I've never felt Giles was being the bad guy here either. It's Angel who's decided to go work for Ultimate Evil, after all.
And since his reason for doing so was Connor, and the memory spell means that nobody else even knows about Connor, then Angel would have been unable to give anyone else a good reason why he was working for W&H.
Incidentally, Giles says that Willow is unable to help because she's gone to Tibet and is currently on the astral plane: that does seem like an actual reason why she's unavailable, and not just a feeble "She's washing her hair" excuse. :-) I'm guessing this is part of the "six month mystical walkabout" she went on between seasons 7 and 8.
Although my own theory is that actually, Willow and Buffy and Giles already knew that Illyria was about to rise, and Willow was actually off doing something about it, like destroying that temple that Illyria goes to to summon her army. I've got a half-finished fic around here somewhere going into that in a lot more depth.
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Date: 2008-11-02 02:23 pm (UTC)And since his reason for doing so was Connor, and the memory spell means that nobody else even knows about Connor, then Angel would have been unable to give anyone else a good reason why he was working for W&H.
Incidentally, Giles says that Willow is unable to help because she's gone to Tibet and is currently on the astral plane: that does seem like an actual reason why she's unavailable, and not just a feeble "She's washing her hair" excuse. :-) I'm guessing this is part of the "six month mystical walkabout" she went on between seasons 7 and 8.
Although my own theory is that actually, Willow and Buffy and Giles already knew that Illyria was about to rise, and Willow was actually off doing something about it, like destroying that temple that Illyria goes to to summon her army. I've got a half-finished fic around here somewhere going into that in a lot more depth.