DOUBLES IN BTVS
I haven't done much in term of BTVS study lately nor have I been much on LJ either, but here's a piece of meta that has been on my mind for quite some time. Hopefully, you'll find some interest in it.
As always, I'm sorry for my bad English and all the errors that could render this read painful.
As a mythic figure the Double or Doppelganger is extremely current in Btvs. Almost all the main characters have one, or even several of them. These Doubles can be constitutive of the characters or only make a quick appearance in one or two episodes for the purpose of the story. They assume various forms, some of them relating to the traditional type of the Double in fantastic literature, others being more original in their manifestation. But almost all of them share the traditional purpose of this mythological figure; to represent the hidden part of the human psyche. This short meta is an attempt at counting the characters who have a Double, at seeing how many Doubles they have and at establishing some of the characteristics of these various types of Double.
From a practical point of view the first criteria that can be used to distinguish the characters is the number of Doubles they possess, but of course it is an insufficient criteria by itself and the characteristics of the Double will have to be examined too, though not always in detail.
Characters with one Double
Two names come immediately to the mind: Angel and Oz, but two others can be added to this list though their cases have to be discussed: Anya and Giles.
Angel and Oz.
Both Angel and Oz are characters constructed with the presence of a Double at their core. Both find their roots as characters in fantastic literature: one could easily find in Jekyll/Hyde a model for Angel, as for Oz his nature as a werewolf makes him a simple transposition of a classic horror character in Btvs world. According to their original models, Angelus and the Wolf as Doubles possess character traits that appear entirely foreign or seem opposite to the other side of the character. Always menacing, they are able under certain circumstance to take control of the whole character and to act as if they were entirely autonomic beings, erasing the rest of the previous personality of the character. Both are representations of the dark parts of the human psyche but their difference in nature give to the writers the opportunity to focus on different aspect of the human nature: Angelus as a soulless sentient demon revels in cruelty, torture, and destruction, his nature is entirely malicious; the werewolf as a mindless beast is mostly driven by his natural appetites and though he is extremely dangerous, he can’t be qualified as evil.
Anya.
With Anyanka the writers introduce another type of Double opening other questioning about identity and responsibility. Though Anya and Anyanka are different in nature -Anya is a human being and Anyanka is a vengeance demon- the frontier between Anya and Anyanka isn’t grounded on a flagrant opposition. On the contrary the two versions of the character tend to bleed more and more together as Anya’s complexity grows during the seasons. Yet Anyanka shares one of her essential trait with more traditional Doubles: she literally surges from Anya’s being. Anyanka is the incarnation of Anya’s thirst of vengeance for having been betrayed by men.
Giles.
With Giles we’re going one more step further from the traditional representation of the Double. Ripper isn’t presented as having a different nature, neither is he presented as an autonomic being. He is more an ancient state of Giles’s being, a remembrance of his past. Yet he shares some of the characteristics of a Double: he has his own name and incarnates dark tendencies in Giles’s psyche: ruthlessness, violence. Ripper definitively represents another face - a hidden one- of Giles.
Characters with several Doubles
Xander
Xander as the possessor of several Doubles offers some peculiarities. At least two of what could be considered as Doubles of Xander are in fact the result of a possession - Hyena Xander and Soldier Xander- meaning by that remark that these aspects are imposed from outside. In the Hyena’s case it reflects a shift in the metaphor; the writers don’t so much examine the dark side of the psyche of the human being as the way social interaction can modify the behavior of an individual to the point of making him unrecognizable: the title of the episode -The Pack- is quite telling from this POV. The soldier’s case is less clear though, it introduces for the first time some sort of a positive Double, an idea which will be explored in much more depth in season four, where Xander is literally cut in two autonomic personalities after a magical attack, one of the two halves -“suave Xander”- being shown as a competent and successful character.
Spike
Spike possesses at least two Doubles. One is introduced in season 5 when the character’s complexity grows. Spike’s Double as a soulless vampire is William, a sweet, weak, ineffective Victorian poet. Like for Ripper, William is a past state of being for Spike though he still influences Spike’s behavior. He represents the human side of the character, the source of Spike’s humanity and as such he is one of the very rare positive Doubles in BTVS. Other Doubles for Spike are introduced in season 7: one of them is his ancient evil self played by the First, the other one is the mindless growling monster he turns into when under the First’s trigger in two episodes (Never leave me and Lies my parents told me). The latter one shares some traits with the figure of the werewolf appearing as more a dangerous wild beast than a proper demon moved by the desire to commit evil. One has to note the reversal in the nature of the Doubles: logically enough after Spike has regained his soul the negative parts of his psyche manifest themselves under the guise of dark Doubles.
Willow
Willow’s first Double has some peculiarities too: in Vamp Willow’s case the word Double has to be taken in its literal meaning as the character comes from an alternate reality. She’s less a manifestation of Willow’s dark part than an exploration of what Willow would be if turned into a vampire. As such she shares the common traits of vampires in Btvs (bloodlust, cruelty, love of mayhem …) but appears as a particularly powerful and scary vampire. One of her original trait is that the character is used to introduce Willow’s homosexuality. The link between the character and his Double is openly questioned. With Dark Willow the writers return to a more usual concept of the Double: she is the manifestation of the dark part of Willow’s psyche and shares some similarities with Anyanka. Her birth is generated by extreme grief and anger after Tara’s death as well as a desire of vengeance. But she has original aspects too: contrarily to Anyanka her exact nature is never revealed though doubt about it is introduced by the way of her friends not knowing if she’s still human. Also Dark Willow is strongly linked to the exploration of power, its danger, its ability to change people and corrupt them.
Buffy
Once again the writers introduce a variation in their game with the concept of Double. The only occurrence where Buffy is presented as having a Double in the strictest sense of the word is in Nightmares in Season one where she turns into a vampire. This transformation is the manifestation of Buffy’s deepest fear. But as a whole, in Buffy’s case the role of her Doubles is taken up by other characters. Buffy’s sister, Dawn, is one of these Doubles; magical in her origin she has been made from Buffy. Deprived of all superpower, she, in a way, is the young girl in Buffy, her normal human side. Faith, the dark Slayer in season three, can also be identified as a Double. She incarnates hidden desires in Buffy: the desire to escape the law, to do as one wants, to go wild without caring about the consequences…, desires Buffy will first follow up to a certain point and then fight. In season six the role of the Double is mostly then taken up by Spike who as a vampire incarnates Buffy’s desire for death during her depression. Even the vocabulary used to describe her relationship with him during this season, where they both fight for dominance and where, along Buffy own words, she let him take her over, is evocative of the battles that traditionally oppose the characters and their doubles in fantastic literature.
The figure of the Double is very complex in Btvs because of the variety of the forms it takes, of the variety of its uses. Its multiplicity and omnipresence introduce a great fluidity in the universe of Btvs: characters constantly travel from one state to another; demon to human, human to demon, thus putting into light the complexity of the being.