There comes a point in the life cycle of every piece of popular culture, when a major twist stops being a spoiler, and becomes instead common knowledge, presumably known by anyone who has not dwelt beneath rock for their entire life. Darth Vader is Luke’s father. Rosebud was his sled. It was Earth the whole time. Snape kills Dumbledore. I’m not tagging these as spoilers, because you already know them, even if you haven’t seen these films. And the fact that you do know these twists changes the fundamental experience of viewing them. You can never have the same experience that those original audiences did. The emotions that they originally intended to invoke are lost to time. The pop-cultural osmosis that these texts have undergone has twisted the texts themselves into something new.
It is in this context that we must view this seventh episode, Angel (named exactly the same as both a character and a show, seemingly in order to ruin my tagging system). Because this episode is built around a major twist: the shocking revelation that the mysterious Angel, the man who has been following Buffy around dropping cryptic warnings, is in fact…
Insect Reflection 