Angel didn't actually die

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VaderSpike24

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During Season Three, Buffy keeps talking about how she killed Angel to save the world. But Angel didn't actually die. He was stabbed with a sword and sent to a hell dimension and then tortured for hundreds of years. If he had died, he would have combusted, and that wouldn't have and didn't happen by a sword chest wound, and if he had died after being sent there anyway, how could he have been tortured?
What actually happened, it seems, was he got sent to the eternal torture hell dimension Angelus wanted the world sucked into, and was forced to live there for hundreds of years until some force (Still unconfirmed who, even after all this time) brought him back out into the real world.
Vampires have very specific rules of death, and Angel's circumstances seem to indiacate that he wasn't actually dead during that time.
Just thought I'd set that straight.
 
No, he didn't actually die, but that's basically what happened. How could they get him back from the hell dimension? They had no idea if they could. Even though he didn't actually die, he was gone from them and being tortured in a hell dimension - how different is that really from killing him? She only didn't kill him on what is essentially a technicality.
 
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Robb Stark
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Welcome to the club, pal! I've been saying that same thing for years. Either Buffy was totally lying to her friends about what happened, certain that at least Giles, if not Xander and Willow as well would ask why she stabbed him instead of beheading him, or she was so upset at that moment that she herself didn't even know what she was doing, either version of which could be a distinct possibility. (By the time Season 7 rolled around, and she was still talking about killing Angel, she had probably told the lie so many times that she had actually convinced herself that it was the truth)

And here's something else to think about. Not only did Buffy NOT kill Angel, she sent him into an unknown hell dimension armed. That sword through the chest wouldn't kill him, but it would make it pretty certain that he would have it to defend himself with once he got there. Looking at it that way, Buffy actually saved Angel, even while she was using his physical body to close the portal into hell.
 
Yeah, that's been noted for awhile now.

When Buffy says she "killed" Angel, she is saying that what she did is as good as killing him. She sent a soulled being to Hell. In a lot of ways that is worse than merely killing. If she had just killed Angel his soul would have returned to Heaven, Paradise or whatever type of peace it seems to have come from and the demon would have went to Hell. The more I think about it the worse it sounds, Angel's soul would have been ripped from its peace (again) only to be immediately sent to hundreds of years of torture in Hell... on the blade of the love his life. It's horrendous.
 
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SlayerOfVampyrs
Beautifully put
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Robb Stark
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iShower4free
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NeonNightLight
NeonNightLight
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When you die you go to heaven or hell (in the Buffyverse)... this means these dimensions are basically the afterlife in Buffy's world. Thus Buffy killed angel because she sent him to the afterlife via a sword through the chest. I would not classify her as a 'liar' for offering the simplest explanation. Also, the reason he didn't go poof probably had more to do with Joss and co wanting the scene to be as emotional as possible, poof would not have fit in with the rest of the scene really.

---------- Post added at 07:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:58 PM ----------

Also, by similar logic, does that mean Illyria did not kill Fred?
 
I think to Buffy at the time she was killing him, she actually believed she had sent him to his death, never to see him again. I also believe that when she refers to that later, specially in season 7, she is thinking more about the mindset she was in thinking she was killing him for the greater good. And although I have already agreed on Kean's post I feel like I should once again agree with her that sending Angel to the hell dimension to be tortured for what seemed like hundreds of years is, at least to me, a much worse fate than killing him.
 
NeonNightLight
NeonNightLight
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white avenger said:
Welcome to the club, pal! I've been saying that same thing for years. Either Buffy was totally lying to her friends about what happened, certain that at least Giles, if not Xander and Willow as well would ask why she stabbed him instead of beheading him, or she was so upset at that moment that she herself didn't even know what she was doing, either version of which could be a distinct possibility. (By the time Season 7 rolled around, and she was still talking about killing Angel, she had probably told the lie so many times that she had actually convinced herself that it was the truth)

And here's something else to think about. Not only did Buffy NOT kill Angel, she sent him into an unknown hell dimension armed. That sword through the chest wouldn't kill him, but it would make it pretty certain that he would have it to defend himself with once he got there. Looking at it that way, Buffy actually saved Angel, even while she was using his physical body to close the portal into hell.
Click to expand...

Acathla was a completely new phenomenon. The person who opened the portal to the hell dimension had to be the one to close it and if he was just staked / beheaded / burned or sunlit, he could not be sent to hell and the portal would continue to expand. So she put a sword through his heart to close the portal, but after that, he was gone and no one (including Buffy) expected him to return ever again.

No one knows whether the sword would make it into the hell dimension or whether Angel would be able to use it or be in any condition to use it. The Whedonverse is like mathematics where you can create spaces that have strange properties and if you encounter some strangeness in these spaces, you have no idea what its properties are and can make no prediction of what is going to happen.

This is a little like the mathematics surrounding the black hole - some people thought that falling into a black hole obliterated all traces of the entity that fell in whereas the mathematics, when pursued further, showed that the entity would be slowed down in time and would be transformed into a hologram, preserving knowledge of what entered.
 
janas
janas
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Buffy could not behead Angel because he would become dust, and Buffy would not be able to stop Acathla. The only useful thing to close the vortex was the blood of Angel.

Whistler: Angel's the key. His blood will open the door to Hell. Acathla opens his big mouth, creates a vortex. Then only Angel's blood will close it.
 
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Robb Stark
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I don't remember who but someone brought up in another thread that Buffy really had "killed" Faith in s3, as she could have easily died, and it is pure luck that she survived. I think the same logic applies here, she really did "kill" Angel, it was simply luck that he didn't die and came back later on. I guess in the real world yes it wouldn't be considered murder if the person doesn't actually die, but the intention was there, so the fact that Buffy feels that she kills him is fine with me, because at the time in her head, that's exactly what she thought was happening.
 
M
Mischlings
I was the one who brought that up, and that was definitely on my mind while I was writing my reply earlier in the thread.
This question was raised at least once before, but it's always good for a 'discussion'.
You could ask yourself did Buffy know that sticking metal into a vampires heart won't kill them? My answer would be that she did know that. So she knew she didn't kill him, as such.
However.
She did cause him to be sucked to hell (or wherever). And as such, not expecting him to live she technically caused his death.
So why did she tell Xander, Giles and Willow that she had killed Angelus?

Here's where I go off topic.
Was Buffy harbouring a secret wish that it would give Xander a happy? (Any reason to kill him would have been fine by me.)
More importantly (?) did Buffy know that Willow would keep trying to give Angelus a soul, and so that raises the question did she know that Xander was lying to her about what Willow said.
 
Ethan Reigns said:
So she put a sword through his heart to close the portal, but after that, he was gone and no one (including Buffy) expected him to return ever again.
Click to expand...

Right. And "gone,never to return" doesn't mean the same thing as "dead." Buffy, as has been pointed out, couldn't have staked, beheaded, or incinerated Angel,because by doing so, she would not have been able to use his blood an body to close the dimensional portal. therefore, Buffy DID NOT kill Angel as she continued to say right up to Season 7. That is fact, irrefutable.

My statement about the sword

"And here's something else to think about. Not only did Buffy NOT kill Angel, she sent him into an unknown hell dimension armed. That sword through the chest wouldn't kill him, but it would make it pretty certain that he would have it to defend himself with once he got there. Looking at it that way, Buffy actually saved Angel, even while she was using his physical body to close the portal into hell."

was, admittedly, only a possibility. Just because Buffy sent the sword with him doesn't guarantee that he got there with it, but it was, at least, a chance worth taking. Whether or not Buffy would have had the presence of mind to think about it at that moment is questionable, but she DID thing far enough ahead to know that she had to send a solid body through the portal, not a cloud of dust, so she MIGHT have thought that far ahead.

We do know that Angel returned from hell the next season noticeably naked, so it's possible that only the body itself could pass through the portal. It's also possible that Angel was the big loser on a game of demonic strip poker. We never found out for sure, but I like that theory at least as well as anything else I've seen or heard on the subject.
 
Blaze
Blaze
although I disagree with part of the theory, I like the strip poker part
white avenger said:
Right. And "gone,never to return" doesn't mean the same thing as "dead." Buffy, as has been pointed out, couldn't have staked, beheaded, or incinerated Angel,because by doing so, she would not have been able to use his blood an body to close the dimensional portal. therefore, Buffy DID NOT kill Angel as she continued to say right up to Season 7. That is fact, irrefutable.

My statement about the sword

"And here's something else to think about. Not only did Buffy NOT kill Angel, she sent him into an unknown hell dimension armed. That sword through the chest wouldn't kill him, but it would make it pretty certain that he would have it to defend himself with once he got there. Looking at it that way, Buffy actually saved Angel, even while she was using his physical body to close the portal into hell."

was, admittedly, only a possibility. Just because Buffy sent the sword with him doesn't guarantee that he got there with it, but it was, at least, a chance worth taking. Whether or not Buffy would have had the presence of mind to think about it at that moment is questionable, but she DID thing far enough ahead to know that she had to send a solid body through the portal, not a cloud of dust, so she MIGHT have thought that far ahead.

We do know that Angel returned from hell the next season noticeably naked, so it's possible that only the body itself could pass through the portal. It's also possible that Angel was the big loser on a game of demonic strip poker. We never found out for sure, but I like that theory at least as well as anything else I've seen or heard on the subject.
Click to expand...

I always thought the nakedness of angel was due to hundreds of years in a hell dimension, which I doubt would have allowed for his clothes to be repaired etc. Also, it was probably more of an excuse to do a nude david b scene, and also it fit in well with the episode, as it made him more beast-like. The real question is, why a savage beast type man, would A. find some pants by the next episode and B. put them on considering his supposed status as a savage beast?
 
iShower4free said:
I'm thinking Buffy put the clothes on him while he was unconscious
Click to expand...

No, she didn't see him or know that he had returned until after he killed the crazy guy whose name I can't recall now. But savage feral men and women always seen to have a basic instinct to cover "that" or "those," in the case of females, parts of their bodies referred to as private in polite society. Just look at Tarzan, Bomba the Jungle Boy, Sheena, Thundra, and whatever other jungle raised character, at least on TV and in the movies, you might mention. Even if they've never seen another human being in their lives, and although the animals that raised them obviously don't wear clothes, they invariably wear at least rudimentary garments,( obviously in deference to the censors). The real question is, WHERE did Angel find a pair of pants? Did he, maybe, still have some clothes left there at the mansion? In this age of clothes dryers, I find it doubtful that there were any hanging on anyone's clothes line. And, if he had the presence of mind to put on pants, why not a shirt and shoes?

I guess Joss just likes to flash bare vampire chests.
 
Its been a while since I have seen it but hadnt she found him and chained him up prior to being attacked by the guy? he was still all feral though and broke out of his chains only to find and save Buffy.
 
I just thought that for a vampire to officially die, he had to combust. Angel clearly didn't do that. I understand the whole 'as good as killed him' theroy, but the point was, he didn't really die. He was banished, which could technically be inferred as 'dead' to Buffy and the others, but to Angel himself, he was still alive and fully aware of being tortured.
On a similar, yet unrelated subject, Joss Whedon seems to have a thing for blood resolutions, dosen't he?
Season 1: Buffy's blood releases The Master.
Season 2: Angel's blood closes Acathla's portal.
Season 3: Faith's/Buffy's blood could save Angel's life.
Season 5: Dawn's/Buffy's blood opens and closes Glory's portal.
Season 7: Jonathan's/Spike's blood opens the Seal of Danzalthar.
 
A lot of this goes back to the Bible:

Leviticus 17:11

"For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life."

As an aside, this has caused one hassle among Christians. This passage is glossed over by anti-abortionists who say life begins at conception; blood does not pump in a human fetus until 17 days after conception, so the morning after pill is Biblically legitimate.

As Spike explains to Buffy before she dies in Season 5, blood is how vampires get to have a semblance of life even though they are dead.
 
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