New Willow

[CharmedSlayer85]

I haven't read the new comic yet, but I will hopefully have it some time tomorrow, but I basically got a gist of what happened from reading about all reading about all this Willow talk. And my question is do you think Joss might be going a little too far with making Willow this powerful. I mean regrowing her eye and instantly healing herself. All these vast amounts of energy beams that she shoots out and God knows what else she'll do as the comics come out

 

[Bishop Cruz]

We'll see. I'm not completely sure myself, mainly because it could be cool to see what it is that Willow has to face that can actually touch her. She would also (many years from now) make an interesting Scooby death, as she is the only one who currently seems pretty near untouchable power wise. Hell I think that if she were to come up against Glory with her current powers she would clean that woman's clock.

But that is pretty much just idle spec right now.

 

[nerd4hire]

Warren and Amy have her whupped, so her magic has limitations.

I'm liking what Whedon is doing with the magic. He seems to have an idea in his head about how it works, and he's letting us in on it bit by bit.

But back to the eye, because that's important. I think saying Willow regrows it is a mistake, because it almost implies the eye is gone, and Willow grows another. There's no evidence of that. Actually we're not even sure the eye itself is damaged. What we see is Warren's scalpel approaching Willow's head and Willow's eye behind the scalpel. Later we're told Warren is lobotomizing her. Lobotomy consists of cutting the connections to and from, or simply destroying, the prefrontal cortex.
There is a method of lobotomy which enters through the tear ducts.

In this trans-orbital lobotomy, a mallet is used to force a surgical instrument akin to an ice pick through the thin layer of skull at the top of the eye socket. The pick is then wiggled to damage the frontal lobe.

We are not told of any organ which has been removed. There is damage and Willow repairs it. We know this, because later Buffy wants Willow to heal the sliced up soldiers, and Willow says something like she doesn't know how much healing power she has left.

 

[CharmedSlayer85]

Yeah I know a big limit to Willow's power is obviously her powers being dimished after running high on magick for hours so I guess if someone can last against her for many hours then that'd be bad for her, but I mean what are is the likely hood of that considering how powerful she is. Also if her power really comes from her mind then I'm not getting how Warren is basically cutting into her brain but she's able to take care of that pretty easily.

 

[The Arcane]

I think this advancement in Willow and her abilities makes sense and is the only real option Joss has with her story. It's been established that the magic is now part of her so there is no going back. All that leaves is learning to control it, which will then lead to these new levels of power and abilities she is displaying. Having the ability to regenerate any damage to her body isn't that far fetched and, as N4H mentions above, is a far cry from going to the extent of entirely regrowing an organ, although I'd have to imagine that that isn't totally out of her reach.

 

[Bishop Cruz]

We DO see Warren shoving a scalpel into her eye. It's the panel where he says "I wish you would". We don't see everything, but we know that Warren had been cutting on her for at least two hours, and that her body was almost dead by the end of it. Not to mention, I figure it was pretty bad from Buffy's expression before she removed the bonds.

 

[nerd4hire]

We see the eye clamped open in the previous frame. In the next one we see Warren sticking some sort of medical instrument (I'm assuming scalpel too because of the previous scalpel shot) into the eye area. Willow is in profile, and the action is on the other side of her, so we can't tell without a doubt exactly where, but we do see what appears to be blood spattering upwards.

Again though, there's nothing really out of sync there with a psychopath attempting a similar trans-orbital style lobotomy to what's described above. Perhaps he does take a detour, or two. Who knows?

The main point however, is we don't see the eye removed, or see it damaged to the point it needs to be regenerated, rather than repaired.

 

[CharmedSlayer85]

I'm still wondering though with Willow being so powerful it again makes me wonder what is Buffy's purpose, what is the purpose of these 1500 slayers she has working for her and possibly the thousands or maybe even millions of others that aren't working for her. I mean if Willow can do all of this stuff then hell she could virtually fight and take out all the demons without Buffy's help. If it's about the power then Willow has ALL THE POWER. I mean the slayers can't even take out Amy and she's not even as powerful as Willow, only Willow could stop Amy and only Willow could stop the zombies, only Willow could hurt Glory and she wasn't anywhere near the level of power she is now, but my whole point is what's the point of Buffy now when we have Willow. Willow could easily take out The Master; Angelus, Spike & Drusilla; The Mayor; Adam; Glory; Warren, Jonathon, and Andrew; and possibly even take on the First somehow and even be a force to reckon with when it comes to Wolfram & Hart and probably even annihilate the Beast from Angel. So again I say why is Buffy needed, which brought up my original point of this thread can Joss possibly be making a mistake by making Willow so powerful and not only that her power level is still growing. I mean if you look at X-Men the writers had to kill off Jean Grey because she basically became too powerful and even then she's not fully dead because she's so powerful that she can resurrect herself whenever she wants. Which is essentially the direction Willow seems to be going

 

[nerd4hire]

I don't know, but it's all a great rollicking romp, so far. I'm loving it. Willows new power included.

I suspect this is all leading towards a central theme suggested by the Twilight general in # 4 where he says something about how all this new power is throwing off the balance.

As much power as Willow has she does have restrictions, and it has to do with the balance.

Also, on the question does Willow need Buffy. Who saved Willow in the last issue?

 

[CharmedSlayer85]

Yeah that's true Buffy did save Willow, but one thing I'm wondering that I guess I'll have to wait and see is is the balance really out of whack? Because I mean there are thousands, maybe millions of vampires around the world and other demons and evil and that's only on the Earth dimension alone, but only one slayer how is that balance? Now there are thousands and possibly millions of slayers around the world so shouldn't the scale actually now be somewhat more or less even, with the exception of the possiblity of there being evil slayers

Also not to mention the murderers and evil witches/warlocks and Wolfram & Hart so I'm not really getting the whole balance thing