Buffy Character Analysis: Willow - The corruption and redemption of a pure spirit
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- Опубликовано: 28 июл 2024
- As part of a character breakdown I wanted to do an analysis of part of Willow's story arch and character and how it relates to Buffy as her spirit.
This is not fully comprehensive as that would take hours!
Major spoilers if you haven't seen the show, though why not I can't comprehend...
#buffy #buffyverse #buffythevampireslayer #willowrosenburg
To me Willow is an older but timeless example that the quiet ones are always the most dangerous because they later understand just how powerful they really are and seek to get a handle on that.
This was damn good analysis. During some frustrating moments where my spirit had been broken and I saw the suffering and injustice in the world, I would quip that maybe it would have been better if Dark Willow succeeded. BtVS has almost always succeeded in its metaphors and I’ll always love it for that.
This is really good analysis. This is the way I interpreted Willow’s shows-long arc from start to finish too. I never related it to Buffy’s soul but this makes a lot of sense. Especially with the way they parallel both their downfalls with depression and addiction in Season 6. It appeared that there was some sort of connection between them spiritually. And I guess you’ve delineated what, how and why.
Well done. 👏
In "Doppelgangland" Willow actually does have to deal with an identical twin of hers who appears to have the hots for her in her heart... that there is a dangerous situation for her character's virtue, if nothing else.
This is a beautiful discretion of willow. You have me in tears
I strongly agree with your observation that Willow is above all else addicted to control. We see a new version of that in s7 where she now has an almost obsessive preoccupation with controlling *herself* rather than other people. Doing the spell in the finale is her finally fully accepting (rather than blaming) the power that she has and using it in THE most positive way possible: empowering others. S7 confirms that it was never the magic specifically that corrupted Willow, it was simply a tool she could use to soothe her deep-seated fear of loss. Which is of course true of all kinds of addiction.
Also you'll notice that s1-2 Willow has a very passive role in the group. There's a small selection of instances where she takes charge (because Buffy isn't there to) but for the most part, she's not a big decision maker for the Scoobies, even compared to Xander. It isn't until she's given the power and has the confidence to make decisions that we start seeing her preoccupation with control.
Yeah, Willow’s addiction is not to magic. It’s to power and control. She would have cared less about magic if it couldn’t imbue her with the power she hungered for. And of course, with the possession of power, comes the impulsion for controlling everything and everyone.
Willow has always been a controller but just not in an obvious way. As you correctly picked up about her in Season 7, she becomes obsessed with controlling herself. But before Season 5 and 6 she was like this too. She had a compulsive need to control herself much like someone with an anxiety disorder does. She was constantly trying to please people, to get their attention and validation. She didn’t want to be a burden to anyone but she still wanted to be useful. She was always trying to control her thoughts and emotions lest she be seen as someone weird and unfavourable. She felt inconsequential in everything she did no matter how many times or how much she did it. Which only caused her to do it all the more. And she could never really be honest about herself due to all of this. The Willow we see in those early seasons was a Willow who wanted to crawl out of her own skin. She was not happy, her self-confidence and self-awareness was 0 and she was constantly worried about how others perceived of her. Fearing that they’d see her for how she really perceived of herself. As a loser, as a geek, as worthless, as valueless. As not significant enough to even be given the time of day.
When she accumulates power through her developing the ability to do magic, suddenly the scales tip over. Something bigger than her has taken hold of her and it has nothing to do with the magic itself. That’s just a tool. It’s all to do with how she feels from using magic. Powerful, capable, valuable and eventually - because of meeting Tara and the fact she was a witch too - lovable. She no longer felt like she meant nothing but only because she had that as an emotional crutch for her insecurities and anxieties. Everything else about her began to take a backseat. Her hacking, engineering and technological skills - her scientific side. Even her academic intelligence. She was less concerned about her school grades and more concerned with whether she could get a spell or ritual right. Everything about her became about magic and that’s why so many people mistake magic as the addiction. But if we compare it to actual drug or even alcohol addiction,… while the dependence may be to the substance itself, the need to have or use it isn’t. That’s always other reasons and they tend to be emotional or mental ones. They’re having trouble coping with grief or with loss. They’re struggling with their identity or sexuality,… they’re under immense pressure from school or work to achieve the impossible. They have had an abusive upbringing and are repressing the childhood trauma of it. There’s always something behind a physical addiction where the physical thing itself that is used isn’t really the problem that needs to be addressed. It’s just escapism from the real problem. The underlying emotional addiction.
With Willow it’s the compulsive desire for power and control so that they don’t feel like they don’t matter and that they’re not needed. And ‘Chosen’ is a good endgame for Willow but I really do feel they made a misstep in giving her a redemption arc from turning evil in Season 6 instead of writing her an arc that had her focus on getting to the root of what triggered all that to happen to begin with. To what has been bothering the woman since the fucking beginning of the show. I mean they start with that, - her and Giles talk about the root system and how everything is connected and that was a good metaphor for leading into how all facets of Willow are connected and therefore should be honoured and appreciated. But then they bring Kennedy into the narrative and it suddenly becomes about her saving her or some shit. And while it is sweet and I’m sure Willow enjoyed the caring attention she showed her - it wasn’t what she actually needed. What she needed was to lean on the support system she already had in the Scooby Gang and finally address her shows-long emotional complex trauma with not feeling worthy enough just as she was. And she does sort of do that in the end. But it’s in a very odd, pick-up-where-we-left off way when the whole season should have been dedicated to this.
I really disagree with this, because I think Willow always had a desire to control herself. Look at her behavior in I Robot, You Jane, staying up all night talking to her crush and lying about it, or Ted where her curiosity leads her to keep parts of him despite saying she'd just dispose of them, her behavior in season 3 in Dopplegangland and Chosen or in Fear Itself in season 4. Telling WIllow what she should and should not do, when she believes it is her choice is a sure fire way to at least upset her and maybe piss her off completely. I believe it's a desire to control others that is foreign to her and why it didn't make sense to me in season 6 and it's easier to read her behavior towards Tara as she felt Tara was trying to control her so she did what she felt she had to.
And I think season 7's ending is a poor way to end her arc and it's not nearly as empowering as many want to make it out, because in the end it's no different than ensouling Angelus for Buffy, doing the enjoining spell against Adam, being Buffy's big gun against Glory. All that final spell is is her doing the magic others need her to do, as she had always done. In the end it comes down to Willow can only be trusted to do the magic others want her to do, not the magic she wants to do
@@JBar what exactly did you disagree with? I did say that throughout the majority of the show the main thing Willow wanted to control was herself. It’s only when she gains enough power to have the capacity to control others does she actually do so. And the reason why that makes sense in Season 6 is because when power goes to your head, you think you’re invincible and that everything you do will be a good or right thing to do. It’s power corruption that is her main theme in Season 6.
@@Girl4Music I was disagreeing with Party City Dumpster rather than you. I don't think season 7 with her wanting to control herself was new. I acknowledge that power corruption was Willow's issue in season 6. But I think they did it terribly and I think the idea it was inevitable was wrong. And the memory alteration. We've seen the kind of control or changes magic can give. Jonothan's superstar spell didn't even get him a stern talking to, he was given something of a pep talk. The monk's spell creates someone the hero is willing to die for. Willow's memory spells seemed like nothing compared to them. I felt they were rather similar to Tara's secret keeping in seasons 4 and 5
@@JBar Ah I see. My bad there. Thought it was a response to my comment. We’re on the same wavelength though :)
The bit at 6:00-7:45 is just perfect. That line from Willow at 7:15 even sounds like something Buffy would say.
Willow was just as controlling as Cordelia in the first episode. Willow just hid it under meekness.
Well said. I love Willow and she reminds me alot of the emotional sides of myself.
thank you please keep making these.
Sounds interesting. I believe it is wrong though.
In my mind, the number one misconception most everyone has with Buffy is that Willow was the innocent and pure person we believe her to be our first watch through.
Watch the show enough times, knowing what happens later, and you start to see the truth that was there right from the beginning.
Was Willow pure and innocent in the beginning, or was she timid and filled with anxieties, making her true nature? A part of the problem with seeing Willow's true nature is very similar to why most Buffy fans misunderstand Xander so much. Much of their character flaws originated before the show started and the show barely shows their home lives. This of course is much worse in Xander's case, as we saw Willow's home at least in the first season.
Okay, so, what was Willow's home life like before Buffy showed up. Well, the short version is it was terrible. Her mother was very neglectful of Willow's emotional needs and likley in several other areas too. Don't get me wrong, she didn't starve or lacked financial support. She did have laptop in the 90s.
On the other hand, from a very young age, she was best friends with Xander, and used to sleep with him at sleepovers when they were young.
Xander's family is very slowly revealed over the course of the show to have been monsters fueled by pettiness and alcoholism. He had a tradition of sleeping outside during holidays just to avoid them when they got especially bad. Worse still, he viewed them and himself as worse than demons.
It's not the type of family one would expect a pair or highly educated professionals would want to encourage their daughter to spend a huge amount of time around, nevermind being there so much Xander and her became practically family. There is some chance, since her parents were psychologists, they encouraged her to spend time with him as some sort of good influence, but I haven't found any evidence for that so far.
Suffice to say, we all know Willow had a poor relationship with her parents.
Whether her anxiety and tiredness were natural for her or induced by her parents isn't really explained, although it could be more likley it came from her parents neglect. In the few scenes we saw of her and her mother, her mother seemed to often have high expectations of Willow and expected her to fall in line with their thinking.
Willow, as we see her in the beginning, seems very respectful of authority, almost terrified of not being perfect on record. This is where her duality is exposed though. In any measurable way, Willow is great. Obedient, dependable, the perfect daughter, the perfect student.
The second have is the first time we see her true nature come to light and it shows there is a totally different side to Willow that she keeps hidden from everyone, even Xander. This is shown in your clip, when she admits to have hacked into city hall records. She didn't just hack in she hacked in before then.
See, Willow in secret is very anti-authoritarian. She's perfect on paper. Her school record likely has no missing days and no late market. No detentions. It's probably white as snow. But in the deep dark of the computer world, where she can act in complete secrecy, she's crossing all the lines and forcing her way into areas she's not allowed to go. She respects no authorities, rules, or laws.
This keeps being exposed through the entire show. Later, how many times did she admit to going around Giles back and reading the magic books he hid from her? How many times did Giles tell her to not do something and she did it anyways? He constantly right from the start tried to hinder her learning and practicing magic. Go back and you will see him admonishing her over and over again and you will see her time and again admitting she completely ignored him.
Giles wasn't the only one, either. Oz expressed a lot of anxiety over Willow's drive into the magics. He loved her, and didn't want to upset her, but she ignored him as well and even lashed out at him when he finally confronted her even just a bit about it. Tara did the same before season 6. Her getting out of control with magic wasn't some new thing in season 6. It was there the entire time.
A clincher for how real this is comes in Dopplegangland. Yes, Angel's stalled statement about how Vampires take on the traits of the human, he didn't just foreshadow Willow's being gay. He exposed Willow's true nature.
Vampires are demons in a human body and as such, they have no conscience. A part of that is having no inhibitions. Things like Willow's social anxiety and timidness would be washed away. Her personality was left. Her disregard for rules and authority would come out of secret corners where she hid it and would come out into the open.
Angel's enlightening almost comment actually showed that Willow is actually a lot closer to being like Vampire Willow than anyone knows.
Willow has other bad traits that the show exposes too. She is extremely competitive, and that leads here into all sorts of problems. The biggest of which is a secret jealousy of Buffy from the beginning of the show. Her line about how it's about time someone kicked every square in of Buffy's ass exposes it, but it can be see through much of the show. Most of it is her complaining about not being able to contribute as much to fighting evil. It is a big part of why she strives so hard to learn as much magic as possible. Many times she complains about her lack of skill with magic through the second and third season, and this is usually linked to a desire to help Buffy more. Secretly though, as shown in season 6, she wants more than to help. She wants to be better than Buffy. By season 5 Buffy already admits that she has exceeded her in power. Her addiction was likley already there in season 4 though, when Oz told her how scared of her explorations of magic made him though.
Further, beyond Willow alone I have quite different thoughts in season six than most, and it seems different from yours. A lot of people complain about season six and attribute this to the Trio being the big bad of the season. I disagree with that assessment quite a bit. I don't think they were ever even close to being the big bad of the season. Personally, I think the big bads were Buffy, Xander, and Willow.
They were at war with themselves most of the season and also inflicted even most damage to themselves that season. Willow is pretty obvious. Xander is less, but he had a lot of problems that spun our of control that season. Heck, again, he judged himself, along with his family, to be worse monsters than actual demons. He refused to marry Anya to protect her from himself.
Buffy seems obvious, but not completely. Yes, she was dealing with a lot, including being suicidally depressed. Stillz the Trio was there for a reason, and tha reason was to expose Buffy's last great flaw as the slayer. One that had been there in the open, staring us in the face, the entire show.
As the slayer, she has a duty to judge demons worthy of death, and it so judged to execute them. She's always had a problem though with pathetic villains, that they were below her time and effort,. More, she outright avoided really making an effort to go after them as she felt like a bully.
A perfect example of this was Harmony. In episode 7 of season one, Buffy learned that the slayer isn't just warrior, but a judge. The rules she defined over the seasons were that as long as the demon wasn't causing harm to humans, not only could she let them live, she had to let them live. This is seen with Angel, Spike, and Clement. Spike really shows that she wasn't able to kill him despite her ruling as judge. Her life could have been a lot less complicated if she could have killed him. Especially as he used his ability to practically be able to read her mind against her many times. In fact, season 4 showed that her judgments to allow a demon to live even had to be respected by the scoobies, it was so firm and resolved.
On the flip side though, if a vampire like Harmony was harming humans like she was, Buffy was obligated to hunt her down and kill her. The seventh season episode when Anya gave up being a demon again proved that. Willow avoided telling Buffy about Anya killing people as long as she could because she knew the moment she told her, Buffy would be obligated to kill Anya. Buffy even said as much to Xander when he quite passionately fought against her carrying our her judgement.
Still, time after time Buffy allowed Harmony to escape to kill kore humans. She lived in the same town as Harmony for over a year and made no effort to hunt her down at all.
This was the purpose of the Trio. She did the exact same thing to them. If she hadn't viewed them as pathetic, hadn't viewed them as unworthy of her effort to prioritize her hunting them down sooner, Tara would have never died. All their personal flaws that they were consumed with that season culminated in the Trio being positioned in the right place at the right time to make that unfortunate shot. The Trio's very patheticness was their greatest attribute that kept Buffy from demolishing them right from the start. All of their neglect that season culminated in the perfect storm that created dark Willow. The Willow of which whose seeds were planted by her parents long before the show started.
Thank you 👍
very interesting analysis, love it
Another spot on character study!
Thank you for this! I just discoverd this video today but I'm gonna check and see what else you've got on my favorite show and characters of all time 😎
Amazing analysis! Super underrated.
This is great and your channel overall deserves more views and subs
It was implied but I don’t think it was mentioned explicitly in this video that in the episode ”Primeval”, the Scoobies cast a spell to combine their strengths with Buffy’s to defeat Adam. They literally enter Buffy as the vessel. In the spell, Willow represents spirit, Xander represents heart, Giles represents mind and Buffy represents hand.
I'm enjoying these videos, Willow is indeed the spirit of the group but you use good examples to illustrate how it's specifically Buffy's spirit. Willow was one of my favourite characters (and many other's favourites too) and she had a great arc, the only part of it I was uncertain about was the end to s6 and how her decline was handled (all the more so recently).
I never noticed it even after two watchings. Bored now the sentence both dark willow and Vampire Willow says
And legacies had the nerve to use the black clothes and veiny black eyeliner.
Look
I agree with u that willow is a representation of buffy soul. But she is more than that she is a representation of buffy power as well were u see willow and buffy both grow in power in season 4 and 5 as the explore themselves. Tara would be the good in buffy or part that is light in willow and her magic that keeps her from darkness. I guess with buffy death does create a fracture being the soul which is willow and the body that is buffy. In away it could also be seen as darkness buffy is going through when she comes back. And when tara died that good in willow who is buffy soul died. U could see Xander as buffy heart or humanity and dawn as her weakness. And spike and faith could be the darker sides buffy hates and wants to give into.
Giles doesn't represent Buffy's mind; he is, in a very literal sense, a sort of stepdad to her- and he's wondering what happened last night when he's questioning her; so that's why she hangs out at the library so much: in a sense, her foster father works there in the school. The remake comics also make this connection between them, included in her remarks at that.
GREAT analysis!!!!
Great measuring ups
Very good analysis. I agreed with every word.
Excellent essay and logically correct. I do not agree that she was the purest of souls . I believe she changed when she started the soul restoration spell on Angel. Willow was warned against the spell and that it could unleash dark powers. Willow is not doing this for Buffy, Buffy told her that Angel was not coming back and that he had done to much and must be slammed. Finally, the spell was not made to help
Angel but constructed for vengeance. Miss Calenders Uncle gave a terrific speech that they were about vengeance and not redemption. We see the power of the spell gripping Willow and we see Dark Willows eyes. Willow starts changing quickly. In the episode Anne, Willow on patrol is not the sweet pure Willow. Soon after she embarks on a wrong relationship with Xander. Then in Something Blue she was recruited to be a Vengeance Demon because her soul was found to be in unison with the other demons. Finally let’s examine Willows choice for college. She is accepted at Oxford and Harvard but chooses the local satellite campus of California. She wants to work on her magical skills. The best place is the Hellmouth. First chance she is looking for a Wicca group. In she is the de facto second in command and wants to take over when Buffy is not around For me Willow is the awkward kid belittled all through school that found her calling in adult life. Like so many given power she wants to right her wrongs . Remember what Sweet said to her In Once More With Feeling, I smell power. A demon would smell darkness and a like kind.
In their great showdown Willow blusters at Buffy about the violence she will bring down on Buffy. Buffy tells her what she has told everyone since her time with Faith… You really don’t know what a Slayer is. Buffy has defined a Slayer with amoral compass not just on ethos and values but with an embrace of love for another This love for others is something Willow does not understand. I’d she did then what she does to Oz and Tara would not have happened Willow knows this because of her dream in Restless where Oz and Tara are talking while looking at Willow. We fell in love with Willow( and the great Allyson Hannigan) in the first 34 episodes nut that Willow was willingly replaced by the power of vengeance. This becomes Willows definition like it was for Anya.Lastly Anya comes to Sunnydale because of Willows betrayal of Cordelia. One of the underlying themes of BTVS is that of duality.We all have a dark and bright side, it is free will that defines are choice
Loved this video.
Actually it was, she was dead too long, and this combined with the inability of anyone no matter how powerful or strong in life, no one's soul can let go of the paradise of the afterlife ascension. Once you get there, there is only one way to come back without damage, and that's to be reincarnated.
Hate to be the guy who comments early but I like how we have a similar logo
haha I noticed that too!
@@Twisted-View also just finished, I do in fact agree with your analysi, good video mate you got a sub from me
This is a better video than the defense of Xander video. Most (not all, but most) of Willow's issues stem from her addiction to magic and control and I while I see her getting better in S7, I don't trust her with those issues until the moment she says "That was nifty."
In a way, when Willow's boyfriend, Oz, leaves her for Veruca, Willow elects to curse her man- dumb choice on her part, and on his- but as the Somebody else stopped her in the process from really messing up her very soul... I'd say her original faith has a sign of Who exactly did intervene in her life at that moment- and He sees Himself in some sense as an adoptive daddy to her.
Love it
What was that episode of Angel please?
Hmm, so her dependency, her addiction, is actually to protecting her neighbors if you're correct... that is interesting to discern.
Did you ever do that Xander analysis? This was great.
ruclips.net/video/HKqXKY-JNLM/видео.html was my very next vid
good
Oh, they were dealing with an *actual* spirit running around in Season 7 and in the episode "Amends" but it was far from even remotely a *good* spirit- it is, in fact, best thought of as the devil itself- but a spirit it sure is!
👍👍👍
willow, spike, wesley, cordelia. best characters ever.
specifically spike and willow
I gotta throw faith in there.. 5 by 5
@@Twisted-View true
OMG
Everybody has a Bad Side - Willow provides a good example of putting a Lid on it! IMO, Xander's rescue scene was a bit of over-acting on Brendan's part - there had to be a better way to bring Willow to her senses...🤔🖖
you are the only person I have ever seen have this opinion since the episode first aired. Even the Xander haters admit it's one of his best moments.
Probably with a Reese's peanut butter cup ✌️
The buffy verse? In reality it should be called the slayer verse because Buffy is just one of many slayers
There are more slayers but the whole verse is centered around Buffy which is why it's called the Buffyverse.
@@peachysparkles I like to think bigger than Buffy but that's just me
@@benjaminreyes3624 We didn't get a Faith show, we didn't get a Potentials/New Slayers spin off. They haven't continued the series with a different lead. They went back to Buffy for S8, they rebooted like 3 times in the comics.
Really, Fray is the only slayer outside the main 3 who really mattered as anything but one of Buffy's sidekicks.
Not so much about Willow being child-like and innocent; in Season 8's future timeline, she's the villain- and a true monster. Plus human beings who act like they don't have souls really are the worst possible deal- they accomplish the greatest amount of evil imaginable: think the Ukranian Genocide as a classic example of the level of evil a single man in this life with a soul who acts like he doesn't have one will end up doing- good golly, man, that was profoundly messed up, and the Gulags of Siberia were worse still, and the worst of them all by far worse than anything the Nazi scum managed to carry out was Kolymar Gulag in East Siberia.
I didnt like Xander in the beginning mostly because he annoyed me the way Chandler Bing annoys the SH out of me on Friends. But as the show progressed I came to a similar conclusion for Xander. I do like Xander a lot because he is the only "normal" scooby and feeling not special is relatable.
People don't like Xander because he stands near giants and points out their feet of clay.
@@ronaldfasshauer4390 The fans ignore his faults, the haterss ignore his wins. It's really hard to have a rational Xander discussion with anyone.
Good analysis but get rid of the eyes between points. It's distracting and annoying.
Wilow did NOT "use her power to empower the helpless"!! She gives Slayer powers to all the potentials everywhere. They were not helpless. Not sure why that offends me so much, but it does..
Perhaps a fopar on my part, or poorly put. I know she gave all with potential and made them slayers.
This was off the back of doing a vid about Cordy, which always makes me think of them the line angel investigations we help the hopeless. So maybe I had that in my mind.