Analyzing the Grey Identity of Willow Rosenberg and how Dark Willow emerges
One of Willow Rosenberg’s worst fears (possibly her greatest worst fear) is that she’s going to lose the ones she loves because of her perceived inadequacies at being somebody who can protect and defend them. She believes that she will fail because she lacks the capability and capacity to perform to her best quality and intention. She worries that she isn’t enough for them to keep her in their life and especially not enough to be loved by them. This fear she has really is just a fear because she proves time and time again that she’s more than capable and that she is worthy of being loved when she’s not trying to control everything that happens between herself and the ones she loves. Her hunger for magical power and specifically accumulating more and more of it as she keeps reaching her milestones in her witchcraft is fully grounded in this belief that she needs to be and do more so that she can be a warrior and hero equal to Buffy if not better than Buffy. Because it goes the other way - because she ends up becoming more like a killer and villain - this changes Willow forevermore. She truly did cross the point of no return. She is never as she was before she became a killer and villain. To use an analogy used in Xena that I love very much: the water that had a stone thrown into it that created ripples eventually calmed down, but that stone still remained under it. Meaning it was now part of it instead of separate from it. So she had to find a way to work with it since it was never going to be something that could leave her. Never something she could just simply discard from her persona as if it was a piece of clothing she was wearing then and didn’t need to wear now. If you will - her villain costume. Her cosplay of villainy.
You could also argue that Dark Willow was always a part of Willow and therefore it was inevitable it would emerge in all its terrifying glory. And that is a perspective I have considered many times given there’s so many instances in Willow’s character representation that show that she’s not quite right. That there is darkness bubbling under the surface. Not evil as such. Just darkness. But darkness carrying a tendency to do evil things. To act them out even if it’s just words at that point because she didn’t possess enough power to act them out. You could most definitely argue that Dark Willow was always what and who Willow was. But I would say to believe that would significantly regress the development of the character. It would make her one-dimensional to put her evil arc down as “she was always this way - it was just well hidden”. That’s a little short-sighted and so I have since abandoned that idea because as fascinating as I think it is in terms of studying Willow as a character, I think it just weakens her as a person. The real Willow is a much stronger spirit than that and she really only ever does evil things because she ultimately is a good person. It’s just with so much power that she can’t control - power that is mostly fuelled by Black Magic - that goodness and intention to do good becomes corrupted and she can’t really differentiate anymore between what is “evil” and what is “good”. She loses that of which gives her a conscience. The ability to differentiate between right and wrong, good and evil, light and dark, and peace and war. This essentially means that, as Dark Willow, her moral compass is missing. That’s a much more accurate explanation for her evil arc than “she was always secretly evil” because it’s much more human. Humans do get corrupted by that of which is more powerful or stronger than themselves. By forces that are above their capacity to withstand. And there’s no shame in that. It’s just what happens because humans ultimately are good but flawed beings. They make mistakes. They mess up. They do evil things. And they act as if they can handle the power given to them when they really can’t. Not because they’re weak. But because they’re pure. They have never encountered a powerful experience like this before and so it goes straight to their head because it feels good to have it. It feels good to be powerful. They feel like they can be and do more through it as that’s what they’ve always wanted. To be and do more. And I would say that’s a better description of Willow Rosenberg and all that she goes through as a character in the show because Dark Willow is still part of all that Willow Rosenberg is. She's just not all she is.
I have ruled out that Dark Willow is any kind of possession of Willow. Willow suddenly doesn’t become evil out of some demonic spirit taking over her body and mind. It’s not an Exorcist-type situation that’s going on with Dark Willow. There’s rhyme and reason for Willow to turn evil when you really analyze the character and her development. But I’ve also recently ruled out that Dark Willow is any kind of incarceration within Willow too. She is still part of Willow but she’s not Willow’s whole existence. Therefore, she’s not who Willow really is because Willow is many things. There’s many dimensions to Willow Rosenberg and not a solitary one of those dimensions completely encapsulate and define her character. All of them combined do because that’s a lot more realistic. Identity is made up of many facets of the human experience and that’s partially why I don’t believe identity to be a real thing in itself. Because the human experience is an interaction with all of existence - human or not. Identity instead to me is the attempt to box experience itself into a specific narrative that the person believes it must be based on its interactions. And I think what Willow represents as a character is that identity isn’t a solid, permanent thing at all. It’s wavy and fluctuating and essentially just… made up. Abstract. It's not a permanence. There is no such existing thing as “identity” in the sense that it has a specific face and name and age and gender and sexuality - ‘cause it doesn’t. Identity is whatever feels right to be whenever it feels right to be it. Willow absolutely expresses that philosophy as a person that is always fluctuating between one perceived ideal to the next. So identity is always an ideal of which fits for the moment. It’s never what anything is fundamentally. Just whatever is suitable at the time. Willow is a very “in the moment” person not in the sense that she lives by the moment, because she most definitely doesn't as a character constantly plagued by anxiety, but that the moment becomes her. She’s a very grey character that doesn’t recognize how grey she actually is because she’s so busy expressing herself by extremities. By a “black” and then a “white” and then back to “black” again. She doesn’t seem to realize that it’s black and white together. That it’s grey. And maybe this is me just projecting my philosophy into the character here but I think it makes more sense to understand this character as “grey” from the get-go because Dark Willow doesn’t seem so shocking when the boxed-in specific narrative of the “pure, innocent, helpless wallflower” is understood as just a passing phase. It’s not who Willow really is either. So it’s not a loss when that phase of her is tarnished by the dirty, guilty, offensive and abrasive phase. It’s just more to her that we haven’t been introduced to yet. That we have yet to know. And that she herself has yet to come to be aware of. That’s what being grey ultimately means in my head. There’s more to “black” and “white” than can be seen on the palette when mixed in together on the canvass. You’re painting something with much more depth and complexity and nuance than “good” or “evil”. You’re painting the whats-in-between of all that. The potentiality. You’re painting that of which resides in a state and position of “there” and “not there” at the same time. And for some people that might not make much sense because if it doesn’t exist yet, why should it matter? Well, the point is that it doesn’t matter until you make it matter. If it’s in your perception, it already exists to you. You perceive it as clearly as anything else you perceive. It is already a part of your subjective experience regardless whether it’s objectively “real” or not. And you will make actions and choices based on it. To avoid it. To claim it. To instate it. To either make it disappear or emerge. Thus, it is a real experience if not a real existence as it's still on your canvass.
Willow does this. She overcompensates for that of which she already possesses but has no belief in. She identifies with situations that have no bearing on her character to control that of which she believes she has to for the sake of others. She performs all these different identities and characters and personas in order to be and do more than what she is already being and doing. Her paranoia being that if she doesn’t be and do all of this, she will lose those she loves and most cares about. Her only real problem is that she fundamentally does not believe she is enough just as she is. Just being “plain old Willow”. To her, that’s something that must be changed, must be avoided, must be improved upon, must go away. The only thing that makes that possible for her is magic. So the only solution to her problem to her is accumulating magical power. Because with magical power she can be and do more. And she can get people to forget “plain old Willow” - either voluntarily and naturally or forcibly and unnaturally. And she is so desperate that either way is fine. Either way will get the job done. She ignores all the consequences and potential damage because she’s powerful enough to fix all of that if need be. She’s powerful enough to control anything that happens as a result of her wanting to get the job done quickly and easily. Willow believes that her "plain old Willow" identity is her Achilles’ heel. That it's the weakest point in her character. It’s the place where it’s easiest for people to attack or criticize her. To her, to remain just that is what will bring about failure, pain, grief, loss and humiliation. And someone with her level of intelligence just cannot let that happen. See, she's always had the smarts, just not the power. And now she has both, she’s not taking any chances. That’s where Dark Willow resides before she completely emerges through rage and vengeance. In Willow’s arrogance and entitlement that she’s powerful enough to do whatever she wants in whatever way she believes is quickest and easiest. In her insistence to take control. And you have to pay very close attention but there’s a particular expression on her face throughout all seasons of the show, a particular glare that she gives, that shows that there’s definitely darkness within her that is just waiting to be pushed over the threshold. But it is as I said: The character is grey - so this part of her personality doesn’t completely define her - all it does it just gives her more depth to admire about her if you can appreciate that her evil arc is a development of her character and not a regression of it and is therefore something that had to happen so that her character could continue to grow and expand into whatever this Willow was:
It's all Willow - the light and the dark - and she had to live and work with that because it was the only way she was ever going to be happy with herself - or at least content. The character was never satisfied with just being and doing whatever she did naturally. She was always striving towards a loftier goal to prove herself to others. The medical term for her condition is "imposter syndrome" or "perceived fraudulence" but I think the most accurate term to call it is "grey" because there was never a point when anything she was being or doing was an imposter or fraud. She just perceived it as such and therefore had a constant anxiety that she would be exposed for it, which led to her doing horrifically abusive things to her loved ones so that she would never lose them or they would never leave her. Didn't quite plan out that way. In the end, she was her own worst enemy and she proved her greatest worst fears true by believing they would happen to begin with. She never meant to be or do evil. She never meant to be a villain. She was just so afraid that she would lose the ones she loves and so when she did - Dark Willow emerged. I'll likely never come across another non-lead female character in TV art/entertainment like Willow Rosenberg again and that's a shame. But now that I think about it... I don't think I want to. She's special and TV today would only cancel her.
