[S a r a h & A l y]

“Around the same time as the much-vaunted Sex and the City, Joss Whedon was putting out some equally superior content for the female friendship canon with Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Theirs was far less glamorous than Carrie-and the-other-three, what with hellmouths and burgeoning evil behind every door. But peel back the layers of demonic activity and teenage worries and you find a great relationship, one that weathers high school where petty jealousies are the order of the day, a love triangle between the girls and their male friend Xander, a discovery of a new sexuality, love lost and found and lost again tragically and even the death of one protagonist.” (source)

“The best example of an enduring female friendship on Buffy is the relationship between Buffy and Willow, which is set up in the first episode of the series (“Welcome to the Hellmouth”). Although their friendship is certainly stronger in the earlier seasons, it still functions as one of the fundamental and enduring stable relationships of the show. Moreover, Willow best exemplifies the role of “sidekick” in relation to the “hero”, Buffy, even when Xander and Giles (the two other core members of the Scooby Gang) are taken into account. It is Willow who provides Buffy with support, not only through her witchcraft and ever-growing knowledge of the supernatural but also emotionally, often acting as a soundboard for Buffy’s emotions and inner turmoil.

As Sharon Ross points out in her essay “Female Friendship and Heroism in Xena and Buffy, Buffy and Willow rely on each other in order to navigate through life’s challenges and make difficult decisions; they do this through discussion, through the “expression of their emotional knowledge”, and through the validation of the other’s feelings and thoughts (248). In this way they are better able to deal with the adversity and suffering they encounter during the progression of the series: their emotional openness and ability to communicate makes them, as women, better equipped to confront the problems women face in our patriarchal society…” (Faye Murray and Holly Golding)