Drogyn joins
the ranks of people Angel cannot save.
After engineering his arrival, Angel accomplishes his execution. "I had to
make them believe someone that good and that pure was my enemy."
In fact, had he become Angel's enemy?
Unwittingly, perhaps. Or more to the point, he became the means by which
Angel could save the world.
With the transfer of the Visions to Angel, in Cordelia's dying moments, the
Powers That Be set out a long, thudding warning bell -- to wit: These are the
people who are bringing about the Apocalypse.
Sadly, however, the Powers That Be couldn't manage to transmit an image of them
without their masks.
So the only way for Angel to track them all down was to infiltrate them.
And how is a simple, garden variety vampire with a soul going to manage that?
Well, how did he manage to plant whatever evidence it was that Drogyn found in
the Deeper Well?
Angel's actions transferred meaning to the deaths of Cordy (by acting on the
Visions) and Fred (by claiming entre to the Circle of the Black Thorn, a secret
society).
Gunn: I've
never heard of it.
Lindsey: That's because it's secret.
The reveal of
the Circle -- ultimately, powerful baddies Angel has encountered throughout the
season -- gave a nice justification
for Lindsey's reappearance: Trying to be part of the Circle.
Good, bad, they're past all of that. They're interested in Power. Power to
bring about wholesale destruction.
And we heard an echo from "Conversations With Dead People," where
Cassie is taunting Willow -- "I'm done with the whole good, bad thing, I'm
over it." -- nota bene for the purists -- all quotes are from best
recollection.
It's sad they wouldn't consider amassing their great powers to end world hunger
or to build communication between the races. But Lord Acton's axiom -- as
partially quoted by Lorne -- rang true: Power corrupts, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely. A recent rerun of "Law & Order" cited
"The Third Man," in which Orson Wells looks down on a fairground from
a Ferris wheel and refers to the people as "dots." And if one of
those dots were to stop moving, what would you care, really?
"An ant with the best intentions or the most diabolical schemes, is, in
the end, no more or less than just an ant."
Angel's rant belied his true nature, which he outlined in an earlier season:
"If what we do doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is what we
do." Or something like that.
Anything to break the stranglehold of W&H's insidious hold over people --
"The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men to do
nothing." Angel does something. In a whole world full of good
people doing nothing, he wants to do something. To look out for the
downtrodden, to hear the voices of the dispossessed -- he rejected the Gem of
Amarra specifically to stay connected to the people who needed him the most.
To help the hopeless.
So ... enter Drogyn.
Well, in order to help the hopeless, to turn the tide against evil's
all-but-inevitable triumph (given the attractive corruption of power), Angel
needs to be in a position to blunt the most direct attack, the agency of the
apocalypse, the Circle of the Black Thorn in everyone's side. Against the
Senior Partners' relative holding pattern of "keep fueling man's inhumanity
to man until everything falls apart," he can bring down their
functionaries in this dimension.
And we hear an echo of Wesley from Pylea: "If you try to save everyone,
you end up saving no-one."
Wesley should've understood intuitively what Angel was up to. Using the
strategems of The Senior Partners against them -- attend to the raft of
"projects" that breeze in through the front door -- The Fell
Brethren's sacrifice, Senator Bitca's opposition, etc. -- to lull them into a
false sense of security while he uses his position as the head of the L.A.
branch to shove a gigantic spanner in the works.
Yes, Angel took Drogyn's life to accomplish his ascension. Drogyn was one of
those dots that stopped moving around so much.
But to get to the place he needed to be -- to save everyone -- Drogyn became a
person Angel couldn't save.
Nina was a person he could.
And despite the way that scene was written, I believe that an post-shoop Angel
joining her on the beach would hardly be unwelcome.
Angel knows full well that if the apocalypse comes and he can't stop it, Nina
could be a few blocks over from it or she could be in Switzerland. The end of
the world is the End of the World.
But at least her last hours would be spent with her family enjoying the day.
He couldn't tip his hand too much, or the final moments of the episode wouldn't
have had as much meaning for us. Such a different vibe from the earlier
meeting, Angel lets them in on it.
But never mind a mildly confused Hamilton standing outside Angel's office. Wouldn't
the Senior Partners see right through a glamor?
Well -- they can't be everywhere at once.
To my understanding, Drogyn became the Season Five version of Tina.
In "City Of," the Powers That Be sent Doyle a vision about Tina, a
girl in trouble who Angel tried to save from a powerful and very connected
vampire who'd been victimizing a string of young naive girls for his own
nefarious purposes.
He couldn't save Tina from Russell Winters, which I choose to see as a motive
force throughout the series.
But his efforts put him in touch with Cordy. Who did grow to care about
him enough to reach out with her last efforts to show him who the Big Bad was.
He had respect for that objective. He had no illusions of doing anything so
prosaic as winning. But as the only being with insight into the Circle with
knowledge of what they were up to and with a will to put a stop to it, he knew
he had to try.
And no time like the present. His loyalty to the Circle is confirmed by his
associates' fears and suspicions of him. The tattoo is on his chest and the
plan is set.
Angel has seen the enemy.
He's got a big sword and knows where to point it.
Let the slashing begin.