Willow Files

Rating:
Summary: A trio of early episodes focusing on Willow Rosenberg
Review: It is interesting to look back and see how few episodes during the first three seasons of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" actually focused on our beloved Willow. The Wicca in training is pivotal in two of these three novelized tales and has a great speech but minor role in the third. From the first season we have "I, Robot . . . You, Jane" in which Willow accidentally unleashes Moloch the Corruptor into cyberspace while scanning book on demons into the computer. There is a wonderful scene in this story where Buffy, Willow and Xander bemoan their lousy loves lives (involving a vampire, a demon and a she-mantis respectively). "Phases" from the second season of Buffy is where Willow learns that Oz is a werewolf, which is really more about him than her, but he is her boyfriend it does matter to her (and justifies the picture on the cover). Finally, we have "Dead Man's Party," which heralded Buffy's return from her self-imposed exile in L.A. from the earliest part of the third season. As I indicated above, Willow does not have a lot to do in this episode, but she does have one of her best moments when she reads Buffy the riot act after discovering the Slayer packing to leave town again.

Buffy novelizations only get four stars because five stars are reserved only for original Buffy stories. But one of the things I especially liked in Yvonne Navarro's novelization is that her framing device consists of daily journal entries from Willow's computer. Not only is that in keeping with Ms. Rosenberg's character, it also allows some insights laid out in Willow-speak (you have to hear her words in your mind for this to work). This is much more effective than most of the other bridging devices employed by writers of other Buffy novelizations. Navarro's fascination with everybody's favorite redheaded Wicca continues to this day as "The Darkening," the first volume in Navarro's "Wicked Willow" trilogy has just been published.