Buffy and Spike - Complete Friendship, Part 3

Season 7 – Complete Friendship

In complete friendship the will commands the inferior powers and moderates both reason and passion. The will values things for their own sake and provides the basis for complete friendship that is both beneficial and pleasurable. This is the relationship that Spike and Buffy were able to establish during season seven.

In season seven, Spike continues to be of utilitarian use to Buffy. He gives her valuable information about the coming evil; helps locate Willow while she is missing and is an essential ally in the fight against the First Evil, the 'big bad' of the season. He helps Buffy train the potential slayers and ultimately, bears the burden of the amulet that saves the world. He helps Buffy accomplish her task of keeping the world safe, while Buffy helps him reconcile with the soul that he won for himself at the end of season six. Her belief in him allows him to withstand the torture and temptation offered by the First and remain firmly on the side of good. In short, they bring out the best in each other. Buffy shows more compassion and understanding to Spike than she shows just about any other character, even after (or maybe because of) their chequered and messy past, while Spike is elevated to the status of ‘champion’ ably assisted by Buffy’s belief and good influence.

With the ambiguity over his position on good and evil resolved this frees the relationship to develop in a new direction. Buffy and Spike share a history of seeking each other out for both utility and pleasure but by season seven they have curtailed their physical relationship. The pleasure they gain from the other is intimate rather than overtly erotic. They obviously still find each other attractive and physical intimacy is a distinct possibility (if not an inevitability, depending on how you read the final episode). The important distinction is that the pleasure they gain from the other exists for its own sake and is not dependant on conditions but rather, stems from mutual admiration, respect and love. Spike says he loves Buffy, not because he wants her, but because of whom she is - one hell of a woman, the one. Buffy gets courage and support from Spike and comes to need his presence, above all else, in order to achieve her goals. Ultimately, they must team up, a unique combination, to save the world – she, an axe wielding Slayer and he the amulet bearing champion, her champion, who she loves.

When faced with almost certain death Spike refuses Buffy’s plea to come with her, rather her sends her out to the world and commands her to take her place in it. He gives up his life so that she, and the rest of the world, might live. Earlier in the season we have seen Buffy refuse to allow Spike to quit, despite his demand that she kill him for everyone’s own safety. She doesn’t let him take the easy way out just as Spike will never let Buffy quit her job as the slayer. He knows that Buffy has a job to do and doesn’t ever separate the girl from the job or try, as others have done, to separate the two for his own purposes. They are a package deal and he understands that. Spike knows Buffy intimately and intellectually, her good, bad, ugly, pretty, dark and light – just as she knows the same of him.
Complete friendship requires virtue: virtue is found in strength of character, strength of character is found in will power. Buffy and Spike have both demonstrated personal willpower on many occasions, the difference comes to their relationship when they master the will power to resist the purely sexual urges that they had previously allowed to drive it. Again, I reiterate, it is not that Spuffy sex is bad and should never happen again. The value of their season seven relationship is that it is a time of revaluation, renewal; it is when they really get to know and value each other with the assistance of all the data gathered during their history together. The result is an intense, trusting friendship that encompasses honesty, affection, loyalty and love – complete friendship. On a very basic level, he satisfies her need for the ‘bad boy’ while she gratifies his long-held attraction to slayers in general. Each fulfils for the other the need for an element of danger without the relationship being fetishistic or inappropriate.

Buffy and Spike are complete friends in a true sense. They value each other for their own sake; they trust each other, know each other, accept the good, bad and the ugly about each other and still share a bond that is as close, if not closer than any in the Buffyverse (perhaps only rivalled by Angel and Cordelia). This relationship stands as Buffy’s best chance for a satisfying, equal relationship that includes both complete friendship and erotic love. Buffy and Spike are physically compatible, are attracted to one another, have satisfying sex and have an intellectually intimate connection.

One can only hope that some day, in some circumstance Buffy and Spike can be reunited to allow their love to continue on the road that they’d venture so far down (because, great muppity Odin, she misses that sex!)

The End.