Senior Partners
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The Senior Partners, also known as The Wolf, the Ram and the Hart are fictional characters in the television series Angel. Throughout the duration of the series, they remain as unseen characters, except for the appearance of one of their ranks in the episode "Reprise".
They are a cabal of demons who seek to bring about the apocalypse on Earth and perhaps other dimensions. They do not live in the Earthly realm, but affect it through the law firm Wolfram & Hart. In the dimension Pylea, the Senior Partners acted through a ruling cult of demon monks known as the Covenant of Trombli.
[edit] History
When the Earth was young and under the rule of the Old Ones, a group known as the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart emerged. They were originally weak (barely stronger than vampires, according to Illyria); however, as the Old Ones began to fade and humans rose to power, the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart also became stronger and more influential, exploiting the darkness and weaknesses of human nature.
The Wolf, Ram and Hart eventually take the form of a law firm known as Wolfram and Hart, which exists not only on Earth, but in other dimensions as well (Pylea, for example), in order to protect and promote evil. At this point, they become known as the Senior Partners and leave this dimension. To maintain their power on Earth, they created a secret society called the Circle of the Black Thorn, attracting the most powerful and ambitious individuals with the promise of more power. To maintain contact with their many servants, the Senior Partners employ dark entities of great power to occupy the position of Conduit of the White Room. They also employ a large number of lawyers, whose contracts extend even into the afterlife, as well as liaisons, who are also known as the Children of the Senior Partners; the Children are creatures with human appearance who are endowed with heightened abilities and immortality for the duration of their association with Wolfram and Hart.
The Scroll of Aberjia foretells that a vampire with a soul would play an important role in the End of Days, but was not specific about which side he would take. When Angel arrives in Los Angeles, the Senior Partners hope to sway him to their side for their scheduled apocalypse. They want to corrupt him and distract him from his mission, and order that he not be killed under any circumstances.
Though dwelling in another dimension, one of the Senior Partners enters this realm every 75 years to visit each branch of the firm for an event known as The Review, which fills W&H employees with dread for both their jobs and lives. When disappointed, the Senior Partners enforce punishments such as forcing a victim to eat his own liver or allowing lawyers to behead their superiors. In one instance they took the children of Linwood Murrow as a sacrifice. In preparation for this event, many employees perform sacrifices of animals (or even their own children) in order to appease their masters and invoke good fortune. In Angel a Senior Partner appears for The Review in the form of a Kleynach demon, a powerful species capable of moving between dimensions using the Band of Blacknill, a mystical ring. Angel manages to destroy the physical form of the Senior Partner and uses the Band of Blacknill to travel to the stronghold of the Senior Partners, only to realize that their "home office" is actually this dimension; he learns that the power of the Senior Partners lies in mankind's own capacity for evil. Although he initially despairs that fighting the Senior Partners is futile, Angel realizes that he must combat the Senior Partners by fighting evil one day at a time.
Angel continues to thwart the efforts of the Senior Partners and Wolfram and Hart, both directly and indirectly. For example, their plans are jeopardized when Angel is trapped beneath the ocean's surface, partly due to Linwood's fear of the vampire. For this, the Senior Partner known as Mr. Suvarta (the only time a Senior Partner is referenced by name) allows Lilah Morgan to dethrone Linwood by beheading him. Their plans are further upset when, in the same time frame, two powerful entities - The First Evil and the goddess Jasmine - both set in motion their own apocalypses, with Jasmine's agent the Beast killing every single member of Wolfram & Hart's LA branch that it could find, as well as the Partner's Conduit (Mesektet).
The next chance for the Senior Partners to put Angel under their thumb comes after the death of Jasmine. Angel Investigations has prevented the creation of a world without wars, hatred, disease or famine in order to safeguard mankind's free will. Because he successfully destroyed world peace, the Senior Partners offer them the chance to run the firm's Los Angeles branch. Angel accepts the offer, with the condition that the firm give his son Connor a new life and erase all memories of Connor's past. In order to keep Angel under their control, the Senior Partners have a "failsafe" installed and send one of their children, Eve, to act as their liaison.
Although Angel and his friends attempt to do good in their new positions, by being "a part of the system," they are doing so under the Senior Partners' terms, which is ultimately the demons' plan. Yet the return of former lawyer Lindsey MacDonald upsets the plan the demons had laid down. Eve falls in love with him, and Spike begins protecting the people of Los Angeles when Lindsey approaches him pretending to be Doyle. After Lindsey is defeated by Angel, he is imprisoned in another dimension by the Senior Partners. With Eve's betrayal, the Senior Partners send a new liaison, Marcus Hamilton, who contractually strips Eve of her privileges (such as eternal youth) and takes them for himself.
Angel's doubts about the Senior Partners' motives lead him to form a plot of his own. He pretends to have been corrupted by the firm's temptations in order to become a member of the Circle of the Black Thorn so he can attempt to destroy the Circle from within. Angel understands that the Senior Partners' power will likely be eternal due to mankind's inherent weakness and corruption, yet he refuses to serve them. Instead he and his friends successfully eliminate each member of the Circle of the Black Thorn, as well as Hamilton, bringing the Senior Partners' grand endgame to a grinding halt, if only for a brief shining moment.
In retaliation for the insurgence, the Senior Partners unleash all of Hell's legions on Los Angeles to eliminate Angel and his team as well as send Los Angeles to a hell dimension soon after.
It is later revealed in the canonical Angel: After the Fall limited series set after the conclusion of the Angel television series, that the Senior Partners decided to spare Angel even after he had destroyed the circle of the Black Thorn. Even deciding to give him some protection from the demons who now held power over Los Angeles. It is also revealed that a now ghostly Wesley Wyndham Pryce has become their representative, bound to the Senior Partners even after death due to his contractual agreement with them, and they have partly transformed Angel into a human to deprive him of his strength when he needs it most.
[edit] Appearances
- "Reprise": One of the Senior Partners incarnates in this dimension under the form of a Kleynach demon. This is the only time a Senior Partner, at least partially, reveals itself physically.
[edit] Children of the Senior Partners
Children of the Senior Partners is a term used to refer to a certain kind of fictional humanoid creature on Angel.
The Children of the Senior Partners are created by these demons through unknown means to act as agents for Wolfram & Hart. Depending on their purpose, they are granted different abilities. All of them have the appearance of humans and cannot be identified as non-humans by vampires, though a pure demon like Illyria was able to tell the difference. Despite this, the blood of these beings is rich in energy and power and can feed a vampire.
The only two members of this kind shown were Eve and Marcus Hamilton. Eve was sent to act as liaison between Angel and the Senior Partners after he took over the Los Angeles branch of the firm. Hamilton served as an emissary and as an enforcer that later replaced Eve in her liaison duties.
From a meeting between them, it is learned that Hamilton knew Drogyn before becoming Angel's liaison to the Senior Partners and the nature of their relationship suggests that Hamilton was serving the Senior Partners in another capacity. Eve was known to have had a college career prior to her time at Wolfram & Hart. Eve went to UC Santa Cruz, which was established in 1965. In the episode "Underneath", Eve states that she is “a child of the Senior Partners, created to do their bidding".
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