The Mission is What Matters: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, part 2
I’m not sure how satisfied I am with this part, but I have to stop playing with it, and since the Epic Roslin Lovefest of 2010 I have reached a zen acceptance of my inability to be coherent about my favorites. I suggest somewhere that’s else for structure or objectivity, is my point here. Also, this is possibly the one that says as much about me as it does about Wesley, so, you know, be cool. (NOTE: In the interests of supporting self-care for everyone, I’d caution that this part does include discussion of Wesley’s emotionally abusive childhood.)
Part 1
The Mission is What Matters: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, part 2 (AtS S1-early S2)
Wesley’s training began at birth. His story began in Sunnydale. But his life, in a very real sense, begins when he rolls into Los Angeles. The two years between the Council and Connor are the high point of Wesley’s short but eventful life. This first year in LA, Wesley will gain more than he ever expected to have - not just a job where he uses his Watcher skills in the field constantly, but he also has the time and space to heal from some of the wounds left by his abusive childhood, and eventually a tight-knit replacement family where he loves and is loved. Also, he's kind of a badass.
Call him by his real name: who is Wesley?
Throughout his tenure on both shows, Wesley relates to the world through a series of roles, and takes what he finds useful from each one and carries it into the next. He continuously chooses roles that he thinks are slightly (but only slightly) beyond his reach. There is probably any number of interpretations for why this is, but I believe it started as a defense mechanism, built up from a lifetime of trying to present himself as the son Roger Wyndam-Pryce claimed to want. The extent of abuse Roger dished out to Wesley makes plain that nothing Wes ever did was going to be good enough, that Roger was an abusive bastard and was going to tear down his child for the sheer joy of bullying. Wesley never internalizes this truth emotionally, and that’s why he carries it around for as long as he lives. Of course, he does know rationally that parents can sometimes be a danger to their children, and he can apply this to cases at large - Wesley being the one to figure out the source of Bethany Chaulk’s power is as brilliant a piece of foreshadowing as any the show put forward, precisely because it’s so in tune with Wesley’s hard boundary between emotional and intellectual, particularly around fathers and children.
Wes has an uncomfortable but useful tendency to share the more painful parts of his past with the rest of AI at inopportune moments. In Parting Gifts, he becomes preoccupied with having been fired - surely understandable, but it’s at a moment when they’re searching for Cordelia. More than once he’ll let slip the awful emotional abuse his father dished out to him as a child. And, given Wesley’s difficulties making emotional ties to others for their own sakes (though he seems to be a solid networker, his relationships are all about contacts rather than friendships; his romantic relationships are at least tangentially related to his job at AI), they’re probably the only people he talks to about his family, or that he’s ever talked to about his family. He doesn’t seem to be particularly aware of the things he says about his father, they come out quickly and easily and he bites them back, as if an external conversation pulled the endless internal monologue loop out through his mouth.
So if we’re going to learn about Wesley on-camera, it’s got to be at AI. Wesley lacks a lot of the ties to the story the other characters have. We had three years getting to know Cordelia and her background; we’ve gone into Angel’s past with flashbacks; we met Gunn’s gang and were there in real time for the watershed moment of his staking of Alonna; even Doyle gets a visit from his ex-wife. Wes doesn’t need ties to the world in the way Angel does, and while he emotionally craves companionship, he fills it through work relationships, which are about the mission, not about him. This elides his focus on his work into his horror of revealing or even meeting himself. Wesley is both lonely and alone. We don’t follow him out on dates or to bars or as he makes contacts, and his awful family certainly never comes to visit.
When he does have a purpose for socialization, though, he’s probably the most adept networker at AI. He’s the one who introduces us to Merle and thinks to bring Angel to the Host, and when S2 opens, he’s in a bar winning a bet and making sexyface at a pretty lady. There’s always some distinct purpose tied in with all of Wesley’s interpersonal relationships. I’m not sure Wesley knows how to have friends for the sake of friendship; he may simply be unable to believe that someone would want to be around him just for him. Not that the distinct purpose has to be work: he has a ladies’ motorcycle helmet with him at all times, just in case. I'm just saying, dude gets around.
Wesley’s lack of self-trust and inferiority complex mean that he relies on external markers of identity rather than self-evaluation. His pompous self-satisfaction when he arrives in Sunnydale is part show and part belief that his appointment as field Watcher to the Slayers proves that he’s succeeded at Being A Watcher. He’s been picked to Watch the Slayers (both of them!), and he doesn’t even think to substitute the Council’s judgment of him with his own.
When that blows up in his face, he swings as far as he can contemplate in the opposite direction. He doesn’t go bad, that’s never an option for Wesley, but he chooses what he thinks of as Chaos over the ordered life of a Watcher. Wesley throws himself into his role as a rogue demon-hunter as thoroughly as he performed his role as a Watcher. It’s even more comically awkward, because Wesley knows a lot more about being a Watcher, and because there are a lot more rules to Watching than there are to being rogue anything. He loses the leather in favor of dull, light blues and khakis and sports coats, contrasting with Angel but otherwise blending into his background.
Wesley’s different presentations of himself aren’t total fictional constructs. They’re whatever facet of himself he thinks is most valuable or important at the moment, stretched out and built up until it becomes a whole persona. Nerd Wes, M-Wes, General Wes, Bleak Wes, Academic Wes; they’re all actually Wesley, but with different parts of himself highlighted or obscured, added to useful fictions. Wesley is always knowledgeable, and usually quite skilled, at whatever role he thinks he’s supposed to be playing. Wesley’s practice at personas leads to his chilling skills in manipulation. The first thing a Watcher learns may be to separate illusion from reality for himself, but the second thing a Watcher learns appears to be the ability to tangle reality and convenient illusion for others.
Wes is eager to jump into danger, seeking out Angel and Cordelia partly for companionship, but mostly because they’re where the action is. It’s a little bit naïve thrill-seeking, but also a desperate desire to prove himself. Wesley still thinks that being a warrior is the best, most glorious way to contribute to the fight against evil, and probably more than a little as a way to atone for what he sees as his failure of the Slayer. Once he’s a bit more secure in his position in AI, he remains a little more ready for action than is healthy, but ceases to devalue his hard-developed natural skill for researching the science of magic.
Hello, Angel: Transition into AI
It’s unexamined in the text, but I’d argue critical, that Wesley is hunting Barney. On first glance, he’s a silly man tracking a silly demon, and the lightheartedness this gives the episode is truly a treat. But it’s also worth noting that Barney is a demon who kills demons. Cordelia is the only human at the auction, and this happens weeks after Wesley began his pursuit of Barney. Wesley readily divorces morality from humanity, which allows him to integrate easily in the gray AtS world.
Assuming the events of Parting Gifts took place roughly around the airing date (and there’s no reason to believe they don’t; Wesley is wearing leather pants and jacket without suffering heat stroke, suggesting that the episode takes place sometime in the winter months and therefore at least near the airing date), Wesley’s only been separated from the Council for approximately six months. In that time, he’s had time to track Barney for “a few states,” possibly longer. Wes was clearly a wreck when the Council fired him in June, and emotionally won’t move past it for quite some time, if ever. But not only did he throw himself into the immediate fight at graduation, he went out and found it on his own. Wes is most certainly a brooder, someone whose pervasive self-loathing and sadness seep into every corner of his mind and life. It ebbs and flows over the course of his life, but he doesn’t know how to staunch it because he’s never known anything else. But he’s what we (arguably unjustly) call “high-functioning.” Wesley always channels his unhappiness into doing good work - Graduation Day, his time as a rogue demon-hunter, his initiative in holding together AI when Angel bails on them, his searches for Angel and then Cordelia at the beginning of S4, his care for Illyria in S5. Whatever the monsters within, Wesley can always remember and fight the monsters without to help protect others.
Being a “rogue” demon hunter (as Faith is a “rogue” Slayer) is more of a reaction to the keenly-felt catastrophe of his tenure as field Watcher than it is a play to his own ego. Wesley is an accomplished sorcerer, and could easily have done just about anything with his skill, whether good, bad, or amorally self-interested. He could be a fairly strong player in the world of humans, but instead he chooses to be demon-bait, then an associate to a super, exacerbating his insecurity and feelings of inferiority. Wesley loves the excitement of the hunt, but magic is at least as exciting, particularly with Wesley’s power.
So why? Perhaps he sees getting into the physical fight as penance; perhaps he thinks he must actually replace Faith as a demon-killer. It’s also his sense of personal worthlessness and shame manifesting as an inability to recognize his abilities and power. Once he does somewhat embrace his aptitude for sorcery, he’ll go on to show us he’s a crack shot who is awfully lax about carrying around a gun. A gunshot may not kill vampires, but it’ll slow them down, and it’s probably pretty effective against a fair number of demons. There’s a sad, passively self-destructive vibe to Wesley-Wyndam Pryce, Rogue Demon Hunter, and yet he cannot bring himself to give up the fight.
Wes ditches his leather for khakis and light sport coats as he settles in LA and joins AI. He integrates into the team fairly easily, though not without a few scenes where his loneliness and eagerness come through a little too openly. This works quickly because it has to - Wesley’s second episode is Somnambulist, when Angel’s past haunts his dreams and the front pages, and Wesley notices the pattern even before Angel himself. Angel doesn’t question Wesley’s presence, just jumps right into his concern that he’s sleep-vamping, and nobody question that Wes should sit and watch Angel’s nocturnal commissions. the episode, though it’s mostly delicious Angelus backstory porn and Angel/new-Darla-replacement angst, overtly gives us a key piece of information we might have otherwise assumed: Wesley knows everything there is to know about Angel’s past, and he signs on anyway.
I’ve Got You Under My Skin is the episode that reveals Wesley’s motivations beyond that of having been fired from the Council, and solidifies him as part of the AI team. At the beginning of the episode, Angel reflexively calls him “Doyle”; by the end, Wesley is developed as a character in his own right - brave and terribly insecure, revealed as a survivor of an emotionally abusive childhood, capable of cruelty and compassion all at once. The demon, with Barney’s empathic abilities as well as its own mimicking skills, forces Wesley’s deepest secrets to the forefront. The first of these is the revelation of Wesley’s childhood abuse; specifically in the form of hours locked under the stairs, of isolation as the wages of imperfection. Wes will never get past this. However, he does a reasonable job starting the exorcism despite this. It’s when Angel shows up that Wesley falters in the ritual. He wants to put in a good show, wants to be respected and liked, or at least to avoid disapproval.
The pivotal, if equally unsurprising, revelation is that: “You’re willing to kill me. And that’s good.” Angel knows exactly who Wesley is. He’ll lose his way and put himself and his connections before the mission. Wesley won’t. At some time or another, Angel asks every member of AI (except perhaps for Fred) if they’ll be willing to kill him. To Angel, this is reinforcement of his ability to trust them to fight Angelus. The Angel persona, for lack of a better chronological way to distinguish between Angel and Angel, is aware that the Angelus persona cannot roam free, and for most of them, this oath is its own end. For Wesley, though, it’s a reaffirmation to the mission, not to Angel. One of the things Wesley might have to do to protect the innocent is to kill Angel, and so kill Angel he may. Because it’s a question of aligning goals rather than mutual loyalty, though, the tendencies Angel lauds here will lead Wesley to do that which Angel considers far worse than death come Season 3.
I Won’t Let You Down: part of the team
Wesley’s role here is the one that’s closest to the self he’s been running from all this time, and for almost exactly two years the part Wes plays will collapse into Wesley. This is a huge part of the stability and self-confidence he enjoys during the two years between the Council and Connor. After a year in which he grows confident of his place in the group and his ability to contribute to the larger fight to protect the innocent, he relaxes enough to return to his WC roots and be the sorcerer he is without fuss, most notably doing the unbind spell that saves Cordelia in To Shanshu in LA and the spell that corporealizes the Thessulac demon before they move into the Hyperion. Magic in the ‘verse is “about emotional control,” and so it’s impressive and not a little bit chilling that someone as complicated and damaged as Wesley can seal off emotion from spirit so readily, but at this point it’s a sign of confidence and progress.
He reintegrates his Watcher training into his new vocation in darker ways, as well. As we see in The Ring, he’s willing to torture to get information if the stakes are high enough, and needs only a dart to do so. The shocking ease with which Wesley tortures people shows up time and again in the show, but it’s portrayed differently depending not on the circumstances (he almost always does it when he’s convinced it’s absolutely necessary to save others, usually Angel), but as to how Wesley feels about himself. When this happens with nerd Wes, it’s a sign of loyalty to Angel and developing badassery. The scene isn’t presented any differently than when Angel bullies or tortures people into giving information up, which the show doesn’t question in S1. When Wes does it in a bleak phase, to Justine and then the junkie in the demon bar, it’s a sign of moral decline.
Also, he has a few opportunities to show us that he’s a BAMF. Given Wesley’s gut-sucking insecurity, what we’re watching on the character level is the development of self-esteem that may have never happened. Wes is a crack shot (Sanctuary, Expecting, The Ring). When he thinks Angel has started killing again, he returns to protect Cordelia armed with only the tiniest, wussiest cross in the world, then sits by Angel’s bed and falls asleep while waiting for Angel to jump out and get with the killing (Somnambulist). He throws the drugged - therefore uninhibited - therefore Angelus down an elevator shaft (Eternity). Wesley is one of the ancient metals he keeps wrapped up under his khakis; soft and unassuming at first glance, unchangingly sharp and hard and cold underneath. Denisof’s talent for physical comedy ensures that Wesley won’t entirely leave behind his clumsy discomfort in even his own skin for some time, but it obfuscates the fighter within to the world and to Wesley himself.
I know the real you: Wesley and Faith
Wesley still considers himself responsible for Faith in some sense, and not just guilt, even though he’s no longer a Watcher (underlined by the fact that Giles, a fellow sacked Watcher, didn’t even think to call him) and she’s gone rogue. “She’s not a demon, Angel, she’s a sick, sick girl.” Wes doesn’t try to stick around to protect Angel, he tries to stick around to protect Faith. It doesn’t matter that she’s a superbeing. She’s the helpless, and Wes wants to help.
As on BtVS, Faith and Wesley are crucial to each other and to their structural stories. Angel and Wesley continue to differ as to how Faith should be treated. Angel guilts Wes over Faith’s mental condition (even though Angel bears at least as much responsibility for it and probably more). Wesley talks Angel down off revenge for Buffy in Five by Five; Angel’s caretaking of Faith strikes Wes as too lenient and therefore risky at the beginning of Sanctuary. This is a step forward from providing information and support to actual tactical disagreement with Angel. Wes takes this step forward partially because of his growing confidence of his place in the group and partially because he considers himself Faith’s Watcher even though neither of them answer to the Council, but the role is a natural fit for him and he embraces it as one of his strengths.
Faith abducts Wesley, not Cordelia, when she decides to “get Angel in the game.” As ever, Faith and Wes throw the other in their own faces brutally. Wes says he knows the real Faith and says she’s a piece of shit; but just how long was he Faith’s Watcher for? A few weeks, maybe, even counting the time they’re just pretending, but it still hits home. It’s Faith who thinks Faith is a piece of shit, and Wes who thinks he should have saved Faith by being a better Watcher. Faith instinctively knows how to go for his failure as a Watcher because she’s good at sussing out the weak spot and going for it mercilessly. Wesley’s goading of her is part there to show the toughness underneath the Land’s End catalogue, but I also think he’s pushing her to dole out the endless punishment he’ll never quite stop believing he deserves. He’s not the type to screw around during a fight in progress, but this is something that’s completely out of his hands, so he drops his guard and lets his issues come into play. He’s also - oh, Wesley - stalling her, not just because Angel is coming to save him from her, but because Angel is coming to save Faith from herself, and if she kills him and leaves, that won’t work.
Wesley, barely conscious, frees himself from his restraints as Faith and Angel fight, and goes down to the armed conflict between two supers with a kitchen knife, because if he doesn’t, one of them might die. Wes is still an eager, slightly desperate nerd most of the time, but in a pinch, he’s stupidly brave. But it’s not about vengeance, it’s not about rage, it’s about the future. He comes down the stairs and the fight is over, and the moment he processes what’s happening, Wesley drops the knife.
After leaving Angel to shower Faith with junk food and snuggles, Wes argues and bargains with the men from the Council. I don’t think he ever intended to hand Faith over to them. He has a good enough poker face to lie to the Slayer-hunters, but we never see him shift from consideration into spy mode. I think he and the senior Slayer-catcher are both aware that this isn’t going to be easy, so he pretends to drive a hard bargain in hopes that it will let them believe he’s committed. He picks saving Angel’s life as the wages of betrayal to stick it to the Council, and because they both know that if he was in it for the money, he wouldn’t be working with Angel. He’s thought through the institution of the Council, going so far as to refer to the Slayer-catchers as “three gun-toting maniacs.”
The exchange at the beginning makes Wes look a little pissy and petty, and is probably not a whole lot more than an attempt to create some suspense when the gun-toting Cockneys show up, but from Wesley's perspective, this is Angel being awfully blasé about Faith doing to Wes exactly what Angel did to Giles. Cordelia underlines it for us in her inimitable way - “people always get a little funny after they’ve been sadistically tortured. Well, you’d know” - but it’s not general. Faith kidnapped the nerd, and took out her rage at the super on him to draw the big guy out. He doesn’t want vengeance on Faith the way Buffy does, he does want to help her, and he never actually objects to Angel’s unwillingness to turn Faith over to the police (after all, if anyone knows how impossible it is to contain a Slayer, it’s Wesley), he just wants some indication that Angel understands that they’re not just saving Faith’s soul, but all her future victims too. Faith is a mission to Wesley, and she represents the mission to him. Peace is not an easy thing to find, he tells Angel in the soft, sad voice of someone who’s learned this from experience. But he hopes desperately that she does, as Wesley’s own rehabilitation cannot happen without Faith’s.
There is a design: Wes and philosophy
“There’s a design, Angel. Hidden in the chaos though it may be, it’s there, and you have your place in it.” Wesley doesn’t seem particularly shocked or inspired by this conversation; he says this to Angel as readily and analytically as he identifies demons or geeks out over antique weaponry. He doesn’t make any grand philosophical statement about the nature of some vague “us,” or a moral statement about “should.” He’s surveyed the available evidence and drawn a conclusion. It’s not about finding the idea comforting, then disappointing, and then finally stifling the way Angel will, or hacking out his own space in it the way Cordelia does, or taking himself out of the equation entirely the way Doyle did. It’s part of his framework of the world. There is a plan. This is an easier conclusion for Wesley to draw - it’s not so much an issue of belief in terms of a religious or philosophical framework - than it is for any of them, including Angel. Wesley is the one who has never lived in a world where the metaphysical was particularly meta. His father was a Watcher, he was raised and educated to be a Watcher, and that means he grew up as conscious of the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness as most kids are of strangers with candy. (No wonder he’s jumpy.)
It’s significant that Wesley doesn’t claim his own place in any grand plan, either, though he sees the big picture enough to know that there’s a plan. He never seems to go looking for one, either. We never see him actually ask Lorne to read his destiny - he, Cordelia, and Gunn are singing for the pure love of tequila in Redefinition (they have forgotten that Lorne even can read their destinies at this point). As ever with Wes, what he doesn’t do is quite as telling as what he does. Given Wesley’s interpretation of the universe as ordered and to some extent foreordained, it’s actually somewhat odd that he chose not to find out his own destiny. He may be convinced he does not have one (Lorne doesn’t tell Wesley he’ll be “playing a huge role” in anything, he tells this to Angel when Wesley isn’t around), thinking perhaps that it’s his insignificance, his outsiderness, that allows him to see the pattern writ large he places Angel in without hesitation. To me, this seems to be the product of Wesley’s dread of himself; his fear that he is insignificant and his terror that he will hurt others rather than help them. More importantly, though, it’s an unwillingness to prioritize his own future over the big picture. Emotionally, Wes wants the assurance and validation that comes from being a hard and sure part of that grand plan, but Wesley is ruled by his head. And intellectually, Wesley knows that his destiny isn’t what matters.
Part 1
The Mission is What Matters: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, part 2 (AtS S1-early S2)
Wesley’s training began at birth. His story began in Sunnydale. But his life, in a very real sense, begins when he rolls into Los Angeles. The two years between the Council and Connor are the high point of Wesley’s short but eventful life. This first year in LA, Wesley will gain more than he ever expected to have - not just a job where he uses his Watcher skills in the field constantly, but he also has the time and space to heal from some of the wounds left by his abusive childhood, and eventually a tight-knit replacement family where he loves and is loved. Also, he's kind of a badass.
Call him by his real name: who is Wesley?
Throughout his tenure on both shows, Wesley relates to the world through a series of roles, and takes what he finds useful from each one and carries it into the next. He continuously chooses roles that he thinks are slightly (but only slightly) beyond his reach. There is probably any number of interpretations for why this is, but I believe it started as a defense mechanism, built up from a lifetime of trying to present himself as the son Roger Wyndam-Pryce claimed to want. The extent of abuse Roger dished out to Wesley makes plain that nothing Wes ever did was going to be good enough, that Roger was an abusive bastard and was going to tear down his child for the sheer joy of bullying. Wesley never internalizes this truth emotionally, and that’s why he carries it around for as long as he lives. Of course, he does know rationally that parents can sometimes be a danger to their children, and he can apply this to cases at large - Wesley being the one to figure out the source of Bethany Chaulk’s power is as brilliant a piece of foreshadowing as any the show put forward, precisely because it’s so in tune with Wesley’s hard boundary between emotional and intellectual, particularly around fathers and children.
Wes has an uncomfortable but useful tendency to share the more painful parts of his past with the rest of AI at inopportune moments. In Parting Gifts, he becomes preoccupied with having been fired - surely understandable, but it’s at a moment when they’re searching for Cordelia. More than once he’ll let slip the awful emotional abuse his father dished out to him as a child. And, given Wesley’s difficulties making emotional ties to others for their own sakes (though he seems to be a solid networker, his relationships are all about contacts rather than friendships; his romantic relationships are at least tangentially related to his job at AI), they’re probably the only people he talks to about his family, or that he’s ever talked to about his family. He doesn’t seem to be particularly aware of the things he says about his father, they come out quickly and easily and he bites them back, as if an external conversation pulled the endless internal monologue loop out through his mouth.
So if we’re going to learn about Wesley on-camera, it’s got to be at AI. Wesley lacks a lot of the ties to the story the other characters have. We had three years getting to know Cordelia and her background; we’ve gone into Angel’s past with flashbacks; we met Gunn’s gang and were there in real time for the watershed moment of his staking of Alonna; even Doyle gets a visit from his ex-wife. Wes doesn’t need ties to the world in the way Angel does, and while he emotionally craves companionship, he fills it through work relationships, which are about the mission, not about him. This elides his focus on his work into his horror of revealing or even meeting himself. Wesley is both lonely and alone. We don’t follow him out on dates or to bars or as he makes contacts, and his awful family certainly never comes to visit.
When he does have a purpose for socialization, though, he’s probably the most adept networker at AI. He’s the one who introduces us to Merle and thinks to bring Angel to the Host, and when S2 opens, he’s in a bar winning a bet and making sexyface at a pretty lady. There’s always some distinct purpose tied in with all of Wesley’s interpersonal relationships. I’m not sure Wesley knows how to have friends for the sake of friendship; he may simply be unable to believe that someone would want to be around him just for him. Not that the distinct purpose has to be work: he has a ladies’ motorcycle helmet with him at all times, just in case. I'm just saying, dude gets around.
Wesley’s lack of self-trust and inferiority complex mean that he relies on external markers of identity rather than self-evaluation. His pompous self-satisfaction when he arrives in Sunnydale is part show and part belief that his appointment as field Watcher to the Slayers proves that he’s succeeded at Being A Watcher. He’s been picked to Watch the Slayers (both of them!), and he doesn’t even think to substitute the Council’s judgment of him with his own.
When that blows up in his face, he swings as far as he can contemplate in the opposite direction. He doesn’t go bad, that’s never an option for Wesley, but he chooses what he thinks of as Chaos over the ordered life of a Watcher. Wesley throws himself into his role as a rogue demon-hunter as thoroughly as he performed his role as a Watcher. It’s even more comically awkward, because Wesley knows a lot more about being a Watcher, and because there are a lot more rules to Watching than there are to being rogue anything. He loses the leather in favor of dull, light blues and khakis and sports coats, contrasting with Angel but otherwise blending into his background.
Wesley’s different presentations of himself aren’t total fictional constructs. They’re whatever facet of himself he thinks is most valuable or important at the moment, stretched out and built up until it becomes a whole persona. Nerd Wes, M-Wes, General Wes, Bleak Wes, Academic Wes; they’re all actually Wesley, but with different parts of himself highlighted or obscured, added to useful fictions. Wesley is always knowledgeable, and usually quite skilled, at whatever role he thinks he’s supposed to be playing. Wesley’s practice at personas leads to his chilling skills in manipulation. The first thing a Watcher learns may be to separate illusion from reality for himself, but the second thing a Watcher learns appears to be the ability to tangle reality and convenient illusion for others.
Wes is eager to jump into danger, seeking out Angel and Cordelia partly for companionship, but mostly because they’re where the action is. It’s a little bit naïve thrill-seeking, but also a desperate desire to prove himself. Wesley still thinks that being a warrior is the best, most glorious way to contribute to the fight against evil, and probably more than a little as a way to atone for what he sees as his failure of the Slayer. Once he’s a bit more secure in his position in AI, he remains a little more ready for action than is healthy, but ceases to devalue his hard-developed natural skill for researching the science of magic.
Hello, Angel: Transition into AI
It’s unexamined in the text, but I’d argue critical, that Wesley is hunting Barney. On first glance, he’s a silly man tracking a silly demon, and the lightheartedness this gives the episode is truly a treat. But it’s also worth noting that Barney is a demon who kills demons. Cordelia is the only human at the auction, and this happens weeks after Wesley began his pursuit of Barney. Wesley readily divorces morality from humanity, which allows him to integrate easily in the gray AtS world.
Assuming the events of Parting Gifts took place roughly around the airing date (and there’s no reason to believe they don’t; Wesley is wearing leather pants and jacket without suffering heat stroke, suggesting that the episode takes place sometime in the winter months and therefore at least near the airing date), Wesley’s only been separated from the Council for approximately six months. In that time, he’s had time to track Barney for “a few states,” possibly longer. Wes was clearly a wreck when the Council fired him in June, and emotionally won’t move past it for quite some time, if ever. But not only did he throw himself into the immediate fight at graduation, he went out and found it on his own. Wes is most certainly a brooder, someone whose pervasive self-loathing and sadness seep into every corner of his mind and life. It ebbs and flows over the course of his life, but he doesn’t know how to staunch it because he’s never known anything else. But he’s what we (arguably unjustly) call “high-functioning.” Wesley always channels his unhappiness into doing good work - Graduation Day, his time as a rogue demon-hunter, his initiative in holding together AI when Angel bails on them, his searches for Angel and then Cordelia at the beginning of S4, his care for Illyria in S5. Whatever the monsters within, Wesley can always remember and fight the monsters without to help protect others.
Being a “rogue” demon hunter (as Faith is a “rogue” Slayer) is more of a reaction to the keenly-felt catastrophe of his tenure as field Watcher than it is a play to his own ego. Wesley is an accomplished sorcerer, and could easily have done just about anything with his skill, whether good, bad, or amorally self-interested. He could be a fairly strong player in the world of humans, but instead he chooses to be demon-bait, then an associate to a super, exacerbating his insecurity and feelings of inferiority. Wesley loves the excitement of the hunt, but magic is at least as exciting, particularly with Wesley’s power.
So why? Perhaps he sees getting into the physical fight as penance; perhaps he thinks he must actually replace Faith as a demon-killer. It’s also his sense of personal worthlessness and shame manifesting as an inability to recognize his abilities and power. Once he does somewhat embrace his aptitude for sorcery, he’ll go on to show us he’s a crack shot who is awfully lax about carrying around a gun. A gunshot may not kill vampires, but it’ll slow them down, and it’s probably pretty effective against a fair number of demons. There’s a sad, passively self-destructive vibe to Wesley-Wyndam Pryce, Rogue Demon Hunter, and yet he cannot bring himself to give up the fight.
Wes ditches his leather for khakis and light sport coats as he settles in LA and joins AI. He integrates into the team fairly easily, though not without a few scenes where his loneliness and eagerness come through a little too openly. This works quickly because it has to - Wesley’s second episode is Somnambulist, when Angel’s past haunts his dreams and the front pages, and Wesley notices the pattern even before Angel himself. Angel doesn’t question Wesley’s presence, just jumps right into his concern that he’s sleep-vamping, and nobody question that Wes should sit and watch Angel’s nocturnal commissions. the episode, though it’s mostly delicious Angelus backstory porn and Angel/new-Darla-replacement angst, overtly gives us a key piece of information we might have otherwise assumed: Wesley knows everything there is to know about Angel’s past, and he signs on anyway.
I’ve Got You Under My Skin is the episode that reveals Wesley’s motivations beyond that of having been fired from the Council, and solidifies him as part of the AI team. At the beginning of the episode, Angel reflexively calls him “Doyle”; by the end, Wesley is developed as a character in his own right - brave and terribly insecure, revealed as a survivor of an emotionally abusive childhood, capable of cruelty and compassion all at once. The demon, with Barney’s empathic abilities as well as its own mimicking skills, forces Wesley’s deepest secrets to the forefront. The first of these is the revelation of Wesley’s childhood abuse; specifically in the form of hours locked under the stairs, of isolation as the wages of imperfection. Wes will never get past this. However, he does a reasonable job starting the exorcism despite this. It’s when Angel shows up that Wesley falters in the ritual. He wants to put in a good show, wants to be respected and liked, or at least to avoid disapproval.
The pivotal, if equally unsurprising, revelation is that: “You’re willing to kill me. And that’s good.” Angel knows exactly who Wesley is. He’ll lose his way and put himself and his connections before the mission. Wesley won’t. At some time or another, Angel asks every member of AI (except perhaps for Fred) if they’ll be willing to kill him. To Angel, this is reinforcement of his ability to trust them to fight Angelus. The Angel persona, for lack of a better chronological way to distinguish between Angel and Angel, is aware that the Angelus persona cannot roam free, and for most of them, this oath is its own end. For Wesley, though, it’s a reaffirmation to the mission, not to Angel. One of the things Wesley might have to do to protect the innocent is to kill Angel, and so kill Angel he may. Because it’s a question of aligning goals rather than mutual loyalty, though, the tendencies Angel lauds here will lead Wesley to do that which Angel considers far worse than death come Season 3.
I Won’t Let You Down: part of the team
Wesley’s role here is the one that’s closest to the self he’s been running from all this time, and for almost exactly two years the part Wes plays will collapse into Wesley. This is a huge part of the stability and self-confidence he enjoys during the two years between the Council and Connor. After a year in which he grows confident of his place in the group and his ability to contribute to the larger fight to protect the innocent, he relaxes enough to return to his WC roots and be the sorcerer he is without fuss, most notably doing the unbind spell that saves Cordelia in To Shanshu in LA and the spell that corporealizes the Thessulac demon before they move into the Hyperion. Magic in the ‘verse is “about emotional control,” and so it’s impressive and not a little bit chilling that someone as complicated and damaged as Wesley can seal off emotion from spirit so readily, but at this point it’s a sign of confidence and progress.
He reintegrates his Watcher training into his new vocation in darker ways, as well. As we see in The Ring, he’s willing to torture to get information if the stakes are high enough, and needs only a dart to do so. The shocking ease with which Wesley tortures people shows up time and again in the show, but it’s portrayed differently depending not on the circumstances (he almost always does it when he’s convinced it’s absolutely necessary to save others, usually Angel), but as to how Wesley feels about himself. When this happens with nerd Wes, it’s a sign of loyalty to Angel and developing badassery. The scene isn’t presented any differently than when Angel bullies or tortures people into giving information up, which the show doesn’t question in S1. When Wes does it in a bleak phase, to Justine and then the junkie in the demon bar, it’s a sign of moral decline.
Also, he has a few opportunities to show us that he’s a BAMF. Given Wesley’s gut-sucking insecurity, what we’re watching on the character level is the development of self-esteem that may have never happened. Wes is a crack shot (Sanctuary, Expecting, The Ring). When he thinks Angel has started killing again, he returns to protect Cordelia armed with only the tiniest, wussiest cross in the world, then sits by Angel’s bed and falls asleep while waiting for Angel to jump out and get with the killing (Somnambulist). He throws the drugged - therefore uninhibited - therefore Angelus down an elevator shaft (Eternity). Wesley is one of the ancient metals he keeps wrapped up under his khakis; soft and unassuming at first glance, unchangingly sharp and hard and cold underneath. Denisof’s talent for physical comedy ensures that Wesley won’t entirely leave behind his clumsy discomfort in even his own skin for some time, but it obfuscates the fighter within to the world and to Wesley himself.
I know the real you: Wesley and Faith
Wesley still considers himself responsible for Faith in some sense, and not just guilt, even though he’s no longer a Watcher (underlined by the fact that Giles, a fellow sacked Watcher, didn’t even think to call him) and she’s gone rogue. “She’s not a demon, Angel, she’s a sick, sick girl.” Wes doesn’t try to stick around to protect Angel, he tries to stick around to protect Faith. It doesn’t matter that she’s a superbeing. She’s the helpless, and Wes wants to help.
As on BtVS, Faith and Wesley are crucial to each other and to their structural stories. Angel and Wesley continue to differ as to how Faith should be treated. Angel guilts Wes over Faith’s mental condition (even though Angel bears at least as much responsibility for it and probably more). Wesley talks Angel down off revenge for Buffy in Five by Five; Angel’s caretaking of Faith strikes Wes as too lenient and therefore risky at the beginning of Sanctuary. This is a step forward from providing information and support to actual tactical disagreement with Angel. Wes takes this step forward partially because of his growing confidence of his place in the group and partially because he considers himself Faith’s Watcher even though neither of them answer to the Council, but the role is a natural fit for him and he embraces it as one of his strengths.
Faith abducts Wesley, not Cordelia, when she decides to “get Angel in the game.” As ever, Faith and Wes throw the other in their own faces brutally. Wes says he knows the real Faith and says she’s a piece of shit; but just how long was he Faith’s Watcher for? A few weeks, maybe, even counting the time they’re just pretending, but it still hits home. It’s Faith who thinks Faith is a piece of shit, and Wes who thinks he should have saved Faith by being a better Watcher. Faith instinctively knows how to go for his failure as a Watcher because she’s good at sussing out the weak spot and going for it mercilessly. Wesley’s goading of her is part there to show the toughness underneath the Land’s End catalogue, but I also think he’s pushing her to dole out the endless punishment he’ll never quite stop believing he deserves. He’s not the type to screw around during a fight in progress, but this is something that’s completely out of his hands, so he drops his guard and lets his issues come into play. He’s also - oh, Wesley - stalling her, not just because Angel is coming to save him from her, but because Angel is coming to save Faith from herself, and if she kills him and leaves, that won’t work.
Wesley, barely conscious, frees himself from his restraints as Faith and Angel fight, and goes down to the armed conflict between two supers with a kitchen knife, because if he doesn’t, one of them might die. Wes is still an eager, slightly desperate nerd most of the time, but in a pinch, he’s stupidly brave. But it’s not about vengeance, it’s not about rage, it’s about the future. He comes down the stairs and the fight is over, and the moment he processes what’s happening, Wesley drops the knife.
After leaving Angel to shower Faith with junk food and snuggles, Wes argues and bargains with the men from the Council. I don’t think he ever intended to hand Faith over to them. He has a good enough poker face to lie to the Slayer-hunters, but we never see him shift from consideration into spy mode. I think he and the senior Slayer-catcher are both aware that this isn’t going to be easy, so he pretends to drive a hard bargain in hopes that it will let them believe he’s committed. He picks saving Angel’s life as the wages of betrayal to stick it to the Council, and because they both know that if he was in it for the money, he wouldn’t be working with Angel. He’s thought through the institution of the Council, going so far as to refer to the Slayer-catchers as “three gun-toting maniacs.”
The exchange at the beginning makes Wes look a little pissy and petty, and is probably not a whole lot more than an attempt to create some suspense when the gun-toting Cockneys show up, but from Wesley's perspective, this is Angel being awfully blasé about Faith doing to Wes exactly what Angel did to Giles. Cordelia underlines it for us in her inimitable way - “people always get a little funny after they’ve been sadistically tortured. Well, you’d know” - but it’s not general. Faith kidnapped the nerd, and took out her rage at the super on him to draw the big guy out. He doesn’t want vengeance on Faith the way Buffy does, he does want to help her, and he never actually objects to Angel’s unwillingness to turn Faith over to the police (after all, if anyone knows how impossible it is to contain a Slayer, it’s Wesley), he just wants some indication that Angel understands that they’re not just saving Faith’s soul, but all her future victims too. Faith is a mission to Wesley, and she represents the mission to him. Peace is not an easy thing to find, he tells Angel in the soft, sad voice of someone who’s learned this from experience. But he hopes desperately that she does, as Wesley’s own rehabilitation cannot happen without Faith’s.
There is a design: Wes and philosophy
“There’s a design, Angel. Hidden in the chaos though it may be, it’s there, and you have your place in it.” Wesley doesn’t seem particularly shocked or inspired by this conversation; he says this to Angel as readily and analytically as he identifies demons or geeks out over antique weaponry. He doesn’t make any grand philosophical statement about the nature of some vague “us,” or a moral statement about “should.” He’s surveyed the available evidence and drawn a conclusion. It’s not about finding the idea comforting, then disappointing, and then finally stifling the way Angel will, or hacking out his own space in it the way Cordelia does, or taking himself out of the equation entirely the way Doyle did. It’s part of his framework of the world. There is a plan. This is an easier conclusion for Wesley to draw - it’s not so much an issue of belief in terms of a religious or philosophical framework - than it is for any of them, including Angel. Wesley is the one who has never lived in a world where the metaphysical was particularly meta. His father was a Watcher, he was raised and educated to be a Watcher, and that means he grew up as conscious of the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness as most kids are of strangers with candy. (No wonder he’s jumpy.)
It’s significant that Wesley doesn’t claim his own place in any grand plan, either, though he sees the big picture enough to know that there’s a plan. He never seems to go looking for one, either. We never see him actually ask Lorne to read his destiny - he, Cordelia, and Gunn are singing for the pure love of tequila in Redefinition (they have forgotten that Lorne even can read their destinies at this point). As ever with Wes, what he doesn’t do is quite as telling as what he does. Given Wesley’s interpretation of the universe as ordered and to some extent foreordained, it’s actually somewhat odd that he chose not to find out his own destiny. He may be convinced he does not have one (Lorne doesn’t tell Wesley he’ll be “playing a huge role” in anything, he tells this to Angel when Wesley isn’t around), thinking perhaps that it’s his insignificance, his outsiderness, that allows him to see the pattern writ large he places Angel in without hesitation. To me, this seems to be the product of Wesley’s dread of himself; his fear that he is insignificant and his terror that he will hurt others rather than help them. More importantly, though, it’s an unwillingness to prioritize his own future over the big picture. Emotionally, Wes wants the assurance and validation that comes from being a hard and sure part of that grand plan, but Wesley is ruled by his head. And intellectually, Wesley knows that his destiny isn’t what matters.