Willow Rosenberg (BIO)
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For me Willow is the truest 'fallen angel' of all of the characters. She started as a pure, innocent girl and within 6 years she tries to destroy the world. Talk about coming a long way. In the end, as sappy as it may seem to some, love, the love of a friend saved her and in turn the world from destruction. Willow truly wants to be redeemed and she's smart enough to know that it's going to be difficult. Willow only started to use magic in Becoming Part 2 (S2,Ep22) when she helped to restore Angel's soul. Up until this time her main skill and talent lay with her computer savvy. Even to this day she is a computer wiz and can hack into about any system including Sunnydale's police records, the electricity grid and government systems. After Jenny Calendar was killed by Angelus she taught Mrs. Calendar's high school computer class. When we first meet Willow she is a shy, quite girl with a weird fashion sense and little self-confidence in herself or her abilities. During the last year of high school and the first year of college, season 3 to 4, her magical abilities grows. Within 3 seasons she goes from barely being able to make a pencil float to hurting and immobilizing the goddess Glory, season 5's villain. During the time she dates OZ, a werewolf guitarist,she slowly grows in power. It isn't until she meets Tara, in college, that her skills quickly grow. Meeting Tara changes Willow's future in many ways. She falls in love with Tara and they're a couple. Tara introduces Willow to the practice of Wicca and how to join her power with someone else to strengthen it. Along with showing Willow her own inner strength and power, she shows how to trust herself. At the end of season 5, during the fight with Glory to prevent an apocalypse, Buffy dies to save Dawn's life. At the start of season 6 Willow performs a spell with Xander, Tara and Anya to bring Buffy back from the dead. Willow worries that Buffy might be in a hell dimension and her life was ended too soon. Willow's power is so great that she can raise the dead by calling on the the god Osiris for help. If the person's life is taken by magical means, as Buffy's was, Osiris can help her to bring them back to life even if they have been dead for several months as Buffy was. While Buffy is dead Willow is made the 'leader' of the group. Everyone relies on her, she uses her powers to help the Slayerettes hunt and kill vampires and demons. It seams Willow is cracking from all of the expectations placed on her shoulders. Everyone is depending on her as they did on Buffy. Just like what happens to Buffy, breaking under the strain and giving up, Willow slowly cracks. She begins to quickly spiral into an addiction with magic, abusing it and using it to affect her friends and life. During the beginning of season 6 Willow starts to overuse magic and always rely on it. She uses magic like it was nothing, she cleans and decorates Buffy's house for a party without a second thought. Tara isn't happy with Willow's flippant use of magic, she even asks her to cut down her use of it. Unfortunately, Willow continues to use magic behind Tara's back. When Tara asks her not to use any magic for a week, Willow breaks her promise and uses it anyway. It seems she is addicted to magic in much the same way a junky is to their drugs. Willow goes so far as to cover her tracks by putting a forgetfulness spell on Tara during the night so that she would forget about their argument. This spell backfires and almost gets the gang killed. During another magic 'fix' from Rack she endangers Dawn's life and gets into a car accident which breaks Dawn's wrist. It's a wake up call to the Slayerettes that Willow's problem exists and is out of control. Buffy has been in her own cocoon with her problems and doesn't see that Willow is in trouble or that anything else is wrong with the Slayerettes. Near the end of season 6 Warren goes after Buffy with a gun and manages to shoot her while she is in her back yard with Xander. Both Willow and Tara are upstairs in their room when Warren's stray shot hits Tara in the chest quickly killing her. While Tara dies in Willow's arms, Willow tries to perform a similar spell as she did with Buffy to bring Tara back from the dead. Unfortunately, Tara did not die by magical means and so the god Osiris refused Willow's request. This sets Willow off and in a bloody rage she goes to The Magic Box and absorbed all the dark magic that she finds in their books. This Dark Willow searches for power and revenge. Hungry for more power she finds Rack (a dealer in magic, similar to a drug dealer, but he uses people during the process) and after draining his power he dies. rack is the first person that Willow has ever killed. (see clip below, Two to Go - S6,Ep21) Willow starts to hunt down the Troika (Warren, Jonathan and Andrew) especially Warren in revenge for Tara's death. She captures and tortures Warren and then skins him alive (using magic) and kills him by bursting him into flames. At this point she has a confrontation with Giles who has come back from England to heal her or stop her if it comes to that. Giles uses power that he has borrowed from the Wiccan group where he was staying (healing, good magic) to try and stop Willow, but Willow beats him and steals his power. (see clip below, Grave - S6, Ep22) This added magic makes Willow the only human to have ever wielded that much power. She can 'hear' everyone's thoughts and feelings from around the world. The pain she feels brings her to the conclusion that the world must end so that the pain will go away. She was stopped by Xander when he sticks by her and tells her he loves her regardless of what she does. After spending the summer in England learning how to use her power for 'good', to clean her up and make her better (rehab) she returns to Sunnydale. (See clip below, Lessons - S7, Ep1) Now Willow wants to make up for what she has done, killing two people and almost destroying the world. Before she could try and make it up to the Slayerettes by baking some cookies, but now it will take a great deal more. Willow is so good at the vengeance gig that the demon D'Hoffryn, who turned Anya into a vengeance demon, tells her that she is welcome into his fold whenever she wants to stop being a human and become a vengeance demon.(See clip below, Selfless - S7,Ep5) Willow is a true 'fallen angel'. She was innocent and kind at the start of the series. Over time and as she increases her power she becomes tainted and tempted by that power. Since her trip to England and the realization of what she had done, Willow has tried to redeem herself. She must be careful since it's easier for her to be once again tempted by the power she can call and wield, because in turn it can wield her. Would you like to send me some feedback about what I've written or on my site? COMMENTS |
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Xander: Figuring out how to control your magic seems a lot like hammering a nail. Well, uh, hear me out. So you're hammering, right? OK, well at the end of the hammer, you have the power, but no control. It takes, like, two strokes to hit the nail in, or you could hit your thumb. Willow: Ouch. Xander: So you choke up. Control, but no power. It could take like ten strokes to knock the nail in. Power, control. It's a tradeoff. Willow: That's actually not a bad analogy. Xander: Thanks Willow: Except I'm less worried about hitting my thumb, and more worried about going all black-eyed baddy and bewitching that hammer into cracking my friends' skulls open like coconuts. Xander: Right. Ouch. Willow: Last time I tried using magic, The First, it turned it around on me. Got inside. I felt it just surging through me, every fiber of my being. Pure, undiluted evil. I could taste it. Kennedy: How's evil taste? Willow: A little chalky. Clips from the Buffy Dialogue Database RACK:
Hey, babe. I've been waiting for you. Guess the rehab didn't take,
huh? That's the way it goes sometimes... But I gotta say: I could
feel you coming a mile away, the power you got. And you know something,
sweetness? I liked it. When you first came to me, you were just
a little slip of a girl. Look at you now! So... grown up... So full
of dark juice... And you still taste like strawberries. Only now
... they're ripe. You came because you want something, don't you?
(she nods) I thought so. So tell me, Strawberry... what on this
earth do you want? Two to Go (S6,Ep21) Confrontation GILES:
I'm here to help you. Grave (S6, Ep22) Penance Westbury,
England Lessons (S7, Ep1) Summoning WILLOW:
Beatum sit in nomine D'Hoffrynis. Fiat hoc spatium porta ad mundum
Arashmaharris. Selfless (S7,Ep5) Willow drops some herbs into a jar filled with red liquid and it starts to smoke. WILLOW: Look, it’s working. WESLEY: I thought Delothrian’s Arrow was used to protect good magicks. WILLOW: It is. WESLEY: So how can you use it to break the jar? The muo-ping is a sacred object. It’s holy. WILLOW: It’s glass, therefore crunchable. The sacred’s what’s inside.“ All life a container…” WESLEY:“… for the heart of all life.” You’ve studied the Daharim. WILLOW: It had to be something specific. There’s lots of jars in the world. Can’t shatter ’em all. Well, I mean, you could but good things come in jars. Peanut butter, jelly… those twoheaded fetal pigs at the natural history museum. (off his look) Come on! Everybody loves fetal pigs. WESLEY: Sorry. I think my sense of humor’s trapped in a jar somewhere. WILLOW: It does seem like you’ve given in to the grumpy side of the Force. WESLEY: A lot’s happened. Not just Angelus. I’ve been… I’ve changed. I’ve seen a darkness in myself. I’m not sure you’d even begin to understand. WILLOW: I flayed a guy alive and tried to destroy the world. WESLEY: Oh. So… WILLOW: Darkness. Been there. WESLEY: Yes. Well, I never… flayed. I had a woman chained in a closet. WILLOW: Oh, well, hey! WESLEY: Nah, it doesn’t compare. WILLOW: No, dark! That’s dark. You’ve been to a place. WESLEY: You seem exactly the same as when I left. No other major changes I’m not up on? Willow shakes her head, suppressing a smile. WILLOW: Just little things. (beat) So… Fred. What’s her story? Wesley looks away, then does a double take. Orpheus (S4,Ep15) from Angel the series |
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