Angel and Spike, two centuries of baggage wrapped in leather coats, were rivals, allies, roommates, enemies, almost-friends — everything except the thing the WB couldn’t quite show in the early 2000s: lovers. If Angel aired in 2025, the enemies-to-lovers arc would’ve been canon. Because Angel and Spike weren’t subtext. They were text with the serial numbers filed off.

TV has always thrived on frenemies — Xena and Callisto, Clark and Lex, Mulder and Krycek. But Angel and Spike perfected the form. Their entire relationship was built on tension that couldn’t be resolved by either killing each other or kissing, so they did a century of both in rotation. It’s Shakespearean: “I hate you” as the longest-running love letter in the Buffyverse.

Every scene between them is dripping with homoerotic shorthand. The lingering glances. The breathless taunts. The way Angel’s stoicism cracks only around Spike, and Spike’s bravado slips into raw need when Angel’s in the room. They spar like exes who know each other’s weak points too well. The subtext is loud enough to wake the dead — which, fittingly, they both already are.

And then there’s the leather. Angel in long flowing coats, Spike in skin-tight black. The wardrobe alone feels like the costume department was yelling, “We know what this is.”

On Angel’s fifth season, when the two literally became roommates, the writers stopped even pretending. Spike lounging around, drinking blood bags in Angel’s office. Angel sulking like a husband whose boyfriend won’t do the dishes. Their bickering wasn’t rivalry anymore; it was domesticity. “My rival lives on my couch” is just one rewrite away from “we’re divorced but still sleeping together.”

Their dynamic shifts constantly — allies, enemies, reluctant teammates — but always loops back to intimacy disguised as irritation. The sparks are too obvious to ignore. Every fight reads like foreplay. Every insult lands like a love tap.

And then there’s Buffy herself. The only way the WB could process Angel and Spike’s obsession with each other was by triangulating it through their shared love for the Slayer. But the math never added up. The depth of their rivalry, the rawness of their emotions, the way they taunted each other about who Buffy “loved more” — it wasn’t really about Buffy. She was the excuse. The safe narrative hook. Their fixation was with each other.

Fans saw it immediately. Slash fic exploded in the early 2000s because Spike/Angel had all the heat of a canonical romance without the hetero sanitiser. Even James Marsters leaned into it at cons, joking that Spike and Angel had probably “done it” in the past. The actors knew. The fans knew. The writers knew. The network pretended not to.

If it aired today, there’s no way studios would leave that gold mine untapped. Enemies-to-lovers is prestige television’s favourite queer trope now — Villanelle and Eve in Killing Eve, Aziraphale and Crowley in Good Omens, even Stede and Blackbeard in Our Flag Means Death. Angel and Spike walked so all those messy gays could run.

Because their dynamic mirrors queer longing itself: obsession hidden as hostility, desire reframed as rivalry, intimacy encoded in banter. Growing up queer often meant turning crushes into “enemies,” because wanting too openly wasn’t safe. Angel and Spike capture that exact energy — two men locked in a dance of attraction and denial, circling each other because naming it outright would change everything.

And in queer reading, that tension is the romance. We don’t need them to kiss (though, let’s be real, we wanted it). Their every scene is already dripping with that energy.

If Angel and Spike aired today, there’s no way showrunners would resist making them endgame. They’d share that one kiss before the apocalypse. They’d have the messy love/hate dynamic carried into fan-favourite “ship of the century” status. Their arc was already written; the only thing missing was the kiss.

Because in the end, Angel and Spike weren’t rivals. They were codependent, centuries-old lovers whose story never got the courage of its convictions. And we deserved that courage.

Angel and Spike’s love story was hidden under layers of denial, censorship, and 2000s network panic. But it’s still there, undeniable, in every taunt, every punch, every leather-clad glare. They weren’t just enemies. They weren’t just friends. They weren’t just rivals. They were the Buffyverse’s great unfinished romance.

And if it aired today? You can’t tell me they wouldn’t be endgame.