Hmmm…I’m really not sure what I think. I guess I’m in “trust Joss” mode right now.
I liked the first half very much: Gunn’s deception, Wes’ wrath, Angel’s leadership, and the finality of Fred’s death, the fact that it was not only her body but her soul that was destroyed. I wasn’t really grooving on the resolution, with Wes and Illyria having touching conversations. It didn’t quite work for me. On the other hand, it was a pleasant surprise to see that we weren’t getting a rehash of Dark Willow or Jasmine, and it wasn’t another apocalypse. This show keeps pulling the rug out from under the fans, and that’s allways been what made it great.
I thought only Buffy had musical montages, that was just surreal.
To be honest, I didn’t really dig it. Not to say that it was bad, but I’ll have to agree with Z-Man, it just didn’t work for me.
Anyway, now that Illiriya’s going to be a surrugate Fred from now on, it makes me wonder where this is leading up to.
For instance, whatever happened to those ninja robots from Lineage? Perhaps I missed something, but did they ever find out where they came from? How about the Senior Partners? Obviously they played a part in Gunn’s brain boost, did they intentionally make it temporary?
And is Eve as pathetic as she appeared in A Whole in the World? She seemed rather in control of herself when she threatened revenge.
Has Sirk been dealt with? There are a lot of avenues for them to go, I’m just curious as to which they choose… or do they try something entirely different.
And god damnit, if I have to see Gunn go through Wes’ season 3-4 arc, I’m going to have a headache.
I guess Sirk is still out there. He was in league with Eve and Lindsey, but that’s all we know. And afaik, we still don’t know where the Killer Robots! came from. What is clear is that Angel’n them are being played. What’s not so clear is who is playing them. Obviously the Senior Partners are doing their share, but is there anyone else? Were Eve and Lindsey really working on their own, or were they controlled by the SP all along? There’s certainly plenty of evidence that Illyria was set up from the get go by the SP, what with Gunn losing his powers right when the Dr. needed him to make a deal. So the whole season may have been an elaborate puppet show, with Angel as the puppet dancing on the SP’s strings. 6 episodes should be plenty of time to give us an amazing (final?) storyline.
Possibility: Angel defaults on the deal with W&H, the SP consider the contract null and void and remove the mindwipe. Connor, living his “fresh and clean” life as a college freshman, suddenly remembers everything. Wesley feels even more betrayed and vengeful. Shit breaks down. Seems like alot to cover in 6 eps, though.
Oooh, you know what I liked? Illyria referring to Wolfram & Hart as “The Wolf, Ram and Hart.” W&H are an ancient order that can be traced back to the time of The Old Ones, although they were not signifigantly powerful then. Which fits into the “home office” thing back in season…2 was it? If W&H somehow feed off human evil, they only became uberpowerful when humanity took over the world.
I don’t see the SP as behind Illyria. I think they knew about it and used it to their advantage. I say this because they put the lock on Illyria’s temple and just might have had a hand in killing her army because it would mess up their apoclapyse. I can see them pulling Gunn’s memory to get him to get Illyria through customs and own him for the most part.
I believe the SP are probably behind everything else.
I want to go back and watch the Wesley’s Dad episode again, because I’m fuzzy about how it all fit in. We never figured out where that robot came from, did we?
So let’s map this out. We have multiple conspiracies that may or may not be related.
Conspiracy #1: The Wrath of Lindsay
Conspiritors: Lindsey, Eve, Sirk.
Activities: sent Spike to WH, molded Spike as alternate shanshu, tried to kill Angel.
Connection to SP: all present or past WH employees. Use of WH resources. Eve is still alive.
Conspiracy #2: Illyria
Conspiritors: Knox, The Upgrader.
Connections to SP: Gunn conveniently losing mental upgrade, implication by Conduit that Gunn now belongs completely to WH.
Conspiracy #3: The Robots!
Objective: Trying to get some book or something? Undermining Wesley’s morality? Not enough information.
Please add more.
I should mention that I actually think it would be more interesting if none of these conspiracies are connected–if they’re all just these separate conspiracies with different objectives butting up against each other–but I can’t seem to shake the idea that the SP are controlling all the chess pieces. Also, writing all this out, I’m starting to wonder what Lindsey/Eve’s original plan was. There seemed to be more to it. Were they just trying to get Angel to suffer by believing he wasn’t The One, or were they trying to pull something on the SP? I still believe that Lindsey would have had as much, if not more, beef with SP as with Angel.
i think lindsey simply wanted angel dead. he blamed angel for a lot of what happened at w&h, especially the loss of his hand. lindsey knew he couldn’t go straight at angel, as the SP have always stated that they want angel alive, hopefully on their side, for the final fight. he brought in spike to undermine angel’s confidence, hoping eventually to shake him enough to get him weak enough to let loose the beast in the basement.
Originally posted by Z-ManConspiracy #3: The Robots! Objective: Trying to get some book or something? Undermining Wesley’s morality? Not enough information.
They wanted a staff, in order to control Angel. For whose benefit? I have no idea.