While there were several important symbols in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Claddagh rings shared between Buffy and Angel stand out for their varied meanings to the characters and the audience. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, teenager Buffy Summers received superpowers to hunt down the forces of evil. However, this became increasingly complicated when she fell in love with Angel, a vampire with a soul. Buffy and Angel's relationship was a critical part of the first three seasons of Buffy, and while Angel eventually moved to Los Angeles (and his own spin-off series), their time together had a major impact on the entire Buffyverse.
Buffy included several bad romantic tropes, but the scene in which Angel gave Buffy a Claddagh ring was actually a very romantic moment, setting up Buffy and Angel's relationship trials and successes early on. Angel got Buffy a Claddagh ring as a gift for her birthday (as well as wearing one himself), leading to the couple sharing their love for one another and sleeping together. Tragically, the happiness that came from their time together caused him to lose his soul, beginning a major crisis for both the forces of good and Buffy and Angel's relationship with each other.
The Claddagh Ring Represents Buffy And Angel’s Love
The Claddagh ring serves as a powerful symbol of Angel and Buffy’s romantic relationship, strengthened by the pain and loss they faced in the name of its values. As Angel explained in season 2, episode 13, "Surprise," the ring has three components that represent friendship, loyalty, and love. This was Buffy's first real definition of love, and while she was given the ring right before losing Angel, the idea that love should always be bolstered by friendship and loyalty was already fundamental to her understanding of the world.
Perhaps worse than just the loss of Angel's love was the perversion of it, with Angelus actively using each of the Claddagh ring values against Buffy. He used Buffy's feelings as a weapon against her, harming her friends and allies and taunting her with the fact that her love for him was what made it possible for him to cause so much pain. As he explained to fellow Buffy the Vampire Slayer villain Spike, "To kill this girl, you have to love her." Angelus's ability to harm Buffy was proof that he did love her, ingraining the idea that love is dangerous into her future romantic attempts.
Angel was Buffy's first love, and for everything terrible that happened in their relationship, he taught her that she deserved friendship, loyalty, and love from the person she was with. The Claddagh ring continued to show up in future episodes, with Angel wearing it off and on in both Buffy and Angel's sudden shift to Angelus had shattered the friendship, loyalty, and love between himself and Buffy, and thereafter, the ring represented heartbreak and guilt to Buffy.
The Claddagh Ring Is The First Mention Of Angel’s Irish Heritage
While Angel's relationship with Buffy endangered his status as a vampire with a soul, the Claddagh ring also worked as a reference to Angel's Irish heritage and human life. Viewers could be forgiven for finding Angel's origins in Ireland largely irrelevant, but they came to represent his humanity as his story continued. Because Angel rarely discussed his past, using a traditional Irish courting ritual with Buffy and referring to the Irish as "my people" was a point of great vulnerability.
Though he had not been a paragon of moderation before Angel was turned into a vampire, his viciousness afterward made him look back on his time as a human in 1700s Ireland as a period of innocence. While Angelus committed innumerable atrocities, his massacre in Galway was the first, sticking with him enough that he resisted going back in Angel & Faith: Fight or Flight. Throughout Angel, the people who tied Angel to his humanity most all had connections to Ireland, from Buffy and the Claddagh ring to Doyle — a fellow Irishman who guided Angel to love humanity — and even Angel's son, whom he gave an Irish name, Connor.
The Claddagh Ring Didn’t Bring Angel Back From Hell
While the Claddagh ring worked primarily as a symbol in Buffy, it briefly seemed like it might have had mystical properties. While Angel was Angelus, he opened a rift between dimensions that Buffy could only close by casting Angel into a Hell dimension. Buffy’s decision to kill Angel destroyed her, and if had Angel stayed dead, Buffy’s entire perspective on life might have changed. As a way of coping with her guilt and grief, Buffy laid the Claddagh ring in front of the place where the dimensional rift has been, with Angel reappearing shortly thereafter.
It seemed as though the Claddagh ring, imbued with the love between Buffy and Angel, had somehow managed to bring him back from the Hell dimension, but that turned out to be a misdirection. Angel was really brought back by the First Evil, who wanted him to become Angelus again and kill Buffy. Knowing that it was evil, not love, that brought Angel back from the dead sends the message that the strength of Angel and Buffy's love was not enough to save him, leaving the Claddagh ring as a loaded symbol in Buffy the Vampire Slayer that ultimately had little power to back itself up.