 Season Four - Five | Season Six | Season Eight   Angel
was born "Liam," a man who had caught the eye of an
affluent woman that was actually a vampire named
Darla. She lured him into an alley, and, promising
him a world full of excitement and travel,
transformed him into a vampire. For generations
Darla and Liam, who was now known as Angelus,
terrorized humankind, murdering and torturing
anyone who crossed their path.
(Angel:
Cursed)
During the 19th century, Angelus crossed paths with a renowned vampire hunter, Sir Andrew Landry. Angelus killed Landry's colleagues and friends, and turned his wife into a vampire. While in London one night, Angelus was taken down by the police and thrown in a jail cell with a window that looked out into the direction that the sun rose from. Come morning, Angelus managed to escape just in time, but was severely weakened from exposure to the sun and hid in the sewers till his strength resurfaced. (Angel: Surrogates) A year after his London arrest, Angelus paid a final visit to Sir Landry, who by now had committed himself to the Devonshire Sanitarium. Angelus revealed that his fascination with Landry was to provide a miserable existence for Landry's son to grow up in, with his father in an asylum and his mother in the ground. (BtVs: Past Lives) In 1860, Angelus sired Drusilla, a young woman driven that he drove insane prior to turning her. Drusilla, in turn, sired Spike, who became her playmate and whom Angelus largely served as a mentor and "role model" for. She also sired Catherine, who became a romantic interest for Angelus. In 1892, whilst in Vienna, Angelus and his vampire family were attacked by the Hollower, a powerful demon that preys on vampires. Angelus managed to hurt the Hollower bad enough for it to go into hiding for over a century. (Angel: The Hollower) In 1898, Angelus slew the favorite daughter of a tribe of Gypsies, the Kalderesh Clan. To avenge her death, the Gypsies cursed him by restoring his human soul, which afflicted him with a conscience and condemned him to an eternity of remorse. Becoming isolated to avoid the temptation to feed, Angelus relocated to London in the early 20th century, where he tried to convince himself that his vampire thirst was for booze rather than blood. One night at a pub, Angelus met Perfect Zheng, a skilled vampire that claimed to be the owner of London, and fought Angelus to a standstill only to spare him when Zheng realized that Angelus had a death wish. A shadow of his former self, a reclusive and emotionally tortured Angelus eventually met a demon named Whistler in 1996 in New York, who persuaded him to join the fight against the evil that had corrupted him and to help the newly called Vampire Slayer, Buffy Summers. (Angel: Long Night's Journey) 
While
watching Buffy from afar, Angelus soon fell in love
with her. He followed her to a casino in Las Vegas
that was a breeding ground for vampires, where he
took a job as a bodyguard for the manager to avoid
suspicion. While snooping around, Angelus was
caught by the manager and banished to limbo, a
place where patrons of the casino from the 1930s
resided. In order to free himself from the timeless
dimension, Angelus was forced to drain and sire one
of the trapped patrons, which would break the
spell. (BtVs:
Viva Las Buffy) After Angelus escaped the limbo, he watched as Buffy's parents' marriage dissolves. When Buffy and her kid sister, Dawn, visited the Santa Monica pier for a breather from the divorce, Angelus saved Dawn's life from a vampire, when Buffy was forced to briefly separate from her in order to dust a couple of vampires in the area. When Buffy returned to Dawn, Angelus quickly disappeared, as he still was not prepared to meet Buffy yet. (BtVs: Angels We Have Seen On High) After Buffy's parents separated, Angelus tried to help alleviate Buffy's grief through means of magic, but ended up releasing malignancy spirits that begia to leech off of all the palpable pain that Buffy was going through. As Buffy faced her literal demons, Angel sought to quickly rectify his mistake, and cast an exorcism spell to banish the spirits. When Buffy moved to the small town of Sunnydale, which sits atop a "hot spot" for supernatural activity called the Hellmouth, Angelus relocated as well, and planned to finally introduce himself to her. Upon arrival, Angelus changes his name to Angel. (BtVs: A Stake to the Heart) 
After meeting, Buffy became attracted to Angel, and
the two quickly fell in love. When they finally
consummated their relationship, Angel experienced
the one moment of pure happiness needed to break
his curse. Without the humanity and conscience that
was instilled by his soul, Angel quickly returned
to his former, evil self. Angelus once more, he
allied himself again with Spike and Drusilla, who
had settled in Sunnydale to kill Buffy. Angelus
found immense pleasure in tormenting Buffy and her
friends. He went on to kill Jenny Calendar, who had
been a core member of Buffy's group and the love
interest of her Watcher, Rupert
Giles. With Buffy in shock over her boyfriend's brutal transformation, Angelus resurrected the demon Kelgor in an attempt to bring about the apocalypse. Following his resurrection, Kelgor betrayed Angelus, which forced Buffy and Angelus to briefly become allies to put an end to Kelgor's reign of terror. Determined to stop him despite their deeply emotional history, Buffy fought Angelus in one-on-one combat, and was able to overcome him, but not before his soul is restored moments before Buffy killed him. (BtVs: Ring of Fire, flashback in Note from the Underground) 
Less than a year later, Angel was unexpectedly
released from Hell, and realized that his return
was not accidental, and that he was meant to serve
some higher purpose. While contemplating his
situation, Angel's sire Catherine returned to warn
him that the Hollower had resurfaced and was
preying on vampires in California. Angel was forced
to do battle with the vampire predator, realizing
that the Hollower would set its sights on humans
once it extinguished all vampire life. Angel killed
the Hollower using an archaic ritual to banish the
demon into a relic which was than destroyed.
(Angel:
The Hollower) Upon the arrival of Buffy's graduation, Angel made the difficult decision to leave Sunnydale and Buffy, in an effort to protect them both and lend whatever normality to Buffy's chaotic life he can. During his travel to Los Angeles, Angel was attacked by a demon that preys on the dead and fallen, who was attracted to Angel's broken heart. Angel overcame the odds and killed the demon, and was ready to begin a new chapter in his life. (BtVs: Double Cross)   Angel
arrived in Los Angeles, where he attempted to
redeem himself by servicing others. He found
support from Doyle, a half-demon sent by The Powers
That Be, and Cordelia Chase, a former classmate of
Buffy's who moved to L.A. to find wealth and fame.
The trio formed Angel Investigations, a shoestring
operation with the mission statement of protecting
those who cannot defend themselves and helping lost
souls find their way. After Doyle was killed in the
line of duty, Angel became even more protective of
those he held dear. Former Watcher, Wesley
Wyndam-Pryce, came to assist Angel and Cordelia in
their mission shortly afterward.
(Angel:
City Of, Hunting
Ground)As Angel continued to help the helpless in Los Angeles, he encountered infertile women becoming surrogates for demon hellspawn; fairies assuming the guises of battered wives to torture the husbands; an excommunicated priest who ran possession scams to make money; grisly murders in the sewers that put the police on Angel's trail; a vampire hooker murdering a political candidate and causing a media stir; mutated rats that eat anything including humans, and a girl cursed with uncontrollable pyrokinetic powers by her abusive step-father. Angel's past came back to haunt him when Alexa Landry, a descendent of Sir Andrew Landry cames to Los Angeles to address old wrongs. Alexa attacked every demon clan in L.A. and put the blame on Angel to keep him occupied while she attacked Angel's people that put them in the hospital. Catching word of Angel's troubles, Buffy came to L.A. to help him take down Alexa and eliminate the warring demons. (Angel: Surrougates, Earthly Possessions, Autumnals, BtVs: Past Lives) Angel operated from a small apartment that housed his agency, but at the end of his first year in Los Angeles, it was blown up, forcing Angel to change location to the abandoned Hyperion Hotel. Street tough vampire-hunter Charles Gunn also joined, adding more muscle to the agency. Perfect Zheng also returned to Angel to claim what he believed was rightfully his: Angel's soul. After the night when Zheng had defeated Angel, gypsies attempted to curse Zheng with a soul, but it didn't hold. Taking Angel hostage aboard his flying warship, Zheng planed to extract Angel's soul, but was interrupted when Gunn climbed on board and tampered with the ship's controls which caused it to self-destruct. Angel managed to escape intact but was haunted by Zheng's revelation that his cursed soul may not have actually been intended for him. (Angel: Long Night's Journey)
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