Favorite Characters: Oz (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a fan of the whole Witches in Love thing, and in its day, Willow/Tara offered critical representation that was sorely lacking on most of TV.  Liking that relationship, however, doesn’t mean I can’t also love Willow’s first squeeze, a certain taciturn guitar player.  (Some spoilers for Oz-related plots in seasons 2-4.)

Oz is, like a number of characters I’ve highlighted on the blog, privileged by his supporting player status.  He doesn’t get weighed down much by high drama elsewhere in the plot, and that helps him to avoid the nearly inevitable pitfalls of being a major character in a genre series:  temporary “dark” arcs, story-demanded bone-headedness, and general moral failings.  TV shows need conflict, of course, and I love me some flawed characters, but shouldering so much of that conflict means they more frequently wind up doing things that make me want to smack them.  If Oz is easy to love, it’s in part because the story rarely has him making those kinds of mistakes.

Instead, he’s mostly just fun and awesome.  He’s an effortless “cool kid” in a band, but when I say effortless, I literally mean “without effort.”  He doesn’t try to be cool and makes no attempt to be as socially desirable as he is.  He’s utterly mellow, with a laconic unflappability that aggravates higher-strung characters like Xander.  After seeing Buffy stake a vampire for the first time and being unceremoniously informed that Sunnydale is overrun with demons, he simply replies, “It explains a lot.”  His nonchalant brevity is a regular source of humor in the face of apocalyptic catastrophe, and his quiet confidence is always present but never insists upon itself.

One of his greatest qualities is, of course, his love for Willow.  Like many fans, I was wholly won over by sweet, shy, nerdy Willow in season 1 and wanted better for her than an unrequited crush on a mostly tone-deaf Xander.  So, when Oz comes along and is instantly captivated with her (dressed as an Eskimo in a party filled with skimpily-costumed girls – sweetest meet-cute ever, and they don’t even meet in that scene,) he immediately scores some major fandom points.  After a slow-burn start, Willow/Oz is a relationship that’s mostly left to its own devices in season 2.  While everyone else is swinging from one extreme to another and physically going to hell, Willow and Oz pretty much get to be fun and cute, with her being all bubbly and adorable about having a boyfriend and him being everything she needs to go “Xander who?”  Even their biggest roadblock that season, the revelation that Oz is a werewolf, is pretty easily dealt with once it’s out in the open.

I really like the plots we get about Oz’s lycanthropy (well, I’m not crazy about the season 4 unpleasantness, but the fact that he’s a werewolf isn’t what makes that storyline unpleasant.)  Given how chill Oz is as a human, and how gentle and loving he is with Willow, it’s an even greater contrast to see him transform into a snarling monster.  It’s one of the only things that can really freak him out.  Although he gets into the routine of locking himself up before the full moon and almost never talks about it, his worst fear is of the wolf breaking out and hurting someone, especially Willow or one of his friends.  When he frantically pores over the newspaper the morning after escaping  his cage or when, his senses disrupted by a malevolent demon, he leaves his friends and desperately pleads with himself not to change, we see a fuller character than Willow’s boyfriend or a foil for Xander.  They’re stories about Oz and, as such, offer a glimpse into everything he doesn’t talk about.