The initial venture of Brian Lynch’s canonical continuation of Angel seemed like an excellent idea especially in light of the success of Buffy Season 8, and the less then acceptable ending the actual televised show received. Unlike the conclusion of Buffy, Angel lacked any sense of resolution but conversely opened up more unanswered questions. Lynch’s decision to create a completely new dynamic for the characters by thrusting LA into hell also seemed like a commendable idea. Buffy seemed to have made an equally shifting decision that worked out for the better with its activation of all the Slayer potentials.
In the case of After The Fall though, I always felt that the initial setup was both a cop-out as well as something that simply couldn’t work in the long run. If anything, it seemed like the opening issue tried tremendously hard, too hard even, to blow away its readers with an overload of startling developments. Not only was the whole ensemble plunged into hell, but all of LA, while Gunn was turned into a vampire, Angel into a human, and Wesley’s death seemed to have been annulled through his return as a guiding ghost. Overall, there seemed to be a general sense that the seemingly sacrificial and heroic acts of the ensemble in the ultimate episode was all for naught by the introduction of this new story arc.
And in the long run it seems if anything, it didn’t work. Whether or not Lynch actually planned the story arc out in the way it unfolded is unknown, but what is known is he basically ret-conned the whole thing in the concluding issue just a few weeks ago. The whole event of LA getting sent to hell now no longer happened, so Gunn never became a vampire, nor did he ever kill Connor. To add to this lack of progression, it seems if anything the franchise had made a regression. The issue essentially ends with a foreshadowing tone that the ensemble is being reunited under the guise of the old Angel Investigations. We even see Nina manning the desk at the Hyperion as if this was simply back to Season Two with the old monster-of-the-week formula borrowed from Buffy.
