Goodnight, Julia
"Are you going to betray me?"
This is the hardest part of the series to put together. All the other characters have their pasts explicitly explained, but everything about Spike is dealt with obliquely. Anyway, the first glimpse we get of Julia's face is in Session #5 (in a bar) and her importance is built upon when Spike staggers onto the sidewalk just outside her house, injured and bleeding, and falls flat on his face at her feet. This isn't their first meeting. Their first meeting seems to be in the aforementioned bar, while Spike is playing pool, seen through a flashback. We can almost hear the bells going in Spike's head from the startled, awestruck expression on his face as he looks at her. But who is Julia? My theory is she's connected to someone pretty important in the syndicate. She certainly holds herself with some pride and the way she looks at Spike at first does not seem admiring at all. In fact, she seems rather superior - unattainable.
During this period, Spike appears to have been pretty close with a tall, silver-haired would-be homicidal maniac named Vicious. (I still think the name should have given him pause.) They are frequently seen in flashbacks and in the end credits as standing back to back and once with identical devil-may-care grins. They were probably extremely good friends back then.
All that is pretty simple and straightforward. Here comes the difficult part.
My interpretation is that Spike and Vicious met Julia separately. Vicious was not in the bar scene with Spike, but he may have been there - the blonde guy Julia was watching could easily be him. It's entirely possible that Spike fell instantly in love (or at least in lust) with Julia on the spot but did nothing about it - he looks pretty flustered and overwhelmed in that shot. I don't know if Julia was already with Vicious then or she was just watching the underworld superstar on the rise, but I get the feeling that whether they had already met before or not, Vicious waited until he and Julia were clearly an item before bringing Spike into the picture. Perhaps Spike and Julia were not exactly on speaking terms until Vicious started going out with her - that Vicious in fact kept their relationship pretty much isolated from everything else - including his friendship with Spike.
There is one intersting shot of them in the end credits which I think serves as a hint of what eventually happened. All three of them are walking down a street, Vicious in the lead wearing a dark suit, Spike just behind him, looking back at Julia - who is traipsing after them. Vicious is going somewhere. His aloof demeanor, his stance, and his sober clothing seem to indicate that he has been planning on becoming a big-shot boss as early as his twenties. At the same time both Spike and Julia were content to tag along cheerfully behind him, interested in something else (namely, each other). This becomes evident in another shot during the end credits, where Julia and Spike turn a corner and find Vicious looking down at them (of course, we only see his legs). Who knows where they went off to, or whether their relationship at the time was already more than friendly. Whatever the case, there must have already been feelings there, if body language in a drawing means anything. They seem a little bit guilty to me. This event may have prompted Vicious' (maybe jealous) warning to Spike not to trust Julia, as his dark side begins to surface (Anakin, much?).
Then at some point Vicious starts taking Red Eye. See Exhibit A (the screencap). A vial of Red Eye lies on the table next to a vase of roses repeatedly shown in Julia's apartment window. Julia doesn't seem like a drug addict to me and neither does Spike (or if he is, it certainly isn't Red Eye - maybe 'shrooms). Vicious, with his pinpoint pupils, bulging eyes, gravelly voice, heavy eyebags, and crazy grimace of rage look suspiciously like Asimov's in Session #1. In another curious twist, besides the Asimov/Katrina and Spike/Julia parallel, there may also be a Vicious/Julia parallel there. Vicious, like Asimov, begins to alienate his lover because of the frightening fits of fury brought on by the drug and his subsequent dependence and addiction. When Julia (like Katrina) displays an interest in Spike's easygoing charm, Vicious (like Asimov) becomes irrationally possessive, driving Julia even further away and into Spike's arms.
So when Spike gets it into his head to leave the syndicate, perhaps sensing that Vicious' plans are about to come to a head and knowing that it could only mean chaos, he invites Julia to come along. But Julia feels that both of them are in too deep and is reluctant, and it becomes a moot point when Vicious discovers the note and forces Julia to choose between Spike dying and, er, Spike dying (he drives a mean bargain). So Julia tears up Spike's note and doesn't go to their appointed meeting place.
Spike then chooses to walk to his "death," still carrying the roses he perhaps meant to give Julia, and lets them slowly fall from his grasp. One can see the life and hope falling away from him, too, but he is determined to leave the syndicate and picks a fight in a cathedral, during which he drops a grenade and brings the house down on everybody - so to speak.
Although this death was a fake death, I can sort of think of it as a real death - or at least, the life that followed it was also a fake life. His years on the Bebop were just a way to pass the time until his past (and death) could catch up with him. But that's for another section now...
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