Sarah Michelle Gellar’s reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer may be dead and buried, but the Buffyverse is still thriving. While fans hold out hope that Buffy can find another home, they can turn their attention to Tubi. The well-written, if somewhat infamous, spin-off is now free to stream with no subscription required.
Taking place after Buffy Season 3, Angel follows the titular vampire with a soul as he goes to the most soulless place in America — Los Angeles. The show starts slowly as Angel (David Boreanaz) teams up with Buffy’s old classmate Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) to help the helpless. The first season centers on Angel Investigations, a supernatural private investigation service, but throughout its five seasons, Angel went to the depths of hell in many storylines which were too dark for its flagship series.
‘Angel’ Was a Proper Follow-Up to ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’
Spin-offs are typically considered worse versions of the series that made them famous, but Angel is an outlier. It beat the odds by not trying to replicate what made Buffy great, but by telling entirely new stories. Buffy had its dark days, such as Season 6, but largely stuck to coming-of-age stories set in high school. Angel had a significantly darker tone because it was thematically about the trials of adulthood.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
The show forged its own path while still respecting the mythology and lore of the original. Angel and Buffy became their own extended universe with thrilling crossover events that made both shows much more enjoyable to watch. Angel also functioned as a story that stood on its own two feet, with plotlines that no other series was even attempting to tell.
The protagonist’s entire story arc stems from his attempt to redeem himself. At the time, Angel was the only vampire with a soul, cursed to relive every murder and atrocity he committed with a conscience. With the hope of one day becoming human, Angel takes each day as it comes, solving supernatural mysteries and saving the world.
At its heart, the series is a film noir that is emotionally harrowing at times. There is levity to the show as Angel tries for five years to fight against the most evil beings of all time – corporate lawyers. However, the story shines when it comes to its central thesis. Through sexual assault, misogyny, and soul-sucking lawyers, Angel always maintains that no matter what happens, it is important to keep fighting.
In a poignant line that defines the series, Angel states: “If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.” The cancellation of the show after Season 5 was unexpected, but the show hammers home this point in its final moments. Angel had a proper ending as the core group continues to fight because that is often what life as an adult feels like. It is a constant struggle, but a struggle that is important nonetheless. Viewers can experience the ups and downs of Angel’s fight against evil by streaming all five seasons on Tubi.
Release Date
1999 – 2004
Network
The WB
Directors
James A. Contner, David Greenwalt, Tim Minear, Bill L. Norton, Terrence O’Hara, Marita Grabiak, Skip Schoolnik, David Grossman, Frederick King Keller, Jefferson Kibbee, Michael Grossman, Vern Gillum, Bruce Seth Green, David Straiton, Steven S. DeKnight, Turi Meyer, David Semel, Michael Lange, Scott McGinnis, Thomas J. Wright, Ben Edlund, David Boreanaz, James Whitmore Jr., Krishna Rao
Writers
jeffrey bell, Mere Smith, Elizabeth Craft, Sarah Fain, Shawn Ryan, Drew Goddard, Howard Gordon, Jeannine Renshaw, Jim Kouf, Douglas Petrie, Tracey Stern, David H. Goodman, Brent Fletcher, Gary Campbell, Jane Espenson, Marti Noxon
