Angel, Darla, Spike and Dru: Before 1997
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Listed below are summaries of historical flashbacks involving the major immortal characters on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. They detail events in those character's lives that occurred prior to the start of the Buffy series in 1997. Specifically, this covers the characters Angel, Darla, Spike and Drusilla. The article has two purposes: it enables the reader who wants to watch a given event to quickly identify all the episodes depicting the event and to order them correctly, and it provides a unified, continuous narrative of the flashbacks in one place. The first reference to an episode in a paragraph includes show, season and episode number. For example, "A4.15" means Angel, season 4, episode 15.
1609. Virginia. The Master Sires Darla. In colonial Virginia a defiant prostitute lies dying of syphilis. The Master, masquerading as a priest, sires the prostitute and gives her the new name "Darla". ("Darla" A2.7.)
1753. Ireland (Galway). Liam becomes Angelus. Liam's father interrupts his attempt to seduce a servant girl. Liam and his father quarrel, and Liam is evicted from home, denouncing his father as unloving and demanding, and parting tearfully from his mother and younger sister. Darla sees Liam brawling in a tavern and is interested, asking the bar maid who he is. ("The Prodigal" A1.15.) Liam sees Darla, who is posing as a noble woman, on the street. She lures Liam into a dark alley. There the two exchange pleasantries and Darla (with surprising ease) sires Liam. ("Becoming, Part One" B2.21, partially reprised in "The Prodigal".) Liam is buried (the tombstone says "1727-1753"). Darla is present when Liam rises from the grave and kills the cemetery attendant. Liam returns home, where his younger sister, thinking he is an "angel" (whence his new name "Angelus"), invites him in. Angelus kills his family. Darla discourses on parents and children amidst the strewn corpses. ("The Prodigal".)
1760. London. Angelus meets the Master. Darla introduces Angelus to the Master. Angelus rejects the Master's underground existence, and the two vie for Darla's allegiance, eventually fighting. The Master wins the fight but Angelus wins Darla. They leave together while the Master bides his time. ("Darla" A2.7.)
1764. England (York). Holtz’s family killed. Daniel Holtz pursues Darla and Angelus. Holtz's men think they have trapped them, but they have escaped, leaving a note threatening Holtz's family. At Holtz's home, Darla and Angelus talk Holtz's daughter into letting them enter. They kill Holtz's wife and baby, and sire his daughter. ("Quickening" A3.8.) Holtz returns home to discover them ("Quickening" and "Lullaby" A3.9). Realizing that his daughter is a vampire, Holtz kills her by casting her into the sunlight ("Lullaby").
1765. France. Darla deserts Angelus. Darla and Angelus hide in a barn from pursuers led by Daniel Holtz. The posse arrives and sets fire to the barn. Darla decides that only one of them can escape safely on their single horse. She knocks Angelus unconscious and departs. ("The Trial" A2.9.)
1767. Marseille. Along with friends James and Elizabeth, Darla and Angelus are trying to evade the vampire hunter, Holtz. Seeking to board a ship to Morocco, the vampires encounter Holtz but escape. ("Heartthrob" A3.1.)
1771. Rome. Holtz and a Cardinal have captured Angelus and torture him prior to killing him. Darla rescues Angelus and they escape. ("Offspring" A3.7.)
1773. England? York? Holtz is recruited by Sahjhan, who says he can help him kill Darla and Angelus more than 200 years in the future. ("Quickening" A3.8.)
1789. Prussia. Angelus meets the Beast. Angelus meets a demon (the Beast) who attempts to recruit his help in killing a group of priestesses that seek to banish the Beast. Angelus declines to help. Angelus is knocked out by the Beast, but the priestesses arrive and banish the Beast. ("Soulless" A4.11".)
1838. Dublin. Angelus feeds. Angelus feeds on a young man, Daniel, who is first seen running through the streets of Dublin at Christmas time. Angelus' speech indicates Daniel has lost to Angelus at cards and Angelus will take his winnings in this fashion. Later Angelus also feeds on a servant girl, and still later we have a brief glimpse of a pre-vampire Liam in a tavern. (The flashbacks occur in Angel's dreams, in one of which Buffy appears anachronistically.) ("Amends" B3.10.)
1860s. London & Prague. Drusilla is sired. Angelus and Darla meet after Darla has killed a prostitute and her client. Darla says Angel must guess their next victim, and he singles out Drusilla, walking in the street with her family. Angelus discerns that Drusilla is prescient, and Drusilla turns and stares at him, frightened. ("Dear Boy" A2.5.) Angelus substitutes himself for a priest he has killed in a chapel to which Drusilla has come for confession. Drusilla offers a distraught confession, worried that her prescience is a mark of the devil. Angel taunts her by urging her to embrace evil, but she refuses. ("Becoming, Part One" B2.21.) Later, having killed Dru's family and friends, Angelus and Darla invade the Prague convent to which Drusilla has retreated. Angelus has killed many of the nuns, and makes love to Darla in front of Drusilla. Drusilla is visibly insane, and will soon be sired by Angel. ("Dear Boy".)
1880. London. Spike is sired. William reads a poem about Cecily, the object of his affection, to his admiring mother, whose bloody coughing suggests tuberculosis. Wiliam's mother sings to William the song later used by the "First" to control him. ("Lies My Parents Told Me" B7.17.) At a party, William sits in the corner working on a poem. He approaches some guests, who read the poem with mocking laughter, noting that he is called William the Bloody because of his "bloody awful" poetry. He then approaches Cecily and confesses his love for her. She scorns him, saying "you are beneath me" (a dismissal echoed by Buffy over a century later). Disconsolate, he walks through the streets tearing up his poems. ("Fool for Love" B5.7.) He stumbles into Angel, Darla and Drusilla as they prowl the streets. ("Darla" A2.7). Drusilla follows William and sires him ("Fool for Love"). William and Drusilla exult in the bloody future that lies before them, but Drusilla is cool when William describes his plans for bringing his mother along. William's mother objects to Drusilla and asks if William has gone insane. He responds by siring her. William's mother as vampire berates him and his poetry. She mocks his oedipal love for her and dares him to consummate it, driving him to a fury in which he stakes her. ("Lies My Parents Told Me".) Drusilla introduces William to Angelus over the bodies of a couple Angelus has killed. Angelus and William bond, after a fashion. In a coach after a night of killing, Angelus and William discuss Drusilla. Angel belittles her and William's affection for her. Spike later finds Angel bedding a despondent Drusilla, which begins Spike's hatred of Angel.("Destiny" A5.8.)
1880. Yorkshire. Dissension While Hiding. The four vampires hide in a mineshaft. Angel and Darla complain that Spike's indiscretions have forced them to flee. Spike rejoins that they are timid and repressed. Angel and Spike scuffle, and Angel says meeting a slayer would teach Spike a lesson. ("Fool for Love" B5.7.)
1894. Rome. The Immortal is a rival. Angel and Spike are held in chains by a demon called the Immortal, who has his way with both Darla and Dru ("The Girl in Question" A5.20).
1898. Romania (Borsa). Angel gets a soul. Darla brings a blindfolded Angelus to his birthday gift, a young Gypsy girl. Angelus ravishes and then kills the girl in front of Darla. ("Five by Five" A1.18.) Angelus is seen running toward the gypsy camp where the girl he has slain lies on a funeral pyre and an elderly gypsy woman pronounces the curse on Angelus that restores his soul. The dead girl's father announces to Angelus his fate: to remember in anguish his century and a half of crimes. ("Becoming, Part One" B2.21.) Angelus returns to Darla but she senses his new soul, and threatens to kill him ("Five by Five"). Darla asks the father of the gypsy girl Angel killed to have the curse reversed in exchange for protection for his family, but Spike has already killed them. Darla, Spike and Drusilla destroy the Gypsy camp in retaliation for Angelus' curse. ("Darla" A2.7.) A disheveled Angel is seen trying to feed on a young woman after pummeling her escorts, but his conscience forces him to stop and to leave her alive ("Five by Five").
1900. China. Boxer Rebellion. During the Boxer Rebellion in China, Angel tracks down Darla. Despite being cursed with a soul, Angel asks her for a second chance to rule at her side. Angel comes upon a family, with a young baby. He distracts his vampire companions from them. ("Darla" A2.7.) Spike kills the Chinese slayer, and the afterglow of the combat prompts an embrace with Drusilla. They tell Angelus and Darla of Spike's kill. Angelus does not share in the general glee at this. ("Fool for Love" B5.7.) Darla senses Angelus' lack of enthusiasm, and later asks him to prove his evil by killing a baby. Angelus cannot do this, and rescues the baby. ("Darla".)
1902. New York. Angel arrives at Ellis Island. He is disheveled and distracted. (This flashback occurs in a dream of Angelus in which he and Faith appear anachronistically.) ("Orpheus" A4.15.)
1920s. Chicago. Angel saves puppy. A suavely-dressed Angel saves a flirtatiously grateful flapper's puppy from being run over in a Chicago street. (This flashback occurs in a dream of Angelus in which he and Faith appear anachronistically.) ("Orpheus" A4.15.)
1943. New York and the Atlantic. Angel is recruited for a mission aboard a submarine transporting vampires destined for German experimentation. Spike is on the submarine. Angel saves the situation but must sire a mortally wounded sailor to do so. Angel disembarks in Maine, again alone. ("Why We Fight" A5.13.)
1950s. Italy. Spike and Dru in Italy. ("The Girl in Question" A5.20.)
1952. Los Angeles. Hyperion Hotel. Angel is living at the Hyperion Hotel, where he becomes involved in various problems including a demon-inspired mass hysteria. He befriends a young woman who is "passing" but she betrays him. ("Are You Now or Have You Ever Been" A2.2.)
Circa 1974. New York. Angel feeds. A shabby but clearly 70s-style Angel is in a diner (he selects "Mandy" on the jukebox) when a robber shoots and kills the owner. After hesitating, Angel feeds on the dying man. Appalled at what he has done, he begins two decades of aimless, half-deranged despair, living on rats' blood. (The flashbacks occur in a dream of Angelus in which he and Faith appear anachronistically.) ("Orpheus" A4.15.)
1977. New York. Spike kills his second slayer. Spike and slayer Nikki Wood fight in a rainy Central Park, while Nikki's son Robin observes from behind a park bench. Spike breaks off the fight, saying he doesn't want the contest with Nikki to end quickly. Nikki tells Robin he must stay with relatives so she can "work the mission." ("Lies My Parents Told Me" B7.17.) In a subsequent fight on a subway car, Spike kills Nikki ("Fool for Love" B5.7).
1996. New York and Los Angeles. Whistler shows Buffy to Angel. In Manhattan, Whistler finds Angel living on the streets and drinking rats' blood to stay alive. Whistler knows about Angel's curse and tells Angel that Whistler is also a demon (albeit a good one). Whistler persuades Angel to go to Los Angeles to see something that will change his destiny. In Los Angeles, Angel watches Buffy as she leaves school at the end of the day, is confronted by a man (watcher Merrick?) who tells her she is the slayer, slays a vampire (with difficulty) in the man's presence, and goes home to feuding parents. The rest is history. ("Becoming, Part One" B2.21).
