"If you go back to "School Hard", the first time I saw the Slayer I very consciously played the hunter, both sexually and violently. In that scene I'm looking at her thinking, 'I'm going to have you, and I'm going to kill you'. It's a leopard look. I'm like, 'Good going, Slayer, come on...' I play those scenes like a hunter, and I wonder to some extent if people picked up on that. I don't know if Joss did. " JM (TEXT)

"He's back to where he was in the beginning (has effectively come full circle), in a way. He's screwed though, man, and he knows it too. He's in love with Buffy, but Buffy is never going to be in love with him. He's so beneath her." JM (TEXT)

Q: Was it harder playing Spike this year?
JM: Every year, I felt like I was playing a new character. I started as the Boy-Toy for Dru. I was cannon fodder and I was going to be done away with and Dru was the main thing. Then I graduated to villain then I guess I was the wacky neighbor for awhile. [Audience laughs] Then I was the forlorn man in the corner loving the woman who didn’t give anything back, then I was the lover, then I was the unhealthy boyfriend. In this final season, I was the redeemed man or the man in search of that. In a way every year I feel, what am I going to do? He is so completely different! When they brought me on the show, the two things that I thought were the linchpins of the character was one – an extreme pleasure in hurting people and two – real love for my girlfriend, Drusilla. When they brought me on the show [in season four], I had neither one of those and I was like ‘What are we going to play?’ and they found it.
I guess about mid-season, I was hungering for some swagger. I was like ‘Spike, is getting really soft here.’
Even my brother who is so supportive of everything, he was like “Dude, you need to get some balls.” But they worked that out too, the balls will be there.
[Audience laughs] (Text)

"But my number one (favorite season or story arc) has got to be the Buffy and Spike love story. I think that is just a gorgeous story. How do you follow-up her romance with Angel? I like the romance with Spike better. I’m more interested in the heat between those two characters because I felt Buffy and Angel had romantic love. Spike and Buffy have something so much more complicated that it’s got that romance and all this other stuff on top of it which makes it so interesting for me." Jane Espenson (TEXT)

"He wears his heart on his sleeve. He's very immature for a vampire, really. He really is the youngest vampire I can think of. Most of them have some kind of perspective by now. You feel like their old." He adopts a Christopher Lee baritone for a wise vamp utterance: " 'I've known this for years, I've seen this before, Buffy.' [Spike has] none of that," James laughs. "he's got the maturity of a 17-year-old!" JM (TEXT)

"He's a monster, but if he likes you, he'd be your monster, and he would protect you above all things. But he is a monster. I don't think women mind if he's a monster as long as he's their monster. Take note guys", he grins, "You can get away with anything as long as it's all for her!" JM (TEXT)

"The fact that Spike is truly in love can motivate him to great acts of heroism as he tries to become the kind of man that Buffy could love," he observes, "or, if spurned, it could drive to him to great acts of villainy."
"I don't know if Buffy will ever reciprocate Spike's feelings," he admits. "I really think Spike is kind of beneath her. He's evil — he really is. He just happens to be in love with a good person." JM
-comments about Buffy and Spikes relationship

"Well, I always knew that if you were kissing Buffy or hitting Buffy, you'd be in the center of that show. So I played an attraction to her in from the beginning even if it wasn't written. But I don't think anyone noticed. But I have a sense that that whole Spike/Buffy thing is going to make me miserable for a while. Nobody has told me if I'm really in love with her or if I had a really good dream. I mean none of us are above a dream or two about Buffy you know." JM

"Inside my own mind, Spike is exactly the same guy," notes Marsters. "It doesn't feel any different. He's not good. He's just hot for Buffy. He's not going to do anything to piss her off. In a way, he's closer to the Spike we met in Season Two. Originally, I thought the interesting thing about Spike was the contrast between the fact that he was a psychopathic murderer and the most sensitive boyfriend you could ever imagine. These two things didn't seem to fit, and yet they were in the same character, which was kind of mysterious and cool. Later on, they took both of those elements away from the character. Dru left him and he became chipped, so he could no longer have fun killing people and he no longer had a girlfriend to be so gentlemanly for. So now, while I'm still chipped, I'm getting to fight demons and have fun with the violence, and I'm also back in love with a girl, which lets me explore that gentlemanly side that really hasn't been explored for about a year and a half. So, in a weird kind of way, I feel like I'm getting back to the original Spike. He still gets to throw out those nasty asides. So it's still the same guy; I just don't have the body count." JM (The Realm)

"That just gets so old, so they have to find a way to keep Spike from trying to kill Buffy, and this was the way they've done it so far. Again, not that I know that much about the new season, but there will probably be other things that bring them together. I suspect that if Spike's needs are parallel with Buffy's then they will be on the same track, but I don't think he'll ever be a good guy. I don't think he was a particularly nice guy before he became a vampire." JM (The Realm)

"The fact that Spike is truly in love can motivate him to great acts of heroism as he tries to become the kind of man that Buffy could love, or, if spurned, it could drive him to great acts of villainy."For those of you hoping for sparks, Marsters dismisses such as possibly happening, saying,
"I don't know if Buffy will ever reciprocate Spike's feelings. I really think Spike is kind of beneath her. He's evil — he really is. He just happens to be in love with a good person." JM (Source)

Q: How far in advance was Spike's attempted rape of Buffy planned?
Joss Whedon: It was not at the very beginning, but it was certainly not added at the last minute. It became apparent that it was the logical extension of that unhealthy a relationship. When they were investigating the boundaries, eventually they would begin to blur, and something ugly would happen. The season was also about power, and misunderstanding of power, and also male power. We wanted to show the impotence of rape and the impotence of guys like Warren, who are firing guns at people, and relate them together. What started out as lighthearted and romantic and sexy on one side and funny on the other, we wanted to get to the dark. Some people were like, "Okay, that's enough of the dark." It was part of the natural flow of the season that it should happen, and that it should happen in the same episode where Warren kills somebody, because it's part of the same thing, the violence. (Source)

So, now it turns out Spike was actually asking for a soul from the beginning of that whole subplot?
"They're switching it up again. I thought I knew what was going on until Joss said what he said. It's a case of what is the most interesting thing and he's kept his options open at the end of the scene. I was instructed to play it as if I wanted to get the chip out and was surprised and mad about the soul. But, as a storyteller, he leaves himself the option of going exactly the opposite direction without having to compromise integrity at all. The way that he constructed it, and I think he did it because of that, he left his options open." JM (TEXT)

Will Spike be a vampire with a soul or a human?
"Oh, a vampire with a soul. His flesh is still dead. His blood is still cold. But he has to deal with the ramifications of 1000 murders." JM (TEXT)

Well, I won't ask you something as lame as how will it be different from Angel?
"Yeah. It will be. That's the one thing you can guarantee and I don't know how it's going to be different from Angel, but it will be." JM (TEXT)

How will Spike deal with his attempted rape of Buffy in the next season?
"Dealing with that is what sent him out to the desert. Obviously, he didn't deal very well with it. Obviously he blamed her for it and was so angry that he wanted to go do something even more horrible. As often happens, and that's the point that's often made on the show, that evil comes about often when people feel very guilty about something that they've done but can't face it. It drives them to further acts of evil. You saw it with Faith and I don't know where it's going to lead with Spike. Seriously, I don't know what's going to happen." JM (TEXT)

Will Spike become more of a villain or try to redeem himself?
"This is the thing. As an actor, I have had the problem of playing - as many actor do - the end of the scene and the beginning of the scene. So, if you're going to get really mad at someone, you start to play anger too early as opposed to discovering it during the scene. And I discovered that working in TV, you can wholesale eradicate that problem from your performance by not asking what's going to happen next week. I am as ignorant as my character and I therefore can fight for my character wholly and then be completely up a tree as Spike can be and not even concern myself with what's going to happen. It's very scary because sometimes on this show you're asked to do things that - there have been things on this show that I've been asked to do that if a movie came along that asked me to do those things, I might have passed." JM (TEXT)

Like playing a rapist?
"Frankly, yeah. Frankly, I don't like that. I can't even watch a movie where that's in there. I get up and want to kill the guy. It's my personal issue. So, that was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, not even as a job, because Sarah and I are friends. I told Joss, "Nobody's safe around here. You cut right to the bone, dude. This is not a safe show." JM (TEXT)

"I'd like to see him regain his sense of joy in something more fruitful than killing people," he said. "I've always envisioned him giving Buffy a garden that he could never go to in the daytime, to give her something alive for a change." JM (Text)

"We've been getting so much feedback from fans. They see Spike as a hero now (but) the relationship is basically something we thought would reflect the kinds of relationships you choose when you're choosing the wrong person."

"People have been very upset about that. They're like, 'He's not the wrong person. He's all redeemed.' Part of what needs to happen at tis point is (for us) to show that redemption is possible for Spike. But he's not redeemed now, and their relationship is really based on things that are not healthy."

"It doesn't mean that things won't get better for them, but what it's based on right now isn't healthy. It's not showing Buffy in the greatest light, but our intention was to show that they need to change who it's about or it's never going to last."
"This will probably inflame fans of a different opinion, but my only answer is that this relationship isn't bringing out the best in either of them. Maybe it's bringing out the better in him in some ways, but it's not bringing out the best in her."

Marti Noxon Executive Producer (TEXT) What she told Zap2It web site.

"Well, I always knew that if you were kissing Buffy or hitting Buffy, you'd be in the center of that show. So I played an attraction to her in from the beginning even if it wasn't written. But I don't think anyone noticed. But I have a sense that that whole Spike/Buffy thing is going to make me miserable for a while. Nobody has told me if I'm really in love with her or if I had a really good dream. I mean none of us are above a dream or two about Buffy you know." JM

"I think it's a tough sell for Buffy to go out with him (Spike). I mean, he's going to have to work very hard. And in the Joss Whedon [creator and executive producer of Buffy] universe, do you think he's going to succeed right away? Or is he going to be made to suffer? Oh delicious! It's just wonderful!" JM (The Realm)

"Later we're gonna have another good - oh, my god! - good excuse to have Sarah and I canoodling. Oh yeah!"
"No... I think that [Joss] is finally seeing the world through Spike's eyes, and this is his vicarious fantasy. I think that the fans have been calling for that from the very beginning. I think that [the writers] have been finding ways to get Sarah and I together in kind of a fantasy way, so we've got an alternate reality inflicted by Willow, in which we almost got married - that was 'Something Blue' - then we had a dream sequence earlier this season." JM (The Realm)

"It was easy," notes the actor, who's spent the last four seasons sinking his teeth into the role of the vampire Spike. "I've never played a character for this long. I'm used to doing stage, where you live with a character for a maximum of about four months. After five years, there really is a space somewhere in my soul where Spike and Buffy really do live. There really is a Sunnydale inside me somewhere. So when Buffy really was dead and I really was Spike it wasn't hard at all to break down. It was crushing. That's the weird thing about acting, man. We're not insane, but we're paid to use our imaginations as fully as we can. So somewhere down inside my heart there is a Spike and a Buffy and he's very much hoping that he'll get a little bit more time with Buffy." JM (The Realm)

Well Spike - maybe he just needs a mom. Maybe sometimes just needs some chocolate milk and a little mom's love.