By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Buffy the Vampire Slayer showrunner Joss Whedon is famous for planning major storylines years in advance…for example, foreshadowing the existence of Buffy’s sister Dawn in Seasons 3 and 4 before her introduction in Season 5. However, there is one blatant example early in the show about how little Whedon had thought about Angel’s love life. In the season 2 episode “Halloween,” Willow assures Buffy (not to mention the audience) that the vampire would never date Cordelia, but the two end up falling in love on the spinoff show Angel.
Why was the Slayer talking about Cordelia and Angel hooking up in the first place? At the beginning of “Halloween,” she was late to a date with her bitey beau because she had to put down some of his fellow bloodsuckers. This gives Cordelia time to hit on Angel at The Bronze, causing Buffy to worry that she isn’t the kind of woman that her centuries-old boyfriend really likes.
When watching “Halloween” for the first time, it’s hard to disagree with Willow when she says that “Angel would never fall for [Cordelia’s] act.” Buffy’s witchy bestie assures her that “she’s not his type,” but Buffy starts to worry that she’s not his type. They end up researching how women dressed and acted when Angel was a human, causing Buffy to wear a costume befitting an 18th-century tradwife.
After Buffy’s third season, Cordelia left Sunnydale to join Angel in Los Angeles. The Angel spinoff presented its titular character with multiple girlfriends over the years, but none more surprising than Cordelia. She began working alongside Angel in Season 1, and their business relationship quickly blossomed into an actual friendship.
For most of Angel, our title character and Cordelia simply had a friendly relationship, but that changed after Buffy died. Cordelia helped Angel process the trauma of the Slayer’s death and they realized (frustratingly, frustratingly slowly) they had feelings for each other. Sadly, the show never really explored their relationship, as she was yoinked into the Higher Plane and returned possessed by Jasmine, a villain made all that much scarier by some of the worst writing in all of the Whedonverse.
From a television standpoint, it’s not that surprising that Angel and Cordelia fell in love, if only briefly…after all, there are only so many years a TV show can dangle hot lead characters in front of us before making them a couple. However, it’s a bit shocking that Willow, a wise and magical character, was so wrong about the possibility of Angel and Cordelia ever hooking up. Even more shocking is that Joss Whedon dismissed out of hand the very possibility of what would become the spinoff’s most infamous relationship.
Of course, the Angel spinoff didn’t exist when Willow made her predictions, so neither she nor Whedon could guess that the vampire and Cordelia would become lead characters destined for sloppy romance. Another reason to go easy on Willow’s incorrect prediction is that even a witch like her cannot see the future…sure, the Angel pining for Buffy in Season 2 was never likely to fall for the airheaded Cordelia, but both characters had changed dramatically by the time they fell in love. And Willow herself changes dramatically in even less time, coming out as gay and falling in love with Tara.
As it turns out, it’s easy for Joss Whedon to predict little sisters, but not as easy to predict the affairs (magical or otherwise) of the heart.
