Joss Whedon returned from his self-imposed exile this week, shaking off the Ultron blues and organizing a new anti-Trump Super PAC with his celebrity friends. The writer and showrunner recently sat down with Complex for an interview about these recent developments, discussing his future plans, his disappointments, his hope to one day make a Star Wars movie, and a bunch of other stuff we don’t care about right now. That’s because Whedon also weighed in on the most important pop culture question of the last 20 years: Buffy/Angel, of Buffy/Spike?
The question centers on Whedon’s career-defining Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and the undead, immortal romances of its title character. Fans have long-debated the relative merits of David Boreanaz’s vamp-with-a-soul, Angel, and James Marsters’ blond-haired bad boy Spike. Now, Whedon has given his own answer: It’s Buffy and Spike, all the way.
“I’m a Buffy/Spike ’shipper,” Whedon said in the interview. “I always felt like he was a more evolved person, but that’s like saying Juliet’s going to be so happy with Benvolio and everyone will love it. Buffy/Angel is for the ages; Buffy/Spike is maybe for me.” The news will presumably be taken with quiet sangfroid by all the Angel fans in the audience, none of whom will hopefully now burn the internet down in a wave of apocalyptic, heart-broken fire. Whedon did offer an olive branch, though, adding, “Actually, I’m a Spike/Angel shipper. Completely re-write the equation.” We’re actually pretty sure a cursory Google search would show that that particular branch of sexual mathematics has already been thoroughly explored.