Talk of sex and Spike leads inevitably to a favorite 11th Hour topic: James Marsters. Espenson even seems to share our enthusiasm for the subject matter, and cites Spike as the character that's the most fun for her to write.

"Yeah, he's just a big bar of white chocolate," she quips. "I love Spike. And of course, he's a big, evil vampire, so certainly you can't say, 'Spike shouldn't be having sex!' I just don't get that. Even if you think sex is evil, I think it would be perfect for him!"

After Marsters' scenes with Mercedes McNab in "The Harsh Light of Day" -- which he performed without a shirt -- we tend to agree.

Season four has also heralded the return of the old Spike, the one we knew and loved from season two, who was certainly evil and just downright mean, roughing up everyone from the minions and his new main squeeze to Angel himself (on the Angel half of the crossover, "In the Dark"). And as Espenson reveals, it's all part of the master plan.

"We knew, and at the point where people watched that episode ['The Harsh Light of Day'], they didn't know that we were going to be emasculating Spike, that we were going to give him his current disability, that he can't bite people. So they may have felt like he was a little brutal for no reason, and in fact we did it very specifically to make him scary so that when he had this done to him, when he had the conditioning happen to him, so that we'd see the contrast. So that he wouldn't seem to have been powerless throughout the whole season, it would be a very nice distinct break between powerful bad-ass Spike and Spike that can't chase the other puppies anymore."

Put that way, it sounds a little diabolical. But there's more in store for Spike, too; Marsters has a two-year contract with the show, and for Spike that means major change. He'll have to change his very nature -- or at least his affiliations -- and side with the Slayer.

"He is going to continue to integrate himself into the group, over subsequent episodes," Espenson reveals. "Which is going to be very interesting, because his attitude remains Spike. He's still Spike, and he's still evil. You'll see how we're going to pull him more and more gradually into the group. The episode I just wrote is going to be episode 12, so it appears well into the new year, and Spike is still kind of at the edges; we're still very slowly bringing him in."