Willow's powers grow stronger ; she uses telepathy which her friends find intrusive, and she begins to cast spells to manipulate Tara.

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.

Willow's card had been Spiritus, representing her magical powers ; she is killed by having her spirit sucked out of her.

Willow's enormous powers, even if she is not fully in control of them, forced the writers to figure out a way to keep her from being part of every fight.

Willow's emotional barriers collapse, her dark powers drain away, and her physical transformation is undone.

* It is revealed in the canonical Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight comic books that the effects of Willow's spell caused some Potentials-turned-Slayers other than Dana to use their newfound powers in violent and illegal ways.

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.

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

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.

Jessica Ford at PopMatters asserts that Willow's sexuality and her magical abilities are connected and represented by her relationships.

Only when she meets Tara do her magical abilities flourish ; to Ford, sexuality and magic are both empowering agents in Willow's story arc.

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

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

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.

By the seventh season, Willow's magical gifts are so powerful that she is the strongest person in Buffy's circle.

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.

Scholar Jess Battis writes that in contrast to the way family members are portrayed throughout the series as absent ( Willow's ), chaotic ( Xander's ), or highly disruptive ( Anya's ), Joyce straddles these extremes.

Willow and Oz are walking back to Willow's dorm room discussing Buffy's odd behavior.

Buffy and Willow are performing a spell in Willow's room to restore Amy, but it fails and Buffy suggests, " Maybe we should get her one of those wheel thingies.

The gang encounters Bringers in the backyard, but they are destroyed and the gang runs off as the Turok-Han finally breaks through Willow's magical barrier.

* Although Buffy and Willow express surprise that Xander's family believed the claim that Anya's demon friends are merely circus performers, Sunnydale residents, such as the Harrises, have a long history of ignoring or explaining away supernatural occurrences, as Willow's mother did after " Gingerbread ".

" In the second scene with Andrew and the First, Andrew is wearing a wire that Willow has set up and the others are listening to his conversation with the First through Willow's headphones.

Buffy manages to partially block Willow's attack, but she and Dawn are thrown underground while Xander is knocked unconscious.

They find the Bronze packed with adults who are acting like teenagers, including Principal Snyder, Mrs. Bartrum and Willow's shirtless, stage diving doctor.

Benson and Hannigan's chemistry was impressive enough that two episodes into Tara and Willow's friendship Whedon took the actors aside and informed them the relationship would be turning romantic.

Defying the tradition of only one slayer per generation, Willow's spell will raise an army strong enough to do battle with The First.

Willow's character demanded that she be shy and unsure of herself, and the casting department encountered some difficulty finding actors who could portray this effectively and still be likable.

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.

Whedon divulged that recovering her magical abilities will become Willow's " personal obsession " in a miniseries where she will be the central character.

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

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.

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.

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 ".

In the final season, Dawn becomes more grown-up and a full-fledged member of the " Scooby Gang " as witnessed in the first few episodes as she aids Buffy and Xander during Willow's absence and is trained by Buffy in combat.

In the season finale " Becoming, Part Two ", Xander decides not to tell Buffy about Willow's plan to re-ensoul Angel — who has lost his soul and is going to bring about the apocalypse — so that she will not hesitate to kill him in order to save the world.

Tara becomes more outspoken during the sixth season about the ethics of Willow's use of magic, cautioning Willow that she depends too much on it.

* Daniel " Oz " Osbourne — Willow's boyfriend throughout Seasons Two to Four, Oz is a werewolf and the guitarist for local band Dingoes Ate My Baby.

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.

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 cover art is done by Jo Chen, and Georges Jeanty and Karl Moline produce character artwork and provide alternative covers.

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

She is capricious and aggressive, the opposite of Willow's usual nature ; her bad behavior so exaggerated that it does not instill fear into the viewer like other female vampires in the series, but indicates more about Willow's personality.

" 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.