Did Darla love Connor?

[HannahRose]

Do you think that Darla loved Connor? Did she kill herself for him or for herself?

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

If you take it on face value, Darla, by some special grace, was in heaven and was sent to try to convince Connor not to kill the virgin and unleash Jasmine. So, as far as shriving goes, what she did was enough for TPTB. If you don't want to take that on face value, I can't blame you, as lying gods and shape shifting ghosts are big motifs of this season. But it is nice to have one of Angel's exes who become victims of higher powers to get a happy ending out of it.

 

[thrasherpix]

I thought it was clear she would lose her soul and ability to love ("I won't even be able to remember I loved it"), so it was to protect (and thus for) Connor. And also so he could be born as I recall something about how her relatively dead body couldn't give birth and Connor would die, so this was her final, desperate solution, but something she likely intended to do anyway.

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

P.S. The other thing to recall is two fold. Vampires fear death. They fear losing their unlives, they fear whatever God waits to judge them, and hell holds no surprises for them. Especially Darla, who knows what's on the other side, better than most. So, aside from the occasional thralled sun o gram, it's a very big deal for an Sister of Aurelius to willingly give up her second life for a mortal.

Having said that, vampires have no pain tolerance. I could easily see her killing herself at the first sign of labor. But I don't know if the creators were thinking that.

 

[Bop]

I thought it was clear she would lose her soul and ability to love ("I won't even be able to remember I loved it"), so it was to protect (and thus for) Connor. And also so he could be born as I recall something about how her relatively dead body couldn't give birth and Connor would die, so this was her final, desperate solution, but something she likely intended to do anyway.

Yeah it seemed like Connor would have died otherwise because Darla couldn't give birth naturally and they also couldn't perform a C-section because something was protecting Connor, which is why Darla failed to abort him, and that something would have also prevented a C-section, I guess because it interpreted anything cutting into the womb as potential harm to Connor.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

How odd, some of the answers are poorly thought out. Was Darla a vampire when she bore Connor? Could she have had a C-section, how would you cut open a vampire that kept healing itself? How could Connor be aborted if the tube kept repairing itself? Staking was the only way out. Was Darla in heaven? As far as I'm aware the only mention of heaven was when Buffy thought she was there but she did not know if she was.

Did Darla say she loved her unborn baby, why is that enough or not enough for folk to believe?

 

[Sinmerina]

Yes. She definitely loved Connor and it had a lot to do with his soul being shared with her, so she was able to have motherly instincts and emotions. It is clear to me that she stakes herself for Connor.

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

Re: Darla In Heaven: Darla appeared in "Inside Out" as a ghost in a white outfit, claiming to have been sent by the Powers That Be. So, Darla survived death, and is on good terms with the Powers. and is dressed the same way as Cordie did when when she was in heaven, and the same way as Joyce did when she spoke to Dawn. Plain reading of the text, she's in heaven. Or, one of the near infinite number of demon dimension controlled by the Powers that be that we conventionally think of as heaven. I believe both Skip, Illyria and Tara have confirmed that heavenly dimensions are a thing, as did the gang when they stole the Delphic Tripod.

I would contend my position is sound based on the available evidence, but, season four is a little crazy, with all the Jasmine's conspiracy, and the regular ghosts and the First Evil, and a lot of unanswered questions as to who was whom, so I am willing to accept that other good hypotheses exist on this topic. Yes, Darla could have been the First trying to convince Connor to keep Jasmine from being born. Yes, the same could be said for Joyce or Lilah. Yes, Buffy's soul could have wound up in a random demon dimension, or heaven works more like Elysium or Valhalla where only the truly worthy go. Yes, the Powers could just be inhuman higher demons with foreign concepts of morality who have decided that that humanity is worthy of something other than cattle or slavery as opposed to divine or angelic. There's no series bible, there's no answer and there's not going to be an answer, so it's YMMV.

 

[thetopher]

I think Darla felt that she could and would be able to love Connor in more normal circumstances, but being an unsouled vampire meant that she could never, would not be able to.

Moreover she realized that she had never truly loved anyone as a vampire, only had an echo of love, as I believe that is all any vampire is capable of.