+RILEY+
Colonel:
You're a dead man, Riley Finn.
Riley:
No, sir. I'm an anarchist.
For a while, Riley was an
anarchist, but not the antichrist. That would be silly. Ultimately, however,
he did return to the government, and left Sunnydale.
When he first blundered
into Season Four, Riley represented someone with what you could call the
typical Horror movie character's perspective; demons bad, humans good.
Kill the demons, and all will be well. Rapidly, however, his mind was expanded,
and he changed from a drone of the oppressors, to someone who could see
the shades of grey present in the Buffyverse.
As a character, Riley didn't
arouse much interest at first; the problem was that because Buffy is pretty
much physically indestructible (being as she is the big bad buff slayer),
the show historically replaced physical danger with emotional danger. Angelus
was never a physical danger to Buffy - she could always kick his, well,
groin, as a matter
of fact. So because Riley failed to create tension in his relationship
with Buffy, initially he didn't work so well.
Later, however, he was developed,
and had somewhat of a crisis of conscience. His belief, correct of not,
that Buffy didn't love him drew him into darker areas. But, as Spike says,
he still couldn't do it - he couldn't be bad, and when he tried to never
quite succeeded. Yet, in retrospect, he's an interesting character, even
if his depth wasn't apparent at first.
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