What are the Powers That Be's goals?

[Miss Muffet]

Are they just trying to get rid of all evil? Because that sounds impossible. Or are they just trying to get rid of Wolfram and Hart? Or do the not have an end goal?
What do you think?

 

[Antho]

They are like the councils. They exist, we don’t know why because they are useless 😂😂

 

[Plasma]

To drive the plot forwar-uh I mean nobody knows! 😉

The PtB are kind of an interesting force in that way. What are their motives? What is their end goal? Why is Angel/Spike so important? All questions that don’t (and really don’t need to be) answered.

A somewhat meta take you could glean from the show is that the PtB are the viewers themselves, a la Cabin in the Woods. The characters strive to impress and carry out the desires of the audience. Probably not what was intended, but it would be kind of fun!

 

[Cohen]

Listen I’m still wholly convinced the Council’s agenda is to keep balance. The slayer can’t be TOO good at her job, or good will tip too far from evil. But she can’t SUCK at her job, because then evil wins. Maybe the PTB are the same?

 

[thrasherpix]

The Powers That Be are far from perfect. The Oracles get killed in their own domain. W&H tried to purchase Cordy's eyes, apparently thinking they could steal the visions from them (presumably by inserting them into someone else, and then there's that ritual on Pylea...), and also "hacked" into the Higher Powers "network" at least twice to torture Cordelia. So they are fallible beings, not all knowing, and not "God" or His angels as society thinks on such things.


And I'm skipping some really sketchy behavior on their part, though I feel like pointing out that I consider Billy their fault. There was clearly no redemption for him, and by hiding him away, there wasn't even any deterrent value of torturing him. (And he didn't seem particularly traumatized by the experience.) The way it looks to me, he was grabbed and hidden away for the Senior Partners to take back...a game, so to speak.

(My headcanon is that both sides were satisfied when Lilah killed him, because to the HP it "proves evil turns on itself" while to the Sr Partners it showed individual strength and resolve to not take crap and the that only evil ways can defeat an evil opponent, and Billy was getting too chaotic--and though the Senior Partners like evil, they don't like chaos.)


Basically, they're truly immortal...and also bored out of their minds. It's possible that they feed off different energies, some feeding off hate and despair, the others feeding off love and happiness (it's not lost on me that those who gave their own lives to feed Jasmine felt such positive emotions--as Buffy did in her afterlife, possibly being slowly devoured at a rate identicial to "hell time," that is several months dead was but a few seconds there).

I've noticed that as a rule of thumb, those who serve the Lower Beings sacrifice others while those who serve the Higher Beings work to sacrifice themselves (and the HP will lie if necessary). Interesting enough, a LB power was more helpful to Angel than the Oracles.

And I just can't help but compare them to this (remembering Lilah saying she didn't care about the law, and though evil who defended individual depravity, they also believed in an organized social structure that loved to use competition for individual empowerment among the employees) to these jerks in B5:

 

[Ethan Reigns]

The Powers That Be appear to be the Fates of Greek mythology. They were Clotho, the spinner, Lachesis, the apportioner and Atropos, the inflexible. They had control of the events that take place in everyone's life and generally have no concern about the outcome although they can occasionally be convinced to make things go differently from what they had planned. In this mythology, Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachesis measured it and Atropos cut it off. Angel tries to change destiny by going to the PTB, who are normally unconcerned with outcomes, but he had to bring gifts to make it happen.

 

[Stake fodder]

I have a notion that the PtB were higher beings who had their own ultimate agenda or goal that they were pursuing, and Angel, Cordelia, Jasmine, etc. were small threads that were interwoven into that ultimate end. I can't remember now if I got that idea from AtS or in a previous discussion with @thrasherpix. But what those ultimate goals are, I can't guess. "Mysterious ways" and all that!

It seemed that while initially they acted with benevolence, in the end they just used people as pawns to set in place for some endgame that only they knew. The Jasmine arc was an example of this mysterious endgame, but itself only a part of the Big Picture.

In other words, it was a mistake on Angel and co's part to think that the PtB cared what happened to them. They were willing to act on behalf of Angel, or even W&H, as long as it didn't interfere with their own plans. But you could never know if they had a hidden agenda about what wishes they granted. If I had to guess at their goal, I would say it was to create some perfect world for themselves, which may or may not be to the benefit of (other) gods, demons, or humans.

 

[Cohen]

I have a notion that the PtB were higher beings who had their own ultimate agenda or goal that they were pursuing, and Angel, Cordelia, Jasmine, etc. were small threads that were interwoven into that ultimate end. I can't remember now if I got that idea from AtS or in a previous discussion with @thrasherpix. But what those ultimate goals are, I can't guess. "Mysterious ways" and all that!

It seemed that while initially they acted with benevolence, in the end they just used people as pawns to set in place for some endgame that only they knew. The Jasmine arc was an example of this mysterious endgame, but itself only a part of the Big Picture.

In other words, it was a mistake on Angel and co's part to think that the PtB cared what happened to them. They were willing to act on behalf of Angel, or even W&H, as long as it didn't interfere with their own plans. But you could never know if they had a hidden agenda about what wishes they granted. If I had to guess at their goal, I would say it was to create some perfect world for themselves, which may or may not be to the benefit of (other) gods, demons, or humans.

Honestly all this in consideration, it would have been better if Angel Investigations stayed at the Hyperion in season 5, and there was a dual big bad between TPB and W&H, with AI caught in the middle. They still could have introduced Illyria in some way, maybe W&H calls her and Wes in to examine the sarcophagus, but the battle between the three parties would have been a much better coming together of threads from all the seasons. The apocalypse they were gearing towards by the end of the season could have been instigated from this fight.