Spike's Biography

William (last name unknown) was born in England (probably not in London, since he later refers to having heard about "London pickpockets"), sometime in the mid-1850s, during the height of the notoriously priggish Victorian era. We know very little about his life before 1880 (which was where his own reminiscences in the episode "Fool For Love" began), except that he lived with his mother and was apparently of good breeding and education.

In 1880, William was a sensitive, awkward, imaginative, vulnerable, bookish, and slightly pompous young aristocratic gentleman in his mid-twenties in London. He disliked talk of scandal, crime, and violence ... preferring to devote his attentions instead to love, poetry, and beauty. In particular, he fancied a by-some-definitions beautiful (I find her eyes a bit too buggy, personally) young woman named Cecily Addams. He wrote poems about his feelings for her, poems which were ridiculed by his social peers, who called him "William the Bloody" because he wrote "bloody awful poetry."

When Cecily rejected him, young William stumbled out into the night to meet his fate ... in the shape of the dark-haired vampire Drusilla, who charmed him with her poetic language and her admiration for his passionate nature. She drank from him, killed him, and sired him as a vampire. They would spend the next 120 years together, more or less, with William acting as protector and caregiver to the childlike Drusilla.

Soon after becoming a vampire, William acquired the nickname "Spike," supposedly based on his having tortured some of his victims with railroad spikes. He travelled with Darla, Angelus, and Drusilla ... and began faking a lower-class accent and speech pattern. "Spike" was done with being "William" ... and he wanted to change himself in every way he could so that he would not have to remember the pathetic man he considered himself to have been when human.

In 1900, Spike killed his first Slayer in China during the Boxer Rebellion, acquiring a scar in his left eyebrow from a blow of her sword. In 1977, Spike killed his second Slayer in New York City on a subway train, taking her black leather duster as a rather morbid souvenir.

In the mid-1990s (perhaps early 1997), Drusilla was seriously injured by a mob in Prague, Czechoslovakia, leaving her severely weakened and unable to hunt. Spike cared for her devotedly.

In mid-1997 (Ep. 2.03), Spike and the weakened Drusilla came to Sunnydale in search of the latest Slayer -- Buffy -- because Spike wanted to kill her on the Feast of St. Vigius. Unfortunately, he got a bit impatient and attacked her too early, and found himself defeated. Spike trapped Angel and used his (Angel's) blood in a ritual which returned Drusilla to full strength, but an enraged Buffy ("Nobody messes with my boyfriend!") dropped a church organ on top of him, leaving Spike crippled (Ep. 2.10).

In January of 1998 (Ep. 2.14), Angel lost his soul and returned to his old evil ways, and to his old companions: Spike and Drusilla. Still confined to a wheelchair, Spike could only watch helplessly -- and jealously -- as Angel pulled Drusilla further and further from him. By making a deal with Buffy to help her defeat Angel, Spike was able to get Drusilla back and leave Sunnydale for Brazil (Ep. 2.22).

Soon afterward that same year, after cheating on him with a chaos demon, Drusilla broke up with Spike in South America, leaving him desolate and depressed. Spike returned to Sunnydale briefly (Ep. 3.08) to try to get revenge on Angel (whom he blamed for Drusilla's defection), but ended up leaving intent on winning Drusilla back by becoming his own true evil self again. Apparently, this attempt failed.

In mid-1999 (Ep. 4.03), Spike again returned alone to Sunnydale, this time in search of the Gem of Amara, which rendered any vampire wearing it invulnerable. He did, in fact, find the gem, but Buffy took it from him and sent it to Angel, who ended up destroying it. Not long afterward, Spike was captured by a secret government organization called The Initiative, who embedded a computer chip in his brain which causes him excruciating pain if he attempts to harm a human being.

In November of 1999, Spike escaped The Initiative's imprisonment, and sought help from the Scoobies (Ep. 4.08). Unable to fend for himself effectively now that he could not hunt, he began to reluctantly help Buffy and her friends, especially once he realized that though he could not harm humans, he could still hurt demons (thereby allowing him to continue participating in his desired amount of violence).

In mid-2000 (Ep. 5.04), Spike realized that he had fallen in love with Buffy. He fought it with every ounce of determination he possessed, but with no luck. His feelings led to him behaving in a stalkerish fashion which was not appreciated by either Buffy or her friends, and Spike made himself rather unpopular at times. By the time Buffy died in the late spring of 2001 (Ep. 5.22), however, Spike had become a dubiously-accepted member of the Scooby Gang and had sworn to protect Buffy's sister Dawn "until the end of the world."

After her friends raised her from the dead, yanking her out of heaven, a dazed Buffy found herself turning more and more often to Spike for friendship (Eps. 6.02-6.06). Eventually, this developing relationship took a turn toward the sexual (Ep. 6.08) and then proceeded to become increasingly abusive on both sides until Buffy called it off (Ep. 6.14), insisting that she could never love someone who has no soul.

In his desperation to make Buffy admit and accept her feelings for him, Spike later lost control and nearly raped her (Ep. 6.19). Afterward, he was aghast at what he had nearly done ... but even more aghast at the fact that he was aghast. Why should a vampire feel regret or guilt? In the end, this ... ahem ... soul-searching led Spike to Africa, where he encountered a shaman who challenged him with various trials. When Spike had proven himself worthy, the shaman rewarded him with the return of his soul (Ep.6.22).

Spike has now become what he has so often mocked in the form of Angel: a vampire with a soul. Buffy's one reason for being unable to love him is now gone, and in Season 7 she has shown a great deal of sympathy and caring for him ... though she continues to insist that she does not love him.

After recovering his soul, Spike became quite insane and fell under the control of The First Evil, which used him to kill numerous people and create new vampires in Sunnydale. However, Spike committed these crimes without his own knowledge, as The First Evil had brainwashed him to do its bidding when "triggered" by a particular song, and then to forget the events afterward. As soon as he began remembering any of this, Spike immediately informed Buffy, though he was fairly certain that she would kill him as a result. Buffy refused to kill him, however, despite his past and recent crimes, because she insisted that he has changed, that he has become "a better man" ... exactly what Spike had hoped when he left to find his soul.

Spike, on the other hand, does not see himself so sympathetically. Tortured with guilt for his crimes, he seems wracked with self-loathing and can only imagine that Buffy tolerates him because she derives strength from her hatred of him. Buffy's belief in him is the only thing that seems to give him any faith in himself at this point, but he must eventually regain some independent sense of self-worth or remain ever reliant on external validation.