Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I continue to live the spoiler-free lifestyle (exercising my will to choose, you know), so the following represents only my own fevered reflections and wild speculations on last night's episode (which I was able to think about a little more coherently, once I'd gotten that silly poem out of my head and onto LJ where it belongs). None of this deals with spoilers or promos for next week's episode (from which I avert my eyes, at the appropriate moment).

What a great episode!

First, let me say that -- like every other fan, I'm sure -- I knew it, knew it, knew it, that Angel had to be pulling a scam with this going over to the dark side and singing paeans to power business. Of course, if Drogan the Battle Brand really was being USED by Angel without his consent or knowledge and really died at Angel's hands as an innocent victim and pawn, whatever the reasons or greater good at stake, I have to allow for the possibility, at least, that Angel may not be faking it as much as he thinks, if he denies to another pure and good hero the very freedom of choice that he says he's willing to die to protect. But that's a worry for later on.


deus ex machina -- literally, "god from the machine" (Latin, derived from Greek 'theos apo mechanes')
n : any active agent who appears unexpectedly to solve an insoluble difficulty.


I. "Is There an Ex-Deus in the House?"

Two weeks ago I speculated that Illyria was being set up to be either Angel's mentor in megalomania or his secret weapon and attack dog in battling the Senior Partners.

[I'm suddenly picturing Illyria as "Lassie" from the old TV series with June Lockhart --
Illyria: "Woof, woof!"
Wesley: "What's that, girl? You say Angel's fallen down the Deeper Well?"
Illyria: "Woof!"
Spike: "And the Senior Partners have got him cornered?"
Illyria: "Woof."
Wesley: "Show us the way, Lassie."
Spike: "Yeah! And then sic 'em, girl!"]

But last night I started thinking, at first, that maybe Angel was using her as his dramatic inspiration, emulating her attitudes and manners in order to lend verisimilitude to his performance as a power-hungry amoral immortal who thinks he's beyond good and evil and only cares about winning at any cost.

However, when I watched the episode "Power Play" again this morning, I decided that Illyria must be IN on Angel's plot. She's the secret, unnamed co-conspirator and fifth columnist who's supposed to come charging in at the last moment to save the day next week. I hope, hope, hope.

For one thing, Illyria was surprisingly easy for Marcus Hamilton to beat to bloody pulp down there in Spike's basement apartment. Was she deliberately "taking a dive" in order to convince Hamilton and the SP that she's no longer a threat and can safely be ignored, meanwhile allowing them to take Drogan prisoner as part of Angel's "cunning plan"? (Sorry! Bad Rev! Comparing Angel to Baldrick....)

But more importantly, since we KNOW that Angel did not have anything to do with engineering Illyria's return, and that therefore her resurrection WAS all the result of ancient prophecy and the manipulations of rogue elements at W&H, and since Illyria presumably knows rather more about that prophecy business than anyone else in the apartment at the time, why would she not have taken the chance to depress human pretensions, correcting their mistaken speculation that somehow she owed her return to Angel's will and not her own powers and destiny? Why would she have stayed silent, knowing that they were going in a wrong direction AND that because of this wrong notion, they were even more inclined to ignore and discount her than ever before? Unless, of course, there was the promise of more power and glory in the offing? Unless this was all part of the game of power, no matter how pointless and annoying that game seems to her now -- the game that she feels compelled to keep playing? Unless it's because she wants to WIN, and this is the only way left for her to strike at the SP and make the world tremble one last time?


Drogan: "Old One, you have no right to walk this earth. Your time has passed. You belong to the Well."
Illyria: "Truly. I wish now I had never been brought out of it."
Drogan: "Do you?"
Illyria: "I don't know. I play this game -- it's pointless, and annoys me. And yet, I'm compelled to play on. Does that not---"


Unless I'm completely off in the realm of fantasy here (well, more than is normal for someone watching a fantasy-esque television show and treating it as a serious academic discipline, just because it happens to be more profound than much of what passes for serious literature and theology, these days), I think Illyria is somehow involved in all this, that the more she protests how much power and influence she's lost, the more of a behind-the-scenes player she really is. The only question left, then, is about whether or not Angel KNOWS Illyria is playing on his team, for now. I suppose, while Angel was feeding clues to Drogan and Wesley and all, Illyria could have been subtly feeding HIM clues, to lead him to make the choices necessary to bring the SP as much pain and distress as possible in the foreseeable future. Or, I could be hallucinating all of this, of course.


II. "Choice? What Choice?"

Back to my concerns about Drogan maybe being a victim: it IS hard to ignore the fact that the only one of the "good guys" who didn’t get a chance to choose to put his life on the line in the fight this time around (I'm not counting the good folks like Nina who didn't get to stick around for the fight, no matter what their preferences might have been) was Drogan, this thousand-year-old good guy (according to Angel's and Wesley's descriptions of him) who first gets seriously mangled and then seriously beaten to a bloody pulp and all his lovely hair pulled out, and finally dies as Angel's sacrificial lamb, just when it looks like Angel's come to the rescue. If he's really dead and was really being used in that cavalier a manner, how could that not poison the well and undermine all Angel's efforts?

Yes, looking at Drogan's condition just before he got slaughtered, I WAS forcibly reminded of some of the "Songs of the Suffering Servant" from 2nd Isaiah, and of the way they've been interpreted in Christian tradition:

"The Lord God has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious,
I turned not backward.
I gave my back to the smiters,
and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I hid not my face from shame and spitting.
For the Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been confounded;
therefore I have set my face like a flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame;" [Isaiah 50:5-7]


The key to the Servant's relationship to God, of course (whether the Servant refers to Israel, the prophet himself, Jesus, or whomever), is choice. Just as the key to Jesus' role in the crucifixion, as far as most Christians are concerned, is the fact that Jesus was NOT merely an abused child being victimized by his Father (yes, there are some folks in my field who would call the cross simply a particularly egregious act of child-abuse), but that he made the CHOICE to be there, to go through with it all, knowing what was coming and knowing that, if he chose, he could call down an army of angels to defend him and keep anyone from laying so much as a hand on him.

I think most of us (whatever our views on redemption and suffering in general) would agree that suffering that is not submitted to voluntarily can never be truly redemptive. At most, it can be endured, and one day -- hopefully -- redressed and atoned for. The Servant's words, cited above, clearly indicate that he COULD have rebelled, he could have turned back, could have chosen NOT to submit his body to all these abuses. So what of Drogan's power of choice?

And that's not even dealing with how odd it is to hear Angel being the champion of choice, after the whole violating-free-will-by-rearranging-people's-memories-without-their-permission deal that's over-shadowed this entire season --


Angel: "We are weak. The powerful control everything -- except our will to choose. Look, Lindsey's a pathetic half-wit, but he was right about one thing: heroes don't accept the world the way it is. The Senior Partners may be eternal, but we can make their existence painful."
Wesley: "You want to take them on."
Angel: "We're in the machine. The Black Thorn runs it. We can bring their gears to a grinding halt, even if it's just for a moment."
Spike: "About time we got our hands dirty!"
Angel: "This isn't a 'keep fighting the good fight' kind of deal. Let's be clear: I'm talking about killing every single member of the Black Thorn. We don't walk away from that."
Lorne: "Do we crawl away, at least?"
Angel: "We do this, the Senior Partners will rain their full wrath. They'll make an example of us. I'm talkin' full-on Hell, not the basic fire-and-brimstone kind that we're used to."
Gunn: "We know the drill."
Angel: "No, you don't. Ten to one, we're gone when the smoke clears. They will do everything in their power to destroy us. So, I need you to be sure. Power endures. We can't bring down the Senior Partners, but for one bright, shining moment we can show them that they don't own us. You need to decide, for yourselves, if that's worth dying for. I can't order you to do this. I can't do it without you. So, we'll vote, as a team. Think about what I'm asking you to do. Think about what I'm asking you to give."
Spike: "Kill them all -- burn the house down while we're still in it?"
Angel: "Something like that."


Great. Love it. And I'm not going to breathe a word about Angel maybe suffering from flaming-martyrdom-envy (after all, Spike DID seem to be sort of coming out on top in their little “I-saved-the-world-more-times-than-you” pissing contest last week) and how that might have had the teensiest bit of influence on his Jim Morrison "Try-to-set-the-night-on-fire" plan.

However, given that we can only choose based on the information we have in front of us and retained in our memories, and given that the SP can apparently alter all of that if they're highly motivated enough, how convincing is it to say that the SP (or the powerful, in general) can’t control our will to choose? Unless Angel simply meant that they can try to control our PERCEPTION of the choices before us, and threaten us with dire consequences if we don't choose their way, but they can’t actually force us to choose one way over another? Kind of splitting hairs, there, aren't we? Or not. I'm still chewing that one over.

But that still doesn't address the issue of what happened to Drogan's choice -- UNLESS Illyria somehow filled Drogan in while they were alone at Spike's place playing Crash Bandicoote, and gave him then the option of whether or not to go on, possibly knowing that Drogan was the likeliest candidate to be chosen as Angel's "lamb". When that idea first occurred to me, I suddenly felt a lot better about things ("Angel's still in his heaven-bound Shanshu course, and all's right with the world").

And then it raised even more questions: Surely, Illyria spilling the beans to Drogan without the benefit of any protective glamor would have tipped off the SP? Unless Angel got that glamor of his FROM Illyria (or through her agency) in the first place, and she actually still has the power to somehow stay off the SP’s radar? [But then, as a friend reminded me, how could they possibly risk Drogan's truth-saying curse not kicking in and screwing the pooch?] Aaaargh! My head hurts. Maybe Drogan gets to rise from the dead, grow back his hair, and join the team in the end, again, after all. I am SO grasping at straws, here.


III. "Xena? Is That You? You've...Changed!"

In case anyone else was thinking the same thing I was ("We're gonna kill 'em all!" Hmmm. Where have I heard that before? Oh, yes--Xena!), this brief note's for you. Not only is Angel apparently adopting one of Xena's most famous catch-phrases, but he also seems to have mastered her patented "I'm-only-making-small-talk-with-you-because-I'm-going-to-kill-you-very-soon" cocktail party smile (at the Black Thorn new member reception: you KNOW he was picturing them all dead and dismembered at his feet everytime he exchanged a word or a hand-shake or a smile with those characters -- very reminiscent of the dark Xena's smile when she'd deliver the "I've-just-cut-off-the-flow-of-blood-to-your-brain-and-you'll-be-dead-in-thirty-seconds" speech).

Even more, we seem to be recycling the vague sort of theology that accompanied talk of Eli's martyrdom in the last two seasons of X:WP. Angel's justification/explanation for why they should sacrifice all their lives to send a message, even though it won't actually make any substantial change in the world, but maybe (if anybody who knows what we did actually survives to tell anyone else) it'll make it a bit easier for other poor sods to choose freedom over giving in to the inhumanity, etc. -- well, I was strongly reminded of how confused I got about why Xena and Gabrielle had to let Ares kill Eli, and just exactly how it was that Eli's self-sacrifice was supposed to make it EASIER for others to choose the way of love (or to usher in the age of the rule of the god of love) over the ways of the old gods. Maybe it was all the Christian symbolism I thought I was seeing that got me confused, though.

[Let's see if I've got this straight: Xena had an Immaculate Conception, and her daughter Eve -- though her birth seems to emulate that of the Virgin Mary in Catholic tradition, on the one hand, and stuff from the book of Revelation on the other hand, and though she's born after the death of Eli -- is the Messenger of Eli, kind of like John the Baptist? Only, she's actually more like Saul of Tarsus when she was Livia and persecuted the Elisians, and then becomes Paul the Apostle when she's baptized, and Mama Xena gets the power to kill gods? And Eli prays to "Abba"/Father and raises Xena and Gabrielle from the dead with a little help from the angel Callisto after their crucifixion, but he's just a regular guy like everybody else. Okay. Now I've got it.]


IV. "Ex-Deus IN Machina?"

So, we've got Team Angel IN the machine that is W&H and the forces of evil, etc., in this world. And rather than a god FROM the machine flying in at the crucial moment to resolve the unresolvable plot twists and save the play (as in the Greek dramas from which we got the "deus ex machina" stereotype), we've got folks IN the machine planning to hurl a whole lot of monkey-wrenches and their own frail bodies, if need be, into the gears to stop it in its tracks, even if only for an instant.

And we've maybe got an ex-god-king in Illyria, either secretly on the team or else moving a few pieces around behind the scenes, who's also in this machine with them. And maybe, in the end, our gang won't have to make the ultimate sacrifice (and thus preclude, short of mass resurrections, any follow-up movies or spin-offs of Angel), because Illyria might be there at the crucial moment -- having no particular desire to stay in this world once the current game is over and being amenable to going back to the peace of the almost-dead lifestyle in the Deeper Well, as she's indicated to Drogan and others -- and make some sort of substitutionary sacrifice, or figure out a way that our gang's efforts don't just HURT the SP, but actually injure or maim the SP. I don't insist that the Senior Partners be maimed, but it would be kind of nice. Or not.

I have no idea and no notion what to expect, when you come right down to it, and I can't wait to find out. Except that, of course, then the series will be over, and I'm really not gonna be 'okay' with THAT anytime soon.