Spike's Soul: What Does it Mean?

a shock to her system just as severe as the one that had originally caused the depression (i.e., another near-Apocalypse); Spike needed a soul. If Spike hadn't needed the soul -- if he could have been good, but was still choosing to do thoughtless and insensitive and evil things -- I don't think I would have been able to retain much sympathy for him. By the same token, if Buffy had acted the way she did last year without coupling it with such a convincing portrayal of what real depression feels like, I don't think I would have been able to retain much sympathy for her.

In "Entropy", when Spike told Buffy that he would never hurt her, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. My first thought was to wonder how he could say that. He had been hurting Buffy all season long, every time he tried to convince her that she had come back wrong or that she belonged in the darkness. However, the sincerity with which Spike delivered this statement -- even Buffy believed he meant what he said -- combined with my new theory that Spike’s lack of a soul was a kind of a spiritual illness, made me think that perhaps he had no idea how much pain he had already caused her. (Spike seemed to confirm this in "Never Leave Me", when he told Buffy that he hadn’t understood emotional pain before he got his soul.) Thinking about it this way made me sad for him. No matter how much I believed he wanted to be good, I started to wonder if there was any way it could ever happen if he didn’t even realize that the way he had been acting was bad.

In a strange way, it was Spike’s behavior in "Seeing Red" that rekindled my hope that there really was a chance that he could become a better person. When I saw Spike’s reaction after he attacked Buffy, it was the first time I saw an indication that he understood that he had acted badly. Not just on an intellectual level; he actually felt that it was wrong and was able to show genuine remorse for his actions. After watching a whole season where I was waiting to see some sign that Spike understood that it was not okay to act the way he was acting, I finally saw that sign in

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