Angel

Conviction

The Metaphysics of "Conviction" Warning : this page contains info about episodes up through season 7 BtVS/season 5 AtS. If you’re in danger of being spoiled, proceed with caution.

A mystical vessel designed to hold anything its owner desires has been made the container for a deadly virus. The container will dissolve and unleash this virus on the world when a specific "magic word" is spoken.

"Anagogic" Lorne is put in charge of evaluating the loyalties of the employees of the Wolfram and Hart Los Angeles office. Each employee sings for him, allowing him to "read their spirits"—get glimpses of their lives and futures.

Instant law degree : Gunn allows Wolfram and Hart to enhance his mind with a comprehensive knowledge of the law. He goes to an office where he is hooked up to a machine that essentially does a "download" to his brain. He now has the equivalent of a law school degree and several years’ experience practicing law. The knowledge is real, although his credentials are forged.

Spike’s return : Angel gets an envelope with no return address. He opens it and a crystal amulet falls out. It glows, then emits a swirling cloud of dust. The dust solidifies to form a revivified Spike the vampire, who is disoriented when he finds himself suddenly in one piece again after his recent death.

Cordelia’s coma

Evil in "Conviction"

The end of Angel Investigations

When the Senior Partners "seceded" the offices of the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram and Hart to Angel and his friends, they weren’t offering to let the gang turn their facilities into a super-enhanced office for Angel Investigations. Angel and the gang work for Wolfram and Hart now.

Eve is Angel’s "liaison" to the larger firm. And if the Senior Partners’ purpose is to corrupt team Angel, then Eve is the bearer of the apple of temptation. She offers the fruit of Wolfram and Hart’s resources and secrets to the gang, but unlike the serpent of old, she is up front about the consequences of taking what Wolfram and Hart have to offer.

The Senior Partners expect Angel and the gang to run the law firm, make a profit, and keep their evil and morally ambiguous clients happy. If they chose to stay, they might manage to do some good in the process. If they chose to leave, evil will go on its merry way doing as it pleases, and they will have a lot less resources to stop it. It’s their choice.

Angel takes a bite of Eve’s apple.

Their first challenge : foiling the plans of client Corbin Fries, a human charged with all manner of crimes, including drugs, gun-running, and prostitution. He is on the verge of being convicted in court. Angel and the gang’s "official" job is to get him off. And Fries is threatening to kill the entire state of California if he doesn’t. He has put a mystical container containing a deadly virus into the body of his own son.

The Wolfram and Hart special ops team does the "field work" for Wolfram and Hart, and Angel knows their work well. They provided back-up when Wolfram and Hart turned Darla back into a vampire. They tried twice to get their hands on Angel and Darla’s infant son and later distracted Angel and the gang when Wolfram and Hart wanted to extract important apocalyptic information out of Lorne’s brain. Angel doesn’t trust them to follow his orders, and there is no reason he should. Their only loyalty is to evil. When ops leader Hauser finds out that Angel intends to isolate the boy who is ground zero for a lethal virus, he sends his team out to terminate the boy and any witnesses to what they have done.

Good and Moral Ambiguity in "Conviction"

"[Y]ou think I’m just a trigger-happy jerk who follows orders, but I am something you will never be. I’m pure. I believe in evil. You and your friends, you’re conflicted. You’re confused. We’re not. That is why you are going to lose, because we possess the most powerful thing in the world... conviction." —Hauser

Fred :

Wesley : "Why on Earth are we here ?" Fred : "Because we’re crusaders against evil, and now the law firm that represents most of the evil in the world has given us its L.A. branch to run however we want, probably in an attempt to corrupt, divide or destroy us and we all said yes in like, three minutes ?"

Fred is the most vocal of the gang in expressing her doubts about their new situation. Her employees seem to be the "I was just following orders" types (Gunn calls them "opportunistic"), with little thought about whether the work they are doing will be used for good or evil purposes. But Fred is now their boss, and she puts them to work researching how to destroy a virus they might have indirectly helped develop.

Wesley, whose doubts are as great as Fred’s, sneaks a gun into Fries’ trial. If Fries threatens to use the magic word to unleash the virus, Wesley plans to shoot to kill, even knowing that doing so might itself trigger the container holding the virus.

Angel has been made "CEO and President" of the Los Angeles offices of a multi-dimensional corporation committed to making the lives of their evil clients easier. So of course, the Senior Partners and employees aren’t pleased when Angel kills a vampire that works for one of "his" clients, tries to foil the threat posed by another one of his clients, and kills a member of his own Operations team in the process.

This is the thin line Angel must now walk. A desperate decision to save his own son has put him in bed, metaphorically speaking, with his enemies, and he must find a way to continue the mission of the now defunct Angel Investigations amidst the evils and the temptations of working for Wolfram and Hart.

When client Corbin Fries’ courtroom looks ready to hand in a Guilty verdict, Angel decides to isolate Fries’ son. Then Angel learns that the special ops team is on its way to kill the boy instead. He rushes to the boy’s school and gets the children out of danger, then tries to fire the special ops team. They respond with bullets. Angel fights back with fists and fangs, killing the ops team leader.

Gunn has hope that the gang will be able to do some good at Wolfram and Hart, and he has a new role to play in that effort. The Senior Partners allowed Gunn to speak to their conduit in the White Room. They wanted to tap into his untapped potential. And tap it they did, just in time to stave off a viral apocalypse. Gunn enters the courtroom and gets Fries’ trial declared a mistrial on a technicality involving the judge’s conflict of interest. This doesn’t mean Fries is off the hook ; he will have to stand trial again with a different judge.

Not exactly a win for the evil client, but the thin line the ex-Angel Investigations team is walking just got thinner. Gunn doesn’t believe that Wolfram and Hart put anything else in his mind besides legal knowledge, and he offers to sing for Lorne to prove it. But the danger of Gunn’s new knowledge isn’t what’s in Gunn’s brain today. It’s in the influence having that knowledge might have on his actions and intentions in the coming days.

Unanswered question : When Angel and the gang were in the middle of their initial Wolfram and Hart tour, making up their minds about accepting the offer, their memories of the past two years were altered (the details of which have not yet been made clear). Did this in any way affect their decision to take the offer ?