Television Early history Spike's story before he appears in
Sunnydale unfolds in
flashbacks scattered, out of sequence, among numerous episodes of both
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
Angel. The first flashback occurs in
Buffy season 5's "
Fool for Love", and reveals William as in fact a meek,
effete young man of aristocratic background (and an aspiring poet) who lived in London with his mother, Anne. Anne would often sing the folksong "
Early One Morning" to her son, right up until the time he was turned into a vampire. William's surname is given as "Pratt" in the non-canon comic
Old Times and is written on the label of his jar of blood in the comic
Spike: Asylum #002. This surname became official with the publication of the canon comic
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 11 #7, in which Buffy calls him by it. The name William Pratt may allude to horror actor
Boris Karloff, whose birth name was William Henry Pratt, and can also be understood as the British slang term "prat", describing a person of arrogant stupidity. Spike is one of the youngest recurring vampires on the show, though the evidence of his age is contradictory, as the concept of the character evolved over time. When he was introduced in "
School Hard" (season 2), Giles read that he was "barely 200," implying that he was either born or sired in 1797 or slightly earlier. In "
The Initiative" (season 4) he said he was 126, thus born or sired in 1874. Flashbacks in "Fool for Love" (season 5) show that Spike was sired as an adult in 1880. Assuming he was in his early to mid-20s when he was sired, Spike would be in his 140s during the series. In the comic
Spike: Asylum #002, Spike's jar of blood has a label giving his assumed human birth date in 1853, about 27 years before he was sired. In 1880, William was a struggling poet, often mocked by his peers who called him "William the Bloody" behind his back because his poetry was so "bloody awful." William showed a strong capacity for loyalty and devoted love, which remained after his siring. After his romantic overtures were rejected by the aristocratic
Cecily, William wandered the streets despondently and bumped into
Drusilla. She consoled him, drained him of blood and made him drink of her blood, thus transforming him into a vampire – "siring" him, in the jargon of the series. Although Angelus did enjoy the company of another male vampire in their travels, he found Spike's recklessness and lust for battle to be unnecessary risks. Angelus regarded killing as an art, not a sport, and killed for the sheer act of evil; Spike did it for amusement and the rush. In 1900, Spike killed Xin Rong, a Chinese Slayer while in China during the
Boxer Rebellion. By the 1950s, Spike had reunited with Drusilla, and they traveled to Italy. Spike attended
Woodstock in 1969, whereupon he accidentally became high after ingesting the blood of a hippie. He claims to have spent the six hours following the incident "watching my hand move". Spike is in fact a fan of Sid Vicious' band The
Sex Pistols and punk band
The Ramones. In the final scene of the episode "
Lovers Walk", he can be seen singing to a cover of "
My Way" by
Gary Oldman, who portrayed Vicious in the film
Sid and Nancy. Spike's first act in Sunnydale is to attack Buffy and a large group of people at her school, making his first appearance the deadliest of any of
Buffys "
Big Bads".He very nearly kills Buffy, but Buffy's mother distracts Spike long enough for Buffy to recover by hitting him in the head with a fire axe. Throughout season 2, Spike and Dru are the canon's most prominent example of affection between vampires, displaying the humanity and intricacies of vampire relationships. Spike was initially conceived as a disposable villain to be killed off, but proved so popular with fans that Joss Whedon decided to merely injure him instead, (Later, it is revealed that Spike's injuries have healed and that he has been deceiving everyone by remaining in his wheelchair, feigning injury.) Spike and Drusilla are major enemies of Buffy for much of the second season. They arrive shortly after Drusilla is seriously weakened by an angry mob in
Prague, as recounted in the canon comic book
The Problem with Vampires. Spike is a devoted caretaker to Drusilla in her weakened condition and initially hopes the Hellmouth's energy can help restore her strength. He reunites with Angel and seems genuinely pleased to see him, but is disgusted to find that Angel has a
soul (whether or not Spike in fact knew that Angel's acquisition of a soul is why he left the group nearly a century before has never been made clear) and is in love with the current Slayer,
Buffy Summers. Spike reappears in the season 3 episode "
Lovers Walk", in a drunken depression after Drusilla, offended by his alliance with Buffy, dumps him for a Chaos Demon. He kidnaps Willow and Xander, and forces Willow to conduct a love spell for him to make Drusilla love him again, even coercing Buffy and Angel to help him in exchange for the safe return of their friends. The excitement of a brawl with the Mayor's vampires helps him see that Drusilla left him because he had begun to go soft; he resolves to win her back by
torturing her until she likes him again, and tells Buffy where to find Willow and Xander. He also tells Buffy and Angel that they can never be 'just friends' because of their love for one another. He is in Sunnydale to look for the Gem of Amarra, a ring which makes a vampire effectively invulnerable. He finds it and attacks Buffy in daylight, but she wrests the ring from his finger and sends it to Angel. Spike goes to Los Angeles, and hires a vampire named Marcus to torture Angel in order to get the ring, but Marcus takes the ring himself and Angel finally destroys it. After being captured by the Initiative and implanted with a
cerebral microchip which punishes him with debilitating pain whenever he harms or attempts to harm any non-demon life forms (he initially assumes it works the same with anything living), Spike turns to the Scooby Gang for protection, bartering his knowledge of the Initiative. (Though he still spars with Buffy, provided he has no real intent on harming her) His inability to bite is comically compared to
impotence, much to Spike's constant humiliation; in "
Doomed", he attempts to commit suicide by staking himself at Xander's house, but is stopped by Willow and Xander. Eventually, he inadvertently discovers that he can harm demons and enthusiastically joins a fight with this knowledge, showing that he's less concerned about what side he's fighting on than fighting for the thrill of it. Occasionally helping the Scooby Gang by providing them with information and/or combat assistance in exchange for cash or for the joy of fighting, but having no qualms about betraying them to such enemies as
Faith and
Adam. In season 4, Spike was introduced to fill the antagonistic role that
Cordelia had in seasons 1 to 3; as Joss Whedon explains on the DVD featurette, "All of our characters got to the point where they were loving and hugging, and it was sort of like, where's Cordelia?" Spike appeared in every episode thereafter with the exception of "
The Body". In season 5, after some erotic dreams, Spike becomes aware to his horror that he has fallen in love with Buffy. He becomes a more active participant in the Scooby Gang, jumping into several of Buffy's fights to provide assistance, whether she wants it or not. When Buffy rejects his advances, Spike attempts to prove his love by kidnapping her so that she can witness him killing Drusilla for her, to little avail; in her disgust, Buffy un-invites him from her house (something she had not bothered to do in almost three years since their alliance against Angelus) and alienates him from the group. Spike then has
Warren Mears make a
robot in Buffy's likeness, programmed to love and obey him. Though Buffy is disgusted by this, her hostility towards him fades considerably when she learns that Spike refused, even under intense torture, to reveal the identity of the Key to
Glory, nearly laying down his life to protect Buffy's sister
Dawn. Buffy is moved by this unexpected loyalty and kisses him, saying she will not forget what he has done. In the days and hours leading up to the final showdown with Glory, Spike fights by Buffy's side, earning her trust and a re-invitation to her house. Spike displays unabashed grief after Buffy dies in the showdown with Glory. He honors her memory by remaining loyal to the Scoobies, fighting at their side and serving the role of babysitter / older brother / protector to Dawn, helping Willow and Tara to raise her in Buffy's absence. After Buffy is resurrected at the beginning of season 6, she is despondent and detached from her friends. During this time, her relationship to Spike deepens and she is able to talk to him about things she feels she cannot share with the Scooby Gang. She gets drunk with Spike, and calls him "a neutered vampire who cheats at kitten poker." After a demon's spell makes them express their emotions in song, and Buffy sings "I want the fire back", Buffy and Spike begin a physical relationship, consummated two episodes later. The relationship is frequently violent, with Buffy most often initiating both the violence and the sex between them; the violence is made all the easier when Spike finds that (as a side effect of Willow's resurrection spell) his chip now does not stop him from harming Buffy. Buffy threatens to kill Spike if he ever tells anyone about their relationship. Buffy is ashamed of her dark desires, while Spike obsessively craves the love, trust, and affection that she is unwilling to give. In "
As You Were", Buffy tells Spike she is using him and ends their relationship. Believing he still has a chance with Buffy after seeing her reactions of jealousy and hurt when he has a drunk sexual encounter with Anya, Spike corners her and makes aggressive sexual advances. When she refuses him, he grows desperate and attacks her, nearly raping her in the process—though Buffy manages to kick him off long enough for him to realize what he was about to do and stop himself. Simultaneously horrified by his actions and angry with his status as somewhere between man and monster, Spike leaves Sunnydale soon after. He makes his way to a remote area of Africa, where he seeks out a legendary demon shaman and undergoes the Demon Trials, a series of gruelling physical challenges, in return for a wish. Having proven his worthiness by surviving the trials, Spike is granted his wish, which is then revealed to be to have his soul restored. In season 7, a re-ensouled Spike must cope with the guilt of his past actions and try to win back Buffy's trust. But under influence of the
First Evil's hypnotic trigger, Spike unknowingly starts killing again. Upon discovering what he has done, he begs Buffy to stake him, but she refuses and takes him into her house, telling him she has seen him change. Buffy guards and cares for Spike throughout his recovery, telling Spike she believes in him, a statement which later sustains him throughout his imprisonment and torture at the hands of the First. When Spike's chip begins to malfunction, causing him intense pain and threatening to kill him, Buffy trusts him enough to order the Initiative operatives to remove it from his head. When Nikki Wood's son
Robin tries to kill Spike, he unwittingly frees Spike from his hypnotic trigger: the song "
Early One Morning", a favorite of his mother, which evokes Spike's traumatic memories of his mother's abusive behavior toward him after she turned; after Spike is able to address these issues, he realizes his mother had always loved him, knowledge which frees him from the First's control. It is unclear whether they resume their sexual intimacy during the third night; creator Joss Whedon says on the DVD commentary for "
Chosen" that he intentionally left it to the viewers to decide how they felt the relationship progressed. In the final battle inside the Hellmouth, Spike, wearing a mystical amulet, sacrifices himself to destroy the Turok-Han and close the Hellmouth. He is slowly incinerated in the process, but not before Buffy tells him "I love you." He replies, "No, you don't; but thanks for saying it." Even as he burns and crumbles to dust, Spike laughs and revels in the destruction around him and the burning presence of his soul, glad to be able to see the fight to its end. In dying to save the world, he becomes a Champion.
Los Angeles Spike had previously appeared in the season 1 episode of
Angel "In the Dark", Spike goes to Los Angeles at the same time as
Oz arrives to give
Angel the Gem of Amarra, Spike's objective was to get the ring and kill Angel. Oz gives Angel the ring who then hides it in the sewer, just as he is about to leave for another case, he is ambushed by Spike who hits him with a wooden plank, Angel defeats Spike but Spike warns him that he will get the ring one way or another. Angel takes precaution and goes on a manhunt for Spike, Angel finally finds him, chases him through the alley, and corners him only to fall into Spike's trap. Spike captures Angel and hires a vampire named Marcus to torture Angel until he tells him where the ring is. After a while Spike gets bored with waiting so he goes to Angel's apartment to find the ring and leaving Marcus to torture Angel, he gets to the apartment only to find
Cordelia and
Doyle aiming at him with weapons and demanding to know where Angel is. Spike reveals Angel's location and tells them that the only way he will release Angel is if they find him the ring. Cordelia and Doyle find the ring in the sewer and head straight to Spike. When they arrive at the location they find out that Spike had lied about releasing Angel. Taking precautions however, they then throw the ring away and just as Spike was about to retrieve it, Oz bursts through the wall in his van and rescues Angel. Spike looks for the ring but finds out that Marcus took it. Spike begins smashing Marcus's things and shouting about how he is going to work alone from now on until a hole that was in the ceiling lets sunlight in and sets the back of his hair on fire. Despite his apparent death at the end of
Buffy final season, Spike returns in the fifth and final season of the spin-off series
Angel. Resurrected by the amulet in the Los Angeles branch of supernatural law firm
Wolfram & Hart, he spends seven episodes as an incorporeal being akin to a ghost; he starts to understand being one when he battles "the Reaper" Matthias Pavayne. During this time he realizes he is being slowly pulled into hell. Later he becomes corporeal, due to a mysterious gift that arrives at the office of Wolfram and Hart. After this, Spike takes on Angel to prove which one of them is the Champion spoken of in the Shanshu Prophecy. Spike defeats Angel, but the prophecy remains ambiguous (the Cup of Torment is revealed as a fake containing Mountain Dew). Soon afterward he is kidnapped by the psychotic Slayer
Dana, who believes he was responsible for kidnapping and torturing her as a child. Cordelia comments on this strange turn of events after coming out of her coma in "
You're Welcome", exclaiming to Angel, "Okay, Spike's a hero, and you're CEO of Hell, Incorporated. What freaking bizarro world did I wake up in?" When
Fred is killed by
Illyria, Spike mourns her death and decides to join
Team Angel in her honor. Upon learning that
Buffy is now dating
The Immortal, Spike and Angel travel to Rome on the pretext of business but spend most of the time there trying to find Buffy. In the end, they fail to catch up with her. (The blonde glimpsed in Rome is
later revealed to be a decoy Buffy, set up by
Andrew Wells, who had researched the history between Angel, Spike and The Immortal, and thought the idea would be "hilarious".) The image is reflective of Spike's role in both franchises. Note that as the series' central character, Spike receives his own stylised logo. Most Spike-centric stories, however, have been published subsequent to
Angels finale episode. The 2005 IDW comic book
Spike: Old Times, by
Peter David, depicts Spike's encounter with the vengeance demon Halfrek, explaining his recognition of her in
Buffy episode "
Older and Far Away", and clarifying that she was in fact his beloved Cecily.
Mutant Enemy approved the story, even though IDW did not have rights to a
Buffy-only character like Halfrek, because of her importance to Spike's backstory, on the condition that the story's timing was deliberately ambiguous. Following
Angels cancellation, Spike immediately appeared in the
Angel miniseries
Spike vs. Dracula by
Peter David, a sequel to the
Buffy episode "
Buffy vs. Dracula" and expanding on the characters' century-old rivalry established in that episode. Scott Tipton's 2006 comic
Spike: Old Wounds is
detective fiction set during season 5, and also features allusions to Spike's activities in the late 1940s. Tipton's
Spike: Lost and Found in 2006 is a season 5 story that acts as a sequel to the 1999
Buffy/
Angel crossover episodes "
The Harsh Light of Day" and "
In the Dark", featuring the immortality-bestowing Gem of Amarra in 2005 Los Angeles. Lastly, writer
Brian Lynch teamed up with
Franco Urru to produce the story arc
Spike: Asylum (2006–07), depicting Spike's stay in a supernatural medical facility. Although originally of the same ambiguous relationship to canon, the characters it introduced would reappear in the canonical
Angel comic books to come later. Whedon appreciated Lynch's writing of Spike in
Asylum so much that he commissioned him to co-write the canonical continuation of the series,
Angel: After the Fall, in 2007. Lynch and Urru also penned
Spike: Shadow Puppets, featuring Spike and Lorne doing battle with the
muppet demons of Angel episode "
Smile Time" in Japan. In the explicitly canonical Whedon stories of 2007, Spike and Angel first appear in a joint cameo in
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight (Dark Horse) as part of Buffy's sexual fantasies. In the
Dark Horse Presents #24
Season Eight tie-in, "Always Darkest", Spike and Angel appear (again in a dream sequence) at Buffy's side when she is fighting Caleb, but to her dismay the two start flirting with and kissing one another. Spike appears in
Season Eight properly at the conclusion of the "
Twilight" story arc. Lynch's
Spike series features some collaboration with Whedon to connect the IDW and Dark Horse series' continuities. IDW had planned to launch the series as a
bona fide ongoing series, and as such it establishes a support cast for Spike suited to his position headlining the title. The transfer of
Angel rights from IDW to Dark Horse necessitated that it end instead as an 8-issue miniseries. In IDW's
Angel: After the Fall, Spike does not appear until the second issue, written by
Brian Lynch with art by
Franco Urru (the creative team of
Spike: Asylum and
Spike: Shadow Puppets) with plotting and "executive production" by Whedon himself. In
Angel: After the Fall, Spike has adjusted to Los Angeles' new status as a literal hell on Earth; he and Illyria both serve together as the Demon Lords of Beverly Hills, living in the
Playboy Mansion after the death of
Hugh Hefner and served by a harem of human and demon females known collectively as the "Spikettes." How Spike and Illyria got to be Lords of Los Angeles is detailed in the
Spike: After the Fall (2008) miniseries, which also introduces a human friend for Spike in Jeremy Johns. In their new capacity, Spike and Illyria secretly rescue humans and benevolent demons, evacuating them into the care of
Connor,
Nina Ash, and
Gwen Raiden. Spike rallies alongside Angel against the other demon Lords. When vampire Gunn causes Illyria to revert to her monster form, memories of Fred from Spike and Wesley are transplanted into her to restore her humanity. After the Senior Partners revert time to before the Fall, Spike begins a loosely affiliated relationship with the reformed
Angel Investigations company, collaborating with Angel and his associates while maintaining independence. Spike continues to appear in the ongoing
Angel spin-off series by IDW, under the pens of
Kelley Armstrong,
Bill Willingham and others. As part of its
After the Fall franchise, IDW also published Bill Williams' miniseries,
Spike: The Devil You Know (2010), which follows Spike's journey from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, where he acquires a spaceship and a crew of alien bugs after learning from Wolfram & Hart of a prophecy concerning the impending apocalypse (featured in
Buffy) which has driven them to abandon this dimension. Spike's IDW series feeds into the "Twilight" and "Last Gleaming" arcs of
Buffy Season Eight, concluding that series in 2011. In
Season Eight, Spike and his crew come to Buffy's aid to help prevent the end of the universe. Due to his own research into the prophecies concerning this apocalypse, Spike is able to lead Buffy and friends to the site of the final showdown with Twilight. When Buffy's decision sees the world lose its magic, Spike is the only one to be emphatically supportive of the decision she had to make. In the follow-up series
Season Nine (2011–2013), Spike bases his ship in San Francisco to be near Buffy, but eventually leaves due to the complicatedness of their relationship, setting up the miniseries
Spike: A Dark Place (2012), which follows Spike and his insectoid crew aboard his spaceship. Dark Horse also gives the
Spike title a new stylised logo, distinct from the
Angel-typeface logo used prior. The arc serves to divest Spike of the ship and crew, and sets up his 2013 crossover stint in
Angel & Faith ahead of an eventual return to the main
Buffy series.{{cite web|url=https://www.cbr.com/cbr-tv-cci-2012-andrew-chambliss-christos-gage-prepare-the-end-of-buffy-season-9/|title=WC13: Gage, Espenson, Jeanty & Chambliss Wrap "Buffy" Season 9 ==Characterization==