Darla's suicide

To me, Darla's suicide was more than just a selfless act. It was the first time Darla has ever cast off her chains and taken her own direction.

Darla was a prostitute originally, living for someone else's profit. Then the master claimed her, and she lived in servitude to him. Then she jumps at the chance to follow angel, but in reality is just trading one master for another, albeit younger and more inspired master. Angel was the driving force of their destiny, and Darla was along for the ride. Angel get's his soul back, and she is literally in tears. She has lost her direction again, and no longer can fool herself into feeling like she has some power over her own destiny.

She returns to the master, and serves him again, though with perhaps a sad air of wistfulness to her, a sense of resignment and loss, as if her spirit was broken. She dies. She is ressurected and once again is the puppet of someone else's plans. Being Darla, and having lived in servitude all her unnaturally long life, she strikes out in anger against W&H and murders the people she sees as trying to control her. At this point in time, I can really see the will in Darla to finally be free from her chains. She is sick of being someone else's puppet, and wants to be master of her own destiny. However, her freedom is, once again, only an illusion. The W&H execs she killed were dancing on strings of their own, and Darla is still not free. She gets pregnant, and is forced to wander with the knowledge that she is still, as she has been all her life, a pawn.

Her final act is to, for the first time, take 100% control of her life in the ending of it. She is finally free from control, and in the process, her action saves the baby she has come to love. It took the love of a mother to give her the strength to finally take charge of her own life, and it was the end of her. But therein lies the true tragedy, as even that act was not without influence, as we discover in Season 4. Darla is the very essence of tragedy: she has been tossed on a sea of events since her birth, and even her final act was at the behest of a greater power. It's truly the saddest story in all of the Buffyverse.

However, there is one bright jewel of happiness that comes to me as I think about her fate. Even though her last day was spent in unnowing service to the causes of another, in death itself she is finally free from control.

Rest in Peace Darla. May you find the peace in death, that you never had in life.
 
You make it sound all tragic, nearly pity her. However in s2 of Angel, she is in charge over Drusilla and she is playing her own mind games on Lindsay, which hardly means she's a puppet.
 
Yeah, in season two she's really fighting hard for her own freedom. Just ripples on the pond though, it comes to nothing in the grand scheme of things. The flailing of a person who is drowning.
 
Khaych I agree she finally did sth coz she wanted to and it was ger own choice.And that was really beautiful....
 
I didn't like Darla...ever. Although, I have to say her suicide showed that she could be "good." She could have always stayed alive and let the baby die...but she made a decision that really took a lot of "guts" to do. I think the way she left was great, and I am glad they ended her character that way.
 
IT WASN'T SUICIDE!!!!!!!!!! It was a sacrificial death to let Connor live as the only good thing her and Angel ever did together. Darla was and is my favourite character in the Buffy/Angelverse, i think her character ending was a beautiful one. Hopefully she will return for a season 5 episode as the ghost she returned as in S4. The one that is a couple of steps up to actually being redeemed of all the evil she has caused and the chaos and destruction.
 
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