Deus Ex Buffyverse

“Does he exist? Is there word on that, by the way?”
“Nothing solid.”
—Holden Webster and Buffy Summers, “Conversations with Dead People”

This may be scaring away my audience before I even begin, but I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic school from third grade through high school. While I’m not the greatest Catholic, I do at least go to church on the big days (Christmas and Easter) and I do observe Lent. That may not make me the most qualified person to talk about theology, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have all kinds of questions about God in the Buffyverse.

Of course, you can’t actually have a vampire drama be about God and actual religious questions, or the viewers would desert in droves, but it’s hard for me not to wonder about it. The whole notion of crosses and holy water as vampire-fighting symbols in Buffy and Angel is what started me down this road, simply because they work. Why do they work? Nobody on Buffy is an avowed Catholic; in fact, Willow is explicitly Jewish, but even she’s seen holding up crosses. So you can’t argue it’s a matter of faith on the part of the user. Moreover, it’s specifically a cross, not just any religious symbol. In the Buffy episode “Passion,” Willow comments that hanging crosses around her room to keep out a recently unsouled Angelus would probably upset her Jewish parents. If Stars of David were similarly effective, it seems like Willow would’ve gone with that instead to keep up appearances.

“This symbol, these two planks of wood. It confounds me. Suffuses me with mortal dread.”
—The Master, “Nightmares”

And it’s not just that vampires have an aversion to crosses, it’s that contacts with them literally burns them. In the first season of Buffy, The Master conjectures about vampires overcoming their fear of the cross and still being able to touch it — which he does — though the experience still causes him some damage. While some aversion to the cross is psychological, there is also a direct physical reaction as well — in the same way that most people don’t stick their hand into a fire. So the cross has power, and on its own — they don’t have to be independently blessed by a priest, there’s no ritual, nothing like that.

Then there’s holy water. Not as often used on the shows — the CGI to show vampires burning is, I imagine, a lot more expensive than telling an actor to jump away from a cross — it’s never really mentioned how the Scooby Gang gets holy water. Are they raiding churches? Do they know a guy? What makes the holy water “holy”? Presumably there is something being done to it to make it holy, because vampires aren’t averse to water in general, just the purified kind.

I’m willing to believe that God exists in the Buffyverse, because something makes the crosses and holy water work — he may not be a “direct intervention” God, which is what people would expect in a show about big good versus big evil, but a “when you do things right, people can’t tell you’re doing anything at all” God. I’m just not sure who he is, though I’m pretty sure he’s not The Powers That Be that are featured on Angel.

“Come before us, lower being.”
“What have you brought us?”
—The Oracles of the Powers That Be, “I Will Remember You”

The Powers That Be are depicted as enigmatic entities who have a stated interest in helping humanity but as the series goes on, little follow-through. They’re depicted as divine beings, but I’m reasonably certain they are not God. They have a pair of oracles who appear only in Season 1 before being murdered. In Season 4 of Angel, one of the Powers, an entity named Jasmine, takes form on Earth and tries to bring about world peace by eliminating free will, making her ultimately an enemy of Angel and his friends.

The Powers That Be aren’t really that good, however, because they ultimately are an athiest’s idea of God — a higher being who either sits around or makes things worse. When Angel meets with the Oracles for consultation, they demand material tribute (Angel gives them his watch). Gunn and Fred often complain about the “Powers That Sit on Their Be-hind,” because they don’t actually do anything — they watch, they’re distant, and they’re uncaring. This image is not helped by Jasmine’s appearance in Season 4 — despite her stated love for humanity and for her “champions,” she unleashes the Beast, slaughters thousands, unlocks Angel’s evil alter ego, turns Angel’s son Connor against him, and turns humanity into slaves, all because she has good intentions. That she promises to destroy the world (before being ultimately killed) because her plan didn’t work out for her is icing on the cake: she’s a wrathful, fickle entity who knocks over the board when she loses the game.

“Well excuse me, Mr. I-spent-the-sixties-in-an-electric-funky-Satan-groove!”
“It was the early seventies, and you should know better.”
—Xander Harris and Rupert Giles, “Beer Bad”

While I’m willing to think there’s a God in some way, shape or form in the Buffyverse, the same cannot be said of the Devil. There are all manner of demons and icky beings and ancient gods (such as Glorificus, the Big Bad of Buffy’s Season 5), but not one of them is ever stated to be working for Satan or even paying him lip service. In fact, most references to Satan in the series are jokes, and there doesn’t seem to be any one unifying hell either: just a cross-section of “hell dimensions,” such as the one Angel is sent to at the end of Season 2 of Buffy; Quor-Toth, the realm Holtz escapes to with Connor in Season 3 of Angel; and the realm that Glorificus came from before being banished to Earth. Heck, even The First Evil, the show’s analogue to the Devil, refers to itself as having existed “before sin.” The only serious reference to satanism in the Buffyverse comes at the end of Season 6, as the temple that Willow unearths to destroy the world is offhandedly referred to as “satanic,” despite also featuring an effigy of a completely different demon (who, granted, is referred to as “way up there in the hierarchy of she-demons” by Anya).

All in all, while there probably will never be any definite connection between God and the Buffyverse (for obvious reasons), I’m willing to believe there’s a “ghost in the machine” as it were. It’s the kind of thing where if he’s doing it right, no one can tell he’s doing anything at all. (Or since this is about Joss Whedon shows, should I say “she”?)