In Willow's dream, she moves from an intimate moment painting a love poem by Sappho on Tara's bare back, to attending the first day of drama class to learn that she is to be in a play performed immediately for which she does not know the lines or understand.

He is last seen in Willow's dream in the episode " Restless.

In the theater scene during Willow's dream, a Frazier lens was used to provide a large depth of field, allowing both the foreground and background to be in focus at the same time, while in Xander's dream, as he moves from room to room in Buffy's house to the university dorm rooms, Whedon used a 17 mm lens to give a sense of motion as the camera passes by walls.

* Seth Green, who left the series earlier in the season, made a brief appearance as Oz in Willow's dream.

* Amber Benson appears as Tara in the dream sequences, as both Willow's girlfriend and a spirit guide to Buffy.

* Mercedes McNab as Harmony Kendall is present during Willow's dream as both an ordinary classmate and a vampire.

In Willow's dream she struggles to find her place in the school theater production of Death of a Salesman, while her friends and classmates are apparently fully costumed, prepared, and ready to go on stage.

Whedon stated that the maze of red curtains on the stage in Willow's dream are not a direct homage to Twin Peaks, as some have posited, but rather represent the safety and comfort of being with her girlfriend Tara, and are a sexual metaphor as well.

* This is Oz's last appearance in person, though he will appear once again in Willow's dream in the season finale.

The Buffy series became extremely popular and earned a devoted fanbase ; Willow's intelligence, shy nature, and vulnerability often resounded strongly with viewers in early seasons.

Willow was noted to be the spirit of the Scooby Gang, and Hannigan attributed Willow's popularity with viewers ( she had by May 1998 seven websites devoted to her ) to being an underdog who develops confidence and is accepted by Buffy, a strong, popular person in school.

In " Gingerbread ", her home life is made clearer: Sunnydale falls under the spell of a demon who throws the town's adults into a moral panic, and Willow's mother is portrayed as a career-obsessed academic who is unable to communicate with her daughter, eventually trying to burn Willow at the stake for being involved in witchcraft ; her father is never featured.

Willow's relationship with Oz continues until he becomes involved with another werewolf and leaves town to learn how to control the wolf within.

From the inception of Willow's character in the first season, she is presented with contradictions.

Contradicting the characterization of Willow's issues with magic as addiction, Buffy essayist Jacqueline Lichtenberg writes " Willow is not addicted to magic.

Willow's earliest and most consistent relationships are with Buffy and Xander, both of whom she refers to as her best friends although they have their conflicts.

Scholar Farah Mendlesohn asserts that Willow's realization that she is in love with Tara allows viewers to re-interpret Willow's relationship with Buffy ; in the first three seasons, Willow is often disappointed that she is not a higher priority to Buffy, and even after Willow enters a relationship with Tara, still desires to feel integral to Buffy's cause and the Scooby Gang.

When they first kiss in the episode " The Killer in Me ", Willow's realization that she let Tara go reacts with a curse put upon her by another witch named Amy Madison ( Elizabeth Anne Allen ), turning Willow into Warren, Tara's murderer.

Manda Scott in The Herald states that Willow's lack of panic or self-doubt when she realizes she is in love with Tara makes her " the best role model a teen could ask for ".

Patrick Krug, a biologist at California State University, Los Angeles named a sea slug with traits of sexual flexibility Alderia willowi partly for his grandmother and partly after Willow's character.

As the season draws to a close, Buffy is forced to battle her best friend when Willow becomes psychotic with dark magics after the human, Warren ( Adam Busch ) shoots and kills Willow's girlfriend Tara ( Amber Benson ) and wounds Buffy in the process.

The relationship is frequently violent, with Buffy most often initiating both the violence and the sex between them ; the violence is made all the easier when Spike finds that ( as a side effect of Willow's resurrection spell ) his chip now does not stop him from harming Buffy.

Tara struggles with understanding her place among the Scoobies with Buffy ( Sarah Michelle Gellar ), the leader ; Xander Harris ( Nicholas Brendon ), Willow's friend since childhood ; and Rupert Giles ( Anthony Stewart Head ), their mentor.

Even Tara's last words, commenting that Willow's shirt is stained ( with her blood ), indicate her preoccupation with the welfare of others.

He saw it as necessary to progress Willow's character ; she had to deal with her dark powers, but nothing short of Tara's death would allow them to come out so forcefully.

Despite this, Tara and Willow's relationship was not heralded with any specific fanfare on the show ; they are treated as other couples.

* Willow Rosenberg — Willow's abilities as a witch make her one of the most powerful members of the Scooby Gang.

Tara is killed when Warren Mears accidentally shoots her, launching Willow's spiral into Dark Willow.

Willow appears in every Buffy episode ( making her the only character besides Buffy herself to do so ), is featured in three episodes of the spinoff Angel, an animated series and video game — both of which use Hannigan's voice, and the comic Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight ( 2007 – 2011 ), which uses Hannigan's likeness and continues Willow's storyline following the television series.

Through the gamut of changes Willow endures in the series, Buffy studies scholar Ian Shuttleworth states that Alyson Hannigan's performances are the reason for Willow's popularity: " Hannigan can play on audience heartstrings like a concert harpist ... As an actress she is a perfect interpreter in particular of the bare emotional directness which is the specialty of writer Marti Noxon on form.

A one-shot comic dedicated to Willow's story was released in 2009 titled Willow: Goddesses and Monsters.

The transition from Willow into Dark Willow, precipitated by Tara's immediate death when she is shot through the heart, was ambiguously received by audiences, many of whom never foresaw Willow's psychic break.

" Several writers state that Willow's transition into Dark Willow is inevitable, grounded in Willow's self-hatred that had been festering from the first season.

Both Dark Willow and even Willow herself state that Willow's sacrifices for her friends and lack of assertiveness are her undoing.

People picked on Willow ... and now Willow's a junkie.

Some critics regard this as a failure on Willow's part to be strong ; Em McAvan interprets this to mean that Willow may be bisexual.

Tara, however, eclipses Willow's role as the moral center of the Scoobies, and as Willow becomes more powerful and less ethical, Tara becomes a maternal figure for the group.

In Season Eight, Kennedy and Willow are still romantically involved, but separated during Willow's self-exploration.

* David J. Steinberg as Meegosh: Willow's closest friend who accompanies Willow partway on his journey.

Love is the most powerful, messy, delightful and dangerous emotion ... Willow's in love.

Writer Peg Aloi calls the backlash at Whedon " staggering ", and summarizes Tara's effect with Willow, stating that they were a single unit the moment they met: " Willow's need for approval and Tara's need for unconditional love allowed their supernova trajectory its singular, incendiary thrust toward its triumphant but tragic end ; like all witches who burn, martyred by flames, they move on to a place where their gods are the right ones.

Distinctly, Kennedy is also a love interest for Willow Rosenberg ; Kennedy is an out lesbian with an assertive personality, which is intended to contrast with the shyness of Willow's deceased girlfriend, Tara.

* Willow's withdrawal from magic fails spectacularly when she loses the love so recently regained.