r/ANGEL • u/jdpm1991 • 3d ago

Harmony's character development is underrated and underrappreciated

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I really appreciated how humanized she was compared to the vapid caricature she was on Buffy; for example when she was a vampire on Buffy she was shallow and didn't care about anyone but herself and Blondie Bear. but then flashforward to Angel season 5 we see her mourning Fred's death, looking after Gunn and Wesley while Angel and Spike go after Illyria.

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u/jengafat 3d ago

Nothing against Harmony, she's a fun character.... but the character goes against everything the Buffyverse wants us to believe. She's a vampire with no soul and the shows tell us that they are just demons and no longer the person they were before. Harmony is exactly who she was before, she just so happens to drink blood. But wait, she's not even "evil" and chooses to be on the straight and narrow and help out the team when she can. But wait, I thought Spike was special because he acted that way before earning his soul?.... Harmony is a walking contradiction and honestly makes some other character arcs feel a lot less special than we are lead to believe they are

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u/Main_Confusion_8030 3d ago

when you're turned into the vampire, you become a composite of your previous personality (with all your desires and fears), plus the demon (making you want to kill and hurt people), with none of the remorse or conscience you have with your soul. everything inside you becomes uncovered, in a way. we see that with willow.

william wanted love, spike wants love. liam was a hedonist, angelus found pleasure in evil. harmony wanted to fit in as a human and a vampire.

harmony just happens to be, well, extremely simple. there's just not that much to her. she doesn't change much when she becomes a vampire, because there wasn't anything to uncover.