EPISODE 5.04

Hell Bound

Written by: Steven S. DeKnight

Directed by: Steven S. DeKnight

Free or Unfree?

When we say that a person is bound for a particular place, we mean more than that he or she is going there.  We mean that the person is destined to go there.  The use of the term in this sense is clearly related to one of the alternative meanings of bound, namely “unfree”.  So, when we say that an illicit affair is “bound to end in disaster” we mean that disaster is the inevitable outcome, regardless of the intention of those concerned.  But this is a linguistic analysis of a word.  Whether disaster actually is inevitable is a rather different matter.  We can say for example that “John is bound for college” but that means no more than that John wants to attend college and that he has the necessary ability to get there.  We can also say that a plane is “bound for New York” but that means no more than the airline schedule says that is where it is heading.  In neither case, though, is there any certainty that John will actually end up in college or that the plane will arrive in New York.  That is because the path each of us follows though life is the opposite of “unfree”.  It is inherently uncertain.  So when we say that something is bound to happen, we are really begging a question not expressing a certainty.  And the nature of that question will vary depending on its context. So, when we ask whether Spike (or Angel for that matter) is really Hell bound we must first understand what we mean by “Hell” and how do people get there.

The Significance of Hell

There have been many examples of “Hell Dimensions” in the Whedonverse.  But to date they have been devoid of any moral significance.  Angel ended up in a Hell Dimension at the end of season 2 of BTVS as a tragic but practical necessity.  It was either him or the Earth and him.  In “Sleep Tight”, Connor ended up in the ultimate Hell Dimension, Quortoth,  because he was unlucky enough to be caught in a tug of war between Angel and his mortal enemies in Woolfram and Hart on the one hand and Holtz on the other.  In neither case was there any suggestion that those dimensions were intended for the punishment of the wicked.  In fact such a suggestion would have been patently absurd unless you conceive of the whole world on the one hand or an infant on the other to be deserving of that punishment.  In this episode, however, the term “Hell Dimension” has been dropped in favour of the simple term “Hell” and the description of Hell and the account of its purpose we see here make it clear that we are talking about “Hell” as it is commonly understood in Western Society.  It is the underworld, somewhere for the dead, a place where the wicked are separated from the righteous, a prison from which there is no escape and a place where the evil suffer eternal punishment for their sins.

So, there is no concept here of an inter-dimensional portal that could be used by anyone to pass between this world and Hell.  Instead Fred, when talking to Spike, refers to:

“The fluctuations in your readings; lack of particle cohesion. It's almost as if your essence is straddling a dimensional void.”

Whether this means anything in terms of physics is doubtful but it is clearly intended to mean that what is happening to Spike is personal to him.  The Hell he fears is not – in this context at least – a threat to the world in general but to him in particular.  He feels pulled there because of his individual circumstances.

 First of all he is vulnerable to the pull of Hell as someone who is now not only dead but physically no-longer part of the world (as opposed to Angel who is also dead but still is part of the world).

Secondly, Spike had already subjectively identified it as a place of “damnation”.  And later Angel reinforces this imagery when he talks of the past of both himself and Spike:

“The lives we destroyed. That's all that's ever gonna count. So, yeah, surprise. You're going to Hell. We both are.”

Thus from early on we have a clear idea of the place to which Spike is being pulled as a place of punishment for past sins.  This particular aspect of Hell is, of course, one that has had an enormously powerful grip on the Western mind for centuries.  Even a cursory review of the literature reveals the extent to which writers have almost revelled in the descriptions of such punishment:

“They delighted in telling their hearers that they would be roasted in great fires and hung up by their tongues. They were to be lashed with scorpions, and see their companions writhing and howling around them. They were to be thrown into boiling oil and scalding lead. A river of brim-stone broader than the earth was prepared for them; in that they were to be immersed. . . Such were the first stages of suffering, and they were only the first. For the torture besides being unceasing, was to become gradually worse. So refined was the cruelty, that one Hell was succeeded by another; and, lest the sufferer should grow callous, he was, after a time, moved on, that he might undergo fresh agonies in fresh places, provision being made that the torment should not pall on the sense, but should be varied in its character as well as eternal in its duration.”

Modern Christianity has largely abandoned this attachment to the idea of physical torture and substituted the idea of mental or spiritual anguish.  But the older imagery remains potent and physical mutilation, torture and pain is the leitmotif of the concept of Hell in this episode.  Among the first warning signs that Spike receives is the sight of a man with a horribly disfigured face cutting off his own fingers.  Later he sees a woman dressed as a 19^th century serving girl with just bloody stumps where her arms used to be.  Later still he meets a woman with a shard of glass sticking from her eye and a lawyer with one side of his face scarred and bloody.  All are in great pain.  Pavayne explains who they are to Spike:

Pavayne: “Died themselves - here, in the service of Wolfram & Hart: little ants, scurrying from the flames.”

Spike: “Their spirits hung on…tried to keep from tumbling into Hell. ‘Till you gave them a shove.”

Pavayne: ”Burning now. Screaming forever. Like you'll scream.”

The metaphor is, of course, a very old one – Hell as a place of fire.  We do not see people burning.  But that scarcely matters.  We are being left in no doubt about the torment in store for those who do end up in Hell.

And finally Hell isn’t temporary.  It is forever, or as Pavayne calls it

            “an eternity of suffering for your sins”.

And just as the former Wolfram and Hart employees show us that torment, they also demonstrate to us a number of other points:

The significance of Hell, as conceived in this episode, is thus as a place of punishment for acts of wrongdoing committed by someone who knows the difference between right and wrong but chooses to do wrong anyway.

And Pavayne seeks to link Spike with each of these aspects of the ghosts he has met.  First there is the history of evil:

“Know all your hiddens, dirty red things you've done.”

But even more importantly he has a soul:

“Look... Hell knows you're ready, plump and ripe. Beginning to understand, aren't you? The soul that blesses you...damns you to suffer—forever.”

All of these elements play an important part in our understanding of the episode.

It can be reasonably argued that the primary purpose of all religion is to provide redemption or, as it is often called, salvation for its adherents.  The existence of a great many different religions indicates that there is a wide variety of opinion about what constitutes salvation and the means of achieving it.  However, the fact that it is a defining characteristic of religions across such a wide variety of cultural traditions equally clearly suggests that salvation is a general human concern.  Humans obviously need to deal with the fact that suffering, evil and death exist in the world and t that each human plays a part in causing these conditions to exist.  One way of dealing with the issue is through seeking to raise, by means of a personal transformation, human beings into a higher state of being.  There are different ways of doing this but in all cases the starting point is the proposition that there is a moral order in the universe and human behavior is at odds with that order.  Salvation at its simplest is the means whereby human beings are reconciled to the moral order. The Christian approach is the one most familiar and most easily understood to most viewers of this series.  It regards sin as disobedience to the will of God.  The Last Judgment will result in the eternal blessing of the just and the eternal damnation to Hell of the wicked.  Salvation in Christianity is, therefore, principally about deliverance from Hell.  And it is here that we see the reason for making the centerpiece of this episode a concept of Hell that is, on the one hand, clear and compelling and, on the other, completely new to ANGEL as a series.  By borrowing this concept for the purposes of this episode the writers were using something that is instantly recognizable and easily understood.  The advantage is obvious. The central conflict in this episode is found in the opposition between Hell and its pull on those who have been evil in life on the one hand and their desire to escape from its torments on the other.  That conflict plays out in a number of different ways:

But the central question is whether salvation (as represented by escape from Hell) is or is not possible for someone who has committed great evil and, therefore, deserves punishment for it or is that person inevitably “Hell bound”?  And the very familiarity of the concepts used by the writers for this purpose means that this is a question that can be readily grasped by the viewer.

Angel and Redemption

Of course there is a major difference between the Christian view of salvation and that examined in this episode.  In the Christian view, sin is an offense given by finite and imperfect  human beings to an infinite and perfect God.  The merits of finite and imperfect humans are, therefore, incapable of making recompense to God for sin.  Salvation had to be through divine intervention in the form of the infinite and perfect merit of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.  For obvious reasons the concept of salvation by divine intervention has no place to play here.  Instead we see another approach, namely salvation by self-effort.  This is at odds with the basic Christian understanding of salvation and entails the self-transformation of a person from a state in which he or she deserved damnation to one in which the same person deserved to escape that fate.  It involves that person putting him or herself in a “right” relationship with the universal order not only by changing future behavior but by making restitution for past sin.  After all without such restitution (involving usually some cost) a person could not be said to have truly repented the past misdeeds.  At root this is the meaning of “redemption”.  The word essentially means to sell and usually refers to the saving or delivery of something for a price.

Angel’s story has been about his attempt to redeem his past sins and at the very end of the first season there was a hint about a concrete manifestation of success in doing so.  Near the start of this episode, Fred tells Spike about the

“The shan-shoe-ha something or other. Says that if Angel helps enough people, he gets to be human again.”

Spike affects to be unconcerned but in reality he sees in this news hope for himself.  That is why he goes to Angel and talks to him about the Shanshu prophecy:

“Oh, put your martyr away, Mahatma. Fred told me all about your great, shining prophecy. Pile up all your good deeds and get the big brass ring handed to you like everything else.”

He knows that Angel spent time in a Hell Dimension.  He sees his success at escaping from this and the Shanshu prophecy as evidence that there is an escape from Hell for him:

Angel: “You're starting to feel it, aren't you? How close you are now... to Hell?”

Spike: “What if I am? Not like it's such a big, bleeding deal, is it? If a ponce like you could break out…”

The ret-coning of the Hell Dimension to which Angel was sent in “Becoming” by the writers of "Hell Bound" is, as I have said, clear evidence of their desire to treat the suffering inflicted on someone in Hell as a punishment for sin.  And I am more than a little uncomfortable about the very blatant discontinuity.  But it does help highlight the stark contrast between the two vampires with a soul.  Whereas Spike sees Angel’s history as a reason to hope, Angel sees it as a cause for despair:

“The prophecy's a bunch of bull. They all are. Nothing's written in stone or fated to happen, Spike. You save the world, you end up running an evil law firm.”

Angel is still trying to do the right thing.  He has not, therefore, lost his faith in his own ability to achieve certain tasks or goals.  Rather he has given up on the idea that those actions can lead to his own redemption.  He is not saying that he hasn’t done enough or cannot do enough good to earn redemption.  He is saying that no matter how much good he does, redemption for him is impossible.  But to believe that anyone is denied salvation because of their past and regardless of their actions in the future is to deny the very nature of salvation.  And to believe in a world in which people are sent to Hell for eternal punishment because of their past actions and regardless of their future behavior is to deny the very existence of the moral order of which such an absolute and unalterable punishment for sin forms an essential part.  It is a matter of cause and effect.  Eternal punishment may be seen as honoring the dignity of the victim of the offence or it may be reduced to that which is merely expedient and useful to protect that dignity.  But in either case, in order to form part of a just moral order, the punishment must be the fruition of the sinner’s own will and not some arbitrary decision made by someone else.  For to take the power from a person to control their own fate is not only arbitrary and unjust;  it is to violate the very human dignity that eternal punishment was intended to guard.

Of course, no-one wants punishment.  And the Wolfram and Hart employees – not to mention Pavayne himself – were doing their best to avoid it.  But there is all the difference in the world between saying on the one hand that someone has sorrow for their sins and a desire for salvation and yet cannot achieve it and on the other that someone continues doing evil for as long as he or she can with full knowledge and no regret but simply wants to avoid the due punishment.  In the latter case the punishment is the fruit of sinner’s own will and therefore just.  In the former case it is neither.

Pavayne

And this is the interesting part about Angel’s attitude to salvation is how we may compare it to Pavayne’s.  And on the subject of the Reaper, perhaps we should let the Wolfram and Hart records speak for themselves:

“European aristocrat, 18th century. He was a doctor, nicknamed "The Reaper" for performing unnecessary surgery on his patients.”

And later:

“Word spread of his unorthodox practices... fled to California, still under Spanish rule at the time. His arrival coincided with a rash of brutal, ritualistic murders. Pieces of the victims placed in a manner suggesting an intimate knowledge of the dark arts."

This was clearly a man who deserved to be sent to Hell.  But on his death, instead of “roasting his chestnuts”, he did indeed know enough about the dark arts to continue to haunt the Wolfram and Hart building, sending those who died in the service of Wolfram and Hart to Hell in his stead.  Just like Angel, the idea of a universal judgment and a just punishment meted out to the wicked was not for him.   Essentially he became master of his own fate:

“All rules are mine. Reality bends. My desire. The way it was meant to...”

He considered himself free of any moral restraints.  He helped to damn evil doers certainly but for his own protection and pleasure only and not as an agent of a just judgment.  He says himself, he regarded the suffering he inflicted as playing.  He was also perfectly prepared to play with and ultimately damn Spike (whose case was a much more ambiguous one), cutting and stabbing him and stripping him naked for his own entertainment before trying to send him to Hell.  Indeed at one point he expresses himself disappointed with the reaction he was getting from Spike.  Then, of course, there was the fate of the unfortunate medium savagely murdered simply to hide his secret.  Finally he was quite prepared to kill Fred to thwart the rescue of Spike. 

But while Pavayne resorts to any trick necessary to avoid punishment, no matter what the cost to others, Angel on the other hand has largely discounted himself or any selfish interest.  He is intent on helping others even though it cannot help himself.  In contrast to Pavayne’s words quoted above, he says:

“We accepted the offer to take over the L.A. Branch of an evil, multi-dimensional law firm because we thought we could make a difference. Use the resources of Wolfram & Hart to do something decent.”

As a counterpoint his assessment of Spike is far from flattering:

“I know Spike better than anyone, and he only cares about himself.”

So, while both Angel and Pavayne share a common frame of reference insofar they deny the justice of a universal moral order, the way each reacts to this conclusion shows the difference between them. 

Spike

The real focus of the episode, however, lies not in either of them.  Rather it lies in Spike and the way in which his attitude evolves.   Particularly significant is the comparison between that evolving attitude and those of Angel and Pavayne.  From the beginning the writers emphasize two thing about Spike.  First of all Angel is quite right – he is selfish.  As I said in my review of “Unleashed”, in that episode he really care only about himself.  There was no trace of understanding about what Nina is going through or sympathy for her.  As far as he was concerned there is only one person who needs help here and that’s him.  Here, he scoffs at Angel for trying to do the right thing and even Fred realizes his motivation for being nice to her:

“I know he's been playing me with the looks and the smiles. I'm not some idiot schoolgirl with a crush.”

And in this episode too he shows no concern for the suffering of Pavane’s victims, even before he knew who most of them were.  But the other important point about Spike is that whatever his failings, he still retains the capacity to be more.  As Fred reminds Angel:

“He just saved the world. Vampire with a soul fighting for the good of humanity. Ring anything? He's just like you, a champion.”

And it is against the backdrop provided by Angel on the one hand and Pavayne on the other that we see this struggle between the two parts of Spike’s character being played out.

When he first hears of the Shanshu prophecy, all Spike is concerned about is whether there is any hope for him.  As we have already seen, when asked if he feels how close Hell is he refers to Angel “breaking out” of Hell and later describes the effect of  his good deeds as the “big brass ring”.  It is clear therefore that he thinks of helping people simply in terms of the reward that it is to bring Angel.   It is a way of escaping punishment and not something to be done for its own intrinsic merits.  So, like both Angel and Pavayne, he rejects the idea of a just universal moral order in which salvation is possible through self-transformation in the terms I talked about above.   But, as we have seen, those two reacted very differently to that conclusion.  And at first Spike’s reaction has more in common with Pavayne.  In contrast to Wesley, he shows little real concern for Fred.  His only interest is in her working harder and faster.   And once he realizes that he can manipulate reality like Pavayne, he simply follows his example:

“Reality bends to desire. That was it, right? That's why I could touch Fred, write your name in the glass. All I had to do was want it bad enough.”

Pavayne’s desire to escape Hell was so strong that he would sacrifice anyone and anything.  But the lesson both he and Spike would learn is that desire is not enough.  After some initial success in fighting back against  Pavayne, Spike is eventually overcome by superior strength:

“I've cheated hell for hundreds of years. Fed it other dirty little souls. Left me alone, let me get stronger. Now, this realm... I am God. And you...wood for the fire.”

But even Pavayne meets his match.  After being re-corporealized, he is easily overcome by Angel.  Then he is trapped in a restraining cell only a few feet wide. He is strapped in by metal bars, with electrodes attached to his head.   A door is shut on him revealing a single small window with a view down an empty and bare corridor, the only view that Pavayne will ever see again.  And Angel says the last words that he will ever hear:

“Welcome to Hell.”

So, in the end mere strength of desire and a willingness to sacrifice anyone and anything will not avoid Hell.  In fact it was Pavayne's willingness to sacrifice Fred that led him to Hell.  If he hadn’t threatened her, Spike would have himself been corporealized; there would have been no dark energy left and that would have left him free to try to cheat his way out of Hell.

Spike on the other hand did escape Hell.  We had seen at a couple of points in the episode that he did really like Fred.  He seemed genuinely grateful for her efforts to help him and genuinely angry at Pavayne’s threats to her.  But at the crucial moment he was faced with a choice between his salvation – through becoming corporal again – and her’s.  He chose the route of self-sacrifice.  In contrast to his earlier attitude to her and in stark contrast to Pavayne's, he puts her safety above his own desires.  Earlier on in the episode Fred told Angel why they should be helping Spike:

“It’s about doing what’s right.  Remember?”

Angel replied:

“Some people just can’t be saved.”

Well, here Spike did the right thing.  And in contrast to Pavayne, he came out of it pretty well:

Don't have it so bad, really. Plenty of room. Good company. Even picked up a few new tricks.  I guess there's worse things...than being a ghost.

This is not salvation.  But it implies that the door to salvation is still open because Spike did the right thing and because, therefore, he was “worth saving”.  In my comments above I discussed the punishment of Hell as being the fruits of the sinner’s own will.  Pavayne continued doing evil for as long as he could with full knowledge and no regret.  He simply wanted to avoid the due punishment.  But the message here is that the consequences of those actions will be punishment and that Hell is ultimately inescapable.  But where there is a willingness to transform oneself, then the sinner is not Hell bound.  Angel is, therefore, wrong.  He is wrong about himself and he is wrong to doubt the existence of a just universal moral order.  However, it seems clear that he does not yet realize this.  And how he resolves the dichotomy between wanting to do the right thing and a lack of belief in a universe where there is a moral order is something we will obviously return to.

The Importance of Redemption

The importance of the theme of redemption for ANGEL as a series is too obvious to need restating.  If it isn’t about redemption, it isn’t about anything at all.  So, I for one would have been astonished if the writers had suggested that salvation was not possible for Angel as a character.  And – despite my reservations about the ret-coming involved – I very much like the way in which the imagery of Hell was used to invoke the idea of salvation in a way that, as I tried to suggest, was meaningful.  But almost as important as the reaffirmation of the possibility of redemption was the message about patience and struggle.  Spike did something good and selfless.  But he was not immediately rewarded.  Indeed he was penalized by being deprived of what he really wanted, a chance to be a real boy again.  So doing the right thing has its costs, especially for someone like Spike and Angel.  But that is the point – redemption is about making restitution at your own expense.  The point is not only well made but subtly made and I like that as well.

The theme is important, however, not just because it is a strong, coherent and satisfying concept of redemption.  It is important because speaks directly to the situation Angel presently finds himself in.  Because the conclusion of this episode was open-ended we will no doubt return to the issue.  But Angel has endured more than his fair share of setbacks.  The Shanshu prophecy at the end of season 1 kindled a hope in him for his own salvation.  That hope was dashed by the events of the Darla arc in season 2.  He eventually reconciled himself to the idea of doing good for its own sake.  But the promise of that was that it would lead to him connecting with others, to becoming human in the sense of being a part of human society.  He gained and lost a son only to regain and eventually give that son up.  He came so close to love with Cordelia, only to loose her too.  And the price of his son’s happiness was a bargain that he is now beginning to regret.  Is it any wonder that he has lost faith?  This is strong and believable characterization.   But the episode has another great strength.  And this is where Spike comes in. In my review of “Just Rewards”, I referred to the obvious similarities between Angel and Spike.  They are both vampires with a long history of great brutality.  Both eventually came by a soul.   And while the circumstances in which they did so and their reaction to their soul differed greatly, the acquisition of a soul does raise precisely the same issue for them both.  The answer given by this episode that salvation is indeed possible must hold good for Angel as well as Spike.  But the fact that Angel was not directly and personally confronted with it in the same way that Spike was means that the significance of Spike’s experience may well pass him by for now.  So, once again ANGEL has the courage to show its hero’s feet of clay.  While we can see his error, Angel is left in the same state of mind he was in before and the full implications of this state of mind for Angel and his outlook on Wolfram and Hart and TPTB are still obscure.   This is something to look forward to.