post Buffy s4

Xander - the funny, loyal, sometimes foolish member of the Scooby gang. He can show incredible bravery (see a href="hero.html">Angel & Xander: who's the real hero?) and has saved the life of every member of the Scooby Gang at some time or another. He's also displayed flashes of perception and maturity. I like Xander - but I'm not convinced he's a true friend to Buffy. The major reason (there are others) for this is his attitude to Buffy and Angel's relationship. I dare say we've all had friends who have been in relationships with people we didn't like or think were good for them but Xander's response to this is somewhat on the extreme side.

Right from day one, Xander was attracted to Buffy, and not happy that (a) this wasn't returned and (b) that she liked the mysterious stranger Angel. At first, it seemed this dislike wasn't all that serious and of a wry, humourous, even self-deprecating nature. However, it seemed to became something darker as the series progressed, especially once Angelus returned (or maybe he just felt he could articulate it more once Angel(us) was 'out' as the enemy?). His comment in Passion when they're all at Giles' apartment after finding out about Jenny's death is very telling "Let's not forget I hated Angel long before any of you did...". We all know why of course - jealousy plain and simple. It's not called the green-eyed monster for nothing.

It is these negative feelings that cause Xander to bring up Jenny's death at *every* available opportunity - as if anybody has forgotten about it!. He doesn't seem to care that his constant reference to this terrible event is painful to Buffy who is carrying an enormous amount of guilt over it. Okay, so she made a mistake. She couldn't kill the body of the person she loved despite the fact that the demon was in charge. Is it really so hard to understand why that might have been difficult for her? Is it really necessary to keep beating her over the head with it? She's 17 and literally carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. As a friend to the slayer, shouldn't he be helping her carry this burden rather than add to it? But no, he's far more interested in using Jenny's death as a weapon in his anti-Angel(us) campaign. Furthermore this focus on his own agenda makes him oblivious to the fact that his behaviour is painful to Giles and Willow who were much closer to Jenny than he. Look at the conflict between him and Giles in the library after Buffy and Willow have brought the restoration ritual to show them in Becoming I. Giles points out that restoring Angel does seem to have been Jenny's last wish. Xander's flat "Jenny's dead" enrages Giles. This tears Buffy apart and just makes the whole situation much more painful to her. We've seen time and time again that Buffy hates it when people close to her are arguing - presumably a result of having seen her parents shredding each other for years before they got divorced.

[As an aside: none of the Scooby Gang who are in favour of restoring Angel's soul use the far more powerful and pragmatic argument that doing so will remove one of Sunnydale's most vicious, and cruelly-inventive killers *and* increase the number of whitehats (assuming Angel wouldn't just stake himself once he remembered what he'd done of course). Had they had done so, it might well have taken some of the wind out of Xander's sails. The emphasis seems to be rather on discussing whether it's right for Buffy to get her boyfriend back. It's only later that Buffy says Willow should try the restoration so they have another chance at stopping Angelus if she fails.] All this can, (with a very charitable mind!) be dismissed as petty teenage angst but he crosses the line in Becoming II when he is sent by Willow to find Buffy and tell her they're going to try the Restoration ritual again. Xander finds Buffy on her way to the mansion and starts to tell her the message - "Willow...", he considers - and instead of giving Buffy the message replaces it with sentiments of his own "She said to kick his ass". He changes the whole tenet of what Willow wanted Xander to say to Buffy on her behalf. Wrong, Wrong, WRONG! This was not his decision to make. He lies to one friend and misrepresents another. The look on his face immediately afterwards shows he knows he has done wrong. There doesn't seem to have been any fall-out from this yet but I do wonder how Willow and Buffy are going to react if/when they ever find out. It hasn't come out yet only because Buffy doesn't want to dwell on the events of that day (look how long it took before she told Willow and Giles she had to kill the newly ensouled Angel in Faith, Hope and Trick) so it's not a big topic of conversation amongst the Scooby Gang.

While it's true that in Amends he offers to help Buffy and Giles research what is happening to Angel, I don't believe this balances the books, especially given his asking Faith if he could go along while she staked Angel just a few episodes earlier in Revelations. I do think his recent experiences with Willow and Cordelia have made him appreciate that matters of the heart are not as straightforward as maybe he previously thought. Buffy is somewhat taken aback by his offer and by way of explanation he says he hasn't been a good friend to Buffy when it comes to Angel (and the award for stating the obvious goes to...). This is the least he can do following his previous behaviour. I'm not saying he should turn into president of the Angel fanclub, but his duplicity with regards to one of his supposedly best friends is deplorable.

In fact, Xander has treated Buffy shabbily on a number of occasions. As long as she is fighting monsters and being her usual self(!) everything is fine and dandy, but as soon as she acts outside of her 'normal' behaviour (often as a result of the very abnormal things that have happened to her), Xander is the first one to start being judgemental. Look at his actions in When She Was Bad "If Buffy's about to lose it, I think we should be reaching minimum safe distance" and in Dead Man's Party he couldn't *wait* to pile in when Buffy and Joyce were having their stand up row. In both cases, he reacts to Buffy's out-of-the- ordinary behaviour with criticism and unwillingness to even try and understand the reasons for it (because he's such a well-balanced personality who's never slipped up). Ironically, I think that it's *because* he has such a high opinion of Buffy that he takes it so hard when she makes mistakes. His attitude is almost one of personal affront that 'the Buffster' should have fallen from the pedestal he insists on placing her on. It's a no-win situation because Buffy is only human. She *will* fall from time to time - we all do and it does mean that instead of being there for her as one of her closest friends, he has added to the hurt she feels in a spiteful and underhand manner. It's tragic really.

It's true that in Season 4 we haven't seen much of this side of Xander (though he still makes his feelings towards Angel quite clear to Riley in The Yoko Factor "It's not that I hate the guy, just the guts part" and he sounds very bitter when he's explaining what makes Angel feel happy and turn into Angelus). However, given that Season 4 was very much about showing the members of the Scooby gang each doing their own thing, I don't think that's surprising. Personally, I think Xander's jealousy is just dormant, lying in wait...


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The Above the Law banner is an altered form of a screen-cap taken from the The Slayer Show, the original screen-cap is © the WB. t really prompted Xander's near-hatred. However, I disagree one hundred percent that all this was was Xander being able to "articulate this more once Angel was out". I think that Xander's real, deep-down dislike of Angel comes from this incident, not from his jealousy. Throughout season 3, THIS was what made Xander distrust the vampire, not jealousy.

Remember The Harvest? Xander had to stake his own best friend who'd turned into a vampire. He's got more reason than most to hate them. It takes some time to wear away the worst of this once Angel joins up, but it's never going to go away. So once the vampire turns, he's going to want him dead more than anyone.

So his attitude in Becoming I isn't surprising. It's certainly harsh. But - and this is an important but - it's also just. It can't be dismissed as simple jealousy. Angel has caused a swathe of destruction, and the gang are discussing forgetting about it. Getting Angel back may be pragmatic - but it isn't justice. Xander is unforgiving, not jealous. Big difference. When he says his last line - "You want to forget all about Ms Calender so you can get your boyfriend back" - his words are harsh. They're inconsiderate. They're also true. That IS what Buffy wants, whether she'll admit it or not. Sometimes hitting someone with a harsh truth is a better thing to do than going along with a deception. It's never going to work with Buffy, since, as even Willow admits much later, with Angel she can't see straight - but that doesn't make it wrong for him to try.

Which leads us to the infamous Becoming II lie. My opinion - Xander did the right thing. It's all very well to say he had no right to do it, but the fact was, he was at the climax of a battle, and had two pretty bad choices, each of which could lead to a lot of deaths. Consequences were a lot more important at this point than principles - you have to be alive to argue over principles.

Buffy, at this point, had been through hell with Angel turning. She'd suffered in about every way possible, and now, finally, after everything, she'd worked up the courage and the resolve to kill the man she loved. If she'd learned, at the last moment, that there was a possibility of Angel's soul being restored, it would have destroyed that resolve utterly. We're now in "what if" territory - but it's the view from Xander's eyes that's the relevant one in this case. If he had told her the truth, I don't think - and I believe that he also didn't think - that there was any way she could have fought with the focus she needed to defeat Angelus and contain Acathla.

So he lied. He must have known at that point that Buffy would never understand once she found out. If his interests were truly selfish, this would be a pretty good reason to tell the truth. He didn't.

Alternatively, you can believe that he was completely unthinking and acted out of pure jealousy and spite. Personally, I think the latter is a lot less likely.

His actions in Revelations aren't perfect. No character is. In this case, he's currently back to normal relations with Buffy, trusting her to do her job. And then he suddenly sees Buffy passionately kissing the vampire who the last three times he's seen him, has been trying to kill Buffy, hurt Buffy, and kill himself, respectively. Nobody ever bothered to tell him that Angel's soul was restored at the last, so the conclusion he jumps to isn't surprising. His actions could have been better, but they were understandable.

And although he goes with Faith to kill Angel, remember how he stops and then tries to STOP Faith when he sees there are no bite marks on Giles? If he was so consumed by jealousy and hatred, why didn't he just ignore the evidence and go straight ahead?

Yes, Xander has treated Buffy shabbily on occasion. She hasn't acted too well towards him from time to time, either. In WSWB, for instance, he only finally snaps at her after she's been treating him with downright contempt for all of the episode. You're right to say that Buffy's abnormal actions often aren't her fault - but you then apply no such leniency towards Xander.

I could make a long list of the ways in which Buffy has behaved badly towards Xander, but I won't, for the simple reason that I don't want to. You'd end up with a totally negative and unfair picture of her - just as you would if you collected Xander's failings, or Giles'. In different ways, I like all of the Scooby Gang, and I think dwelling on their bad points is inevitably going to make them seem worse than they are, and overshadow their good deeds, which in truth are much more numerous.

Not everyone can be as compassionate and forgiving as Willow, or as mature as Giles. Xander can't match either of them in those respects, but he has his own qualities which they likewise can't match. It's these that make him a good friend to Buffy, and I think the reason you haven't seen much of Xander's jealousy in Season 4 (which I haven't seen - BBC lag, sigh) is because it isn't anywhere near as big a part of his character as you make it out to be.

Nightsatyr 24/8/00
I believe that there is a story that has not been delved into by the both the writers and the self-appointed critics of BtVS: The life of Xander. We havent even seen the face of his parents. (At least part of Willows background was shown during Gingerbread.) He lives in his parents basement, which shows the isolation which may have fueled his hatred for angel.

We don't know what his childhood was like, which could undoubtably give is even the smallest insight into why he acts the way he does. For all we know he couldve been deprived of love as a child which would explain his obsession turned hatred.

Here's my theory. He was deprived as a child. He meets Buffy, falls in love with Buffy (actually this would fall into the category of lust), is shot down by Buffy, love/lust quickly turns into hatred (This is why i think that it was love... but lust can cause the same emotions as love, lacking the one essential thing to make it true love: mutuality, can hence the nick-name "false love"), but rather going through the confusion of making his friend the enemy, his subconcious goes for the object of her affection. (Angel). Now he sees Angel not only as a barrier between him and Buffy, but as the cause of all his unhappiness. (It had to unloaded onto someone, and what better candidate then Angel.).

Now I am sure that at least most of you have some experience with this (though not as strong.) The object of your affections doesnt return them, you feel betrayed. Now add those affections to the others emotions you may be going through as a teen and then add to it the fact that the person whom you wanted is in love with a known killer. Whats to think about.

Ribbon the cat 25/8/00
In defence of the "X-man" , Xander is sometimes the voice of reality. Sure he isn't supportive enough, but on the other hand, he wasn't wrong about Angel in series 2. If he had told Buffy that Angel had a chance of being saved at any second could Buff have won that fight, and if she had been sure he was back would she have sent him to hell. Xander enabled Buffy to do her duty risking their friendship on a lie, for the sake of the her safety and the world's. He won't forgive Angel... well as Angel would be the first to admit, if he turns again someone will have kill him, spin off show or not! Xander protects his friends and he doesn't have special powers, or knowledge, and nothing no sworn duty or destiny is involved.

Sometimes you just have to measure people by their actions....

Lore 25/8/00
Sorry to disagree, but I tend to think that of all Buffy's friends, Xander is the most loyal one. So what if he can't stand Saint Angel, that isn't his fault. And about Becoming II, have you even considered that the reason Xander didn't tell her had nothing at all to do with jealousy, but with concern about her. The fear that if he told her about their attempt to resoul Angel, that Buffy would be unable to kill him if it proved necessery.

Sure he's jealous of Angel, but he's never let his jealousy for a potentially very dangerous being keep him from being there for Buffy and the others when they needed him.

Now about that thing with Faith in Revelations, you should also remember that even though Xander, in his anger told her about Angel, he was also immediately ready to tell her the truth about Giles, that since there weren't any bitemarks, it was unlikely that Angel had attacked him.

Faith went after Angel on her own, even after Xander tried to stop her. You can't blame him because Faith is so quick to jump in the fray.

Rmsgrey 4/10/00
My impression from late season two and elsewhere is that, although Xander dislikes Angel on principle - he's never one to let a good grudge go to waste, he is more motivated by a desire to protect Buffy from worse pain by trying to make her face facts - Angel had turned bad, he had killed Jenny Calendar as part of his warm up on the way to destroying Buffy, and the hope of restoring his soul, from his viewpoint, could only lead to worse happening if a) it didn't work, or worse yet, b) it did work and Angel and Buffy got back together and Angel turned again. Even the actual sequence of events, where Angel was restored, and both he and Buffy managed to resist temptation, has been laden with heartache for both Buffy and Angel. Knowing that even if Angel did get his soul back, the future was anything but bright for the Buffy/Angel relationship, he did his best to get Buffy to move on, rather than see her go through that pain.


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Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: The Series are the property of the WB Network or perhaps Fox, maybe both. I'll leave them to work it out and contact me with the result. This web site, its operators and any content on this site relating to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are not authorized by Fox. No copyright infringement intended. This site is for entertainment purposes only and does not profit in any way.

The picture was taken from The Slayer Show and is © the WB.

The Above the Law banner is an altered form of a screen-cap taken from the The Slayer Show, the original screen-cap is © the WB.