When Angel first appeared on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it seemed as if his endgame and destiny were to be with Buffy Summers. However, that was never meant to be. While Buffy and Angel’s relationship was so fierce that it gave him a moment of pure happiness that turned him evil again, they ended up going their separate ways after the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3. As a result, Angel ended up moving on to other relationships, including some love interests who came close to matching the one he had with Buffy herself..
While Buffy Summers had several love interests on her show, Angel put a little less attention into love and more into monster hunting, but he still had five notable love interests that fans latched onto.
Nina Ash was who Angel dated in the final season of his show, and it was a chance for the vampire with a soul to have a real relationship that wasn’t surrounded by life-or-death experiences. However, it didn’t start that way since Angel met Nina when he saved her from a werewolf attack. The problem is that the werewolf had already bitten Nina, so she became a werewolf. Her first time to change, Angel captured her and caged her until she reverted to human, and then he began to help her understand her new condition.
They began dating after this, when she realized she could still have a life as long as she did what Oz always did, and she protected others from herself when she knew the changes were coming. The only real problem with Nina on Angel was that she wasn’t on the show very much. Wesley often mentioned her as Angel’s girlfriend, and although she had sex with Angel, it didn’t trigger his curse, showing she wasn’t as important to him as Buffy was. She was the one Angel was dating during the apocalypse, and the comics showed she survived.
Kate Lockley was the person Angel developed romantic feelings for in the first season of his spinoff show. This made her someone who was hard for many fans to latch onto at first since she was Buffy’s replacement, and that didn’t sit well with fans who wanted Angel and Buffy to be together. Kate was a Los Angeles police officer who came after Angel when she thought he was a serial killer. When she realized he was also trying to stop the killer, and he saved her from the real killer, the two began to work together.
This eventually led them to a romantic relationship, and things moved forward from there. However, their relationship was doomed when a vampire killed Kate’s father, and she developed a hatred for Angel simply because he was a vampire who wasn’t concerned with anything other than dealing with problems in Los Angeles. Angel never stopped caring, and even saved Kate from a suicide attempt, but by this time, their relationship was broken completely.
One relationship that seemed controversial ended up as one of the best Angel ever had. When Cordelia showed up in Los Angeles, she ended up working with Angel at Angel Investigations and entered into a non-official relationship with the vampire. They never officially dated, but Angel knew that he had romantic feelings for Cordelia, and she also had deep feelings for him, although they were not meant to be. Through it all, they mostly denied their feelings.
The sad part is that Angel and Cordelia could have had a perfect relationship. She had grown tremendously since her days on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and her world really revolved around Angel. It also helped that they were a team, and that worked better than Angel and Buffy both being individual warriors, which always came between them. When Cordelia ended up ascending to a higher plane, it ended any chance they had, but their relationship was the most normal one on either series.
Sometimes, it’s all about the toxic relationships, and they don’t get any more toxic than Angel and Darla. Darla is the vampire who sired Angel, which connected them for all eternity. While Angel sired Drusilla, it was still Darla that he was forever attached to emotionally. This wasn’t a happy relationship for others, but as Angel and Darla killed countless people over the century, there might not have been a better vampire couple in fiction than these two monsters.
What really solidifies it, though, is when Darla returned and constantly tried to turn Angel back to her ways. It could have happened in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 2 when Angel lost his soul, and he began to kill again, but he had already killed Darla to save Buffy in the previous season. When Darla was resurrected in Angel, it was even more complicated since she was a human again, and she and Angel finally had a baby together. Darla even staked herself to ensure the life of Connor, allowing Angel’s son to live.
There can be no other love interest that holds a candle to Buffy Summers. When Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered, it was Angel who was in hiding and willing to do anything to protect Buffy as the new Slayer in Sunnydale. While a vampire himself, Buffy fell in love with him, realizing he had a soul and was not a mindless killer like other vampires. It is also a tragic relationship thanks to the second season.
Angel’s curse that gave him a soul could only be broken if he experienced true love and happiness, and when he and Buffy slept together, he lost his soul, proving that she was the only person he truly loved. Even later, when Angel had sex with Nina, he kept his soul, meaning Buffy was his one true soulmate. However, Buffy killed him in Season 2, and then nursed him back to health after his resurrection in Season 3 before he left her. While fans wanted them back together in the end, it was not meant to be. Buffy and Angel are one of fantasy’s most tragic love stories.
