Angel Investigations

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"When the chips are down, when you're at the end of your rope, you need someone you can count on. And that's what you'll find here. Someone who'll go all the way, who'll protect you no matter what. Don't lose hope. Come on over to our offices, and you'll see there's still heroes in this world."

―Allen Francis Doyle^[src]

Angel Investigations logo

Angel Investigations is the name of a detective agency specializing in supernatural cases run by Angel. It is sometimes abbreviated as AI. The agency allows Angel to openly advertise his willingness to assist people in trouble without specifying the agency's specialization in supernatural cases; their slogan We Help the Helpless is especially appealing to people who are unfamiliar with the supernatural world and therefore are afraid to ask for help, fearing they will be considered crazy, but who are nonetheless in desperate need of aid.

Throughout most of the series' run, the agency has employed most of the characters, and provided the series with a steady income of storylines. Because of this, AI is somewhat synonymous to the group of main characters. It is also known as Team Angel, a term that could be employed even following the demise of Angel Investigations as a business.

History

The agency is founded by Angel sometime between the first and second episodes of Season One. Angel makes friends with Doyle, a half-demon who's been given visions by The Powers That Be of people in need of Angel's help. After they successfully rescue former Sunnydale associate Cordelia Chase, she joins them and encourages them to front their operations with a detective agency, with the hope of having a steady paycheck while she attempts to make it as an actress. Cordelia also coins their slogan, "We help the hopeless" and designs their business logo, a stylized angel which resembles "a lobster" (Although she intended for it to be an angel).

Halfway through Season 1, Doyle passe

Angel Investigations calling card

s his visions on to Cordelia just prior to his death. Another old Sunnydale friend, self-styled "rogue demon hunter" and former Watcher Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, joins Angel Investigations soon thereafter bringing an extensive knowledge of demons and magic to the agency. At the end of season one, street tough vampire hunter Charles Gunn also joins AI, adding much-needed brawn to their group. AI originally operate out of Angel's residence, a basement apartment beneath a ground floor office space comprised of an inner executive office and an outer reception area. At the end of the first season, however, an agent of the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart blows up the building as part of a scheme to eliminate Angel.

Cordelia's residence is pressed into service as AI headquarters until shortly into Season 2, when AI moves to a new location, the Hyperion Hotel. Now empty and all but abandoned, the Hyperion is a luxury hotel where Angel stayed in 1952. The Hyperion was abandoned due to a demon that drove the occupants to insanity. AI kills the demon and takes control of the building for use as their headquarters, Angel concluding that they will redeem the building like he seeks to redeem himself. The manager's office in the lobby is used by Angel (and later Wesley) and several of the empty rooms are used as a residence for various characters. Halfway through season two, Angel fires his three colleagues after escalating disagreements about his growing moral corruption. Instead of disbanding while Angel deals with his private issues, Gunn, Cordelia, and Wesley continue running AI without him in a rented office. They opt to keep the name "Angel Investigations" because they feel they are continuing the "mission" that Angel started out with, but their attempts to operate independently are hamped by the lack of Angel's supernatural abilities and his weapons stockpile. Eventually, Angel rejoins them and their base of operations returns to the Hyperion Hotel. As part of his amends, he agrees to work for them and Wesley is selected as the leader of the team. At the end of the second season, A.I. spent several episodes in the demon-dimension Pylea, home to friend Lorne. There they rescue Winifred Burkle, a stranded former physics student, who joins the agency around the middle of Season 3 after spending some time recovering from the trauma of her time in Pylea.

After a fallout in Season 3, Wesley leaves the group and sets up his own group, which is run more as a paramilitary mercenary group than a detective agency. Angel resumes his function as leader with the departure of Wesley, although he was often unofficially 'in charge' even with Wesley's presence, leading their fight against such opponents as Gunn's rogue gang or Wolfram & Hart's attempts to abduct the pregnant Darla.

At the end of Season 4, the agency is dissolved when Angel assumes control over the L.A. branch of their former enemy Wolfram & Hart.

In Season 5, the A.I. team is now known as Team Angel, though, in "Underneath", Angel claims that they "don't have a name,"- when Spike reflects on his former time with the Scooby Gang- which Spike thinks is for the best, as he'd call them "Angel's Avengers or something" (Angel, at first, thinks this is ridiculous, but then apparently starts to consider it).

By After the Fall, the team seems to have been fully disbanded, though the members are still active, albeit operating mostly independent of each other; the now-human Angel and a ghostly Wesley are combating the Demon Lords from the destroyed Wolfram & Hart building, Spike and a somewhat unstable Illyria (now appearing to manifest Fred's personality within her) are posing as Demon Lords in order to save humans and benevolent demons, a vampiric Gunn is fighting them and plotting revenge against Angel for letting him die, Connor is heading a safe house for humans and benevolent demons (most of them having been rescued and evacuted into his care by Spike and an anonymous Angel) alongside Nina Ash and Gwen Raiden, and Lorne is the neutral Lord of Silver Lake with the Groosalugg as his champion. In Angel's battle with the other Demon Lords' champions, Lorne rallies the others in order to help him in the fight, and afterwards, they all move back into the Hyperion. As of these events, the Angel Investigations team has been fully reformed.

After the Senior Partners rewind time, Angel's crew are once again running Angel Investigations as a business from the Hyperion, though with several difficulties due to Angel's newfound fame; many of their clients are merely fans and admirers rather than people who actually need help.

Aforementioned karaoke-demon Lorne, and Angel's son Connor, are also affiliated with the agency, although it is unclear whether or not they are actually employees.