I think I was surprised by Lorne killing Lindsey for two reasons. First, it was Lorne, who is not normally the killing type (as he said many times throughout the series). Second, he shot him in cold blood, with no opportunity for Lindsey to defend himself. Most of the time in the Buffyverse, the good guys fight the bad guys before killing them, so the bad guys die with some sense of honor. On Angel, however, the good guys progressively play by the bad guys' rules. Most of all, I find Lindsey's death to be a very interesting contrast with Buffy. On Buffy, Willow kills Warren because he "deserves to die" after having killed his ex-girlfriend, accidentally killed Tara, and tried to kill Buffy. But Buffy tells Willow it was wrong because he's human, and Scoobies don't kill humans. Lindsey was arguably more evil and was responsible for more murders than Warren, so his death was perhaps more warranted, but was it right (plus, Lorne kills him with a gun, which is a no-no on Buffy)? I think it just demonstrates how much Wolfram & Hart had corrupted the gang's souls, either directly or indirectly. By the end of the series, most of the gang has killed or wanted to kill another human being, because they have decided that they need to eliminate evil wherever it exists. But most of the time, they were not happy about it, and felt guilty about it. Yet as the series drew to a close, one by one, each character abandoned these qualms. Wesley feels guilty about wanting to murder his father in cold blood, but feels no such guilt about killing Knox (which in a strange way is okay, since Knox had renounced his humanity). Angel admonished Wesley for killing Knox in cold blood, but then goes ahead and orders Lorne to kill Lindsey in cold blood. And yet, they can still fight the good fight, since they're killing evil beings, no matter that they are human. I'm not complaining, since while these murders are not tolerated in real life, the Angelverse plays by very different rules. I'm just intrigued by how we can forgive certain killings, depending upon the circumstances in which they occur.
