This Creepy Angel Storyline Nearly Ruined 1 of Buffy’s Best Characters (& the Actor Absolutely Hated it)
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When Angel moved from Sunnydale to Los Angeles, there was a decided move in the tone as well. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had always been about the trials of high school, while Angel was more about mature themes that presented themselves in adulthood. Los Angeles was the perfect place for this as it contained big city living as opposed to the charms of a small town. This tone worked well for the Buffy spin-off up until Season 4, when, by all accounts, the series went off the rails.
This largely had to do with the sudden narrative turn Angel took in the season. The story in Season 4 was ambitious, but many fans felt the characters were inconsistent. Some were acting out of character, starting when Cordelia returned from a higher plane. After returning to the mortal coil as a human, Cordelia was an amnesiac, but when she regained her memory, she became a Trojan horse for evil. Cordelia’s Season 4 turn as the Big Bad did not sit well with many, including Cordelia’s steward, Charisma Carpenter.
Cordelia Became Unrecognizable Starting With One Horrifying Act
Image via Warner Bros.
Cordelia had always been the beating heart of Angel as she progressed from a selfish aspiring actor to someone who legitimately wanted to save the world. Her return from a higher plane in Season 4 should have been a celebration, but it soon became clear that something greater than Angel Investigation was at work. After regaining her memory, Cordelia appeared shaken by her brush with omniscience and holed up with Angel’s son, Connor.
The two grew closer and, motivated by the apparent Apocalypse that was literally raining fire down on then, Cordelia and Connor committed the ultimate sin. While Cordelia was not biologically Connor’s mother, she was a maternal force in his life before he could remember. She would have continued to be, also considering the latent feelings she harbored for Angel.
Angel, for his part, witnessed the act and immediately exiled Cordelia and Connor from the hotel. This moment was so close to House of the Dragon level incest that essentially every main character reacted to it with disgust, which is why Cordelia had attempted to keep it a secret. Even so, the series seemed to make moves to absolve the characters of their actions. Moments leading up to the shameful act iterated that Connor was 18 years old, which would make his encounter with Cordelia legal in the eyes of the law. This excuse was a last-ditch effort to make the relationship between the two plausible enough for a character to make such a decision, but it still didn’t save Cordelia from the reaction against her. Even Fred noted the creepiness of the situation, a sentiment that was repeated throughout the season.
In the morning after, Angel appeared to try and walk back the passion that led to the encounter, when Cordelia expressed regret over what transpired between them. She made excuses, stating they only got together because they thought the world was ending and nothing mattered anymore. This, in a sense, was an effort to preserve Cordelia’s character up until that point, but it was a storyline that was hard to get past.
The most telling was when Angelus was released on the populace and noted the strange Oedipal nature of the dynamic. Connor had been a baby only months previously before he was taken into a dimension, which aged him to legal consenting age. He also had murderous intentions for his father, Angel, since he was raised to believe he was the monster who killed his adoptive father.
| Note |
|---|
| Oedipus made its first appearance in the Buffyverse when Buffy, Xander, and Willow performed a scene from the play for the Sunnydale talent show. |
Connor’s life became the closest to a Greek tragedy as he tried to kill his father and marry his mother. Cordelia’s character was only slightly saved by the realization that she wasn’t in her right mind when all of this came to pass. But even the true Big Bad of the season couldn’t save the most maligned style of the series.
Cordelia Was Possessed For Most of Season 4
No one could accept how evil Cordelia had become, which started when she returned from the higher plane. Thankfully, it turned out that Cordelia didn’t have all of her faculties during the darkest part of Angel. When she returned from being a higher being, she wasn’t alone. A disgraced Higher Power caught a ride with Cordelia back to Earth and was reawakened when she got her memories back. From the moment that Season 4 began, the Cordelia fans knew and loved was gone. She was instead being operated by a deity of sorts, attempting to birth themselves back into being.
This entity had orchestrated events, including Cordelia becoming half-demon, to make a receptacle that would allow them to come into being. Connor’s birth had also been preordained, so he would impregnate Cordelia. This Power planned to only use Cordelia’s body temporarily as a host and create a permanent solution. The issues with this storyline should be obvious. This arc was an assault on Cordelia’s bodily autonomy, as she had not control over her circumstances,
Even when the High Power birthed itself into being, later named Jasmine, Cordelia was effectively discarded. Though this protected Cordelia’s legacy by making it clear she was not actually evil, it destroyed her character nonetheless. She was used only as a way for the male characters to achieve emotional catharsis, and once the plotline concluded, Charisma Carpenter was kicked off the series. The behind-the-scenes drama of the situation only added to the complexities of the issue.
Charisma Carpenter Had Always Been Vocal About the Storyline
Image via 20th Century Studios
Cordelia Chase became one of the greatest explorations of character development in the Buffyverse. While Angel typically remained the strong hero with unimpeachable moral high ground, Cordelia was the opposite. She was a beacon of light in the series, changing everything about Buffy, which made it even more heart-wrenching to see her fall so far. Many who were behind the scenes had vocalized their distaste for the storyline, but none more so than Charisma Carpenter. Over the years, she spoke about the creepiness of the storyline, including in one TikTok, when she responded to a fan’s question about her feelings on Season 4.
“It was so difficult,” Carpenter acknowledged while admitting she wanted to save many of the more gory details for another day. “It was a very difficult storyline. I thought it was so awful and so creepy, and predatory of Cordelia. Just destroyed me. I was so ardently against it.”
Cordelia’s encounter with Connor betrayed everything the character was about and betrayed an actor who had been with the Buffyverse since its inception. Carpenter first portrayed Cordelia Chase in the pilot episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, starting as a tertiary villain before becoming a demon fighter in earnest. She followed David Boreanaz to his spin-off and was the heart of the series.
Writing off Cordelia so callously was disrespectful to Carpenter and was one of the many footnotes in the career of Joss Whedon. Following Ray Fisher’s allegations against the creator about toxic workplace conditions, Carpenter also shared her experience with Whedon on the set of Angel. In a public statement on Twitter (via Variety), Carpenter opened up about what led up to the storyline.
Carpenter maintained that she attempted to communicate with Whedon about her pregnancy and was only met with radio silence. She attempted to get in touch with him via her agent, but, according to the actor, he ignored any calls. When Whedon finally learned about Carpenter’s pregnancy, he took her behind closed doors to discuss the matter. “[H]e asked me if I was ‘going to keep it.’ and manipulatively weaponized my womanhood and faith against me,” Carpenter explained in her statement. “He proceeded to attack my character, mock my religious beliefs, accuse me of sabotaging the show, and then unceremoniously fired me following the season once I gave birth.”
| Portrayed By | First Appearance | Last Appearance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cordelia Chase | Charisma Carpenter | Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 1, Episode 1, “Welcome to the Hellmouth” | Angel, Season 5, Episode 12, “You’re Welcome” |
Cordelia’s storyline was written to incorporate Carpenter’s real-life pregnancy, and the actor maintained that she was punished for her desire to have a family. To add salt to the wound, Carpenter was asked back to Angel for the 100th episode, and she stipulated that she would come back but would only do so if she would not get killed off. Of course, that is what happened as at the end of the episode, Cordelia died following her comatose state.
This is one of the many examples of women on Angel being punished through pregnancy or possession. Cordelia had become mystically pregnant three times in the series before dying, while the long-running character, Darla, also did not survive giving birth to Connor. Fred was also one of the most heartbreaking as the demon Illyria liquified her insides when taking over her body. The treatment of women in Angel is one of the most horrendous in the Buffyverse, but no one suffered more than Cordelia.
Original article at CBR
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