Fool for Love

Spike (James Marsters) reveals his feelings for Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) when she comes to him for information on what it's like when a slayer dies. A brush with her own mortality ignites Buffy's curiosity and she realizes that only Spike, who has killed two previous slayers, will be able to sate it. When she offers the neutered vampire cash for his life story, he happily obliges: William, a terrible poet in the London of 1880, tries to court beautiful Cecily Addams (Kali Rocha) but finds acceptance only from Drusilla (Juliet Landau), the alluring but insane vampire who later sires him. Rampaging across the planet with Darla (Julie Benz), Angelus (David Boreanaz), and Dru, William comes into his own and renames himself Spike. His flamboyant carnage annoys the low-profile Angelus, who warns Spike that one day a slayer will get the best of him. Now fixated on slayers, Spike kills a Chinese Chosen One (Ming Liu) during the Boxer Rebellion, earning extravagant praise from Drusilla. A mere 75 years later, on a subway in New York, he finally bags his second slayer (April Weeden-Washington), this one a Foxy Brown-style heroine from whose corpse he collects his now-signature black leather trench coat. Dru remains his inamorata throughout these adventures, but in 1998 she leaves him, disgusted by his truce with Buffy (see "Becoming, Part 2"). In the present day, Spike counsels Buffy that he was able to kill both slayers only because their constant proximity to death left them eager, finally, to feel its peaceful embrace. He tells Buffy that when she's ready he will kill her, then he tries to kiss her. She recoils, tells him he's beneath her, and leaves him sobbing. Later, however, after learning her mother has once again been hospitalized, Buffy stiffly allows Spike to console her. Originally broadcast November 14, 2000, on the WB network, "Fool for Love" marked episode 85 of the cult-favorite series. The subsequent episode "Hell's Bells" would hint strongly that Halfrek, the vengeance demon played by Kali Rocha, is the same person as Cecily Addams, the human she portrays here. And although she would be played by a different actress, this episode's unnamed Blaxploitation slayer would resurface unexpectedly in "First Date.", When Buffy is wounded in a fight, she starts to wonder how her predecessors died, and turns to the only person with first-hand knowledge - Spike.