meta ; tvd & btvs | Stefan v. Angelus
Ripper!Stefan is no Angelus
Why comparing ‘The Demon with the Angelic Face’ with ‘The Good Brother Gone Bad’ just doesn’t work.
Note: Spoilers and references to Buffyverse as well as all aired episodes of The Vampire Dairies.
With the introduction of Ripper!Stefan in the season two finale of The Vampire Diaries, there have been a lot of comments around the TVD community comparing Stefan to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer character of Angelus. Being a big fan of both shows, I honestly do not see a good basis for comparison. For me, these two characters, while having superficial similarities, are in completely different categories if evil.
One · Angel is not Angelus
On the surface, Angel and Stefan do have some basic things in common:
They are ‘good-guy’ vampires.
They are the protagonist’s main love interest.
They have a mysterious and dark past for which they are remorseful.
They temporarily regress back to their old evil ways.
Add in the dark hair and the giving of meaningful jewelry and you could make a case for Stefan being similar to Angel. However, the comparisons are not being made to Angel, they are being made to Angelus. And herein lies the main problem with the Angelus/Stefan comparison:
Angel is not Angelus. Angelus is the demon; Angel is the soul. Angel doesn’t decide to become Angelus (except, you know, that one time.). He can certainly choose to ‘go dark’ and say, allow a room full of semi-innocent lawyers to be massacred, but that’s still Angel, not Angelus.
Ripper!Stefan is still Stefan. He makes the choice (more or less) to go back to his evil ways. Nothing fundamental has changed as far as who he is. He is the same being, but now he is giving in to bloodlust and temptation, where before he wasn’t. It is more similar to how humans operate, choosing to do good or do evil.
Two · Motivation
Ripper!Stefan, at least in this most recent bender, is all Klaus’s doing. He needed Klaus’s persuasion to give in to the bloodlust. Klaus is giving Stefan the license to be bad and pushing him merrily along that path. Stefan does it all to keep his brother safe, which is noble and all, but it also gives him an out, an excuse that will be his future ‘get out of jail free card’ for the slaughter.
No one told Angelus to be evil. He didn’t have to be bribed or conned into it. Once turned, evil was in his very nature. He enjoyed it. He lived for it. It was his art. He sought out fresh victims for the thrill of the kill. It was his passion.
Three · Addiction verses Nature
Stefan has an addiction. It is all-consuming and, if given into, it drastically alters his personality and actions. For him, being a ‘ripper’ it is a habit to kick. He knows he is wrong, but slides into it anyway, in this case, to save his brother.
Angelus had no addiction to evil or to blood; he was a pure sociopathic killer.
Four · Acts of Evil
It is one thing to tell us how bad and evil a character is, but showing us is it in their actions makes a much deeper impression.
As far as we’ve seen, Klaus is the one who most often sets up Stefan’s kills. Andie’s death by compulsion was somewhat interesting and manipulative on Stefan’s part, but it doesn’t compare to the magnificent manipulating bastard that was Angelus, who devised torture beyond the physical and imparted as much pain and emotional trauma as possible just because it tickled him. Stefan seems to enjoy the hunt and kill to some extent, but it is highly unlikely that, without Klaus’s influence, he’d be tearing into people with reckless abandon.
There is also the issue of remorse: Ripper!Stefan clearly feels and shows remorse for his actions; Angelus never felt any remorse. Angel felt remorse for Angelus actions, but Angelus, nothing.
For one of the finest examples of Angelus’s evil greatness, take Drusilla. He took this innocent girl, who was virginal, sweet and kind but troubled by visions of the future, drove her completely raving mad and then he turned her into a vampire so she’d have live out an eternity of torment and madness.
Stefan, ripper or no, doesn’t have that kind of evil in him. Not yet anyway. He could get there, but I am not sure the writers will let him. They are too worried about how to bring him back to the good side that they aren’t pushing him all the way. I mean, they’ve done the 'one step too far' bit with Damon plenty of times; they ought to know how to do it by now. So why not Stefan? Why keep Stefan, even a killing Stefan, the golden boy, doing evil solely to protect those he loves? If this arc is going to work, they’ve got to go further. Stefan needs to do more than fall of the wagon; he needs to jump. I worry that the writers extreme caution on this subject could prove, at the end of the day, to make the whole ripper arc pretty damn boring.
Five · Friends and Foes
As far as their relationships with the rest of the characters goes, Angelus was actively threatening the lives of Buffy and her friends. Stefan is clearly trying to protect those he left behind in Mystic Falls. Angelus sends messages with creepy handdrawn pictures and dead fish garland, twists lies into truths and destroys everything in his path, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally. Stefan killed Andie to send a message to Damon, but ultimately, it was to keep Damon safe from Klaus.
When Stefan kills these days, it is because Klaus tells him to, to keep his end of the bargain. Angelus killed for the pure thrill.
Six · Our Vampires are Different
Because the vampire mythology between the two shows varies so much, I find that there is no real comparison for Ripper!Stefan in the BtVS universe. The closest I can figure is Angel’s semi-dark period during season two of AtS. Maybe it’s the ‘soul/no soul’ difference in BtVS that makes making comparisons between the two so difficult.
If Angelus were around Ripper!Stefan, he wouldn’t consider Stefan a like mind; he’d probably consider him an amateur. The lack of discretion in Stefan’s kills would piss Angelus off, not to mention the sheer lack poetry. These characters, while sharing some basic aspects, are simply not the same.
Seven · Closing Thoughts
I could be jumping the gun here. We’ve only had one full episode featuring Ripper!Stefan; maybe he gets worse, more evil, more sinister. Maybe we haven’t seen Stefan’s “Jenny Calendar” moment yet; we haven’t had the moment with him when a line is crossed and we know with certainty that things will never be the same. However, that phone call to Elena, the tears, the sadface, was, in my opinion, a definite step in the wrong direction for a true 'ripper'. If the writers are going for 'evil', the missed a step there. It is as if they are already setting him up for redemption before he really needs to be redeemed.
Don’t get me wrong; Ripper!Stefan is awesome in his own way. I am so glad the show went there and I hope it keeps going further. This arc might be morphing into one of my favorite aspects of the show, if they do it right. He’s just not in the same league as Angelus. Not yet.
Angelus was a fantastic evil character whose background and depth was given the chance to develop over three seasons of BtVS and five seasons of AtS. Ripper!Stefan has the potential to be great but we don’t know enough about him yet. He’s not done baking. We don’t know how developed Stefan is going to be, how dark the writers will go with his character, or how and when he will be fully redeemed, but I for one am optimistic. It could turn out to be one hell of a ride.
Here endth the meta.