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![]() Angel s1e19 "Sanctuary" Faith's actions in the Angel episode Five by Five reveal her to have a serious death wish. She attacks Angel, under the guise of assassination, then begs him to kill her when he refuses to fight back. It can be assumed that this was her motivation in taking the “job” from Wolfram and Hart all along, to find a way to end her life in a way that doesn’t look like suicide. But did she have this same death wish in Sunnydale? To answer this question, I will focus strongly on the two episodes where Faith portrays a death wish, Graduation and Five by Five. PART ONE: Yes, she did have a death wish A) She must have been aware that the only cure for the “Killer of the Dead” poison was the blood of a Slayer. It was provided to her by the Mayor, a man who cared for her as a daughter and was visibly shaken and distraught when she was on the verge of death. If he knew enough about the poison to know that it killed vampires, he also had to have realized that Buffy would try to determine the cure for the poison. To avoid her healing Angel with time enough to devise a plot against him (its pointed out by Mayor Wilkins that the sole purpose of poisoning Angel is to “keep her [Buffy] occupied for a spell”), he had to be assured that the cure was something elusive and difficult to come by: such as Slayer’s blood. He also had to realize that Buffy would try to kill two birds with one stone: ridding herself of Faith and curing her boyfriend. So why did he conceive of a plan that allows Faith to use a poison that would both anger Buffy enough to try to kill her (which was quite possibly Faith’s intention all along, unbeknownst to the Mayor) and required Faith’s blood as a cure? We can only assume that he had enough faith in Faith to believe that she would be able to kill Buffy, or at least keep Buffy from harming her. We can also assume that Faith knew Buffy would come after her (realizing, as the Mayor did, that Buffy could want to cure Angel and get rid of her simultaneously) and also knew that the Mayor believed that she was able to dispatch of Buffy, or at least keep her out of circulation while he finished the Ritual of Gavrok. What the Mayor perhaps didn’t know was that it was Faith’s intention to get killed all along. B) When Buffy came to her place, intent on killing her, Faith only provoked her, much as she did Angel in Five by Five. She asks whether is Angel is “dead yet” and tells Buffy that the Mayor got her the poison, which is “wicked painful.” When informed that the cure for the poison is her own blood, she seems unsurprised, then utters the most revealing line: “You know you’re not going to take me alive.” It has already been proven to Faith that Buffy is a better fighter than her, not to mention has more experience and a larger backup team (as shown in Enemies when the gang bursts in to save Buffy). She must also realize that there is no way that she will leave her apartment alive. Either Buffy will kill her and use her to cure Angel, or she will kill Buffy and leave the apartment, only to be ambushed by Buffy’s friends. (While we, the audience, know that the Scooby Gang were actually researching and preparing during this time, Faith had to assume that they were backing up Buffy, as they had in the past.) But despite all this, she not only carried through with the plan, which not only directly threatened Buffy’s lover *and* called for Faith’s own blood she then taunted the other Slayer into attacking her, an action which she surely must have realized would get her killed, or at least (as was the case) seriously injured. C) Faith looks out for only one person: herself. She does what she thinks will benefit her, and anything else that happens along the way is only a bonus. This is shown in Five by Five when she is provoking Angel to attack her: “If I kill him [Wesley], would that help, or just be really funny?” “You I have to kill. Wesley is just for the hell of it.” She has been hired to kill Angel, which affects her directly since 1) she will have someone she considers to be a personal enemy out of the way, and 2) she’s getting paid for it. He is also the only person in LA capable of killing her. Wesley is just something fun that takes up her time until Angel comes. In the end, she’d be dead, but she caused some damage along the way. Faith appeared to be using this same tactic in Graduation. She wanted to die, but first needed an excuse for Buffy to come after her and eventually kill her (much as she needed to give Angel an excuse to come after/kill her in Five by Five: kidnapping Wesley and torturing him). Even as she was dying, she tried to deprive Buffy of Angel—she jumped off the roof to avoid being Angel’s cure. She must have realized that only two things could come of this: 1) Angel would die, shattering Buffy emotionally, or 2) Angel would have to drain Buffy’s blood, which could possibly kill her. Therefore, even in death she would leave a permanent mark on those around her, and we all know that Faith didn’t want to be forgotten. Faith also must have realized that having Buffy kill her would affect her monumentally, in a negative way. She had previously pointed out to Buffy in Enemies that if she kills Faith, she becomes her, taking over the veil of “murderer” and “rogue Slayer”. She also pointed out that Buffy wasn’t “ready for that…yet.” In the face-off scene of Graduation, the following interaction takes place:
Faith: Well, look at you. All dressed up in big sister’s clothes.
Buffy: You told me I was just like you. That I was holding it in.
Faith: Ready to cut loose?
Buffy: Try me. She realizes that Buffy is fully prepared to kill her at this point, and only provokes her further: “Give us a kiss,” inviting the image of the chaste kiss on the forehead in Enemies (during which she made the kill-me-become-me speech). One may ask how Faith’s own death benefits her. Well, its already been shown that Faith ultimately thought herself to be “Nothing! A murderous bitch!” (Who Are You). Perhaps she thought that the best course of action for herself was death. As a Slayer, she had already accepted the “Live fast, die young, and leave a pretty corpse” path of life, and at the time of Graduation had already gone through momentous personal trauma: losing her group of friends and her justification of her “bad girl” actions as she joined the “dark side of the force.” It has also been shown that she suffered abuse and neglect as a child because of her alcoholic mother. When Angel asked if she felt young, she couldn’t respond in an affirmative fashion. As she had already decided she would die young, and she felt “old” after having seen so much and killed so many, her only available course of action was death. And rather than give her perceived “enemies” a victory by killing herself, she decided to have one of the opposition off her, which both ended her life, and gave her something to enjoy along the way: the knowledge that her death would 1) be remembered, and 2) affect other people in a negative fashion, such as by turning Buffy into a Faith. D) Another indication that Faith had a death wish during her time in Sunnydale is the similarity of the situations in Graduation and Five by Five, the episode in which she voiced her wish to be killed for the first time. She was, consciously or unconsciously, mimicking what had happened before with her and Buffy. First she threatened and challenged Angel publicly, before finally making a definitive move to force him to “get in the game.” Similarly, her and Buffy had a number of altercations before Faith poisoned Angel, forcing Buffy to come after her if she wanted her boyfriend to live. In both cases, Faith did not directly attack either one of them. Instead, she challenged them by attacking someone under their protection and provoking them into action by implying that they could not protect their own. The conversations that take place collectively in Faith’s apartment and in the apartment of the guy Faith beat up are somewhat similar as well: Buffy and Angel only wanting to take care of business, and Faith taunting them and provoking them into hurting her however she can. Faith also implies, in both fights, that she doesn’t expect, or doesn’t want, to live through them.
In Graduation: In Five by Five:
PART TWO: No, she didn’t have a death wish A) Faith was planning to fight at the Ascension. In fact, she didn’t want to go home when she did. She asked the Mayor if she could got and kill or maim somebody else, because “there’s no way I’m sleeping.” She was just itching to kill someone else, and an angry Buffy had to be a good fight, which she was eager to have. In fact, when Faith first awoke from her coma, her first instinct was “I gotta get to Sunnydale High School graduation—*now*.” She wasn’t disappointed that she wasn’t dead, she just wanted to *fight*. B) As Buffy points out, “All that killing and you’re afraid to die?” Faith fought back with everything she had, making it a brutal fight all the way until the end. She did everything she could to wound Buffy, and certainly gave her no advantage which she could use to kill Faith. In fact, she tried to get back what was hers: her knife, which (it can be assumed) she planned to use on Buffy, since it was already there. She employed every weapon she could to win an advantage (ex: the pipe that she hit Buffy with). C) When Buffy stabbed her, she seemed shocked. Now, perhaps this was only the actual fact of her imminent death hitting her hard, but perhaps she just didn’t expect Buffy to win. Faith had confidence and skill, and definitely underestimated Buffy in many ways over the course of time. (Ex: in Enemies, she certainly didn’t expect to get “played” like she did.) Maybe she actually thought that she could win that fight, and even kill the other Slayer. She had a personal vendetta against Buffy, who she believed had stolen her life away from her. (“This was supposed to be my town!”) She was also super-confident in her own abilities, considering herself both above the law and superior to everyone else, including Buffy, who she believed thought herself better than Faith. Buffy added insult to injury when she showed that she intended to stab Faith with her own knife, and Faith seemed fully intent on killing her when Buffy produced the knife. D) Faith was an “adrenaline junkie” who lived in the moment and (apparently) loved her life at least until the point where her only options were fading into the oblivion of LA, jail, and death. Her philosophy on her life was “Hey, slaying’s what we were built for. If you’re not enjoying it, you’re doing something wrong,” and tried to pass this philosophy onto Buffy. Her personal motto was “Want. Take. Have.” She rejected society’s laws because she believed that they didn’t apply to Slayers. In short, Faith did things which affected her “right now” and didn’t think about what would happen later, so assuming that she had been plotting her own death for an extended period of time is somewhat ludicrous. Under this rationality, her death wish in Angel was also “spur of the moment” as Angel pointed out her faults and what she was doing wrong with her life. In fact, she went after Angel so that she would get paid, and intended to 'work my way up'. As far as we know, *everything* Faith did was in the moment, even when she intended her own death. E) If Faith had a death wish in Graduation, then why did she attack Buffy again when she awoke from her coma? She was 'ready for payback' because Buffy 'took my life'. In return, she takes over Buffy’s life, and doesn’t try to get herself killed. Nope, she just goes for a plane ticket. Its only when she’s back in her own body that she realizes that she is a 'murderous bitch' in her own eyes, and finds that she has a death wish. She then goes to LA to try and live her life, but is approached by people who are willing to pay her to kill Angel, giving her a way to provoke Angel into killing her, or at least a way to make some money and have some fun. CONCLUSION: Who knows? There are flaws in either sets of logic. For instance, maybe Faith and the Mayor didn’t know that the cure for the 'Killer of the Dead' poison was Slayer’s blood. Maybe the person who supplied it to them forgot to mention that, or the Mayor thought Buffy would be too busy worrying about Angel to come after Faith. Maybe Faith was only trying to provoke Buffy into fighting her, not killing her. Adversely, maybe Faith’s Slayer instincts kicked in even while she wanted Buffy to kill her, which is why she fought back. And why did she go after Buffy again when she knew that Buffy was more well-trained, Faith was out of practice, and Buffy had already beat her before? Maybe she knew that her only options now were jail or death, so she once again tried to provoke Buffy into killing her. And it’s also ludicrous to assume that Faith had *no* long-term plans, when she obviously held long-term grudges. So in the end, its hard to figure out whether Faith had a death wish while in Sunnydale, or even at all. She had always possessed a careless attitude towards her own life and the life of others (ex: going into the sewer in Bad Girls when the odds were six against two), and perhaps her death wish in 5X5 was just another example of that. In my own opinion, Faith always had an unconscious death wish. She jumped headlong into dangerous situations that threatened not only her life, but the lives of others. She acted out the same life-threatening conflicts over and over in which she always lost, and attempted time and time again to kill a girl she believed could be exactly like her, a girl who had 'stolen her life'. She affected to love her life, but had a very cavalier attitude about maintaining it. In short, she was a very disturbed girl (duh, right?) who took out her aggression towards herself on others.
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