Anyone who has had any doubts about the quality of this season, or if they were ever going to introduce the “arc,” needs to get their patinkins in gear and watch this episode NOW. This was, without a doubt, the absolute BEST episode of the season to date, and one of the top episodes of the series as a whole. Interesting flashbacks to the early days of the Angelus/William The Bloody pairing, a revelation of precisely where their antagonism came from, a couple of great bits of character insight on the part of Spike (“You had a soul forced on you as a curse. Make you suffer for all the horrible things you’d done. But me…I fought for my soul, went through the demon trials, almost did me in a dozen times over but I kept fighting ’cause I knew it was the right thing to do. It’s my destiny.” and “I’ll tell you why you can’t stand the bloody sight of me. ‘Cause every time you look at me, you see all the dirty little things I’ve done…All the lives I’ve taken because of you! Drusilla sired me, but you…you made me a monster…You never knew the real me. You were too busy trying to see your own reflection…praying there was someone as disgusting as you in the world so you could stand to live with yourself. Take a long look, hero. I’m nothing like you.”)…and someone we haven’t seen for a long, long, long time returns. It’s one of the best closing shots of any Joss-related show. It’s a reveal to DIE for. It’s one of those things that makes me glad I avoided spoilers after the first 4 episodes.