by 'stina
post Buffy s2
Kindly donated by 'stina's Buffy theories

Ok, people have been asking for another hair-brained theory from me, and here's my latest.  Of course, I couldn't ever have started something like this without relying partially on Leather Jacket's seminal work, Willow=evil, (c)BYTEME, 1998.

So most of you know my pet theory centering around an involvement between Ethan and Willow (unlike the involvement between Angel and Xander, this is a platonic unholy alliance).  This is an attempt for me to elaborate it further and flush out some of the details.

Willow has been fascinated with the dark arts ever since she heard about them.  She's participated in, as far as I can count, at least 6 rituals: the hyena transfer in The Pack, burying the master between Prophecy Girl and When She Was Bad, the ousting of Grace and James in I Only Have Eyes For You, the first attempt to restore Angel's soul in Becoming 1 and the final, successful attempt to restore Angel's soul in Becoming 2. (Though I guess it could be technically correct that she took place in the Anointed One's (Colin's) attempt to restore the Master, since she was unconscious at the time, there wasn't much for her to learn from that particular experience.)  In addition, she was instrumental in researching both Ethan's first appearance in Halloween and in determining a way to defeat Eyghon in The Dark Age..

Willow, it must be remembered, is only 15-17 years old (depending on whether she skipped grades, whether she started young, etc.). She has been the person in the group that has been the most affected by romanticism. (Some have argued that without her pushing, the Angel / Buffy relationship may have moved a bit slower and not have had the disastrous results it did before. I've addressed that issue elsewhere.) She was excited and thought it was cool that she was able to wear robes and everything when she took place in the burial of the Master. She was able to come up with ways for defeating enemies on three occasions.  First, when Giles and Buffy were with Eyghon in The Dark Age; second, when Giles was convinced that Jenny was speaking to him in IOHEFY; and third, when Giles was kidnapped by Angel in Becoming 2..

Willow knows that the black arts are dangerous.  She's seen Amy's mother, the zoo keeper at the Sunnydale Zoo, Ethan, Amy, and Xander misuse them and nearly cause major destruction because of them.  (She's also almost seen Angel die because of them, in What's My Line 2.). It's unknown whether Buffy told Willow about Giles's past "occult-addiction" that was revealed in The Dark Age, but it sounded like it was something that was told in confidence and Buffy may have decided to keep her watcher's weakness to herself.

However, Willow is smart, and she knows she's smart.  She's shown time and time again that she is fully capable of doing things that adults have trouble with.  In most cases this is an asset, but in this case it is a liability for two reasons.  First, even though she knows it's dangerous to mess with the dark arts, she assumes that she's going to be better at it than those she's seen fail with it. This notion was probably reinforced in IOHEFY where both Willow and Giles were engaged in trying to figure out what was wrong with the school, and Willow was right and Giles was wrong. Second, since everyone knows how capable she is in nearly everything she attempts, they're going to think that she's going to be smart in her playing with the occult.  Her innocent face in Becoming 1 when she's assuring Giles that her going through Ms. Calendar's spells was for "educational fun" was pretty convincing.  I think that if anyone's going to give Willow's increasing fascination with the Dark Arts any thought, they're going to assume that Willow's smart enough not to let it get her into too much trouble.  They're not likely to see the warning signs.

There are other factors that indicate that Willow is destined to head down a dark path. First, Willow admired and loved Jenny Calendar.  Currently, she is in a position to follow in her footsteps, taking over her computer class and looking up her book-marks on her computer. If it was ok for Jenny to cast spells and be a technopagan, then it was ok for her to do it. After all, Willow has been more than capable in teaching her class, so she may reason that she's also capable in following Jenny's technopagan footsteps.  What Willow may not realize is that Jenny wasn't particularly involved in casting spells. She helped to form the Circle of Kayless in I Robot, You Jane and she sought the soul restoration curse for Angel in Passion, but the shopkeeper in the local Boogedy-boogedy store didn't know her, because she had no occasion to go there before.  If Jenny was casting spells right and left, they were minor spells and they did not require props.

Second, most of the people that would notice strange behavior in Willow are either distracted or absent.  Giles missed Willow's involvement in the IOHEFY spells until they were going full force, and he agreed with the attempt at re-cursing Angel partially because of Jenny's wishes.  Giles is not through with his mourning for Jenny, and any time he sees Willow trying to emulate her, he's touched and thinks more of his own grief than of Willow's safety.  (I'm not even going to discuss the "moment" between Giles and Willow on the stairway in IOHEFY. I just hope that Joss was making fun of Dawson's Creek or something.).  Also, if Giles scolded Amy for her involvement in the Black arts after her mother's disaster, it wasn't a public scolding.  Buffy, for the first couple of episodes of the third season will be absent, and she has faith in Willow's ability to take care of herself. She'll probably be distracted with her plethora of other problems than to notice Willow's new fascination with the black arts.  Xander  is confused by his own feelings right now, and will think that any changes he sees in Willow are the result of her involvement with Oz.  Also, Willow suffered a severe head trauma, and strange behavior is common after such events.  That can easily be used to explain new and different fascinations.

Third, it is unknown what the apparent temporary possession by either the gypsy woman or Jenny did to Willow's mind. She may have been left with many other spells and curses that she's dying to try. Chances are that possession will encourage her down the dark path.

Finally, Willow has a firmly entrenched belief that she can help to do good for Sunnydale. If it means that she has to cast spells or perform rituals or whatever, she's fully confident that she (and the other Slayerettes) are much better for public health and safety than any of local law enforcement.  Who else will be qualified to take on demons, witches, zombies, etc? And with Buffy gone for a temporary time, she's going to have to shoulder a bit more of the burden. Willow doesn't have Buffy's physical strength or her ability to think in battle, but she does have spells and her mind that she can work with.  Willow will think that she has a duty to pick up the slack where Buffy left.

Ok, so how does Ethan get involved?  He tells Willow that he's her father and that Obi Wan didn't tell her the whole truth.  :-)

First, some basic truths about Ethan.  Ethan is into chaos, and causing trouble. He's also one that always looks out for number 1. So whatever he does, he's going to make sure that he benefits from it.  Ethan also has a particular hatred for Giles going back to their school days (though it was never mentioned whether Ethan was at Oxford with Giles or not, I have visions of him as a Christ Church man, while Giles is more the Balliol type...). Though there is absolutely no way of proving this, I think that Ethan and Giles were probably in Watcher training together (along with the others in their group); and Ethan may very well be a Watcher without a slayer.  It would be a great coup for Ethan to get one of Giles's protégés in his camp.  And it would be beneficial to get someone like Willow, who is able to learn quickly and able to think very, very, very well.

So how to seduce Willow.......

I see two possible scenarios.

First, Sunnydale's a small town, and Ethan has to know that there's a werewolf in town.  He's the type that probably can figure out by following the howls who that particular werewolf is and from that, figure out who he's dating.  While Willow and Oz have seemingly been able to work around the fact that he's a werewolf and they're pretty comfortable with having to be apart for three nights, I'm sure that Willow would be more than willing to try to de-werewolf Oz.  Willow's weakness is other people and helping them, especially those she loves.  If Ethan were to lure Willow with a spell or two that help to de-werewolf Oz, it may convince her that a) he's not such a bad guy after all, and b) he has a lot more spells that she can learn from him.   And we have her down the path to her own destruction....sneaking off to meet Ethan, not telling her friends what she's doing, lying about her involvement with the Black Arts. Until she's hooked and Ethan reveals to his mortal enemy that he's managed to grab up one of his best and brightest.

The second scenario is similar, but involves a more complex scheme.  While many people believe that Willow did the right thing in restoring Angel's soul, I'm convinced that it was NOT a good thing. She literally decided where a soul should be after the body was dead. And she caused that soul to spend time in Hell.  Unless that soul came from hell in the first place, she's in deep trouble.  This is not her role in life (and probably not in the afterlife either), so there are bound to be repercussions.  Repercussions may include haunting by something or someone (Angel?) or an amazing weight on her conscience.  Though she doesn't necessarily know what happened to Angel after he and Buffy met and fought, she may have pieced enough together to realize what happened from Giles and her own knowledge of what happened with the soul (and it would explain Buffy's leaving too).  So she feels an unbelievable amount of guilt in her casting Angel's soul to hell, and she's going to want to get him out.

Willow is not the type that would want to put her friends in danger, and she knows that trying to get something out of hell is dangerous to both her friends' physical safety and the safety to their immortal souls.  So she's going to want to go to someone who's soul she doesn't really care about and someone who knows a hell of a lot about things dark for help.  What a great opportunity for Ethan... I'm sure there's stuff in Hell that Ethan would love to get his hands on and control... and he's going to see the potential of corrupting Willow in the process.

Ok...so another theory that will probably be debunked in the first twenty minutes of the third season, but I like it because I'm one of those types that likes to make things as complicated as possible, and I'd love to see a confrontation between Buffy / Giles vs. Ethan / Willow.....


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