There's still the chance that this is all a fake out, I say. I mean c'mon...Whedon comes up with the name "Twilight." Then "Twilight" gets associated with another Girl-Meets-Vampire story. Then it turns out Twilight is Buffy's vampire paramour? C'mon! And what publicity! Maybe I'm just bitter that my pick for Twilight didn't pan out (Future Xander you've failed me once again!)

But as much as I hate the idea of Angel being Twilight...it has a certain tragic brilliance to it which I do like. And I'm not about to drop the comic (or the IDW Angel books) because of this by any means--I definately want to see how it unfolds, especially if my guesses are right and it turns out to be a fight about how it is best to save the world, well damn, that's a great, epic storyline. But the things that Twilight has done, however much 'for the greater good,' are from a storytelling point of view, irredeemable, especially by the compass of the Buffyverse. Which to me kind colors show Angel and the character in a negative light--kind of turns the existential themes of both into an ugly nihilism.

 

We know that Twilight either wins outright or Buffy eventually joins him. Fray has already been written. Magic will be driven from the world and the Slayer line will go dormant. That's well established. What matters is how they get there.

 

I wanted to point something out that hasn't been addressed yet: people who are doing things that could be described as evil rarely - if ever - see their actions as being such because of this, it is entirely plausible to me that Twilight can be Angel and still be reconcilable with what we know - or think we know - about the character as established by previous canon.

 

Yes, he was. He was a man who, from the very beginning, saw women as objects to be controlled and to serve his lust. I mean, the man built a sex robot when his real girlfriend wouldn't act like a slave. And then, when he got a mind control mojo and used it on his ex, he tried to rape her, and then he assaulted her when she tried to escape him, leading to her murder. Which he then covered up.

And then, when Buffy thwarted his attempt to steal from an armored car, he came back and tried to kill her for it. While shouting, "You think you can just do that to me?! That I'd let you get away with it?! Think again!"

The man was a narcissist and a misogynistic, sadistic sociopath from the very beginning. The word "psychopath" fits him to a "T."

 

You've got that backwards. Originally Warren was a socially inept geek who created a robot who would love him unconditionally because he couldn't imagine ever meeting a woman who would. And he latter concluded that it was a mistake in more ways than one. He never wanted a slave, her attitude was a programming error on his part, one that he found more and more annoying as time went on. More importantly, he met an actual human being who seemed to actually care about him.

But he didn't have the social skills or the courage required to break up with a robot (which right there shows that he isn't a sociopath, as sociopaths tend to be both fearless and charismatic), so he just left her to run down. Then his human girlfriend hypocritically dumps him just because he made a robot girlfriend once in the past (which in and of itself is no more strange than owning a real doll).

His issues in Season 6 begin with an inability to move on (again, due to the fore mentioned lack of social skills). It is easier for him to blame Buffy and continue pining for Katrina than it is for him to risk getting his heart broken all over again. And it does work out fine, until the whole mind control thing, at which point it goes downhill fast. Warren didn't even want to mind control Katrina, he wanted her to accept him for who he was. The mind control was just an (incredibly stupid) act of desperation. He somehow thorught that everything would work out in the end, that she'd eventually come around and admit that she still loves him and then they could live happily ever after together. Her death was an accident, and covering it up was just about the only thing he could do (though attempting to frame Buffy, again, stupid desperation).

And Then Warren finds one last chance to get out of the hole that he dug himself into, steal a bunch of mone and leave Sunnydale forever. It was a good plan, but Buffy stopped him (because she's the only person in the world allowed to commit grand theft). He had nothing after that. And when you've hit rock bottom there is no place left to go but a shooting rampage.

Meeting Amy should have mellowed him out, and probably would have, too, if not for the fact that he doesn't have any skin.

 

Is there a non comic book form for this? I'd like to read it if it was in a book or something.