Buffy The Vampire Slayer: 10 Best Spike Episodes
5. Lies My Parents Told Me (Season 7, Episode 17)
Buffy loves a good flashback episode, and by this point in the show's final season, it would have been fair to assume the show was done with them, ready for a more conventional speed to the finish line.
Lies My Parents Told Me remains one of the best episodes of the show's last season, wherein Spike takes centre stage and the gang try to get the First Evil out of his head.
Put under a bizarre test by Giles, Spike realises that the First is able to control him by manipulating the memories he has of his late mother. The flashbacks running through the episode show Spike as a newly-sired vampire, who sires his own mother to save her from her declining health. Unfortunately, this brings out the monster within her and Spike kills her.
The episode is intercut with new high school principal Robin Wood attempting - with poor results - to kill Spike and get revenge for his own mother's death years earlier.
It's a fast-paced episode in which Spike's horrific past is revealed more than ever, and he's forced to come to terms with his old life once more.