Angel’s Character Analysis

Angel, vegetarian vampire detective, silently shrinks from humanity, while years of regret stain his newly possessed soul. He converses only when necessary, avoids eye contact and skulks alone with late night bottles of blood, like an old veteran contemplates his lost comrades over Scotch. Early into season 2, his resurfacing past evokes the question: What is Angel’s true character (as per his actions in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been)?

The filming offers plenty of hero\villain clues contradicting one another. During the first clip within Angel’s past, the bellhop admits feeling discomforted and apprehensive in Angel’s presence. When delivering his bill, the bellhop hesitates to exit the elevator. When he does build up the courage, the film draws the eye slowly and dreadfully down the dimly lit corridor before the bellboy reluctantly arrives at the door. He taps almost inaudibly at the door, his voice whispers into the room. After hearing Angel rustling, he sets the tray on the floor and rushes back to the safety of the elevator. The viewer expects the opening door will reveal some monstrous creature. The camera slowly ascends to reveal Angel’s face. They use the opposite portrayal near the second to last scene. The heroic vampire bursts into the room where the now elderly Judy has spent 50 years feeding her turmoil to a hungry demon. She ponders, “I don’t hear them anymore,” of the Thesulac demon he just only just vanquished. Good-naturedly, he lets he run her fingers across his face, inspecting for changes. He gently reassures her, helps her into the bed where she (presumably) dies comfortably and at peace.

The plot distinctively repeats the theme of the double life, of passing for one thing while denying an equal truth. Judy is black, passing for white. An actor passes for straight. Fangs aside, Angel is neither hero masking villain or vice versa. Angel is self-interested, passing for a lost soul in need of redemption.
He has some good guy credentials. Although his bloodlust is keen, Angel resists killing humans. His condition affords him predatorial advantages: super strength, heightened senses of smell, vision, and hearing. Vampirism lends itself to slaughter, but Angel stopped hunting victims when the gypsies cursed (or blessed) him with a soul. He protects Judy from incarceration, beating up a detective, and hiding her stolen money. In his single truly altruistic act, after searching for a way to defeat the demon that plagues the Hyperion, Angel takes Judy’s place in the noose when the hotel’s guests head hunt for the non-existent murderer of the salesman. Finally, Angel defeats the demon, ridding the hotel of its demonic presence.

He also commits villainous actions. Although he has reason to suspect she might be in danger, he tries to evict Judy from his room, until the last seconds when he notices his own lock being picked. He beats up a detective, even though he suspects that Judy is lying. When interacting, he keeps his back turned, as if dissuading and shortening conversations. He threatens to murder a bookstore owner and demands free equipment and assistance vanquishing a demon. When he does have the opportunity to slay the presence he believes caused his “friend” to turn against him, he abandons the cause, sacrificing countless lives In order to wallow in his own resentment. Finally, he endangers his friends without telling them they’re vanquishing a demon to attain bargain real estate.

Despite Angel’s hero/ villain conflict, the character displayed through his actions is calculating self interest. At the beginning of the episode, the Hyperion Hotel, his 1952 home, is on the market, but unsalable due to its demonic inhabitant. While he could have vanquished that presence years past, he instead abandoned the cause over hurt feelings. While Angel did not take the lives of the residents who died there after his abandonment (an evil act), he did nothing to save them, either. The viewer might guess that his return to the Hyperion might be in search of redemption, until the last scene. Once the hotel is free of the evil that has bound it for almost a century, Angel welcomes them to their new home. Angel may have attained redemption by accident, but the quest was a renovation of sorts, a real estate opportunity.

An honest hermit might choose to occupy some abandoned shack or business far from inquiring eyes. Angel instead occupies a busy hotel known for harboring inconspicuous types. He sets himself out for display but apart from others, as if to be observed but not approached. His mask, therefore, is solitary, but his actions indicate he wants to be seen while disguising the want. He wants people to think him a hermit, so he acts like an inapproachable renegade. Sometimes, he will unmask portion of his true self without regard to the reliability of the seer. Only after catching Judy lying several times, learning she has been hiding behind a wall of secrecy, that she has stolen a large sum of money from her former employer, does he befriend her. His friends are the low elements of the world, so he uses their betrayal to justify the wearing of his trust no one mask. Only once it serves his interests (as with the bookstore owner) does he communicate with more trustworthy crowds.

Finally his interactions with Judy, leave him hurt and betrayed. Although he understands that the residents of the hotel are being deceived by paranoid whispers, and that she did no actual physical harm to him because vampires cannot die, he leaves her riddled with remorse. Angel himself is assumed to be struggling with remorse, but turns a cold shoulder to the anguish he can see as Judy’s face blurs out of consciousness. Even after the demon guffaws out a southern laugh, confiding that he can now feed for years on Judy’s pain, Angel disappears, betraying in turn his so called friend. Even if he left the demon there, he could have eased Judy’s pain in any number of ways. He did not, because it did not serve his interest to do so.

Angel may go on to save the world from its own dark forces, even challenging hell for the benefit of mankind. He may champion women, children and the helpless in other episodes. Perhaps he leads mankind in the quest to reunite lost men with their souls, rescuing babies from burning buildings (or was that Spiderman?) and falling in love with sworn enemies. In this, episode, though, his true character is amoral, self interested, calculating, businesslike. His actions, benevolent or villainous, are quid pro quo. In Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, Angel is human.