The secret sauce that makes Spuffy work so much better than most newer Enemies to Lovers is that that Spike is weird little freak who shows in painstaking detail the embarrassing growing pains of developing as a person. He's not some ~secret good guy~ who's just misunderstood, he was actually an evil little shit with just enough charisma to be too human to stake so the main characters let him stick around. He had to claw his way to humanity and it was that growth, and the slow development of Buffy's affections in response to it, that makes it so compelling.
YES. This is why I love enemies-to-lovers but hate "enemies to lovers" as a trope generally, because no one does it like they did it. It's only fun when they're ACTUALLY enemies and bonus fun when they're enemies because one of them is an ACTUAL bad boy (or girl).
Most stuff labeled "enemies to lovers" featuring a baddie character is actually "two people who argue the first few times they meet" and "guy who is rough around the edges but secretly very kind and goodhearted". It's just cheap and doesn't hit the same but it's also way easier so I get why it's done so often. Also fandom nowdays has a LOT of young fans who can't seem to handle like...moral and emotional complexity?
Enemies to lovers works best when writers don't chicken out on making them proper enemies and fans don't throw a fit about them acting like enemies instead of pseudo enemies who don't go beyond bantering with each other.
This is why Spuffy stays elite. They genuinely wanted to kill each other at some point and would have done so but didn't bcs circumstances kept preventing it and, once the connection was forged, the banter that followed was like icing on the cake which we enjoyed thoroughly because we had lived through their bloodlust for each other.
Honestly, I don't even need one of the characters to be truly evil so much I just need real conflict between them. No chickening out and making them have all the same opinions that they misunderstand at first. Real conflict, real animosity, and the real capacity to grow and change each other profoundly.
So many newer books market themselves as EtL but the character's "enemies" phase is basically just them being snarky and misunderstanding each other, meanwhile they're secretly entirely on the same page and both are heroes who love saving puppies. What makes EtL work is growth. Way too many writers are too cowardly to actually commit to the premise of EtL, which is an inherently harrowing and difficult arc for a relationship, yet want to entice the audience with it anyways. Hence, the vast majority of canon EtL stories are just kind of milquetoast and shallow and it doesn't hit.
Spuffy reigns supreme because, in Spike not being a planned love interest, he was very much created with a worldview that clashes with Buffy's. They were never meant to be friends, let alone lovers and their clash of ideals is a VERY real and richly explored conflict.
