Buffy The Vampire Slayer

5.16 Shells-Chrysalis

Writer/Director: Steven S. DeKnight

At the conclusion of “Shells,” we’re shown a montage that’s a continuation of the “Fred leaving home” opening of “A Hole in the World.” To the background accompaniment of Kim Richey’s "A Place Called Home," it’s wordless and consists of Fred hugging her mom, getting into the station wagon, and driving away, conspicuously happy at the unknown prospect before her at her destination, Los Angeles. This time, though, this flashback moment is not isolated or centered on Fred alone, as in the previous episode. It’s interspersed with shots of each of the Fang Gang (which now includes Spike, by his own choice) in the present, each apparently troubled, grieving, alone.

Gunn lies in his infirmary bed, his sins finally all confessed and repented of but not forgiven; at her desk, head in hand, Harmony sadly contemplates her totemic unicorns; Lorne sits despondently drinking; Spike, the gregarious, sits like a cat in the middle of oblivious activity, plunked down on the stars where everybody has to walk around him, like a stone in a stream, dividing the water’s course; Angel sits at his desk, brooding; Wes packs up Fred’s things; Illyria wistfully touches the sarcophagus. Each alone.

And it leads off with a shot of one couple, also isolated, grieving for what’s lost, wondering what’s ahead: Ilyria and Wes.

By the inclusion of Fred into the equation, a particular spin is imparted to the whole montage: it says that this is not the end of something but the beginning. It’s looking back but also looking forward with hope and determination. Something has been lost (home; innocence; love; friendship; community) but something more valuable has been gained, even though it’s still unknown and unfelt by those involved. Physically separate, perceiving themselves to be alone, the unhealed loss of Fred has united the Fang Gang in a fresh configuration, given them a unanimity and purpose that were lacking before, even though it springs from grief.

"There’s so much I don’t understand. I’ve become overwhelmed. I’m unsure of my place." It’s Illyria speaking. But she speaks for them all. They’ve all “lost their place,” as Fred sets out happily from home. It’s what Fred left home to seek-her place, her special destiny. It’s what each of the Fang Gang realize they’ve lost and must remake anew. Not surprisingly, this realization begins with Spike, who articulates it first. In a meditative speech that’s as much thinking aloud as it is explanation, realizing that he finally has a choice, Spike says that rather than accept Angel’s offer of a completely funded roving commission as a lone Champion, he’s going to stay at detested Wolfram & Hart, with Angel, whom he dislikes as much as ever. He starts from his usual premise: it’s what the central woman in his life, now Fred, would have wanted. But then he thinks further and adds remarkably, decisively, "It’s what I want. I don’t really like you, suppose I never will, but this is important, what’s happening here. Fred gave her life for it. Least I can do is give what’s left of mine." Thinking ahead, he continues, "The fight’s comin’, Angel. We both feel it. And it’s gonna be a hell of a lot bigger than Illyria. Things are gonna get ugly." Smiling sadly, he concludes, "That’s where I live."

Spike has both chosen and recognized where he lives, what he wants, independent of anybody else. It may be ugly and dangerous; it may even cost him his unlife. But he now knows where he belongs-his quest throughout the dissociation of Season 5. He knows where he stands and where he’s going, though not where the path may lead him. He knows where he belongs and therefore where home is.

Shells, the Rabbit, and Feigenbaum

Since last week, I’ve been looking into the “Master of Chaos” Mitchell J. Feigenbaum, of whom we receive another visual reminder as Wes packs up Fred’s things in the lab, including her toy white rabbit named for the Chaotician. Feigenbaum’s most well-known contribution to chaos theory, as best as non-physicist I understand it, is how causal chains bifurcate-split in two. As people descending the stairs must choose to pass to Spike’s left or to his right. By who he is and how he’s positioned himself, going straight through him is not an option. Now corporeal, Spike forces others to make a random choice about on which side they’ll pass. And on such random and apparently meaningless choices, all else depends. One thing altering alters all, with seemingly unrelated and unexpected consequences: another chaos theory concept commonly called “the Butterfly Effect.” Another version of the concept that recent remarks let us know Joss Whedon is specially mindful of: the road not taken. Making an arbitrary choice between two paths changes the entire journey: “I took the [road] less traveled by / And that has made all the difference.” (“The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost)

In this episode, each of the major characters has made a crucial choice that will affect everything that comes after. Gunn has confessed and repented of his sin that resulted in Fred’s “infection” by Illyria and death. “...I was weak. Because I wanted to be somebody that I wasn’t. Because I don’t know where I fit. Because I never did. Because a thousand other reasons that don’t mean a damn because she’s gone. She’s gone...and she’s not coming back because of me. I did this. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry." Like Spike upon his first materialization as a ghost, and like all the rest of the Fang Gang since coming to W&H, Gunn has been unsure of his place in the world. What he was is no longer enough. But Gunn’s choice of what to be instead was disastrous because it was something completely alien grafted on, never absorbed or integrated-somebody he wasn’t. A wily, well-informed, articulate lawyer. Not a viable choice. A shell.

Likewise, in becoming CEO of the LA branch of W&H, Angel put on the mantle of a top corporate bureaucrat. It was, at best, an uneasy fit. True, Angel is a leader, a Champion. But as past seasons have shown, he leads best from behind. Like Gunn, he’s a brawler, best in a situation where fists and fangs can decide the issue. That tends to create awkwardness in a corporate setting, when whether Angel may kill somebody is no longer a question. The question is, who will be next? The bad fit between the role and the player is a recipe for disaster, which now has happened. None of Angel’s choices now is effective. His power is thwarted because he, too, has adopted an unfitting shell he must outgrow and discard.

Lorne’s rightful sphere of action is emotion. We may forget that in some ways, he was closest to Fred: they share the unique experience of having been outcasts in Pylea, Lorne’s home dimension, from which both have gladly fled. At W&H, Lorne has felt increasingly a failure, with nothing of value to contribute (“Life of the Party”). His gregarious delight in providing entertainment and enlightenment for others (as Host of his bar, Caritas) has degenerated into cynical Hollywood deal-making and sycophantic attendance on the repellant powerful, like Archduke Sebassis. His anagogic ability to read people’s destinies, when they sing, has failed to provide timely warning or truth because of magical deception or inability to correctly interpret what he heard. Knox murdered Fred; but Knox saw it as fulfilling and ennobling her, so nothing of use would have been revealed by a song. Lorne saw Fred’s fate when she sang but saw no timely remedy or solution. Lorne is alone and in despair, his old role inadequate but no new way of employing his unique gifts yet in view. He feels he’s failed everyone...but particularly Fred.

Fred’s essential curiosity, part of what makes her a brilliantly intuitive scientist, is what led her to touch things that are not to be touched: the sarcophagus. Wes muses that he now hates her a little for that. Fred’s incaution in a context filled with deadly contaminants is part of the chain of causation that led to her death. Fred’s naive curiosity is appropriate only to a more benign setting. It’s her role at Wolfram & Hart, and her lack of necessary caution and suspicion within that setting-her shell-that was deadly. It led her to be literally hollowed out, literally a shell that Illyria now inhabits and names as such: “the shell.” The shell that was Fred.

Illyria, too, is a shell of her former self. The outer trappings-the temple and the army that went with it-are dust and rubble with the passage of untold millions of years. Realizing she can no longer be the person she was, perform the role of warrior/queen/demon deity that formerly was hers, she finds herself lost and adrift in the world humans have made. Her high priest, her Qwa’Ha Xahn, Knox, is dead, shot by Wesley. She is diminished, defeated before the fight for world domination was even begun. Surprisingly, she accepts it. She sheds her expectations and the wish to make the world take its accustomed form with her at the center. She’s adrift and alone. But she’s willing to adapt to the new, rather than try to make it mirror the old. That skin is shed and discarded with surprising ease. To take Knox’s place as her intermediary between herself and this unknown world, she chooses the most unlikely, and the best, person imaginable: her fiercest enemy, the lover of what she killed in displacing: Wesley. She humbles herself to him, agrees to abide by the restrictions he imposes, to win his consent to ground her in this new reality. To teach her what she must understand to live in what she accepts as her new home. Even more surprisingly, he accepts.

Wesley, with the Fang Gang, was “book man.” The go-to research guy. The role he took on when he gave up that of “Rogue Demon Hunter” with which he arrived. He’d outgrown it and wasn’t very good at it anyway. Wes functions best as part of a team, and “book man” was what the team lacked and needed. Hands without head don’t accomplish much. So Wes became that head both figuratively and in fact. When Angel formally abdicated as leader of Angel Investigations, it was Wesley who assumed that leadership role by common consent. That was when he fully became “book man.” At Wolfram & Hart, again as Angel’s subordinate, that role has been cemented and expanded. Wesley has all the immense resources of W&H to draw upon. But any workman is only as good as his tools; and since all he has to draw upon is W&H sources, all he knows is what W&H is willing to let him know. When the sources lie, either by falsehood or incompletion, the knowledge based on those sources is misleading, flawed, wrong. It cannot lead to true knowledge or effective action. More subtly than the rest, Wesley has found his role increasingly restricting and unsatisfactory. The shell inhibits. The shell no longer fits. Increasingly, he’s been casting it off in favor of becoming “gun guy.” But because his knowledge is flawed, his aim is poor. He shoots what he believes to be his father-a cyborg replica (“Lineage”). He shoots Knox, putting the lie to the mission statement Angel has just been reiterating, prompting Angel to demand in comic exasperation, “Were you even listening?” He stabs Gunn, not for betraying Fred but for lying about it, as though the lying were the greater betrayal. (This suggests he will really go ballistic when he learns about the Connor mind-wipe that Angel has imposed on them all, and then by omission lied about...which now surely must happen.)

However, neither of these shells represents Wesley’s true self. Under “book man” and “gun man” and before either, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was Faith’s Watcher. That was the role he abandoned; was fired from; despaired of. That of mentor, teacher, guide. The role that, however sadly and unwillingly, he has now resumed...for Illyria. It’s what she needs and asks for; what she’s willing to accept Wes’ restrictions to have him enact; what he’s willing to perform because despite everything, to some degree, she still is Fred. He’s shed one shell and accepted, recovered, another that’s far truer to himself, however painful and difficult it may be for them both. It would seem that, like Spike, in shedding the confusion of an outgrown chrysalis, Wesley has found a person to be, a place to stand, and a way to go. At episode’s end, he alone is not alone: he’s with Illyria, interpreting the human world for her. In answer to her question if there’s anything but grief and regret for the past, in this human world she’s lost in, Wesley responds pensively, "There’s love. There’s hope...for some. There’s hope that you’ll find something worthy...that your life will lead you to some joy. That after everything...you can still be surprised."

The Dividing Line

Fred’s death/transformation is the catalyst that has broken the roles her companions were enacting, comfortable or uncomfortable. All that we or they can see, at first, is the destruction. The ruined temple, the absent army. The failure to achieve what they thought they wanted. But what they don’t yet consider is that achievement would have been the true disaster. The worst thing that could happen to Angel and the Fang Gang is that they be successfully integrated into Wolfram & Hart. W&H, as Spike sees from the first, is corruption. Evil. Wrong action. Failing to become one with it is, perversely, the beginning of success. And in this episode, Angel finally and decisively concludes that the move to W&H was a mistake. And only from that realization can right begin. That skin must be shed, that shell cast off. Destruction of the old is sometimes necessary to allow the new to send up its spring-green sprouts.

Feigenbaum is the patron saint of bifurcation-of what was one course dividing into two. The road taken, and the road unchosen. The sheep and the goats, at Judgment Day. The crucial choice, the flap of a butterfly’s wings that somehow produces a devastating storm in South America. That moment is what we’re seeing in this episode.

But we also saw it some time ago, perhaps not realizing then (as the characters did not) that that was what we were seeing. Because all this present course depends on one crucial choice that Angel made alone and in ignorance of the consequences, played out before us in the present season: the death and transfiguration of Connor, and the mind-wipe that accompanied it, the price of which was Angel’s unilaterally embracing Wolfram & Hart-for himself and all of the Fang Gang. It was into that precarious mix that Spike was so surprisingly inserted. Into that flow, Illyria’s advent. Nothing would be what it is, except for the Connor mind-wipe-a lie of omission. Which was a bad choice, it now seems: and nothing but disaster has come of it.

Until that primal lie has been revealed and somehow undone, nothing can be right in the present. Until they are rejoined past that fundamental diversion, none of our characters will find the path to home and their true selves.

Chrysalis

Two schools of thought predominate, concerning Fred. On the one hand, we are told repeatedly and with varying authority that she’s dead, unrecoverable, gone. Knox says so. The repellant Dr. Sparrow says so. Illyria says so. Others, believing what they’ve been told, echo and seem to accept it: Gunn, Angel, Wes. Her soul, we’re told, is not only unrecoverable by a witch, such as Willow (whose assistance Giles refuses anyway, since Angel is still at W&H); it was burned up in the transformation, consumed “by the fires of resurrection.” Every possible door seems to have been shut. Repeatedly. Nothing whatever of Fred remains.

Except that’s conspicuously, observably, untrue. At the very least, some of Fred’s memories remain: Illyria repeats Fred’s dying words and knows the name of “the shell.” She recognizes the lab, and possesses Fred’s affinity for science and facility in thinking in scientific terms. Her recognition of Wesley’s love survives her death. If this much, in the first hours following the transformation, why not more? Why not all?

And who in their right minds would take the word of Knox, Dr. Sparrow, or pre-Stone-Age Illyria for anything? And if it’s true, why not say so once and let it lie there, a flat fact? There is such a thing as protesting too much! The very forcefulness with which the impossibility of recovering Fred is reiterated renders the declaration suspect. Certainly we’re going to be dealing with Illyria for some considerable time; and which side she’ll choose, in the unknown coming battle that Angel and Spike sense, is still unknown. Will she be antagonist or ally? But for viewers to believe what’s being drummed into them, on such suspect authority, is decidedly premature. Fred, and her soul, have an affinity for fire (remember Fred and the flame-thrower, in “A Hole in the World.”) Although physical fire can devour, it can also purify and rid material of all contaminants, render it down to simple essence. How much more might immaterial fire mirror that process-the very “fires of resurrection”?

It’s entirely possible-likely, even-that before season’s end, we’ll see Fred back in all her original Texan science-geek glory, only strengthened by her experiences.

There’s another possibility. Already, hints of original Fred are glimpsed through Illyria’s shell. Memories are surfacing, literally sparking, arcing between Illyria’s fingers. She doesn’t understand the modern world. Yet in the lab, techno-speak comes fluently from her: “When her brain collapsed, electrical spasms channeled into my function system. Memories." What does Illyria know of electricity or function systems? But Fred knows. For her mentor, reaffirming Fred’s closest connection, Illyria chooses Wesley.

Fred is a survivor. She’s survived and escaped from other confining shells: the caves of Pylea; her room at the Hyperion. Her Texas home, her pop’s limited expectations and experience. Fred grows beyond limitations, does the impossible, and remakes herself anew-comparable only to Spike in that respect.

So another possible scenario is Fred gradually rising up like a flood and refilling the vessel of herself, with Illyria becoming a subordinate attribute or washed away altogether.

Either way, we must remember that one kind of shell is a chrysalis-an intermediate stage, covering and protection for a transformation, from which something utterly different but more truly itself will emerge. No longer a caterpillar but a butterfly whose wings can flap up a storm no one would ever have looked for.

As Spike observes, how we interpret what we see is a matter of perspective. Don’t be persuaded by assertions of dubious authority or dazzled by science. Think chrysalis. We can still be surprised.

Nan Dibble 3/5/04 Acknowledgement: As always, I am indebted for the gladly shared insights, wit, and general snarkiness of my fellow S’cubies: the members of the Soulful Spike Society.

MISCELLANEOUS

That is some hard shell: Wes takes a good swipe at Illyria with Fred’s handy bedside battleaxe (doesn’t everybody have one?) and Illyria not only isn’t cut, she doesn’t so much as twitch, and the axe-head shatters. For the first time, unprompted, Angel mentions Buffy to Spike, unselfconsciously, in terms of the fact that death isn’t necessarily final in the world they inhabit, as opposed to the human world. Harmony shows remarkable compassion in this episode, considering that she’s un unsouled vampire. She claims Fred as a friend, albeit to take part in torturing Knox. She listens to Gunn’s confession and puts her hand on his shoulder comfortingly. It’s Harmony who thinks of checking Knox’s phone for the numbers of missed calls, which leads Wes to Dr. Sparrow and the unraveling of Gunn’s role in releasing the sarcophagus from customs. (Question: since the sarcophagus was removed from the Deeper Well by magical means, why was it sitting in customs to begin with? Couldn’t it have been magically sent direct to its destination?) What will be Harmony’s new role? Angel flinging the phone at the wall in frustration, when Giles refuses to help them, is the sort of thing Spike would do. Are they converging? When Illyria pitches Angel out of the lab and down about 20 stories to the street, he’s mirroring Spike getting pitched out a window by Dana in “Damage.” Now Angel has found out what it’s like to bounce off the pavement. Probably pretty much what he figured, too. Trying to explain Illyria’s super-swift departure, Gunn makes reference to Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, and Wally West. These are the first three incarnations of the comic-book hero The Flash. (Thanks, Gail!) It’s interesting that only Spike actually saw the blur when she began to move (having slowed time for others). Superior vampire vision in action. Apropos of the visual representation of the ruins of Illyria’s statue and her temple, this comes to mind, and may have been in the writer’s mind:

Ozymandias by Percy Blysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said:-Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things, The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Illyria, like Spike in the previous episode, declares that she has nowhere else to go. Perhaps, like his declaration, that may mean that she has nowhere else she wants to go. That she believes that here, she’ll find what she’s looking for and needs. Fine performances from both Alexis Denisof (Wesley) and J. August Richards (Gunn) in this episode. Moving and convincing. And Amy Acker, as Illyria, is convincingly alien and un-Fredlike. Her abrupt motions and head-tilts, as though she’s not at home in the body she inhabits, are a bit like Jeff Bridges’, likewise finding himself in an unfamiliar, human body, in Starman-birdlike and strange.

Memorable lines:

Illyria: This is grief. I’m watching human grief. It’s like offal in my mouth! Wesley: If you stay here, you’ll taste it every day. Every second. Look: humans rule the earth. It will last for millennia. Like roaches crawling everywhere. Crying and sweating and puking their feelings all over you. Go back. Sleep until the humans are gone. They are stupid and weak: they will kill each other off and you can return to the world you deserve. Leave this shell. (Nice try, Wes.)

Harmony (of bound, unconscious Knox): Gonna torture him? Gunn: Thinkin’ about it. Harmony: Can I help? I’m really good at it!

Knox: I loved Fred. I really did! She had a warmth that took you in and held you until everything cold and distant melted away. She was the most perfect woman I ever met. That’s why I chose her. (And swapped her for cold bitch Illyria, who regards Knox as rather lower than a worm. Nice going, Koxie!)

Spike (on overcoming the problem that Fred’s organs have been liquefied, raising his hand): Flash-fried in a pillar of fire. I got better.

Knox: I knew you’d come for me! My life is yours. I worship you! Illyria (in a bored tone): Yes, I know. Worship.

Knox: I am your priest. I am your servant. I am your guide in this world. I have taken your sacraments and placed them close to my heart in the ancient ways. (Pulls up his shirt, showing a crudely stitched [and fresh looking!] scar on his abdomen and two or three matchbox-sized lumps under his skin, just below his rib cage on the left. This may come to be important and is therefore worth noting.)

Wesley: I’m unreasonable because I’ve lost all reason.

Harmony: I got a degree in tearing things up! Spike (muttering as Harmony departs): Never a truer word.

Spike: Back in the lab, she was standing right there in front of me. But there was no scent. Nothing. It’s like she wasn’t even there. Angel: I know. (Add to your notes on how vamps perceive people/the world.)

Harmony (to Wes): The girl of your dreams loved you. That’s more than most people ever get. Wes (softly): I know. But it isn’t enough.

Gunn: I didn’t think anyone would get hurt. Wes: Nothing from Wolfram & Hart is ever free. You knew that. Gunn: I couldn’t go back to being just the muscle.... I didn’t think it would be one of us. (But he evidently knew badness was gonna drop on somebody. He just didn’t think it would be quite so close to home.)

Angel: What did you get out of the doctor? Spike (calmly cleaning blood off his fingers): Screams. Various fluids. And a name: Vahla Ha’Nesh

Illyria (stepping over dead guard): Your breed is fragile. How is it they came to control this world? Knox: Opposable thumbs. Um, fire. Television. What they lack in strength, they make up for in extraordinary sneakiness.

Illyria: The wolf, ram, and hart. In my time, they were weak: barely above the vampire.

Ilyria: It’s gone. My world is gone. Wesley (cocking gun): Now you know how I feel.

Illyria: We cling to what is gone. Is there anything in this life but grief? Wesley: There’s love. There’s hope...for some. There’s hope that you’ll find something worthy...that your life will lead you to some joy. That after everything...you can still be surprised. Illyria: Is that enough? Is that enough to live on? Wesley: (doesn’t respond)

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