REVISED entranceway history.

[evilhandissues]

Angel is a spin off of Buffy that Joss Whedon described as "Growing up. in comparison to high school." Angel's issues are considerably more adult then Buffy's - from dealing with the pressures of the world (represented by Wolfram and Hart) to the pressures of fatherhood (Conner, and Cordelia and Conner's liaison by proxy.) The issues are darker, sexier, and more appropriate for the new millennium. Angel, from a television standpoint (a technical standpoint) represents a new generation of television shows. Angel isn't secondary to Buffy, it is an ancestor of shows like Supernatural, Once upon a Time, and The Walking Dead.

Buffy naturally stands in a class by itself (Paving the way for supernatural shows to be even possible.) Conversely, breaking down a character like Lindsey requires a small understanding of Buffy - but a larger understanding of adulthood and recognizing that it's a much darker show that deals with a lot more serious themes. Buffy is High School, Angel is Joss entering the real world, paying rent, and living a life in a world full of vampires with their own unique strengths and weaknesses.

Who is Lindsey? Lindsey is two kinds of people that you're going to meet in your life. Good people in service to bad causes, and people who have given up on life. Inevitably there are people who aren't happy for one reason or another and who believe that working for a paycheck can fulfill their lives. Lindsey is one of those people. He represents the majority and the masses, the people not strong enough to say no and to make a change. He's incredibly average and halfway through it he sees that he wants to be special - recognizes it - but it comes far too little and far too late.

For the sake of the character, since he's run as long in the series as Angel -I'm breaking this up by seasons since Lindsey's character has changed along with Angel's. While his canon point is taken from season two - I intend to canon update him.

The Prince and the Pauper - or how the pauper became the prince of his own accord.
season one ~

Lindsey discusses his past only once, in Blind Date where he's trying to justify his actions to Angel. We learn he was one of six, born in a dirt poor family - so poor they were unable to afford basic health care. He was hired on at wolfram and hart in his sophomore year at Hastings school of law. That's not unusual - to be hired out of law school? To be hired out of law school in his sophomore year means that he's incredibly intelligent as well as extremely motivated to make something of himself. By the time we meet Lindsey he's twenty five years old and living in Los Angeles. He embodies the late eighties early nineties go-getter. He wears the fanciest suits, the nicest ties, and "seemingly" cares more about his appearance and his money then anything else.

Lindsey and Angel meet in the first episode, when Angel flings Lindsey's client out the window. Lindsey takes it in stride, but when Wolfram and Hart make Angel a project Lindsey becomes an antagonist. It doesn't become personal. Hiring an ex-slayer to attack Angel isn't personal. He laughingly jokes about his colleague being injured when he makes a joke in front of Faith. It's not personal.

They come together when Lindsey has a crisis of faith in Blind Date. His mentor says it best. "You're a young man Lindsey, you've hitched your wagon to our star and you're wondering where we might be going." At twenty five he wanted to rise higher then he had. Perhaps he was feeling qualms about the things he was asked to do and never sharing them. When he discovers that he has to help a paid assassin get away with the murder of children he goes to Angel for help. Lindsey believes in innocence, despite never believing that he had it himself.

After Angel succeeds in getting the information to save the children, Lindsey fails and is trapped in the company building. After a draconian "Sweep" where that colleague who was attacked by Faith is killed in front of him Lindsey learns the truth. Wolfram and Hart know about what he did. He has a choice to make and he stands like Christ in the desert- waiting to be tempted by the devil. He falls and is tempted, returning to Wolfram and Hart out of a sense of obligation as well as a sense of these were the first people who accepted him.

These were the people who had cared about him.

It's assumed that he signs his contract for a six figure salary and a full benefits package. He becomes a junior partner with a promise for advancement. His and Angel's rivalry becomes more heated especially when Lindsey helps the senior partners try and arrange for Angel's suffering. Angel responds by cutting Lindsey's hand off and the go-getter who doesn't take it personally takes it personal. Lindsey has seemingly chosen the side of evil.

Evil represented in the goal of Wolfram and Hart at the end of the series. The ressurection of Darla, Angel's sire who was killed off in Buffy.


Beauty and the Beast - or how the beast ran away with beauty's heart.
season two ~

Lindsey is driven when we enter season two, and he is given a new charge - to take care of Darla who's returned to human and is lost in this brave new world. Her importance cannot be overstated, she is his firm's project entrusted to him as part assignment and part (seemingly) reward for losing his hand to Angel. He's tender to Darla, chastising Lilah when she treats Darla as an idiot by speaking to her verbally. She personifies that same innocence that he fought to protect in season one. We see a new side to him, he is tender, gentle, and loving. Her presence, plus his wounded pride makes him twice as violent and twice as aggressive towards Angel. Angel isn't the only one growing up (so to speak.)

He is pushed towards Darla and she, partly out of confusion and partly out of a misguided attempt to return to power attempts to manipulate him. To her surprise (her unacknowledged surprise) it works. He falls head over heels for her because she makes him feel manly and important. He becomes close to her just as she discovers that returning was not the best move made. She is Wolfram and Hart's responsibility. They have restored her - but by doing so and bringing her back as a human she retains her human weaknesses including late stage syphilis. What could have been fixed with antibiotics is 400 years too late for treatment. Seemingly she is going to die.

After making peace with Angel and accepting it Darla prepared to die. Lindsey refused to accept that. Lindsey at the behest of the senior partners as well as his own desires brings in Drusilla. Drusilla, Darla's granddaughter (in a manner of speaking) re-sires Darla. Darla is restored to her glory. She takes revenge on wolfram and hart, slaughters Lindsey's coworkers and leaves he and Lilah alive so that they have a liaison to the world of darkness. The senior partners, rather then being annoyed with this made them co-vice presidents and encouraged them to compete against the other. Lilah became obsessed with work, Lindsey dove deeper into Darla's arms despite the fact that Darla now maintained all of her facilities.

After squaring off against angel and losing, Darla retreats into Lindsey's arms and the two begin a relationship. She eventually leaves him. The circumstances of it don't matter suffice to say that she has to seemingly find herself. Lindsey is heartbroken and begins to get distracted. This leads into his most important character arc, the piece of information that changes him (and makes him notorious in the buffy universe.)

Wolfram and Hart, feeling that Lindsey is the logical choice to continue on the senior projects department - arrange to have his hand returned to him. They use a donor (against the donor's will) and Lindsey's had refuses to operate under his own control. It spends it's day drawing "Kill, Kill, Kill." Until he finds out that he and Angel are working the same case. Wolfram and Hart has been stealing body parts off of donors and arranging for them to be attached to people. Lindsey and Angel become buddy comedy partners - destroy the bad guys and Lindsey's hand becomes his hand. He leaves the firm rather spectacularly - pushing Lilah to the forefront (and proving that he is by far more evil then she - leaving her to certain damnation.) he leaves Los Angeles with Angel's blessing - and a sign on his truck that ended up getting him a ticket.

Leaving Los Angeles left Lindsey at a moral crossroads. Driving away with a promise to return to his roots he becomes a recluse, a rolling stone. He reconnected with his past and his history - accepted that he was trying to pretend to be something he was n't (or so he thought). However, without Wolfram and Hart Lindsey lacked a purpose, and afraid of Wolfram and Hart's punishment the rolling stone turned into a fleeing creature. Little more then a ghost. Lindsey began to run, fleeing to the far corners of the globe including Nepal and Tibet. He found people there who were willing to train him, satisfying his innate lust for power based on the years he spent feeling powerless.

That changed him. Recognizing that even with Wolfram and Hart backing him he still was powerless, so he sent out to improve himself. He made a choice - that he was tired of being hurt and abused. The good guys had consistently abused him in his mind, so he aligned himself with Wolfram and Hart. However, in returning to work with them he resolved that he would do so only on his terms. That meant making himself a more powerful individual, in proving himself to the senior partners.

At some point when this happened he discovered Wolfram and Hart's offer to Angel. Angry, he dedicated himself to bringing Angel down and proving that he was a worthy successor to the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram and Hart - as well as a worthy member of the circle of the black thorn. This meant that he had to become an expert in magic - and dealing with magic and the arcane left him powerful but emotionally scarred and stunted. By the fifth season he's acquired a love interest - Eve, who he treats like a lap dog until she sacrifices herself for him. (Herself here is a word referring to her immortality.) There's no information about what he had to do beyond taking a trip to Nepal, proving he's come a long way from the up-and-coming go getter that wolfram and hart hired, and an even longer way from the abused and forgotten farm boy that he started out as. He is protected by magical tattoos that Angel's team remove - which alerts him to the senior partners who don't take kindly to Lindsey trying to mess with Angel's plans.

Trapped in a hell dimension where he has a beautiful wife and a storybook life. At night he is dragged down to the basement and spends his evenings being tortured. When Angel needs to defeat the circle of the black thorn they go to Lindsey who has made himself something of an expert in them. Freeing him, he's put into Angel's custody as he is still technically an employee of the firm (You never leave Wolfram and Hart. It leaves you.)

When Angel is ready to take them down he enlists Lindsey's help as Lindsey has made himself into an expert swordsman. Lindsey agrees out of respect for Angel's fighting skill. After he and Angel's compatriot Lorne take out a group of demons Lorne shoots Lindsey three times in the chest. He is "not part of the solution." his work to find himself and be special is for nothing and he is sent to hell to suffer for his sins at the Firm's hands.