Angel will be forced to look into the past if he has any hope of warding off a future filled with death and destruction. While the vampire with a soul may not want to dwell on his days as Angelus, it may hold the key to everything. Is he strong enough to do it?
Note: This recap may contain spoilers!
Angel and Fred are in Ireland to perform an exorcism at a hotel, but this will not be a straightforward case. Instead, the vampire has grown contemplative and distracted ever since they got to Dublin. Being the friend that she is, Fred wants to know what’s going on and how she might help, but Angel’s very closed off about the cause. Looking inside his head, he might have a very good reason. He has been having some really messed up visions of the past, mixing his time as Angelus with images of gruesome flowers and bugs. But what’s hidden cannot remain so.
Concentrating on the case, the hotel ghosts start attacking them, so Fred no longer has the time to question Angel’s strange mood. But what should be a simple exorcism turns more serious, and in the midst of the fight Illyria takes over Fred. Helping to deal with the ghosts, she then turns her attention to Angel. She tells him that something is coming and that Angel needs to prepare for it. And then she shows him something that he cannot deny. One of the flowers from his vision is in this realm, growing and breaking through. It is up to Angel and Fred to figure out what it all means.
Their approaches to the situation are quite different. Fred wants to kill the flower, but Angel thinks that might trigger something worse. What he needs is answers, and those are in short supply. There is a possibility, though. Angel talks about a saint he heard about when he was younger who was able to see the future. The saint was buried with a scrying glass, and his body should be in a church nearby, so they head off to try out that possible solution. And Fred reveals a power of Illyria’s that might help, traveling through time. To this point Angel was unaware that she possessed the ability to do this, but since it was brought up now I’m sure it will come into play later.
At the church, they find a trigger to a hidden room. Since the opening’s small, it’s up to Fred to go inside and retrieve whatever’s in there, which turns out to be the saint’s bones and an object that looks like a mirror without the glass. They call the aunts for help to tell them what the object could be and how they could use it. Scrying doesn’t necessarily need glass. Filling the basin with water would achieve the same function.
Before they can focus on the scrying, they hear a knocking on their hotel door and then a black mass is in their room. This gives way to a swarm of bugs, looking exactly like those from Angel’s vision. This brings Illyria out again with another warning. There’s a tear between the worlds and Angel must delve into the past to fix the present. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t want to face up to what he did as Angelus because he must. The fate of the world depends on it.
Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
