“I Think I’m Kinda Gay”: Evil Willow and Duality in the Buffyverse
If you’re one of those people who sings through half of “Once More, With Feeling” in the shower, you may have found yourself dwelling on Evil Willow. To be clear, this is not Willow from the final two seasons - that baroque and self-contradictory jumble of ham-fisted addiction stereotypes and grief-as-anger manifestations warrants its own treatise. Rather, this is the alternate-reality Willow introduced in “The Wish” (S3 E9), after Anya grants Cordelia’s wish that Buffy had never come to town, and the world is transformed into Bizarro Sunnydale, complete with a leather-clad pansexual vampire version of Buffy’s bookish bestie.
First off, to state the obvious: Evil Willow is awesome. When she pops into the show’s restored reality in Doppelgangland (S3 E16), she serves as a counterpoint to Good Willow’s crisis of confidence. Appearing shortly after the unfortunate labeling of “Old Reliable,” Evil Willow’s swagger, style and unbridled sense of self causes her friends to sit up and take notice, to reconsider their treatment of her as a bland goody-two-shoes. She also turns the tables on a bullying jock, which is always good fun.
But therein lies the dichotomy and, indeed, the genius of the Buffyverse’s moral compass: Evil Willow is also, well, evil. She is a murderous vampire, one who tortures for her own pleasure, declaring “bored now” when a victim begs for mercy. The same lack of restraint that allows her to glory in her power and her sexuality, also frees her from even a hint of empathy. She is the negative framing of Spider-man’s creed: with her great power, she can elect to not take responsibility.
This blend of heroism and villainy, of kick-ass girl power and devastating consequences, is what always grounded the Buffyverse’s horror hijinks in recognizable moral reality. Reams have been written, courses taught, on Buffy herself as an inherently fascist avatar: like all superheroes who operate outside the bounds of law enforcement (or in Buffy’s case, Principal Snyder and the corrupt Watcher’s Council), her might makes her right, and she is unconstrained by societal strictures. When Faith goes rogue in Season 3, we see the damage that a slayer unbound can do, but we also root for Buffy (mostly) without reservation as she sets her own hierarchy of which demons must die, and which are more useful alive. With her blonde hair, blue eyes, and impressive roundhouse kick, she is the überfraulein, striking with the hand of God based on her own judgement.
This blurring of traditional roles is pervasive among the Scoobies: Xander is fiercely loyal and commonly coded as the “heart” of the group, while also being a sexist pig with a chip on his shoulder about being the only one without supernatural abilities; Giles manages to be both hidebound and a loose cannon, providing fatherly advice while eliciting childlike rebellion; Anya’s hilarious forthrightness about the idiocy of human customs highlights her other-ness and struggle to assimilate into humanity; and Spike is a master class unto himself on relative good within one person. Angel comes off as the simplest case, because his dividing line of a soul puts him squarely on the side of good, or bad, depending on how recently he’s experienced true happiness.
Which brings us back to Willow (Good Willow, the show’s in-universe Willow), and her last-second intervention to spare her doppelgänger from Buffy’s stake. Despite Evil Willow’s more outré tendencies, Good Willow still sees herself in her: she recognizes the loss of kinship and purpose beneath the soulless demon shell. Evil Willow serves as both warning and premonition, prefiguring Good Willow’s growing power, eventual fall from grace, and difficulty in separating boundaries worth breaking from those that cut her off from her innate goodness. (And the “I think I’m kinda gay!” foreshadow, a full year before Willow comes out, is still one of my favorite Whedonisms.) Like all the Scoobies – like all humanity – Willow contains darkness and light, and she has learned (through her lived experiences, her relationships, her faith, and her luck) how to tamp down the parts that don't fit her persona, or the ideals of her surroundings. When Evil Willow gives free reign to all of those sequestered traits, she releases the bad (murder, torture, lackey bullying) along with the good (her sexual identity, confidence, a taste for skintight leather). Good Willow suppresses her id to a fault; Evil Willow has let hers run free – and catches a splintered 2x4 in the heart for her troubles.
