r/buffy • u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 • Jun 13 '25
Content Warning I don't think Willow was Evil for Killing Warren nor the way she did
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
- Fredrick Nietzsche
In Buffyverse, Vamps are evil because they lack a soul. Angel tortures himself for his crimes. Spike as well. We must reference this because of Faith and Willow.
BUT
Warren is HUMAN and in Buffyverse, had a soul. We are supposed to forgive "evil" Angelus then once again, "Angel" because he did it without a soul. We are supposed to forgive Spike when he had no soul. Warren did the same and worse, WITH A SOUL. Why should we consider Willow torturing and killing Warren any worse than Buffyu staking a vamp?!
Whedon changed it to how it took her over, and in story, she was so evil, but the initial act, I stand by being as just as justified as Buffy staking vamps.
Warren had a soul, and still CHOSE to be a raping murderer.
I always feel that Willow was justified in her torture and murder of Warren and feel he deserved worse. Sure she went off the rails, but he was an unrepentant raping murdering narcissistic sociopath. If it were today, he'd be a "Red Pill" and he ACTUALLY acted on all of it and both raped and murdered and had zero remorse. I'll never not appreciate her monologue about the bullet and that he was never moved by it and still blames Katrina and Buffy and all women who reject him. He'd already raped and killed and I agree that he was worse than most vamps who are stupid and killed quickly.
To depict Willow as evil for actual righteous vengeance was unnecessary. Buffy's speech about monsters versus humans and Slayer Law versus Human, was a bit on the nose as Nietzsche's; Whedon's take on Nietzsche means that a rapist can rape, and a murderderer can murder when HUMAN, even while a vamp can be redeemed for previous crimes with a returned soul for the same crimes, UNLESS it is an incel and/or red pill WHO HAD A SOUL.
That removes all of the "Girl Power" Whedon claims he intended.
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u/SevereEducation2170 Jun 13 '25
Do I understand why Willow did it? Sure. Do I feel bad for Warren? Nope. But she was essentially getting off by torturing him and killing him. And then she just continued down the crazy road, hurting people she loved and who loved her... before trying to end the world. And it all started with her lust for vengeance against Warren.
If Buffy started capturing vamps, locking them up, torturing and flaying them instead of simply staking them, she'd be a very different character, and not at all a sympathetic hero. She'd basically be an extreme version of Faith at her darkest. Who was most definitely considered a villain during those times.
Although the point to me wasn't so much Willow was evil, but that she due to grief she gave into an addiction and the power that addiction provided her corrupted her.
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Jun 13 '25 edited Jun 13 '25
Torturing a man alive and getting off on it is not a good sign. Proceeding to then attempt to take the lives of two others and then your friends is also not good.
Was Willow "evil" for killing Warren? Eh, not really. Was it an "evil" act? Absolutely.
Willow also had a soul. She too chose to be a raping murderer, what does that say about her?
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u/First_Pay702 Jun 13 '25
Also it was less about who she did it to than about what she did. Willow was already on the slippery slope with the magic addiction and magical gaslighting, by the time she catches Warren she has dove down the off the rails slip n’ slide shouting “wheeeeee!” People aren’t so much horrified at what happened to Warren as to what Willow is doing - and she escalates from there. She was going full power into the whole hurt people hurt people thing. The worry is for what Willow is/was/could become and what she will now have to live with. Evil acts committed, redemption required
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u/Tacitus111 Jun 13 '25
Also the manner of killing him was outright sadistic. Like Angelus level sadism.
When you can reasonably know that Angelus would be impressed by your torture…you know something’s gone terribly wrong.
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Jun 13 '25
And Buffy's concerns are immediately validated when Willow doubles down with "Two to go" then triples down by threatening to turn Dawn into a ball of energy then quadrupling down by attacking her, Anya and Giles.
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u/IL-Corvo Jun 13 '25
And for her finale? "I'm gonna kill the world because people are sad."
Thank goodness there was a carpenter around to save us.
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
Technically as long as the comics remain canon she didn't even actually kill him, Amy stopped it. It's a completely moronic retcon for shock value but it's 100% how things actually happened and why too much of the lengthy justifications for Season 6 have Godzilla-sized obstacles from the rest of the canon that make it a shaggy dog story. If the reboot elected to change that it'd arguably be a change for the better as Willow having a broad sketches version of the same arc but actually killing someone and facing the consequences is a stronger moral element.
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u/lmjustaChad Jun 13 '25
Why are the comics so bad? The First appeared as Warren he was dead
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
I dunno, but it's why I 100% am on the 'they should have resurrected Tara if they inflicted that Warren on people's good eyes because saying Warren and Giles get to come back from the dead for cheap and she doesn't is a crock.'
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u/Knight_Machiavelli Jun 13 '25
I'm going to need to know what happened in the comics now. Is it related to Warren coming back in The Killer in Me?
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
It's that Amy somehow saved Warren from dying, with the Willow turning him into burnt bacon part just left out so he looks like a dollar store Cenobite instead, leaving the only thing of Season 6 that permanently sticks Tara's death. Which seems extra wrong when other characters get cheap death but this is the only element of Season 6 required to stand for.......absolutely no clear reason at all.
So not only did Willow not actually kill Warren, but he makes it all the way to Season 8's end until he gets unceremoniously bumped off by the collapse of magic, permanently. And I think that renders the entire set of justifications of 'Season 6 was great as it was' a moot point because right now the canon is that nothing bad Willow did stuck, only Tara's death.
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u/redskinsguy Jun 16 '25
I think Tara staying dead was Joss being petty. He may have taken less control over season sux but the main plot was his idea. And fans rejected it hard. Then Amber doesn't come back for season 7 when her as the First would have dramatically altered the effectiveness of it's portrayal
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u/Slow_Grapefruit5214 Jun 13 '25
I haven’t read the comics, but I don’t actually think the fact that Amy saves Warren is material to the larger point about Willow here. She still met the mens rea for murder. Is there a huge difference in the moral blameworthiness of murder versus attempted murder? Not really.
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
It 100% is relevant because the entire thing that sets the arc off is 'Willow murdered someone and that's bad' and it's clearly where her slide downhill started, under the impression that she actually killed him. If she didn't kill him it renders everything that happens afterward a grim farce. And as long as Warren literally tried to kill the superpowered person literally going after him he literally made it self-defense as much as the Slayers, who are stronger and faster than vampires, can be said to 'defend themselves' from beings they are more powerful than and who they specifically exist to erase from existence.
It's the equivalent of going to Yellowstone to mess with a Bison and Pikachu-facing when the tactical assault cow runs your ass over.
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u/Wonderful-Noise-4471 Jun 14 '25
'Willow murdered someone and that's bad'
And she still fully intended to kill him, believed she succeeded, and was happy with the results at the time. The fact that the character survived, while dumb from a story perspective, doesn't change anything about Willow's arc in S6.
and it's clearly where her slide downhill started
Willow's downhill slide (in S6) started in the first episode, when she killed an innocent animal. The entire season's arc is her continuing her slow descent. From sacrificing an innocent life to rescue her friend, to manipulating the memory of the woman she loves to avoid a fight, to trying to remove Buffy's memories so that she can be "happy", to the entire magic = drugs storyline where she chased her pleasure at the cost of everyone else.
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u/_paranoid-android_ Jun 13 '25
This is a really good point. Willow is also a rapist. She is the SAME KIND of rapist as Warren, in fact. Both played with a partner (ex and almost-ex)'s memories for their own end. In fact, it's heavily implied that Willow had sex with Tara, yet we see that Warren's ex wakes up before the act. Therefore, Willow may actually be worse than Warren in this instance.
Also, I think it would be a problem if Buffy tortured a vamp for fun before staking it, so the entire premise of OP's argument is off imo. Killing because it needs killing is different than torturing.
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u/TomorrowNotFound Jun 13 '25
And we see Buffy's concerns about just that when Faith got a little punch-happy with a vampire. Buffy judges herself for getting too into the violence at times. 'Hunting' versus patrolling, killing versus protecting. Regardless of if one supports the death penalty or not, most can understand that personally motivated vigilante justice can easily cross all sorts of moral lines.
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Jun 13 '25
Warren is Willow's shadow self. Whereas Willow tries to justify her meddling with her partner (and later her friends) minds as being for the greater good, Warren is fully aware that what he's doing is wrong.
What both of them did was awful, and their reasonings are different, but you can't deny that the parallel feels absolutely intentional.
The problem with the "did Warren deserve it?" argument isn't about whether or not he deserves it, it's about why Willow is doing it and the way she goes about doing it, that being torture and flaying as opposed to an alternate method of neutralising him.
Warren was strung up and completely defenseless during Willow's torture, there were countless non-lethal methods she had at her disposal to put an end to his villainy but chose vengeance, followed by a rampage on those not involved, including her friends.
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
I disagree that Warren is Willow's shadow self, Jonathan is very clearly her actual shadow self, his spell in Superstar where he raped two women is the exact same thing and they share much more of the self-loathing and lack of purpose unless validated by others, along with actual expertise in magic. Warren is Buffy's shadow self and reliant on machines and magitek to do what Buffy does from an innate supernatural gift. Warren is the incel, in contrast to Buffy, who has a very active, if unstable, sex life if she wants. Warren relies on robots, Buffy's sex life relies on the undead.
Warren is also the leader and while Willow's the backup leader in case something happens to Buffy she's mostly the sidekick, the same role Jonathan portrays in spite, as Superstar shows, of his having very formidable magical power indeed, far moreso than the guy who's the boss of their group. Just like Willow with Buffy.
There are, however, parallels between the guy who thinks he's a supervillain and is a nerd posturing for attention and the actual supervillain with reality warping magical powers.
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u/Slow_Grapefruit5214 Jun 13 '25
I’m inclined to see Warren as Willow’s shadow self - which is why she appeared as Warren to her friends in that episode in S7. She needed to integrate with her shadow in order to truly heal from everything that happened in S6.
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u/QualifiedApathetic I'd like to test that theory Jun 13 '25
Warren didn't do anything with Katrina's memories. He made her a mindless automaton. That is way, way beyond blanking a single memory. Tara was completely conscious; she could still have refused to have sex with Willow if she just didn't feel like it. Katrina had absolutely no agency to the point where the Trio dressed her up in a costume like a life-sized doll. Also, for an encore, Warren murders her. So it's really weird to suggest that Willow is worse.
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u/Anna3422 Jun 13 '25
These replies are insane! Such a gross false equivalency.
TW:
I'm not going to argue that Willow didn't rape Tara. She certainly removed the possibility of informed consent.
But that is NOT equivalent to kidnapping a woman, rendering her unconscious and programming her like a doll for the purpose of repeated sex crimes. Oh my god!
Willow & Tara have what they both think is a mutual sexual encounter while both of them are enchanted by a demon. They find out as a side effect of something else that Tara couldn't give proper consent. Tara never confirms what she would do differently otherwise.
"Under Your Spell" is comparable to a couple having enthusiastic sex while one of them is drunk or deceived about the consequences. Which, to be clear, is bad! What Warren does is comparable to drugging someone unconscious and raping their comatose body. These crimes are not the same!
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Jun 13 '25
Serious question. If your partner punches you in the face repeatedly and then magically makes you forget about it and heals the bruising, then they initiate sex with you -which you go along with because you don’t remember that they just punched you in the face-, do you have agency in that moment? Without that piece of information that your partner took away from you without your knowledge or consent?
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u/QualifiedApathetic I'd like to test that theory Jun 13 '25
I would have agency to a certain extent; I'm obviously not refusing sex on the grounds that they punched me in the face, but I might still refuse it because I'm not horny or I have an appointment. There is a large difference between your scenario and altering someone's mind so that they cannot say no and aren't even aware of what they are doing.
There's also a smaller difference between your scenario and what Willow did. She didn't punch Tara in the face repeatedly. They had an argument. Couples argue. They snipe at each other and say things they don't mean. Striking your partner is or should be the instant end of the relationship. There was no suggestion that Tara was going to break up with Willow because of some harsh words exchanged. Willow didn't do the memory spell to prevent the relationship from ending, she did it to skip the work of talking it out and making up. Bad, yes, but not equivalent to what you described.
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Jun 13 '25
No, she didn’t punch Tara in the face. She violated her mind and played with her memories. For what? Convenience? And after what Glory did to Tara, knowing how traumatic it was? IMO that is worse than violence. It is a betrayal on the deepest level.
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u/Ikrie Jun 14 '25
I cannot fathom why people are out here trying to make one of these better or worse. They're both literally performing mind control. Yes, there are different levels to that but the outcome was the same. The abuser got exactly what they wanted by removing their victim's agency.
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
Warren 100% did the exact same thing that Willow did, the difference is one did it with technology, one with machines. Willow rewrote Tara's memory on a lark for her convenience, it's a complete crossing of the line into supervillain territory and on a much bigger scale than anything the Trio managed until they shot Buffy and Tara.
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u/MassiveTemporary4050 Jun 14 '25
Willow is also a rapist. She is the SAME KIND of rapist as Warren
This show really hates nerds 😂
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u/V48runner Jun 13 '25
Willow also had a soul.
The soul can mean anything on this show. It's more of a plot device than anything.
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u/DarthMomma_PhD Jun 13 '25
You are right about how Warren would be a Redpilled dude, OP. Adam Busch (Warren) was just on the Buffy Rewatcher podcast and he said as much. Adam was very aware that he was portraying an INCEL/Redpill guy before they were a well-known “thing”. He was a really excellent guest, too!
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Jun 13 '25
Omg I loved that interview so much, Adam is so smart and really well spoken.
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u/DarthMomma_PhD Jun 13 '25
When he said he knew he had a “punchable face” because one of the hosts had previously said he had a punchable face I actually LOLed. He got her! 😅
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Jun 13 '25
That was so funny 😭
I actually don't think Adam has a punch able face, but he is a fantastic "face actor". Just compare the way he looks in most of S6, with how he looks in the S7 episode "The Killer in Me". He almost feels like a different person.
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u/DarthMomma_PhD Jun 13 '25
I agree. He’s a great face actor.
Also, listening to him talk I finally understood how he and Amber would have dated. He seemed really sweet and plugged into social issues. Nice dude.
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Jun 13 '25
Yeah, he's lovely. I remember someone from the Warren-fanfic community telling me about the time she had Adam's band, Common Rotation visit her house to perform and I was just like... I couldn't imagine having that happen, I'd literally faint on the spot 😭
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u/ActsofJanice Jun 13 '25
Oh that’s awesome!! I bought a couple of Common Rotation’s albums on iTunes and still listen to them every once in a while when I’m in the mood for folksy. Amber directed their video for “Wasted Words.”
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u/BeccasBump Jun 13 '25
Yeah, no, sorry, "torturing someone to death and enjoying it isn't evil" is a bad take. Doesn't matter who it is.
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u/Still_Razzmatazz1140 Jun 13 '25
I feel like if op doesn’t get this then they don’t know Buffy very well. It reminds me of Batman begins “I will not become an executioner” leave the justice to the authorities and keep your soul from murder
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u/jacobydave Jun 13 '25
The problem wasn't what happened to Warren. The problem is what Willow became by doing it.
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u/jacobydave Jun 13 '25
I'll go ahead and expand on this.
In S2, we're told two things. Uncle Enyos said that Vengeance is a living thing. Giles said that doing the curse would open a door within her that could not be closed.
Come to "Becoming 2" and Willow goes almost directly from traumatic brain injury and coma into starting the curse, and something wanted it done so much that it possessed Willow's body to complete it.
After that curse, once a season, Willow lashes out with all her confidence and all her magic to protect how she feels loved, which results in an increase in power. This is "Lover's Walk", "Wild at Heart", "Tough Love". It explains the forgetting spell in "All the Way", and fits the "already in your costume" line in "Restless".
The possessions we've seen are generally fast and complete, both in Jesse and Xander, so Willow slowly losing herself to Vengeance over several years doesn't seem like it. They mistake it for addiction because they don't understand. But finally, after Warren shoots Tara, Willow can get vengeance but she can't revive Tara, can't bring back how she feels loved, and she loses herself to Vengeance, and needs a jolt of Giles compassion magic and Xander to find herself again.
And that's the problem. Willow losing herself while gaining power. Not Warren being killed.
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u/lmjustaChad Jun 13 '25
It's like people forget Willow was offered the job of a vengeance demon her evil could be seen as far back as season 4 long before Warren ever entered the picture.
Also Tara was not the first person she tried to control she was about to perform an anti-lust spell on Xander because she could not control herself in season 3.
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u/jacobydave Jun 13 '25
I wouldn't say "her evil", because it's her need, her anger and pain, that drew D'Hoffryn. She got no love at home – six months to recognize 18 inches of hair were cut off, Mom? – and not the kind she wanted from Xander. It isn't evil, yet.
Otherwise, 100%.
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Jun 13 '25
Warren was not an incel. He had a girlfriend who he had sex with. He wanted more power over women. That’s a different thing.
In society we’ve decided vengeance isn’t ok. Humans stand trial for rape and murder and we send them the prison for it. Warren would have gone to jail. Willow killed him instead.
What Willow did was wrong. It didn’t bring back Tara. It didn’t do anything to stop her pain.
Still loved seeing her do it.
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u/_WillCAD_ Poncy bugger owes me £11 Jun 13 '25
Yeah, Warren was just a straight-up misogynist. Warren was just a different flavor of the same kind of shitcicle as incels.
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Jun 13 '25
Warren is a misogynist. He's probably the most realistic one in the entire show, but he's definitely not an incel.
Warren's disdain for women doesn't stem from involuntary celibacy, it stems from blame, particularly for Buffy and Katrina.
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Jun 13 '25
Oh the vien diagram is of the two is almost a perfect circle but Warren didn’t blame women for romantic problems. He blamed them for having minds of their own and not serving him and his genius.
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u/Fancy_Injury_7800 Jun 13 '25
And the really fucked up thing is that he made a being to serve him and his genius, basically creating life like he was a God… and that wasn’t good enough for him
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Jun 13 '25
Dude could literally make life like sex robots, or battle bots, or whatever the hell you wanted bot. He could have been the richest man on earth. That wouldn’t even be good enough for him.
Imagine what the US would pay for soldier bots.
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u/VelvetElvis Jun 13 '25
Incel wasn't a concept that even existed in the 90s.
The first time I heard of it, it seemed absurd. Everyone had dry spells, but nobody had a victim complex about it.
We also weren't as picky, didn't go looking for one night stands because HIV/AIDS was still terrifying, but also didn't care if someone had had other partners before us (37 blowjobs aside). We dated almost entirely among our extended peer group because that's the only people we knew. There was more drugs and alcohol involved, but we looked out for each other more, too. Everyone knew at least one person who had already seen you naked. It was a very different time.
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Jun 13 '25
Don't bother trying to say Warren isn't an incel, this sub will downvote you to oblivion even though he isn't lol.
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u/nome_ann Jun 13 '25
Please note that incel =/= virgin. Girls make mistakes. Plenty of incels have had sex. They're just not having it now with everyone they want.
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u/DarthMomma_PhD Jun 13 '25
No, but he is what an INCEL would be if they finally did get a girlfriend. That was exactly what he was meant to be from the get go. Makes himself a sex robot because he is a lonely loser who can’t get a real girlfriend, but then when he finally does get a girlfriend he is still a POS misogynist. Years of pent of rage and brainwashed ideology don’t just go away because you finally get the thing you desperately want but hate at the same time.
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Jun 13 '25
I agree with this, I think it's a lot more complex than just straight up calling him an incel (as someone who's dealt with them personally I don't like the term because it gets misused a lot)
His attitude both towards women and the rest of the world is a combination of his bad upbringing and extreme immaturity, specifically in the way he treats Buffy and Katrina after his breakup. His misogyny is extremely realistic in that way, and very well written.
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u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 Jun 13 '25
I said he'd be a "Red pill" now, that does include incels but also other types ("high value man can use low value women", "women owe me", etc.)
I know that somewhat morally it was wrong, but still liked Willow doing it and it was cut short by other Scooby arrivals, but she could have done it better if the flaying took an hour.
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Jun 13 '25
I loved the scene and couldn’t wait for it when I read the spoilers. I imagined something like the Emperor just blasting Luke in Jedi.
Do you watch the last of us? If you do I disagree with really everyone. Vengeance doesn’t help. It might feel good in the instant but it didn’t solve anything. Just made Willow want to punish more.
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u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 Jun 13 '25
I haven't watched it (a lack of THAT streaming service), but I'm keen to :)
I appreciate recommendation and your take.
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u/QualifiedApathetic I'd like to test that theory Jun 13 '25
Warren's issue, the reason he created April in the first place, was that he couldn't get an actual girl. So he was involuntarily celibate before he met Katrina. Then he wasn't celibate, but his mind had been poisoned by the incel mindset; it didn't just go away because he got a girlfriend.
So I'd say incel is a fair term here.
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u/Fancy_Injury_7800 Jun 13 '25
So you’re saying he just looked at April?
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u/QualifiedApathetic I'd like to test that theory Jun 13 '25
No, I didn't say that at all. I would call what he did with April a form of masturbation.
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u/Fancy_Injury_7800 Jun 13 '25
Data from Star Trek and most droids would disagree. Also the machines from the matrix
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Jun 13 '25
How long was he with Katrina for? His involuntary celibacy could have just been high school. I don’t think his problem was not finding a sexual partner. His problem is he thinks he should be a god and worshiped. That ain’t happening. Thus April.
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Jun 13 '25
This exactly. Warren has a very "you're either with me or against me" mindset, which is why he hates Katrina after S5 and ends up liking Andrew and hating Jonathan in the back half of S6.
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u/QualifiedApathetic I'd like to test that theory Jun 13 '25
The point is that the root of his misogyny is being an incel. That it was just in high school doesn't matter, what matters is the effect of it on his mind. Sure, well-adjusted people know that not dating in high school isn't that big of a deal, but to him it was huge enough to create his own girlfriend.
I recall a shot from April's POV showing a bunch of files in her program, and a lot of it was sex stuff, and some was labeled like "listensympathetically.exe". Thinking he was the bee's knees was part of it, but it wasn't about being worshipped. Warren wanted sex and he wanted his concept of the ideal girlfriend.
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
Killing Warren itself wasn’t the problem, it was her going from that to trying to burn the world to a cinder. And under the current canon she didn’t actually kill him. A complete shit idea and yet nevertheless…
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u/QualifiedApathetic I'd like to test that theory Jun 13 '25
We literally see the skinless body go up in flames. Did Whedon forget that?
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Jun 13 '25
Yeah. Amy saves him like the second before death but he is still skinless and just walking around and scheming.
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
Which in turn, as I will repeat, was a shit retcon that nullified the actual moral meaning of Willow's actions as her biggest line crossing didn't actually happen, so she neither avenged Tara's death nor actually did the murder she was blamed for doing. If you're going to have your adorable cinnamon bun witch go Wicked Witch of the West, don't wimp out and try to retcon it.
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u/redskinsguy Jun 16 '25
wimping out would be doing it in season 6. They tried it and didn't like it
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u/SaltyAd8309 Jun 13 '25
Having a soul (a conscience) means you can be bad because of your past. Some people are bad because of a bad upbringing, abuse, etc. It also means you can change, regret what you've done.
Not having a soul (a conscience) means you can never feel remorse. Therefore, yes, it's normal to eliminate yourself if you do something bad because you don't feel anything. You can never change. Humans are supposed to feel; that's what makes them different.
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Jun 13 '25
Warren is explicitly said to have an awful upbringing in the episode "Seeing Red". Is that a justification of anything he does? Ha, no. But that is part of the reason he is the way he is.
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u/Kazaloogamergal Jun 13 '25
I believe that the death penalty is always wrong. Warren was captured. Willow should have turned him over to the police.
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u/illvria Jun 13 '25
I really don't know why people are so resistant to the idea that vengeance is bad and killing is corrosive to the self.
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Jun 13 '25
You hunt down a person to kill them you have crossed a line. Ok, draw a new one. Willow does. “Two to Go”. Just gonna kill his helpers. But wait my friends are trying to stop me. Draw a new line where it’s ok to kill them to. 4 years before Anakin said it but “if you’re not with me you’re my enemy.”
So the show portrayed killing as a corrosive action when done for vengeance.
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u/QualifiedApathetic I'd like to test that theory Jun 13 '25
Only a Sith deals in absolutes!
Still unintentionally hilarious that this line was said with a straight face. It's right up there with Craig T. Nelson's "I've been on welfare and food stamps. Did anyone help me? No."
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Jun 13 '25
Ha! I love both those examples. Got Hayden on Fox News was awful. That was the help, Coach!
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u/GaylicBread Jun 13 '25
When the demon responsible for making other vengeance demons lives by the quote "never go for the kill when you can go for the pain," you know you're not on the right side when your aim is to cause as much suffering as possible rather than just eliminating a threat.
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
One of the big problems here is that Buffy kills at least a few humans, between the Order of Taraka assassin and the Knights of Byzantium, and neither notices nor cares, but draws a moral line with the guy with mind control tech and a robot double and a jet pack who was a rapist and a serial killer. It's one of the cases where the moral code is completely inconsistent and IMO the kind of inconsistent more the fault of the writers than the characters.
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u/illvria Jun 13 '25
It's not really inconsistent imo. Between the order and the knights it was self defense and war. There's a difference between killing some warriors in an army actively attacking you and/or trying to kill your sister, and hunting someone down, stringing them up, torturing and murdering them. But even killing actual demons takes a clear toll on buffy even though its her purpose and has to be done
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
So Warren putting an axe into Willow's back was what, offering a free back scratcher?
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u/illvria Jun 13 '25
You're not gonna like the answer.
This is definitely not a defense of warren but that's a closer comparison to buffy killing the knights than Willow killing him the way she did.
He ran and hid an entire day then got chased through the woods before using the axe. Willow immobilises him after he does. He'd have spent his life in jail if she had left him there and called the police. Instead, with all the power in the situation, she tortures and kills him while he's helpless, then kills Rack to go after John and Andrew, then Dawn, Buffy, Xander, Anya, Giles and the entire world.
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u/Kirstemis that'll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo Jun 14 '25
Were the Order of Taraka human? Very few humans can turn themselves into a pile of maggots. They and the Knights who don't say Ni were trying to kill Buffy and destroy the Key. That was self defence.
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 14 '25
The assassin Buffy killed at the rink absolutely was human, yes.
Warren literally put an axe in Willow’s back.
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u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 Jun 13 '25
I don't think it is good to hold on to "vengeance"; this wasn't some "50 years later he invited them to an island to torture for a game". Warren was an immediate threat who had raped and murdered his ex, tried to frame Buffy, and then tried to kill her and accidentally murdered Tara, and still blamed others for HIS actions.
In Buffyverse, in SAME episode we have Anya and Clem who are both demons. If Buffy were Kendra, they'd both deserve death for existing. In Willow's case, it WAS vengeance, but still he was a viable ongoing threat to the well-being of others. Buffy glibly killed that slightly less than-Harnony-type moronic Vamp in Season 4 with "Don't touch my stuff". Again, she'd killed. Warren killed.
I don't believe in killing, but when we forgive Angel over Angelus' actions, and Spike over soulless and pre-chip (and post-both), but then excuse the SOULED Warren, then it is contrary to the actions of other two. And if we could have put either down without, Warren is WORSE for having a soul but being worse than a vamp.
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u/EchoesofIllyria Jun 13 '25
Willow had enough magic by that point to kill Warren in any number of painless ways. She didn’t do that, she tortured him. And she wasn’t doing it because of any future threat that Warren posed.
Also, using vampires as examples is probably not fair considering the show presents killing vamps and killing humans as very different (see also: Faith).
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u/illvria Jun 13 '25
She had him strung up by roots, evil dead style, any threat he posed could have ended there regardless of if she took his life.
They could have called the police.Let them know where he was and left, he'd have spent years in jail for buffy's attempted murder and tara's death, probably katrina's too.
There literally was no immediate threat. Instead she senseleslessly tortured and murdered him. The question isn't even if it's understandable she did so, it is, but that doesn't make it right or good for her in any way.
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u/gebbethine Jun 13 '25
I'm just against calling her 'Evil' Willow. I don't think she was evil. I think she was a super-powerful magic user going through an immense amount of grief. The same way a normal person might blow up friendships or family relationships when they're dealing with grief, Willow's powers, range, and addiction led her to almost destroying the world.
'Evil' gets tossed around a lot.
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u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 Jun 13 '25
Yes. She saw a raping murdering P.O.S. and went through the supernatural 5 stages of grief.
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u/thewelllostmind Jun 13 '25
I mean, Whedon never actually had the “girl power” he claimed to, but I think there is a distinction between having a righteous reason for something and that act being okay. It clearly wasn’t healthy for Willow to go down that path, and while I have no qualms about the world being better without Warren it’s also not a better world to have a super-powerful witch in active grief justifying her own violence.
Also, I think when it comes to staking vamps I think of that less as “they don’t have a soul, it’s not their fault” or whether they should be punished but more as “their souls have already been lost” and it’s only through extraordinary circumstances, even in this magical universe, that it can ever be restored. The person they were is gone, already dead.
Preventing Warren from causing further harm was not wrong, but Willow not only taking on Buffy’s role but relishing it was never going to be okay, it was corrosive to her soul. It also reminds me of when Anya reverts to demonhood and argues with Buffy that she doesn’t understand, despite the fact that she killed Angel. Not Angelus, re-souled Angel, to close the portal. Great power, great responsibility, etc.
A lot of it comes down to something I wouldn’t ascribe to real life because superheroes are not a thing, but basically Buffy is the chosen one, it is her burden to be the one that kills the baddie and strives to maintain her own humanity and the balance of being in touch with her emotions, fueled by her connections to her loved ones, but not overtaken by them. Anytime the gang tries to overstep and go from supporting her to being her it doesn’t work.
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u/thrilling_me_softly Jun 13 '25
You are evil if you flay the skin off of a living being while it lives, the context doesn’t matter.
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u/not_firewood_yeti I am no one. Jun 13 '25
I hope Evil takes MasterCard.
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u/thrilling_me_softly Jun 13 '25
Sorry it only takes Discover card. It’s too bad, stay with the good two shoes over there.
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u/Evil_Unicorn728 Jun 13 '25
Nah.
Warren got exactly what he deserved. It wasn’t nice. It was cruel. But it was just. Not evil, but monstrous in execution, sure. Willow doesn’t do anything truly evil, Andrew and Jonathan are complicit in Warren’s crimes, although they didn’t kill Tara, so her going after them is still kinda on the side of ridding the world of evil before they could do anything worse.
Willow’s brush with evil is her trying to annihilate the earth, which I don’t think she had any real intention of doing. Her grief was so total that I believe she wanted to die, and attempting that kind of atrocity would be a ticket to Buffy killing her. That’s why she goads Buffy into a fight.
Even her apocalyptic plan comes from a twisted sort of empathy, feeling that every living thing was suffering, and deciding everyone else should die too.
It’s complex, and I don’t know that the writing quite explored this enough, but the show isn’t called “Willow the Witch” so we kind of move past it.
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u/thrilling_me_softly Jun 13 '25
I didn’t say he did not deserve what he got, yet torturing a person and flaying him alive IS evil in of itself. Then trying to destroy the world whether she would really go through with it or not is evil as well.
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u/EchoesofIllyria Jun 13 '25
Flaying someone alive is not just lol
It’s fascinating how medieval some people’s attitudes to justice still are.
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u/Evil_Unicorn728 Jun 13 '25
Rapists deserve flaying.
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Jun 13 '25
Then Spike and Willow line up.
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u/Evil_Unicorn728 Jun 13 '25
Yeah actually
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Jun 13 '25
I always like Andrew’s point that really a lot of the slayers people are murderers. Also a high amount of rapist.
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u/Knight_Machiavelli Jun 13 '25
I personally think this is an insane take and dramatically disproportionate. However, even if you believe they 'deserve' it, that doesn't make the act not evil. It's evil to torture people, period, regardless of if they deserve it.
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u/Evil_Unicorn728 Jun 13 '25
Ehhhh no
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u/Knight_Machiavelli Jun 13 '25
I've been raped before and been through another attempted rape. I never reported either. I don't want either of those people to go to prison because I think even that is disproportionate to the crime given how a criminal record fucks up your life forever. One of the main arguments against the death penalty for rape is that you'd have even more of an underreporting problem because lots of people don't want the rapist to die.
Not all rapists are like Warren, who certainly deserved death and probably worse. To equate all rapists to the worst kinds of rapists is to be either woefully misinformed about the various forms rape takes or to be completely heartless. Saying something like 'rapists deserve to be flayed' is just not thinking that statement through unless you're just a sadistic psychopath.
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u/Evil_Unicorn728 Jun 14 '25
My personal moral code is if you violate someone else’s body through an act of sexual violence, you have forfeited your humanity and you should be at the mercy of the wronged party. If you chose to forgive someone for that, or to simply not pursue a punitive form of justice, that’s your choice. It does not change the fact the person who committed that act should be held accountable, and that a violation that monstrous demands justice. For the person who did it to me, flaying is a pittance. I can’t forgive or find empathy for the person who did that to me.
An unrepentant rapist and murderer like Warren would continue to rape and murder, and removing him from existence prevents that. Simple balancing if the scales. He harmed people, his ability to harm was taken away. Willow could’ve turned him into a rat, or castrated him and I’d find that just for the harm he did.
Im not a psycho I just have a different view on ethical utilitarianism.
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u/Kirstemis that'll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo Jun 14 '25
You're talking about two different things as if they're the same. From a point of public safety, killing Warren is preventing him from continuing his behaviour, like shooting a rabid dog prevents it hurting anyone (although of course dogs can't help what happens to them). Imprisoning him would have prevented him hurting anyone else too, and been a punishment. But flaying him alive was cruel tortuous vengeance and it was wrong.
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
I mean the first thing Dark Willow did was save Buffy's life from Warren trying to kill her, so there's at least the prospect that even in magical overload she might not have done it. But I think at the point where she chased him and he tried to kill her with an axe in her back that the bastard pretty much did himself in there, even if the means of execution were especially horrible.
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u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 Jun 13 '25
It does matter.
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u/thrilling_me_softly Jun 13 '25
It doesn’t. That is torture, torturing a person or animal alive is an evil act and makes her evil int hat moment.
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u/Kirstemis that'll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo Jun 14 '25
It means she did an evil thing.
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u/gdex86 Jun 13 '25
Warren is a man who murdered her girlfriend, nearly killed her best friend, and was a rapist. Willow deciding that for him where he's going he doesn't need skin was fine.
The problem is that after that she doesn't stop with the need for vengeance. Even with the argument that they enabled him to get that bad Jonathan and Andrew were in jail when Warren shot Buffy and Tara. That was a him choice. Then she's not deterred having to go through her friends to kill the other two. She threatened to turn Dawn back into energy for annoying her with the full intent on doing it. That's Evil.
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u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 Jun 13 '25
My problem is that because she did what you and I both see as justified, in Whedon-World, she MUST lose control and become evil for it.
Warren literally raped and killed and we go a couple more episodes with NO ONE caring at all, but also have Spike's attempted rape within those same few episodes. We had Willow and Tara working towards reconciliation, when the reason that Willow and Tara had been apart was not JUST the magic, but that Willow VIOLATED her mind as Glory had, so THIS discussion was on the table (but not the table Anya and Spike boinked on).
It's just why did Willow have to lose control for vengeance to be done. We've even seen Anya have regrets. I feel Willow losing it was for the wriylters and not for the characters or story.
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u/AIGLOS42 Jun 13 '25
I'm firmly "torture = evil" but you're 💯 correct about the double standard when it comes to depicting impact of killing on the killer.
Some of this is apparent in the Initiative arc, but it's quite blatant in Angel, where the reality of LA-area law enforcement containing multiple organizations of brutally out-of-control officers is not portrayed.
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u/Still_Razzmatazz1140 Jun 13 '25
Nothing she did was justified. Warren was wrong and a murderer but murder for a murder isn’t justice it’s just more murder. Do you believe in death row then by that logic? Even the character Willow didn’t like what she had become.
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u/meatpotatostew Jun 16 '25
“Why did Willow have to lose control for vengeance to be done”
The act of premeditated murder changes you, will change anyone. It doesn’t matter if you or anyone thinks they had it coming or that it’s deserved or justified. Like, I think you are considering the philosophical implications of this act but not the basic human psychology of torturing and killing another human being. Whether or not you like or loathe someone, you will still fundamentally recognize them as a fellow homo sapien, and needlessly (ie outside of self defense) causing them suffering will have impact on your mental in ways you can’t really grasp, and that will make you feel surreal or out of control. That’s why she went off the rails, coupled with all of the pent up magic inside her.
I don’t think the writers did it just to do it, it’s a combination of her storyline having always been steering towards a dark place, while also being informed by a psychoanalytic approach towards the character. You cannot go from being a fairly healthy, happy human one day to torturing someone the next and walk away unscathed.
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u/DeaththeEternal Dog Geyser Person Jun 13 '25
Also Warren literally tried to put an axe in Willow's back right before she killed him (technically, as of the current canon, she actually didn't but). When he did THAT his ass was grass regardless.
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u/orionsfyre Jun 13 '25
I think in terms of human justice, what she did was wrong.
In terms of supernatural justice, it's difficult to pass judgement on her actions in a world with such vicious beings and creatures. Warren was as dangerous and evil as any demon, perhaps more so then most.
So in the real world, her actions would be wrong. But in terms of the world she lives in, it's hard to find fault with her. What human court could ever hold Warren? What human court could ever punish him for his magical abuses?
Remember his crimes were more then just simple murder. There SA, Kidnapping, repeated instances of attempted murder on Buffy, and he had access to magical resources and abilities outside the realm of human law.
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u/Essex626 Jun 13 '25
Killing Warren is a problem because he has a soul.
There is a line crossed when a human kills another human, it's something we see in the series repeatedly. Using magic also affects the user in ways related to what they're doing with the magic. Killing a soulless thing or a demon does not impact a human the way killing another human does.
I would argue that what Willow does to Warren is not as bad or damaging as if she had managed to kill Jonathan and Andrew. Buffy and co. treat it as if it's not as bad, that killing Jonathan and Andrew would have been crossing a line she didn't cross when killing Warren. She had reason to kill Warren for sure, and he deserved it.
At the same time, revenge isn't morally right, no matter how much we might feel like it is. Warren killed Tara with a gun, purely mundane means, and as a human he should be dealt with by mundane authorities. Willow does not have the right to be judge, jury, and executioner any more than anyone else does.
And finally, torture isn't acceptable for any reason. Buffy stakes vampires, destroying the body and sending the demon back to its home dimension (as I understand it, anyway). She doesn't torture vampires for fun.
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u/Knight_Machiavelli Jun 14 '25
I feel like Jonathan gets off way too easily. Like maybe he's not quite as evil as Warren, but he's not far off. Nobody is ever going to convince me he wasn't going to murder as many people as he could in Earshot. One doesn't bring a sniper rifle up to a sniper nest overlooking a school in order to commit suicide. Then raping twins and with a fairly strong implication of forced incest in Superstar is almost as bad as anything Warren did. And then, despite being far more powerful than Warren, he let Warren lead the trio when he could have stopped Warren at any time.
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u/reereejugs Jun 13 '25
Warren was worse than any vampire because he did all his bullshit with a soul.
Willow did an evil thing but she wasn’t evil. Had she continued down the path of vengeance, she would’ve become, like Warren, worse than the monsters she’d spent her teen and young adult years fighting.
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u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 Jun 14 '25
That's sort of my point; we're supposed to forgive soulless creatures who do this BECAUSE they were soulless, but can be met with grim fates and justice, but Warren does it WITH a soul and supposed to accept that he doesn't deserve just as grim a fate. He as a part of The Triad used significant amounts of magic and demons for everything from mildly annoying to truly evil purposes, and Spike once referenced "only The Big Bad, like vampires and witches" in reference to detecting Rack's place, which suggests that magic users can in fact be on par with vampires. I get not wanting Willow to continue on path, but still think both her vengeance on Warren was JUSTIFIED and was ACTUAL justice; he'd crossed from human crimes committed in HUMAN ways to supernatural and THAT made him fair game for a SUPERNATURAL death or a death by supernatural means.
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u/Hedgewitch250 Jun 13 '25
The show has a very weird morality thing. Buffy killed at least 2 human knights defending dawn. They were adults following order and willingly chose to run it with a slayer. Vampires and demons have shown the ability to be compassionate but they get immediately aligned with murder is the best solution. Warren constantly antagonized them and almost killed 2 of their own and was succeeded with 1. You can’t just say vengeance is wrong or right it’s not that black and white especially when Xander told buffy Willow said kick his ass while she tried to resoul him. Warren played in the world of demons and magic and rightly got a reckoning for thinking it’s a game.
It’s like that Batman thing where he refuses to kill the joker but lets him escape every Tuesday. Your already breaking the law as a vigilante if your grasp on reality turns shatters cause you killed once (but your commissioner friend can take a life as his job to keep the peace) even if it’s for self defense that’s more emblematic of you then the situation.
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u/marle217 Jun 13 '25
Willow didn't just stake Warren like Buffy stakes a vampire. She tortured and flayed him alive. And he's probably alive after the flaying and dies slowly tied up in the woods.
That said, it's understandable, if wrong, and if she then was OK with Andrew and Jonathon going to jail and didn't go violent on anyone else, he friends would've let it go.
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u/fabelbabel Jun 13 '25
I just rewatched this and she incinerated him very shortly after the flaying happened. So I don’t know about dying slowly
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u/marle217 Jun 13 '25
You're probably right, it's been a while since I watched it. I think the point was that it was more brutal than necessary.
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u/Ok_Ant_2715 Jun 13 '25
Willow also had a soul when she wiped her girlfriends memory then slept with her. Exactly the same thing Warren attempted to do.
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u/Rtozier2011 Jun 14 '25
You can't be justified in murder. The definition of the word 'murder' is 'unjust killing' - if it's just, it's not murder, and vice versa.
Was what she did forgivable, even relatable? Yes - like a cop shooting an unarmed rapist murderer they've cornered after a car chase. That's not the same thing as saying it was the right thing to do.
In both cases the best solution seems to me to give the perpetrator court-ordered therapy and time off work (or Buffy-ordered, in Willow's case) rather than prison. That's what she gets.
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u/Ze_Bri-0n Jun 14 '25 edited Jun 14 '25
Honestly, I mostly agree, but I’m still concerned about all the black magic she was doing; the dark side does indeed corrupt in the Buffyverse, and you can tell by the fact that she literally tried to murder the world like a day later.
Also, their point about the human world having standards and systems in place for dealing with this, and those systems deserving a chance to do their job IS valid. There was basically no magic or monsters involved in this case; a man with a gun stormed into a girl’s backyard, shot at her and hit someone else. Seems to me like an open and shut case. If we want society to last, it needs to have a chance for its systems to work.
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u/Distinct-Value1487 Jun 13 '25
I grinned the whole time she was tormenting him and cheered when she skinned him. She did nothing wrong to Warren.
To me, the bigger point of that arc was that the scoobies were worried about what those dark acts would do to Willow as a person. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to come back from that kind of thing when you're not naturally inclined to violence, and Willow was always seen as the marshmallow of the group, wearing her fuzzy sweaters and speaking with a youthful tone. They thought doing what she did to Warren would break her, and they feared they'd lose their friend to her own darkness.
Her friends didn't understand that the gentle, fluffy Willow wasn't the only version of her to exist.
I think that's why it's important that Giles took her to England for rehab. For years, he had told her to stifle that side of herself and stop playing with magic, and when it came down to it, he realized she was like him. Smart, soft when she can be, but deeply violent when needs be. He saw that her darkness would not destroy her, if she had a way to control it.
He brought her to the coven where she married both sides of herself, instead of living like they were at odds with each other. She reached cohesion there. TBH, I think that's more "Girl Power" than most narratives. Women are told to stifle their anger, to pretend it doesn't exist, that it's against the natural order, stay sweet, blah, blah, blah. Instead, Giles embraced her dark side and brought her to women who helped her see how to use it.
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u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 Jun 13 '25
That's the most interesting take on Giles taking her to England, and I think I like it... it honestly makes sense, but I don't think I've ever thought of it that way.
I definitely saw the "Keep quiet and don't draw attention" and how she grew from it, but Giles as seeing him in her past season 4 hadn't occurred as it should have. Thank you, stranger for the good "food for thought"
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u/ringobob Jun 13 '25
Willow had a soul, too. Doesn't really matter what Warren deserved, actually doing it to him is what caused Willow problems. I don't think she was evil, for that, but it broke her.
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u/FoxIndependent4310 Jun 13 '25
Imagine if the bullet had hit Connor or Dawn. How would Buffy or Angel have reacted? We can't blame Willow for killing Warren.
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u/EchoesofIllyria Jun 13 '25
Angel did try to suffocate Wesley for kidnapping Connor.
I don’t think Buffy would have killed Warren though. And I don’t think either of them would have done it in the way Willow did.
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u/IL-Corvo Jun 13 '25
I absolutely can and do blame her for it. An "eye for an eye" revenge is one of the things that keeps human societies mired in barbarism and violence.
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u/Still_Razzmatazz1140 Jun 13 '25
If you think she was justified then fine, but you miss the heart of the show which is humans don’t kill other humans not because of the other human but because of how it affects our souls to murder. It makes us the same as the bad guy, but the heart of Buffy is to fight evil not become evil. Buffy would have wanted justice, but would not want her friends to murder. Giles did murder Ben but that was a special case and was to ultimately stop Glory from returning. We also see the consequences of Faith murdering that man by accident, it was a mistake but it turned her towards the dark.
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u/AIGLOS42 Jun 13 '25
But we aren't shown it with cops or soldiers, which is telling.
Look at the Initiative- the doctors are (appropriately for torturers) depicted with a general lack of empathy, but the highly-trained before becoming monster hunters soldiers aren't? Sunnydale cops helping the Mayor for decades at just fine before and after the Ascension?
The show plays with the idea of how the act of killing impacts the killer, but it lacks the commitment to it for me to agree it's the heart of the show.
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u/redskinsguy Jun 15 '25
the way the show acted about Faith is part of why I disapprove of their BS in season 6
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u/Meushell Jun 13 '25
Torturing anyone is wrong, and she tortured him more than he tortured any of his victims.
Beyond that though, I agree with you. He needed to be stopped and jail wasn’t going to stop him. They had no idea what they were dealing with. He probably would have killed multiple police officers in his escape.
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u/TrepieFF Jun 13 '25
I was absolutely rooting for her in that moment, but in my eyes it’s also not really Willow at that point.
Not to absolve her from her actions because she made a series of bad decisions, but at that point she is fully corrupted by dark magic and she isn’t herself - almost like a possession that she is able to break out of until Xander manages to get through to her.
We see it later in season 7 when she is using magic to save a girl in Selfless - her eyes go black and she temporally loses control and tells the girl to shut up, but Willow is able to fight back the darkness quickly with her training from England. That’s how I view it anyway.
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u/Fancy_Injury_7800 Jun 13 '25
Killing Warren was a neutral act, but it also was a line and crossing it nearly drove her to kill six billion people
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u/TrueSonOfChaos Astronauts Jun 13 '25 edited Jun 13 '25
To play Devil's advocate (not because I believe this): Buffy isn't tasked as the Slayer with enforcing the law against Warren so Warren's revenge might be considered a form of preemptive self-defense (pre-empting Buffy's next attack against Warren) and his killing of Tara was completely accidental in the process done without malice. This takes any notion that Willow is behaving "righteously" off the table (this I do believe for other reasons, vengeance is not a righteous act even if it achieves a beneficial result). Nowhere does Warren engage in direct assault against Buffy without using a "supernatural" intermediary (not including the time he bumps into her to plant the "time-dilation" bug on her which probably couldn't be legally proved assault nor does it constitute much of an assault in the "common sense" way) but when he fights Xander with his fists, and when he fights Buffy with his fists, both times Xander and Buffy got in Warren's way.
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u/redskinsguy Jun 15 '25
she fought against people like Ethan Rayne though
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u/TrueSonOfChaos Astronauts Jun 16 '25
More Devil's Advocate: During Halloween it was Willow and Giles. During The Dark Ages Ethan kidnapped her. During Band Candy he was helping in a baby sacrifice with multiple demons and even then I don't think she really assaulted him, just interrogated him. During A New Man she actually tried to defend Ethan Rayne from Giles the demon initially - and then Riley took him into custody.
By contrast, when she attacks Warren right before the shooting he's robbing an armored car - blase crime and crime indeed but not her jurisdiction.
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u/redsky25 Jun 13 '25
He absolutely deserved it , but I don’t think willow deserved what it would do to her .
I think the concern is less that warren is human and needs to be dealt with by human laws , but more warren deserved death at the hands of someone who would not face the guilt for killing him .
I think buffy even says something about how killing him would change willow , no one is concerned for warren , they’re not even that concerned for Andrew and Johnathan , but they don’t want their friend doing something that will haunt them forever and push them over the edge .
Willow isn’t even satisfied when warren is dead , she just keeps going after everyone else until she is stopped . She then has to live with the knowledge of what she’s done and we see how it affects her and how she’s suddenly terrified of her power in case she looses control again . I don’t think her having to suffer like that was worth her getting to kill warren , even if warren absolutely deserved it .
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u/redskinsguy Jun 15 '25
I really don't think she was all that affected by killing Warren, it was more all the stuff around it. The ignored issue is she was likely planning to kill herself when she was done
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u/CuttlefishBenjamin Jun 13 '25
If Buffy started flaying vampires, this would also be a cause for concern, less out of any consideration as to what the vampires deserved than for what it would say about Buffy's headspace.
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u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 Jun 14 '25
True, but for a vamp, I'm not sure it would kill them, but rather make them come back over years or even possibly decades or centuries, and show that it was purely for the delight in torture, but doing NOTHING to protect others (a weak Vamp really needs to feed, and as we've seen, they often sire minions), but killing a human in this way PROTECTS other women as we know Warren would never stop. It also protects the dumb and malleable types like Jonathan and Andrew from crossing from feeling outcast into far worse actions. We've seen a rise in Warren-types in the last couple decades, and the truly violent ones continue to escalate in their violence and ENJOY very violent ends (shooting up a yoga studio, rampaging through a town and hitting attractive couples and any woman he'd think would reject him, etc.).
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u/Slow_Grapefruit5214 Jun 14 '25
Angel did bad things even with a soul though. If you recall the episode ‘Orpheus’ from Angel S4, sometime in the 1960s Angel drinks the blood of a dying gunshot victim, even though he has a soul. I think the Buffyverse tries to show that the lines between good and evil are never really absolute. Which is precisely why our moral choices matter.
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u/redskinsguy Jun 15 '25
I honestly have always felt Joss wanted them to be far more absolute.
And I never really got why drinking the gunshot victim was so bad, unless we were supposed to think he was less dying and more injured
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u/ZucchiniMoon Jun 14 '25
Xander made essentially the same point - Warren deserved his just desserts. Buffy's concern wasn't with Warren (or Andrew or Jonathan) being killed but with Willow killing them. She was trying to keep her friend from becoming a murderer.
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u/meatpotatostew Jun 16 '25
Killing Warren didn’t make her evil. The destruction she caused in pursuit of him, subsequently trying to literally to destroy the whole world after torturing and killing him, her egomaniacal justifications of her actions, and choice to deny her feelings/play god instead of owning them were what made her villainous. Dark Willow didn’t begin with Warren; Willow’s arc towards darkness has long been in the works (since at least S2) and is a combination of the corruptive forces of her natural power/talent with magic AND her own unchecked ego. What she did to Warren was a culmination of that. She’s egotistical, and hurts people often with little remorse and/or foresight.
I think karmically Warren deserved what he got, and I can also understand her pain during that time. But, premeditated murder also changes you, no matter how much they “deserve” it. Deciding you are the arbiter of justice in a society is extremely individualistic, and endangers your community. Even just killing him arguably may have been one thing, but torturing him was sadistic and thus needless.
It’s also not just about Warren, it’s about the pain and damage Willow caused (to Dawn, Tara, and Buffy) before Warren even came into the picture that’s meant to further color the moral standing of what she became.
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u/TheDoctor9229 Jun 16 '25
I mean, if the show addressed that Buffy has killed multiple people and she had to deal with the guilt and consequences, I’d say willow was wrong. Given that it doesn’t, I don’t mind
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u/V_is4vulva Jun 13 '25
Yeah, Warren absolutely deserved what happened to him and I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it. People are pretty weird these days on the idea that ANY circumstances of taking a life should be severely traumatic, else you are a monster™️. That's just... simply not the case for like all of human history. Willow flaying Warren wasn't evil. Now Willow trying to bring about the apocalypse, that was misguided.
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u/Still_Razzmatazz1140 Jun 13 '25
Willow flaying warren was evil. It’s fine to think it wasn’t evil, but don’t believe the show led you to think that. Because the show was definitely not agreeing with what Willow did.
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u/V_is4vulva Jun 13 '25
Yeah, that's the point. OP and I were disagreeing with the show's (and apparently your own) insistence that flaying Warren was evil.
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u/samrobotsin Jun 13 '25
That removes all of the "Girl Power" Whedon claims he intended.
Considering the scene with Dawn, Xander & Buffy, plainly explaining the rationality of it all & the following season...I don't think the show actually ever claims killing Warren makes Willow evil.
To give this rationality that women have the right to give into vengeance is a pretty disgusting misuse of feminist philosophy actually. Especially considering Willow was using the same justification to kill Warren as she was to put mind-control spells on Tara.
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u/teh_maxh Jun 13 '25
Let's make it even spicier: Killing Warren was wrong because it meant she couldn't keep torturing him.
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u/Adorable_Tie_7220 Jun 14 '25
I disagree with you. Once you torture someone, it takes away some of your humanity. So this hurts Willow as much as him.
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u/majeric Jun 14 '25
“Two wrongs don’t make a right.” Is an expression for a good reason.
She didn’t seek justice. She sought revenge.
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u/redskinsguy Jun 15 '25
An eye for an eye, turnabout is fairplay, and revenge is a dish best served cold are far older experessions that seem more reflective of actual human beliefs
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u/majeric Jun 16 '25
They are reflections of our baser nature.
We have replaced vengeance and retribution with justice in our society for a good reason.
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u/sdu754 Jun 14 '25
I don't think Willow was inherently evil, but she was wrong to kill Warren. There was no justification, but most fall on your side of the fence because of his victims. I do have to ask you, and everyone who feels that Willow was justified, do you support the death penalty? If not, this is pure hypocrisy.
Warren was a human that could be dealt with via the justice system. In fact, he would have been dealt with in that manner because there were two witnesses in Xander and Buffy, not to mention Jonathan and Andrew turning themselves in. The police and courts aren't capable of handling monsters and demons. Warren wasn't "worse than most vamps" either. The problem here is that the vampires were portrayed as cool and sexy on the show. Even Vampire Willow was far sexier than regular Willow.
Nobody is saying "that a rapist can rape, and a murderer can murder when human".
You are also missing the rest of the story here, where Willow was going to murder Andrew and Jonathan and kill anyone who happened to get in her way. As I stated at the beginning, Willow wasn't inherently evil, but as Dark Willow, she was evil. This is why I see the treatment of Willow in season six of Buffy as worse than what any other character was put through on the show. Other characters that acted this bad were possessed by Demons, Willow was not.
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u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 Jun 15 '25
She was possessed though with dark energy from the magic she was using. When her genuine intentions were good, and she was balancing with nature, then magic was fin; it was by getting out of balance and tapping into dark forces rather than those in the natural world, that they could take her over and alter her.
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u/sdu754 Jun 15 '25
I don't consider being "possessed by magic" an actual possession. It was an addiction if anything.
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u/redskinsguy Jun 15 '25
there was nothing in the Buffyverse to suggest the justice system was competent or trustworthy and Angel had evil lawyers that actively corrupted it as their main adversaries
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u/sdu754 Jun 16 '25
There is nothing in the Buffyverse to suggest that the justice system was in any way incompetent. It should be noted that Faith was put in prison, so their is certainly something to suggest that the justice system does work properly.
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u/redskinsguy Jun 16 '25 edited Jun 16 '25
Faith turned herself in and basically walked away the second she decided to.
Also the First had no problem smuggling on of it's daggers in to try to assassinate her
But anyway I think Wolfram & Hart suggests that
plus we saw in seasons 2 and 3 that police were either corrupt or incompetent in Sunnydale
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