Wow. These past two seasons have been a roller coaster. Not in the meaning of greatly varying quality, but more in the sense that they have been continuously entertaining and good — thrilling all the way, with lots of ups and downs, emotionally and atmospherically speaking.

As you’ve probably guessed, I think this applies to this episode as well. Here, Illyria is getting unstable as her demon powers prove to be incompatible with her human shell, and Angel and the rest begins to look for a way to keep her from blowing up and taking half the western hemisphere with her. It is in relation to this she utters the immortal phrase, “I would rather be a titanic crater than to be like onto you.” Angel, ever the action hero, wants to kill her, but Wes isn’t too keen on that plan, and arranges another solution — without telling anyone, which, as usual, has rather catastrophic consequences. As in, “Illyria kills everyone and then takes California with her as she explodes.”

In between this, however, are a bunch of fun time travelling scenes which features some rather cool Machiavellian advices on leadership from Illyria, and a sequence where Angel and Gunn try to talk a mother from giving her child to a demon cult. Understandably, Gunn isn’t too keen on making more deals with demons, even though they are technically their clients, but in the end Angel cuts through and decides that they should be helping their clients instead of fighting them. At first this looks like him being influenced by Illyria, as she said some things about “if you want to win a war you must serve no master but your ambition”, “if you are to maintain your rule, you must destroy everything that’s not completely in your power”, “a true leader is as moral as a hurricane, empty but for the power of its gale”, and other such things, all of which she naturally phrased much better. But that’s just at first glance. When keeping “You’re Welcome” and “Not Fade Away” in mind, you see quite a different picture. I believe that this is where Angel sees the opportunity to punch Evil on the nose, and win at least one battle in The Apocalypse. Only, he sees that this would be best accomplished from the inside, like a fifth column, if Evil if not outright trusted him and his fellows, so then at least lowered their guard against them. Abandon principle for a while, and then return to them with a vengeance. Good strategy, within reasonable limits.

Now I’m off to hear Illyria say “I can no longer hear the green” before going to bed to prepare for an early start tomorrow.