Angel - Season 3

^{Review – Daniel Tessier}

The third season was good for Angel. While season two had allowed the series to establish its own identity, it was still heavily indebted to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with characters from that series appearing and crossovers still happening. It still hadn't quite moved out of the shadow of its parent show. In its sixth season, Buffy jumped networks to UPN, leaving Angel standing alone in its original home on The WB. This meant that direct crossovers were suddenly out of the question. The next season would prove that it wasn't impossible to arrange such a thing, but it was certainly a more complex task. Still, it seems that it was a deliberate decision, with WB President Jordan Levin quoted as saying Angel should “really establish itself independently from Buffy.”

This was a good move for the series. While three of this season's main characters and one of its recurring guests had originated on Buffy, they had by now been well established as Angel characters with their own relationships and ongoing stories independent of the parent show. Angel had taken great steps to define its own style and mythology in season two; season three capitalised on and reinforced that. Behind the scenes changes helped shape this; David Greenwalt was now acting as showrunner while Joss Whedon focussed on Firefly, with Tim Minear writing and directing several episodes. Jeffrey Bell (The X-Files) joined as a regular writer, with Mere Smith returning, the four creatives shaping the season.

Still, at the beginning of the season, Buffy's shadow still hung over Angel. Picking up three months after the end of season two, the man himself was on a distant Eastern retreat as he tried to get over the news of Buffy's death. In the meantime, Wesley, Cordelia and Gunn continue fighting sundry horrors in L.A, while Fred, having been rescued from a demon dimension, is slowly adjusting to life back on Earth.

The first episode of the run, “Heartthrob,” is a thematically strong story dealing with love and loss, while setting up important plot threads that will have huge consequences later on. Angel returns to from his retreat (the monks turned out to be demons – should've gone to Vegas), but seems somewhat detached and is clearly not confronting his feelings. A nice bit of monster hunting should help get him out of the doldrums, though, and Cordelia receives a painful vision that sends Angel out to save some youngsters from a vampire attack. He stakes a blonde vampiress (Kate Norby – Boston Public, Swingtown) and at the last second before she disintegrates, they recognise each other.

We flash back to 1767, where Angelus and Darla (Julie Benz) are storming through France with undead couple Elisabeth and James (Ron Melendez – The Young and the Restless, General Hospital). James and Elisabeth are devoted to each other, and James is disgusted by Angelus and Darla's selfishness and disregard for each other's safety. In fact, Angelus is all to happy to sell out the rest of them when vampire hunter Daniel Holtz corners them, looking for vengeance against Angelus and Darla for brutally murdering his family.

In the present, James learns that Angel has killed Elisabeth. Still utterly in love, he vows revenge, but not until he gets a little upgrade from a supernatural surgeon. James has his heart cut out, granting him complete invulnerability at the cost of a his imminent death. Subtle it isn't, but the confrontation between James and Angel – including an impressively choreographed fight on a subway train – finally allows Angel to work through some of his grief at the loss of Buffy. Once James has crumbled away, Cordelia finally gets him to talk to her; it's not Buffy's death itself that is eating him up, but his guilt at being able to carry on without her. Cordelia is able to talk him round, convincing him that his continuing to live and fight is what Buffy would want. Which makes you wonder – did the Powers That Be send Cordelia that vision just so Angel would be able to work through his feelings and get back to the fight?

It's a great start to the season, but it's the epilogue that sticks in the mind the most, threatening to overshadow everything that's gone before. We jump to a bar in Nicaragua, where Darla is enjoying a drink or two from local patrons – getting up to reveal that she is heavily, impossibly pregnant.

The next episode is the excellent “That Vision Thing,” a Cordelia-focussed episode that allows Charisma Carpenter to shine and shows just how far her character has come since her shallow beginnings on Buffy. The previous episode showed how Cordelia's visions had been becoming ever more painful and debilitating, but this story pushes it to new extremes. The visions now start manifesting brutal, painful and disfiguring effects: a vision of a clawed demon leaves her with gaping wounds; a vision of a particularly hideous creature leaves her with boils across her skin. Cordelia bravely soldiers on as Angel and the gang follow her visions and fight for mystical objects as part of an unknown mission.

Angel calls in Lorne to see if he can trace the vision back to their source and find out why they're getting worse. (Appearing in all but four episodes this season, Andy Hallett should really have been promoted to a regular.) Cordelia initially refuses, frightened that she'll may lose her visions altogether, but is persuaded to try. Unfortunately, another vision arrives, throwing Lorne across the room and horribly burning Cordy. Lorne is able to tell Angel that the visions aren't from the Powers, but another source. There's only one likely candidate: Angel confronts Lilah (Stephanie Romanov) at Wolfram and Hart, where she's been employing a psychic (a brief but memorable role for Kal Penn of House and the Harold and Kumar series) to hack Cordelia's visions. Angel has been fighting for the wrong side, but is persuaded to fulfil his mission in order to save Cordelia. He uses the mystical items to enter a hellish prison, where someone truly despicable is being held by Skip – a huge demon with an elaborate exoskeleton who immediately became a fan favourite. Played by David Denman (The Office US) he just seems like a really nice guy. Altogether, it's an extremely strong episode that shows just how courageous Cordelia has become, and how much she has come to mean to Angel. Their actions have have some major consequences later on.

3.3, “That Old Gang of Mine,” is a solid, Gunn-centred episode which gives him some much needed focus. Since his introduction in 1.20, “War Zone,” Gunn had developed from a reluctant ally to Angel to a loyal and vital member of his team. What we'd seen less and less of was Gunn in his home turf, working at street level with his crew to fight against the vampires and demons preying on the poor living in L.A. When several apparently harmless demons are found dead, including Angel's long-suffering informant, Merl (Matthew James – American Crime), Gunn is at first unbothered, and understandably wonders why Angel and Wesley are so concerned. When he recognises one his own weapons has been used, he tracks down his gang and discovers that they are no longer fighting to survive; they are no seeking out demons and killing them, not caring about whether they are a threat or not. It leads to a terrifying stand-off in Caritas, Lorne's club, when the gang siege the venue, led by their ruthless and fanatical new leader Gio (Khalil Kain- Girlfriends).

J. August Richards gives an excellent performance, particularly in the scene where he has to admit that while he likes and respects Angel, he feels he can never truly call him his friend because of what he is. Still, his loyalties are now with a group of white people living in a comfortable hotel, one of whom is the very thing he and his largely black gang used to kill, no questions asked. In many ways, the episode comes across as some necessary tidying up, finally severing Gunn's ties to his old life and forcing him to choose where his loyalties lie.

Throughout these opening episodes, Fred has been very gradually coming out of her shell now that Angel is back. She's still kind of crazy, mostly holed up in her room in the hotel drawing on the walls, and her brilliant mind is largely being occupied by trying to reconcile her terrifying experiences in the Pylean dimension with being back in the normal, human world. Angel's presence makes her feel safer, what with his having rescued her from monsters, and she's also, understandably, besotted with him. This comes to a head in 3.4, “Carpe Noctem,” an otherwise silly, throwaway episode, in which an old man in a nursing home (Rance Howard – The Waltons, Babylon 5) uses a spell to swap bodies with Angel. Boreanaz is a hoot playing an old man enjoying Angel's fit and handsome body, especially when he discovers he's a nigh-indestructable vampire. There's also some strong material with Lilah, including her rivalry with obsequious new Wolfram and Hart employee Gavin (Daniel Dae Kim – Crusade, ER, 24), and her unexpected clinch with not-really-Angel. It's mostly a bit of fluff, but sees some important development for Fred, who is forced to deal with her feelings for Angel when he sees him (well, his body) with Lilah.

3.5, “Fredless,” is a fully Fred-focussed episode which finally sees her face up to her demons, which are, in her case, more literal than figurative. Fred's parents turn up, having employed a private investigator to track her down from a single, unmarked letter she sent them. (There's a fun sideline of commentary in the episode about how hopeless Angel Investigations are in comparison to actual detectives, with the showrunners basically coming out and saying this just isn't that kind of show anymore.) Fred runs away the second she sees them, clearly terrified, planning to get the first bus to anywhere. It looks for all the world like Fred is fleeing an abusive home, surely the reason she came to L.A. in the first place, implied heavily by the dialogue and performances.

The twist is that she's doing nothing of the sort. Her parents, Roger and Trish, really are just as nice and normal as they first appear, and anything secretive about them was due their own distrust of Angel and co. Instead, Fred is on the verge of a breakdown when they finally catch up with her – because if they're here and they know what happened, she'll have to admit to herself it was all real. There are no details, but there's a heavy implication that Fred's experiences in Pylea were even worse than we realised, and while her trauma comes from fantastical events, it's nonetheless used as an allegory for the kinds of abuse that can so often happen to young people, particularly girls and young women, who find themselves in cities like L.A.

It's a powerful episode, thanks largely to an absolutely standout performance by Amy Acker as Fred. While it has heavy themes, there's still a lot of fun to be had, with Angel and the rest trying to keep their line of work secret from Fred's very normal folks. Gary Grubbs (Common Law, Will & Grace) and Jennifer Griffin (Banshee, The Messengers) make the Burkles genuinely likeable but with a harder side when needed, and Roger's bonding with Angel over classic golf tournaments is a joy. Fred is all set to go home until she realises her place is at Angel Investigations, when she solves the puzzle of a group of insectoid monsters running amok (some of the best monster effects in the series so far). Altogether, an excellent episode. (Oh, and Angel met the alive-again Buffy between episodes three and four. It's as brief a mention as it could possibly be.)

While Fred has gotten over Angel, both Gunn and Wesley have begun to fall for her. (This is, of course, entirely understandable. Even Lorne seems to have a thing for her). To begin with, it looks like Wesley will be the one to make a move, but the events of 3.6, “Billy,” impact his relationship with Fred for a long time. Another truly stand-out episode, “Billy” guest stars Justin Shilton (Little Miss Sunshine) as the eponymous character, the calmly sinister creature who Angel broke out of hell in “That Vision Thing.” Billy is a demon on his mother's side, and a well-connected socialite on his father's, with a influential senator for an uncle. He's untouchable – quite literally. Any contact a man makes with Billy's skin or blood awakens a deeply buried primal misogyny, first scene when Billy's visit to his law firm leads to Gavin beating Lilah to a bloody mess.

“Billy” is one of the most terrifying episodes in the entire franchise of Buffy and Angel, by staying so close to a brutal reality. Much of the episode follows Wesley and Fred, the former driven to murderous rage and the latter using her wits to escape him. Wesley's stalking of Fred through the hotel is a triumph of building tension, with both Acker and Alexis Denisof giving excellent performances. It's Wesley's all too believable transition from charm, to mild contempt, to outright hatred that is so unsettling. While Fred is able to see past his actions remarkably easily, Wesley is left devastated at what he almost did and what it say about his true nature.

Meanwhile, the second thread of the episode revolves around Cordelia and Angel, as they each struggle with the guilt of being partly responsible for Billy's freedom and reign of terror. Cordelia is never more impressive than when she confronts Billy, and Angel's own confrontation with him raises interesting questions. He's unaffected by Billy's power, seemingly because, in his years of evil, he moved beyond simple cruelties like hatred. However, the real standout performance in this episode comes from Stephanie Romanov as Lilah. Romanov doesn't get nearly enough credit for how good she is in Angel, throughout the series portraying her as a woman who is both powerfully confident and extremely vulnerable. She regularly appears to be holding back real fear, particularly when confronted by Angel, and in this episode when, bloodied and bruised, she has finally had enough, sees Romanov give a quietly brilliant performance. “Billy” is an episode that is extremely uncomfortable to watch and sticks with you afterwards. While the script is credited to Tim Minear and Jeffrey Bell, Joss Whedon performed some uncredited rewrites on key scenes that are said to have really made the episode. Given what is now known of the extent of his bullying on set, this is interesting, to say the least.

The first half of the season culminates in a four-episode run that deals with Darla's pregnancy. The vampiress, almost ready to drop, arrives in L.A. in 3.7, “Offspring,” having taken the bus and eaten her fellow passengers. She's ravenous, incredibly strong, even by vampire standards, and going out of her mind. She turns up on Angel's doorstep to present him with the result of their ill-advised night of passion in the previous season, something Angel is very much not prepared for and Cordelia is very much not impressed by. (In all fairness to Angel, while sleeping with Darla was not a good idea, he's one man who really shouldn't have had to worry about unplanned pregnancy.)

Darla is desperate to get this baby out of her by any means necessary, but it's protected by some kind of mystical force (the team hope it's the Powers That Be, but there's no way to know). Worryingly, a prophecy has turned up that tells of a terrible darkness due to arrive any day now. It's not long before other powers become aware of Darla's presence and her condition, from a vampire cult to Wolfram and Hart, the latter now having appointed the arrogant Linwood (John Rubinstein – Crazy Like a Fox) as Lilah and Gavin's new superior as Head of Special Projects. As if that wasn't enough, Holtz is back, after revenge against the vampire pair.

American actor Keith Szarabajka (Supernatural, The Equalizer) plays Holtz, delivering his line with a respectable English accent (although it's by no means the accent the Yorkshire-born Holtz should speak with). His performance as Holtz is quiet, restrained, and all the more powerful for it. The four episode storyline is woven around a sequence of flashbacks to Holtz's life in the 18th century, where we see the horrors visited on him by Angelus and Darla, including the death of his entire family and the transformation of his daughter into a vampire. The embittered vampire hunter makes an uneasy pact with the demon Sahjhan (an entertainingly sardonic performance by Jack Conley, previously werewolf hunter Cain in Buffy 2.15), who has his own vendetta with Angel. While he has been made insubstantial, he is able to travel through and manipulate time, bringing Holtz over two hundred years into his future to strike at Angel and Darla when they will be vulnerable.

The tension rises throughout the first three episodes, culminating in the climactic sequence of events in 3.9, “Lullaby.” Darla begins to go through a difficult labour and the gang fear she may not be able to come to term – and with the prophecy in mind, wonder if that might be better all round. Angel is determined to keep her and his unborn child safe, even as assailants arrive from all corners. They take refuge in Caritas, now restored by Lorne and protected by a powerful sanctuary spell that prevents all forms of violence within. Unfortunately, it doesn't extend to the street outside, allowing Holtz to throw a bomb into it. Angel manages to get Darla to safety, but she is in turmoil, with the unborn baby's soul affecting her. Weighed down by both her love for the child and her guilt at her actions over the centuries, fearing that she may not be able to successfully give birth and terrified that if she does, she will immediately revert to her evil nature, Darla stakes herself, crumbling to dust and leaving a beautiful, healthy baby boy with his father. It's an incredibly intense and moving sequence, with an astonishingly strong performance by Julie Benz. Finally, Holt catches up with Angel – only to see him cradling his child. He allows him to pass – but promises to Sahjhan that he will have no mercy. His letting Angel and his son live is not merely done out of compassion; now he has both a soul and son, he truly has something to lose.

The final part of this run, “Dad,” tries to keep the tension building, but it can't hope to compare to the previous few episodes and feels strangely anticlimactic, even as every group imaginable closes in on the hotel, eager to worship, sacrifice, dissect or eat Angel's son. In the midst of this, there are some lovely scenes where Angel struggles to calm the baby, while keeping the others at arm's length. It looks like he's ready to lose it again and go solo, but it's all part of a clever plan to remove the various threats in one go. Finally, the reach the mid-season break as Angel's son gets a name: Connor.

After the Christmas break, the season picked up again with 3.11, “Birthday,” perhaps the most significant episode this year for Cordelia. While Wolfram and Hart are thankfully no longer sending her killer visions, Cordelia has still been suffering more and more from the genuine visions' effects. It's revealed here that she's keeping the pain at bay through a cocktail of drugs, and has been receiving CAT scans which show her brain is deteriorating. On her birthday, a vision leading to a teenage girl threatened by a demon hits Cordy so hard that she is knocked into a coma, and right out of her body. After some time desperately trying to communicate with Angel, the disembodied Cordelia is met by Skip, now acting as a sort of spirit guide and otherworldly messenger for her. Skip was brought back purely due to the hugely positive fan reaction to the character, and it's appropriate that he appears here, since this is effectively a partner to “That Vision Thing,” in which he first appeared.

It turns out that Cordelia was never supposed to have visions, and her inheriting them from Doyle was a bit of a cosmic cock-up. The human brain is incapable of handling the strain, and even if she recovers from this vision, the next one will definitely kill her. Skip offers Cordelia the chance to live her life how it should have played out; he shows her the supposedly correct timeline, in which she is a hugely successful actress headlining an absolutely awful-looking sitcom called Cordy! (The theme tune will haunt you for weeks afterwards.) While she can't remember her original life, Cordelia is bothered by the knowledge something is wrong, and is able to track down the girl her vision originally told her about. Going to help her, she is met by Wes and Gunn, on the same mission. We learn that in this version of events, Wesley has been left hardened and injured (having lost an arm in his first mission with Angel), while in this timeline it was Angel who got the visions from Doyle, the mental strain of which has left him a gibbering wreck. (It also raises the question: did Doyle kiss Angel before he died? Or can the visions be passed on by way of a firm handshake?)

As with “That Vision Thing,” this episode really hammers home just how far Cordelia has grown, how strong she is, and how selfless this once incredibly self-absorbed character has become. It's a test, of course, and Cordelia gives up her perfect life so that she can help both her friends and strangers. Skip offers her a loophole: she can continue to experience the visions and survive if she becomes half-demon. She accepts, and wakes up back in the original timeline, experiencing a perfectly clear and painless vision. Carpenter, Boreanaz and Denisof all give great turns as their alternative selves in an episode that works on its own as well as having huge repercussions later. Although, you have to wonder what happened to that poor girl in this timeline: Cordy says it's taken care of, but no one actually went to help her in this version of events...

3.12, “Provider,” is a so-so instalment that largely serves to keep various background plot points running. While Angel frets about providing for his son and looks to generate more work for the firm, Wes and Gunn begin to show rivalry over Fred's affections. Meanwhile, Holtz has been recruiting, and a large part of this episode focuses on his brutal “training” of wannabe vampire killer Justine – a tremendously annoying hardass character played by Laurel Holloman (The L Word) who we will unfortunately see a lot of this season. There's a daft subplot about demons who want to steal Fred's brain, while Lorne becomes fully part of the team now he's moved into the hotel (the club having been gutted twice now, it seems fair enough).

Another ongoing plotline that simmered through the last few episodes is that of Angel and Cordy's feelings for one another. Having spent years fighting the forces of evil together, the two champions had begun to develop a deep romantic attraction. This is one of the more controversial developments in the series. While, on the one hand, it allowed Angel a chance to finally move past his longing for Buffy, and recognised the huge character growth that he and, particularly, Cordelia had experienced, it also seemed quite unnecessary. Angel and Cordelia shared a strong, platonic bond in their first couple of seasons, and while Cordy had been immediately attracted to Angel when she first met him in Buffy, it certainly looked like she'd long moved past that. For some fans, changing their relationship to a romantic one diminished what they already had. For others, though, it built on their friendship. At the very least, Boreanaz and Carpenter share a great chemistry on screen, with the former in particular playing his gradual acceptance of his growing feelings well.

Of course, no romance on this series could be allowed to run smoothly. 3.13, “Waiting in the Wings,” brought the attraction to the forefront, by having the two characters forced to act out the lives of cursed lovers. As with the musical episode “Once More, With Feeling” on Buffy season six, “Waiting in the Wings” is Joss Whedon's sole dedicated contribution to the season, acting as both writer and director. It's an excellent episode; haunting, rather beautiful, and astonishingly sexual. It begins innocently enough, with Angel buying tickets to a performance of the ballet Giselle by a troupe he saw back in 1890 (“I cried like a baby – and I was evil!”) There's a lot of fun to be had, watching the team dress themselves up in evening wear and spend the evening taking in some high culture. Gunn's shift from reluctant attendance to besotted admiration of the dancers' athleticism might be the highlight of the episode.

However, Angel, with his frighteningly good memory, recognises that it's not just the same troupe performing. It's the very same people, giving the very same performance that he saw over a century earlier. Investigating backstage, Angel and Cordelia are possessed by the spirits of the prima ballerina and her lover, playing out their last night together before they were violently separated by the villainous Count who owns the troupe. It's an exceptionally sexy scene, yet conveys the story succinctly. It is, however, rather reminiscent of Buffy 2.19, “I Only Have Eyes for You,” which is hammered home when Angel himself comments on the similarity.

Meanwhile, Wes and Gunn both mean to make a move on Fred. A fight between the gang and the Count's spectacularly creepy theatre-masked henchmen leads to Gunn suffering a stab wound, with Fred's fear that he is seriously hurt pushing the two of them to finally kiss. Wesley is... well, he's not pleased. There's a strong guest performance from Summer Glau as the prima ballerina, cursed to perform the same play night after night for all time. It's Glau's first screen role, surprisingly, and she really carries the tragedy of her character's fate (although her Russian accent is a bit all-over-the-place). Shortly after this, she would go on to star as River Tam in Whedon's Firefly, and later appear in his series Dollhouse. However, it was actually Acker's years of ballet training that inspired Whedon to create this episode. A scene was filmed in which Fred and Wesley dance on stage, with Acker performing gracefully and professionally while Denisof prances about comedically. It's a shame it was cut, but it's understandable, as it would have rather diminished the tone of the episode. (it is available as a DVD extra though and on YouTube if you're dying to see it.)

“Waiting in the Wings” culminates in Angel deciding to finally express his true feelings to Cordelia. They get back to the hotel... to find the Groosalugg there waiting for her. This leads into a run of episodes where it all really hits the fan, various plot threads coming together to a catastrophic breaking point. 3.14, “Couplet,” focuses on Angel's jealousy of Groo (the cartoonishly handsome Mark Lutz), who is just as much a champion as he is, but also able to rescue people in the daylight. This side of the story is very fun, with Cordelia worried that sleeping with Groo will mean he inherits her visions, forcing Angel to play his part in finding her a “supernatural prophylactic.” Meanwhile, while Angel is increasingly jealous, Cordy is clearly subconsciously yearning for him, as shown when she gives Groo a makeover which leaves him looking like the spit of Angel. Cordelia and Groo leave together at the end of the episode, not returning until 3.18 (rumoured, sadly, to have been due to Carpenter's pregnancy and miscarriage).

Angel deals with his jealousy rather well in the end, but Wesley does not, becoming increasingly hostile towards Fred and Gunn as their romance begins to intrude into their work. Wes becomes more isolated as his studying of prophetic scrolls reveals a horrifying prediction about Angel: “The father will kill the son.” His worries only get worse across the following two episodes, “Loyalty” and “Sleep Tight,” as Angel's enemies plot against him. Wolfram and Hart, determined to push Angel to breaking point, have been spiking his pig's blood with blood taken from Connor at the hospital, leading him to become hyperactive, aggressive and predatory towards the baby. Meanwhile, Holtz and Justine, having amassed an array of vampire killers, are themselves trying to manipulate Angel's team, while Lilah goes behind her firm's back and begins working with Sahjhan.

Things get very heavy in these few episodes, but there is some lighter material. They feature some of the show's most inventive monsters, including a life-draining tree monster who snares its prey through dating sites in “Couplet;” and a loa, a Voudoun spirit, which takes possession of a fast food joint's hamburger statue in order to dispense wisdom. Mostly, though, this is grim stuff. The writers seem to be making sure we don't feel too much sympathy for Holtz by making his relationship with Justine violently abusive, and Wesley doesn't come off much better. If he'd just spoken to his friends, he could surely have found a way to keep Connor safe. Instead, he isolates himself, turning to Holtz of all people, and eventually abducts Connor to keep him safe from Angel.

“Sleep Tight” ends in a shocking sequence of events, as Wesley is accosted by a badly beaten Justine, who claims to be running from Holtz, only for her to slit his throat, leaving him for dead in a park while she runs off with the baby. This culminates in an electrifying standoff between Angel, trying to rescue his son; Holtz and Justine, who plan to steal him away and raise him as their own; and Lilah, who wants Angel dead but wants to bring the baby back to W&H. Sahjhan arrives, having had enough of all this, and opens a rift in space/time to a particularly dark dimension named the Quor'Toth, threatening to have everyone present pulled in unless the baby is killed. With no other recourse, and unwilling to kill the child, Holtz leaps into the portal with Connor, leaving everyone else stunned. Sahjhan's pretty happy with this, but Angel, naturally, is devastated. It's an exhilarating climax, the sort of thing that serialised television excels at, when all the spinning plates come crashing down all at once.

3.17, “Forgiving,” deals with the fallout, and while it's a slower episode than “Sleep Tight,” it's even darker and more brutal. While Wesley holds onto life, Angel and the gang search for him and a way back to his son. While the other members of the team are reeling from Wesley's betrayal, Angel is single-minded in his mission to rescue Connor by any means necessary. Lorne's interdimensional contacts reveal that there are no portals to the Quor'Toth; the place is so horrible that it's sealed off and can only be accessed by ripping a hole right through the fabric of reality. This doesn't deter Angel, who decides he just needs better resources, leading him kidnap and torture Linwood so that he has access to everything Wolfram and Hart have. It's undeniably satisfying to see the smarmy Linwood in trouble, forced to call on his disrespected underling Lilah for help. Angel demands information on Sahjhan, reasoning only he can open the way to his son, so Linwood orders Lilah to take Angel to the White Room, a sort of in-between place hidden away within the W&H headquarters.

There's something effective about a featureless void, inhabited only by a creepy child. Kay Panabaker (Summerland, No Ordinary Family) is spot-on as the calm and collected little girl representing the conduit to the Senior Partners. She reveals that Sahjhan is a member of a race of demons so utterly despicable that even the Partners thought they were too much trouble and had them all rendered immaterial. She offers Angel a spell that will make Sahjhan corporeal again, so he has someone he can beat up and force to help, and Angel very foolishly goes along with this. Painting a pentagram onto the floor of the hotel lobby, Angel enacts the ritual, causing Sahjhan to appear in the flesh – in the middle of town. After gleefully engaging in some carnage, the demon is cornered by Angel who demands that he open another rift to the Quor'Toth. Unfortunately, it's a one-time deal: if Sahjhan tries it again, it'll probably destroy the universe. To rub salt in the wound, Sahjhan reveals his real plan: he discovered a prophecy saying that he would be killed by the son of the vampire with a soul, so faked another prophecy to try to get said son killed. Wesley betrayed Angel based on lies, making the entire terrible affair for nothing.

Sahjhan's story is rather abruptly switched off when Justine, feeling guilty for her actions under Holtz, shows up and does the Ghostbusters thing, sucking the demon into a magical urn. Having helpfully fixed this little issue, she tells Angel and co. where to find Wesley. It's too late, he's already been found, and eventually Fred tracks him to a hospital. The episode ends with Angel calmly confronting his former friend, lying weakened in a hospital bed and unable to speak, explaining what he's learned and that he understands why Wesley did what he did. He reassures him that Wolfram and Hart's attempts to break him did not work, and that he is still Angel, not Angelus. Then he snaps, screaming that he will kill Wesley for taking his son and tries to smother him to death with his pillow. He's dragged away, screaming that Wesley's a dead man, in one of the most shocking and powerful scenes in the series. While there are problems with this episode, not least some shoddy plotting, it's worth it for that final scene. It ends a run of episodes that reach a level of tension, shock and sheer drama that Angel never really manages again.

After that, we need a couple of lighter, filler episodes, although with everyone still reeling from the recent events it's not exactly all fun and frolics. 3.18, “Double or Nothing” tarts with Cordelia and Groo return to the hotel to discover Connor missing and the team in tatters, while Wesley leaves hospital to a life alone, with only Fred giving him even the slightest compassion. Thankfully, the rest of the episode is daffy fun, when a demonic repo man (Jason Carter – Babylon 5) turns up to tell Gunn that his soul is being claimed by the otherworldly casino boss (Patrick St. Esprit – Narcos, SWAT). After taking her out for the best date ever, Gunn cruelly dumps Fred so that she won't miss him and heads to Vegas to hand himself over. Fred's having none of this, and she and the team head after him, with Angel very foolishly betting his own soul in a double-or-nothing card cut which he promptly loses. Fortunately, there are no terrible consequences as the episode is running out of time. It's good fun, if entirely throwaway, mostly worth it for the final scene where we learn that the 17-year-old Gunn sold his soul for a big truck.

3.19, “The Price,” does have some ongoing consequences, but delivers them in such an offhand way they're rather wasted. That pentagram is still on the floor and the spell to materialise Sahjhan is having disturbing consequences. Hundreds of skittering little creatures called sluks infest the hotel, threatening the wider area as they parasitise an unassuming potential client (John Short – The Cavanaughs – with his best “some guy” acting) and drive him mad with thirst until he crumbles to dust. Angel is actually quite pleased to have a case to work on and take his mind off things, but when Fred gets slukked, things get more serious. Gunn goes to Wesley for help, with the now damaged and lonely man agreeing to do so only because it's Fred. Frankly, his solution is so obvious it's embarrassing the others didn't think of it, and it's ultimately unnecessary as Cordelia manifests a random superpower that clears the creatures out. The only event of real note is at the very end of the episode, when some young oik in animal skins materialises with an offhand, “Hi, Dad.”

Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men, Titans) guest stars in the final three episodes of the season as Connor, now eighteen years old thanks to the time differential between dimensions. Having broken back into his home reality, Connor immediately attacks Angel, before running out into sunlit L.A. to fend for himself. Kartheiser does well with a character who's hard to like, with the script playing up his teenage obnoxiousness over his, very understandable, confusion and hurt from his upbringing. Having been taught that his true father is a monster and that all demons must be killed, he's not at all keen on Angel, but it comes across largely as petulance instead of a reasonable reaction to what he's been taught.

Having been raised by Holtz in an alien dimension, he's lost when he arrives in the city. With vampire-like strength, senses and speed, he's more than capable of defending himself against an assailant, but altogether the dangers of our world are alien to him. In 3.20, “A New World,” he pretty much immediately falls for Sunny, a young addict living on the streets (Erika Thormalen – Just Deal), rescuing her from her abusive pimp (Anthony Starke – Make It or Break It, The George Carlin Show), only to find her dead from an overdose in the morning. Angel tracks him down just in time to save him from the pimp's gang, beginning a mending of their relationship. It doesn't last.

The final two episodes, “Benediction” and “Tomorrow,” rush the ending of the season, packing in a lot of incident in order to tie up loose ends and set up the next run. Holtz has also arrived in L.A, reconnecting not only with Connor but also Justine and, in time, Angel. Now elderly and scarred, Holtz appears to have made peace with his demons (literally and figuratively), and he and Angel are able to talk civilly about Connor. In spite of his hatred for Angel, Holtz clearly loves Connor as if he were his own son, and for a moment you honestly believe that he'll quietly leave and let the boy grow up with his real father. Then, while Connor is kept busy elsewhere and Angel is returning to the hotel, Holtz orders Justine to kill him, piercing his throat to make it appear that he was bitten by a vampire.

You can see where this is going, but before we're even halfway to the payoff, we have to squeeze in Connor's threatening of Lorne, Lorne's decision to leave for Vegas, a black ops attack by a vengeful Linwood, yet more inexplicable powers from Cordy, and Lilah's attempt to seduce Wesley into working for Wolfram and Hart – and eventually, simply seducing him. There's some good material here, which would have made for several strong episodes, but it's all packed in so tight it's hard to appreciate it. Frankly, another couple of episodes to allow these developments to breathe would have been preferable over casino demons and parasitic prawns.

The most important developments are the relationships between the key characters, which need more time to breathe. Groo accepts that Cordelia loves Angel, not him, breaking it off with her and leaving for parts unknown. Mark Lutz gives a nice, understated performance in his final appearance on the series and you find yourself wishing he'd stick around. Cordy, for her part, refuses to accept the truth of her feelings until she receives a vision of herself, shouting about how she loves Angel, and yes, it's as cringeworthy as it sounds. Still, she's able to share an awkward but sweet phonecall with Angel in which they arrange to meet, although for reasons of plot that outweighing logic, it has to be on a cliff edge in the middle of the night.

Angel, meanwhile, has been having a great day, with Connor embracing his identity and seemingly accepting Angel as his father. He even wants fighting lessons from him. Of course, we've already seen him disposing of Holtz's body and spitting bile about Angel, so it's no surprise when he arrives at the cliffs and beats Angel down (shouldn't have shown him all your moves), with Justine on hand to provide back-up.

What follows is an overblown double-cliffhanger. While on her way to meet Angel, Cordelia is stopped by Skip, who gives her an ultimatum: she has proven herself as a higher being, and is destined to ascend to another plane to continue the fight, but it's now or never. Realising this is her final test, Cordy gives up the chance of happiness with Angel and is beamed up to the heavens, to take her place among the angels or something. If this doesn't sound like a very likely end to her story, there's a reason for that, but it won't be revealed until well into season four. Angel, however, fares much worse, sealed into a metal coffin by Connor and Justine and dumped into the ocean, to sit eternally, unable to die. That's nasty stuff, and Angel's descent makes for a nice juxtaposition with Cordelia's ascent. Nonetheless, it's an awful lot of incident played out very quickly, without much in the way of logic.

Season two saw Angel, a series that wasn't quite sure what it wanted to be, finding its own style. Season three capitalised on that, seeing it break away fully from Buffy to become its own show. The two seasons saw it at the height of its impact and quality, balancing action, humour and heart in a way that eclipsed even its parent show. However, the final episode of season three showed, in its overblown way, that this success couldn't continue forever, giving a taster of the poor storytelling choices that would blight the fourth season.