Angel: Season 3 - Son of Angel

Yeah, so that title for the post. Yeah. If Angel is a vampire, he is sterile. So did he have a son back in the 1700s that is somehow alive today (another vampire perhaps)? The flashbacks we've seen would all point to a negative answer there. All shall be explained...

After spending a few months away from Los Angeles to deal with the death of Buffy, Angel returns to find the group trying to reassimilate Fred into human society. Five years in a reality where being human means that you are lower than rats didn't do wonders for her psyche, and she is having some trouble readjusting. However, Angel's appearance seems to help, since he was the first person in five years to treat her like a person. Over the course of the first few episodes, Fred slowly regains her sanity. Overall, this is a good thing, since the crazy Fred would quickly lose a purpose on the show and the sane Fred allows for better story-telling. However, the lines said by crazy Fred are some of the most humorous of the entire show.

As usual, Wolfram and Hart were still attempting to turn Angel into Angelus, and this year, they started coming after him through Cordelia. Exploiting the fact that her visions were never meant for a human to carry, they found a way to amplify the negative effects they have on her. This was a pivotal season for Cordelia; this is the year when she truly starts to become a force for good. She receives combat training from Angel, which causes the two of them to start to fall in love. However, she also elects to become part demon in order to survive her visions. Both of these developments will have extreme consequences in the future.

However, just as Angel and Cordy begin to realize that they have feelings for each other, a major bombshell is dropped on the Angel Investigations team: Darla is back. And she's pregnant. What?! Somehow, when Angel had sex with her the previous year to vent his frustration, some sort of miracle (or anti-miracle) happened, allowing two dead things to conceive. And not only to conceive, but to create life; the baby is human, and it has a soul. And this revelation couldn't have come at a worse time, since a new (read: old) enemy returns to hunt down Angel and Darla. A 17th century vampire hunter named Daniel Holtz, who was alluded to in Season 2, has been brought to the 21st century by a time traveling demon named Sajahn, and Holtz intends to get revenge for the wrongs the vampires did to him.

Wesley also has a pivotal season, as he slowly becomes more and more detached from the group at Angel Investigations. It starts with him trying to translate and piece together a group of prophecies that deal with both the arrival of Holtz and the revelation that two vampires will conceive a child. This work keeps him awake many a long night, and he is reluctant to report on his findings once they begin to suggest that Angel is going to do something terrible. He also begins secretly meeting with Holtz and his growing group of 21st century vampire hunters, in an effort to get them to back off, since Angel and Angelus are two different people (at least in the mind of Wes and Angel). Wes also tries to avoid seeing Gunn and Fred when they become a couple, since Wesley himself pined for Fred and was unable to make a move before Gunn, despite ample opportunity (it also didn't help that he tried to kill her while under demonic influence).

Eventually, when the baby is born, Darla is forced to sacrifice herself since she would be unable to birth the baby naturally. The soul of the baby is powerful enough to affect Darla, and she once again begins to act like a human. She knows that once the baby is out, she will revert back to one of history's most dangerous vampires, and stakes herself to save the baby. Naming the baby Connor, Angel is forced to stay alert at all times to keep him safe from Holtz and Wolfram and Hart, both of whom want the baby for very different reasons.

And then it happened. This season has one of the most emotionally intense series of events involving both Wesley and Angel. It starts with Wes deciphering the prophecies to read that, "The father will kill the son", and when Angel begins to display behavior that suggests the fulfillment of the prophecy is imminent, Wesley does what he feels he must to save both Angel and Connor: he kidnaps the baby. But when he is confronted by Holtz's gang, Holtz's number two (and possible girlfriend0 Justine cuts his throat, takes Connor, and leaves Wes for dead in a park. Holtz wants Connor in order to make Angel suffer. Wolfram and Hart wants Connor to experiment on and possibly bring about Angelus. And Angel just wants his son back. These three groups meet up and a stalemate occurs; Holtz has the baby, but W&H have an army. Angel decides that he will allow Holtz to escape, since Holtz plans on keeping his son alive. But Sajahn appears and reveals that the prophecy was a lie; he altered it from the original, which said that the child of two vampires would kill Sajahn. Sajahn, who is incorporeal and unable to kill Connor himself, makes one final effort to ensure the baby's death by opening a portal to a particularly brutal hell dimension and getting Holtz to run in with Connor. Upset, Angel goes to the hospital to visit a barely-living Wesley. After putting his friend at ease, Angel then attempts to kill Wes.

Craziness. Wes' role in the rest of the season is that of a broken man who has lost everything. His friends have turned their backs on him, and he barely has a reason for living. But the darkness of his life leads to a relationship with W&H attorney Lilah Morgan, which is one of the show's most disturbing and powerful relationships; they may be enemies, and they may hate each other, but it shows how much each of them are hurting.

Meanwhile, the romance between Angel and Cordelia was put on hold when an old flame of Cordelia's returned. But even after he left, the loss of Connor has not put Angel in the mood for love. But then, miraculously, Connor returned... as a teenager. Since it has been established that time moves faster in hell dimensions, it comes as no surprise that he would be this age, but the fact that he returned is the surprising part. But he does, and he's pissed. After being raised by Holtz, he has been led to believe that Angel is the worst being on the planet (this isn't that off if applied to Angelus), and is out to kill him. However, like Fred at the beginning of the year, he is completely bewildered by human society, and begins to accept help from Angel to adjust. Sadly, a happy family is not to be, when he executes a plan to get rid of Angel forever. He and Justine seal him in a box and drop him to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, where he will live forever, but in a perpetual state of starved madness. This occurred when Angel was on his way to meet Cordelia, so that they could confess their feelings for each other. Cordelia is confronted by an agent of the Powers That Be and is offered a spot in their heavenly realm to become one of the Powers. In the final scene of the season, Cordelia ascends toward a greater purpose while Angel descends into a hell on Earth.

Season 3 ends with a lot of tragedy; Angel and Cordelia are both out of commission, Wes is an outcast from the group, Lorne has left the city, and Gunn and Fred have no idea where their friends are. This sets up the darkest season of the show, which rivals Season 6 of Buffy in bleakness (let's just say that the first Angel episode I ever saw was one of the darkest episodes of Joss Whedon's canon).

Up next: The end of Sunnydale...