The version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer we watched — the one where Spike becomes central to the show’s mythology, earns a soul, sacrifices himself to close the Hellmouth, and moves on to co-lead five seasons of Angel — very nearly did not happen. At a panel at MyCon Live in Connecticut last weekend, James Marsters explained exactly how close Spike came to being killed off early in season two, and what he did about it.
“They were going to kill me off quickly anyway,” Marsters told the audience, which included fellow Buffy cast members Charisma Carpenter, Julie Benz, Marc Blucas, Kristine Sutherland, and Clare Kramer. Drusilla — played by Juliet Landau — was always intended to be the larger role of the pair. Spike existed primarily to give her someone to stand next to. They “just need someone to pair with her.”
What changed it was a deliberate act of creative defiance. Marsters had been told that Spike was a soulless vampire who cared about nothing and no one — that vampires on Buffy were metaphors for teenage challenges, designed to be defeated, not sympathised with. He disagreed. “I was like, ‘Eff that’,” he said. “If I play like that, they are going to kill me off. I’ve got to find love.”
The love he found, initially, was Drusilla. “It wasn’t on the page,” he said. He chose to play Spike as someone genuinely devoted to her — someone for whom love was not a weakness but the animating fact of his existence. The connection it created with audiences changed everything. What was supposed to be a disposable villain became something the show could not let go of.
Marsters has spoken before about Whedon being actively irritated by Spike’s popularity — apparently threatening to kill the character off precisely because audiences had grown too attached. He did not. And the show Spike made possible — the soul arc, the poetry, the “Fool for Love” confession, the final season’s sacrifice — is substantially a product of an actor who looked at what he had been given and decided to do something better with it.
Spike was supposed to die in season two. Instead, he became one of the most significant characters in the history of the show. James Marsters brought love. It turned out that was exactly what the audience needed.
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