Different Roads - Eve, Angel, and the Shanshu prophecy

[butterfly]

"I care. I guess I just don't mind." - Lindsey, re: his possible death at Darla's fangs in Reunion

That actually reminded me of Eve's attitude at the end of Destiny - she cares about whether or not Spike killed Angel, but she didn't mind that he didn't. And Lindsey's got... it's not a death wish so much as a hurt wish.

They're both flexible when it comes to getting what they what. Neither of them seemed to be terribly attached to any one outcome. It's about moving pieces and seeing what happens.

"What's wrong, Lindsey? Bitter that your girlfriend didn't kill me?"
"More like bummed."

Lindsey's ambigious. Always has been. And he was our introduction to Wolfram and Hart.

Lilah was always more professional than Lindsey. Lindsey gets emotionally involved in projects in a way that Lilah doesn't - even when she cares about Wesley, she never lets it interfere with her work.

So really, when we have an Angel who's letting himself bleed away his emotional contacts and sink into the grey of the work, it makes sense to bring Lindsey back for a wake-up call.

"The road to redeemption is a rocky path."

Even though Angel is instrumental in Lindsey's development, he was never the reason for any of Lindsey's decisions. All of those, from staying with Wolfram and Hart (Blind Date) to finally leaving it (Dead End), all came from Lindsey's own ambiguity.

And it's interesting to note that Lindsey leaves soon after Angel's epiphany and is gone for all of the time that Angel is letting himself forget about the Shanshu. Lindsey is, as others have noted, the person connected most with the Shanshu - once Angel's journey takes him away from thinking about the Shanshu, Lindsey is, for the moment, unneeded.

Really, once the Shanshu was mentioned again, I should have been on the lookout for my boy. The scrolls are introduced in Lindsey's first big episode. He's the one who brings Darla back and who starts the disconnection of Angel from the powers (and now Angel truly is cut off from the PTB - and he hasn't even realized that it was foretold). He told us that "we don't want [Angel] dead. We want him dark." Though he did misunderstand what was meant by that - it wasn't Angelus that W&H wanted - it was a dark Angel.

Lindsey handed the reins over to Lilah (saving her life in the process), but her goals weren't his, and W&H's focus on Angel shifted in the changeover.

Interestingly enough, Lindsey was never really afraid of Angel in the way that Lilah was - he practically challenged Angel to hurt him whenever they met. Again, Eve demonstrates that same lack of fear. Lindsey's been hurt by Angel more often than Lilah has (though Lilah's been threatened more, he didn't hurt her as much) but Lindsey? Well, Lindsey never really seemed to have much of a concern for his own skin after Blind Date - or possibly what happened in To Shanshu in L.A. is what set it up.

Some people have speculated that Eve is a cyborg (if Lindsey is behind the people in Lineage, that would make perfect sense - Roger wasn't detectable as non-human in any way). This actually really tracks for me. And it explains why she has Lindsey's pragmatism and lack of fear of Angel. And why she wears Darla-red clothes. "Sex with robots is more common than people think."

And her ambiguity, again, mirrors Lindsey's.

So, what do we know for certain -

a) they put Sirk in there - which means that they either took advantage of Wes' absence or they arranged it. I suspect that Corporeal Spike is a Plan B. That Lindsey also sent the cyborgs and would have been perfectly happy with a will-less Angel. That's so something Lindsey would think of and it explains why the cyborg knew where to find things in the vault (and also why it needed Wes, after all, I bet Wesley's changed the password and who the vault is coded to).

b) they were kinda hoping that Spike would kill Angel, but were fine with him not - Again, definitely a Lindsey thing. Lindsey, after TSiLA, pretty much never minds the idea that something could lead to Angel's death. He won't force it if a live Angel works with his plans, but he's always willing to change his plans to accommodate a dead Angel.

c) they did it under the Senior Partner's noses - Which means that they are not on the side of Evil. They may or may not be on the side of good - I personally suspect that Lindsey is on the side of himself and people that he likes - which does include the innocent most of the time.

d) this is only the beginning of their plan - Yay! More Lindsey!

Comments

[starsprinkles.livejournal.com]

I didn't even think about Eve being a cyborg. I kinda hope not just because I thought that plot twist was a little.. I don't know. It just doesn't fit with the normal mystical flow of Angel so much. But hey, if you're gonna create a woman, what better name than Eve? It's certainly a possibility.

So if it was Lindsey who sent the amulet and Spike's "Pandora's Box," did he mean for the amulet to go to Angel.. or Spike? While I can see him wanting Angel to die, would he really want to give him such a hero's death? Did he know the champion who died would come back, albeit uncorporeal?

And if Lindsey & Eve aren't really evil, does that mean this year's Big Bad will be as ambiguously evil as Jasmine was? Last season we were kinda led to believe the Beast was the bad guy, as he was clearly evil.. but it turned out to be the "peaceful" Jasmine. This year, is Lindsey an ambiguous henchman to a truly evil Big Bad? Did the order switch? Or will it be something totally unexpected?

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

Great commentary - and a lot to think about, with Lindsay's season arc. :)

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

I don't think that he sent the amulet the first time (that was all Lilah and the SP, I think), but I do think that he sent it the second time.

And the Roger cyborg was under a magical glamour... I wonder if the power source is also magical as opposed to physical - the power source that we saw, we didn't really find out what it was.

Angel tends to go for arcs that last a long time - the stand-alones of S1 turning into the beginning of the Shanshu arc (which just returned). There was the Connor arc, which came in the middle of and was influenced by the Jasmine arc. The Darla arc that started all that, and the Cordy-visions arc that also started off major things.

In S4, we started with Connor, Wes/Lilah, and Cordy as the arcs. Cordy returned and hooked up with Connor and destroyed W&H, leaving just the Cordy/Jasmine/Connor arc to finish out the season. When that imploded with Connor finishing off Jasmine, the Lilah/W&H arc returned to clean up the pieces and offer Angel&Co a new beginning. Each arc feeds off the others.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Lindsey's a thought-provoking type. It was sweet of ME to bring him in so that I wouldn't mourn quite so terribly over a Wesley-less episode.

I do love that not having Wesley was such a key part of the episode - if he'd been there, he'd have prevented all the foolishness. It couldn't have happened with Wesley there.

[inlovewithnight.livejournal.com]

if he'd been there, he'd have prevented all the foolishness. It couldn't have happened with Wesley there.
That's because our boy Wes is the logical one...almost typed "the smart one," but that's a disservice to Fred...and Gunn, I suppose. Though Gunn's smartness is ambiguous itself...and didn't anyone at ME read "Flowers for Algernon" before they came up with that plot?
[Found your commentary through a friendsfriends...and enjoyed it very much. :)]

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

And Wes is the prophecies/demon guy. He knows tht language and the way these things work. Wes finds things out, whereas Fred's more of an inventor and Gunn is more of a practical/people knowledge type (even back in S2, he's the one who guessed what the lawyers were going to do - "You telling me those lawyers haven't found a way to write that off?").

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Cool insights and some impressive bits of speculation-- thanks for sharing with the class. & :-)

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.

January cannot come soon enough.

Well, I suppose it would be a shame to miss my birthday and Christmas, but apart from that...