Angel (series)/Plot summary
This is a plot summary of the series AngelWarning: Plot details follow.
After moving to Los Angeles, Angel is visited by an Irishman named Doyle who is half human, half Brachan demon. Doyle explains to Angel that he experiences visions from the "Powers That Be" (also referred to throughout the series as "The PTB's") of people who are in danger or in trouble and that 'The Powers' have sent him as a messenger on their behalf so that Angel can investigate these visions. While on his first investigation Angel bumps into Cordelia Chase, who has also moved to LA to escape Sunnydale and become an actress.
When Cordelia later bumps into vampire problems, Angel comes to the rescue and after that Cordelia comes up with the idea that she, Angel, and Doyle should start up a detective agency "to help the helpless - but charge a fee," as she puts it.
Partway through the first season, Doyle dies, sacrifices his life to save a group of defenceless part-human demons who were being hunted down for extermination by an army of pureblooded demons. Just before he dies he passes on his dangerous visions to Cordelia, who finds the visions painful.
Wesley Wyndham-Price (who had a recurring role as the new Watcher in season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) then makes an appearance in the next episode and since then has become a vital part of the team and major character. At the end of Season 1 we meet Charles Gunn, a black kid who leads a gang of street vampire-stakers. Gunn become a regular and member of the team the next season.
In the final episode of Season 1, several important events occur. Wesley translates an ancient prophecy that says after that after a final battle, the vampire with a soul will live (that is, become human). Meanwhile, Wolfram and Hart try to raise some powerful creature from the dead. Angel slices off Wolfram and Hart employee Lindsey's hand, but is unable to prevent the raising of the creature. At the end of the episode we see (but Angel does not) who this creature is: Darla, Angel's ex-lover who we first met in Buffy.
In Season 2, Wolfram and Hart's Lindsey preens Darla as their weapon to bring down Angel. But Darla is brought back as a human, not a vampire, so her conscience prevents her from doing terrible evil. But as a human, she also suffers from illness, and a terminal case of syphilis. After failing to get Angel to turn her back into a vampire, Lindsey brings in Drusilla, (a vampire sired by Angel) to keep Darla from dying. Enraged by this, Angel begins to grow darker. He cuts himself off from his staff and attempts to go after the pair himself. But after repeated despair, he goes to bed one night with Darla. In a seeming replay of his night with Buffy, he wakes up with an epiphany. But this time, instead of losing his soul, he sees the error of his ways and reunites with his group and banishes Darla.
Meanwhile, Lindsey is given some sort of magical procedure that replaces his lost hand. But the hand doesn't work quite right and in the process of investigating, he meets up with Angel and sees the error of associating with Wolfram and Hart. After talking things over, he leaves town.
Towards the end of the season, the group works with Lorne, the demon owner of a local demon karaoke bar. All of them somehow get transported to Lorne's home dimension, where they meet Lorne's family and Winifred "Fred" Burkle, a young former physics student who has been trapped in the dimension for five long years. The group and Fred return home, and Fred decides to become a member of the gang next season.
In Season 3 Darla once again returns, but this time she sacrifices her life to give birth to Angel's son Connor (magically conceived during their one night stand in season 2). After being kidnapped by an old enemy named Holtz (whose family Angelus and Darla killed over a hundred years ago), Angel feels that his son is lost forever. He attacks Wesley, indirectly responsible for the kidnapping, and banishes him from the group.
Near the end of the season, Connor comes back as a teenage boy, having been raised by Holtz in a demon dimension where time moves more quickly. But all is not so sweet as Connor has been brainwashed by Holtz to believe that Angel is still the evil vampire Angelus that Holtz once knew. In order to gain his final revenge on Angel, the greatly aged Holtz has his closest follower, Justine, kill him and frame Angel. The grieving Connor uses his inherited super-strength and his father's unsuspecting love to defeat Angel and imprison him in a casket on the bottom of the ocean. Cordelia disappears the same night, having been invited to be elevated to a Higher Plane, leaving a very confused Fred and Gunn to carry on at Angel Investigations.
At the start of Season 4, we learn that Wesley has captured Justine and used her to find and recover Angel. (At the same time, Wesley, exiled from the group, has been having a love affair with Lilah, Lindsey's replacement at Wolfram and Hart.) Cordelia also returns under mysterious circumstances. A hellish beast returns to earth, blocks out the sun, and rains fire from the skies. Cordelia, feeling that this may be her last night alive, sleeps with Connor. They turn out to live another day, but the absence of sunlight makes LA a party town for vampires. Cordelia sees visions which convince her that Angelus is the only one who knows how to stop the beast, so they extract Angel's soul.
But then we find that Cordelia is actually evil, and secretly controlling the Beast. While the gang isn't looking, she releases the evil Angelus, kills Lilah, and makes it look like Angelus did it. Then Cordelia reveals to Connor that she is pregnant with his child. Short on powerful fighters, the gang springs vampire slayer Faith from prison. But Faith turns out to be no match for Angelus, who feeds on her. But unknown to him, Faith had previously taken a powerful psychoactive drug, which neutralizes them both. Willow (from Buffy) visits, restores Angel's soul, and takes Faith back with her to Sunnydale.
Meanwhile, the gang figures out that Cordelia is the one behind all the evil shenanigans. But before they can capture her, Connor, deluded into thinking that the gang must be somehow evil, grabs Cordelia and takes her into hiding. Angel eventually tracks them down and is about to kill Cordelia when she gives birth to an adult Black woman named Jasmine before going into a coma. Jasmine, it turns out, is a god who has been using Cordelia's body to give birth to herself. Her winning smile makes all who see it fall under her spell of total happiness. But her and Cordelia's blood breaks the spell and lets people see her for who she truly is. Inoculated, Angel and the gang kill her (by revealing her true name, which Angel learned by visiting a demon dimension she had previously taken control of) just as she is about to take over the world.
In the final episode of the season, they are met by a resurrected Lilah, who congratulates them on keeping the world from total happiness and says that as a token of their appreciation, Wolfram and Hart would like to give them the LA branch. Skeptical at first, the gang is eventually won over, and takes the offer. Meanwhile, however, Connor has gone crazy at the loss of Jasmine, and has tied himself and the unconscious Cordelia up to several large bombs. To save both their lives, Angel allows Wolfram and Hart to give Connor a life as a normal child and erase him from everyone's memory, except his own.
In Season 5, the gang begins to get used to their new life at Wolfram and Hart when they receive a package. It turns out to be the amulet Spike used to destroy the Hellmouth, and once opened, Spike appears as a ghost. Later, Spike receives a package that recorporealizes him. Spike is skeptical that they can do good at an evil law firm, so he goes off to work on his own. He is approached by a returning Lindsey, who claims to be Doyle (Spike had never seen or heard of Doyle, so this works), and gets Spike to help the helpless the way Angel once did. Meanwhile, Cordelia returns and helps Angel find and stop Lindsey, who it turns out has superstrength and is attempting to release a giant monster to devour Wolfram and Hart. It turns out that Lindsey was responsible for bringing Spike back, both times, all a part of his plan to get revenge on both the Senior Partners and Angel. As Cordelia is saying her goodbyes, they're interrupted by a phone call, which informs Angel that Cordelia has just died. When he turns around, Cordelia is gone.
Later, Fred receives a mysterious sarcophagus in the mail. When she touches it, it infects her with a virus that hollows her out and gives birth to the ancient Illyria. Illyria, who has super-strength and can slow down her perception of time, uses Fred's body to try to raise her army and destroy Earth, but discovers that her army has long ago returned to dust. And that's where we are now.