Projections 1: Willow & Oz

T

The Arcane

Scooby
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Jan 2, 2005
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A lot of us around here seem to know the slayerverse inside out, having watched all the episodes a number of times each. We know the situations and events, the characters and their motivations, why a specific person did what they did and what resulted from it. So it got me thinking that if we know these characters and their lives so well we should be able to make an educated guess as to how Not Fade Away would have ended had a certain event happened differently in the continuity of the shows. What would have been the outcome of the final episode of Angel if things were different in the past. Basically this is the slayerverse equivalent of What If?

The first one i thought we could consider would be Willow and Oz. How different would Not Fade Away have been if Veruca has never turned up and they had stayed together. What part did Willow's development play in the events of the final season of Angel? Not much? Everything? That's what this thread is to find out.

I've got a few theories on this already (as you probably guessed) but i don't want to influence others thoughts straight away. I'm more interested in knowing if others see the connections that i do and if we can come to some sort of group consensus of how the final episode would have looked as a result of the change.

So what do you think? Did Oz cheating on Willow have any effect on Not Fade Away? If so, what and how?
 
Well obviously it would have had an affect because if Oz and willow had stayed together, then willow and tara wouldn't have got together, which means tara wouldn't have died so willow wouldn't have drained the magick shop books and the magick from rac and giles, making her less powerful. This means that she may not have been able to win cordelia if the magick type battle they had. Therefore angel wouldn't have his soul back, jasmine would still be around and there would be world peace, so Not fade away would never have happened! In conclusion yes willow and oz breaking up would have an effect on the events in angel
 
J
Joamna
That was what I was thinking too.
Good points and that does make sense. Although that assumes that Willow's actions would lead to a single linear change in the cause and effect. What if other things that came about from Willow and Oz breaking up were partly responsible for Jasmine even being able to put her plan into motion. Was Willow's relationship with Tara the only way that the Scoobies were able to see through the bodyswap between Buffy and Faith, and if so would that occuring differently have led to Faith not having travelled to L.A. in Five by Five. Would this happening differently have had any effect on Angel's life that would have put him in a different place at the start of season two of his show. Do you think that Tara may still have played a role in the lives of the Scoobies if Oz had stuck around?

Every event on Buffy and Angel leads to numerous other events that all converge into the reality we saw so all the players lives could conceivably be altered by one event being changed. The idea of this is to look at the big picture.
 
I'm not convinced that there would be much change at all. First of all there's the fact that Tara spotted that Buffy was Faith, but the difference was very noticable, so someone would have surely spotted it eventually. My guess would be Giles (who never actually saw Buffyfaith to my memory).

Then there's the fact that Willow supposedly gained a lot of power from being with Tara. I can't deny that they shared knowedge and therefore willows power grew faster by being around Tara. But having easy access to the magic shop was another factor that helped her evolution which would have remained.

People say that Tara's death boosted willows power...but I don't think it did. I mean obviously it did at first. but after coming round in the s6 finale and going to England, this power was held back greatly. In s7 we saw that willow found it hard to use the power without putting herself in danger. In time she learnt to control this...but when she restored angels soul she wasn't in full contol. In other words, I think that if she hadn't split up with oz, I think she still would have had enough power to restore angels soul.

And if not...I'm sure they would have found a way. There's plenty of other people in the world with that kind of power.
 
Well, if Willow and Tara had never gotten together, then Faith in Buffy's body might not have been recognized, and she wouldn't have gone to LA. Here, she would not have had a cofrontation with Wesley (and I always thought that his battling Faith made him into the confident man he was after season one). If Wes had never had to deal with Faith in LA, and had not had that confident boost, he might not have turned out to be the bad boy that he was. Then, in turn he never would've gotten with Lilah, and the Angel Investigations gang would never have been that intwined with Wolfram and Hart. Therefore, they would've never gained access to W&H, and season five would not have happened. In summation; Not Fade Away would never have happened.

Wow, this is confusing!
 
Well, the the question was "What if Oz never cheated on Willow?". So they would've stayed together, but people are factoring this into that if she stayed with Oz, she would've never met Tara which is false. My theory is that the timeline wouldn't change that much due to this. Willow and Oz would stay together until Willow met Tara and she would CHEAT on Oz leading to the almost exact same events in "New Moon Rising" with the same conclusion, Oz leaving and never being seen again and Willow and Tara continuing with their relationship the way it was for the rest of the continuity, so no effect on "Never Fade Away" at all.
 
Yeah that is interesting.. I mean was Oz cheating on Willow the only reason they broke up, or were there other not so great things in their relationship? And would Willow still notice Tara? I'm thinking yes, since they were "only friends" in the beginning. And there's no reason for them not to be friends just because Willow was dating Oz. And the Tara/Willow friendship would probably still lead to more than friendship, just the way it did now. It's not like Willow expected that to happen now, just like she wouldn't have expected that to happen if Oz was still in the picture.
So I pretty much agree with you Guestage_87.

(But then again, you never know, what effect what and how it will turn out in the end... Seriously, the smallest things can change so much, so even if Willow and Oz only broke up a bit later, that could affect stuff in a way we could never imagine.)
 
I'm surprised no one else has added anything else interesting to this thread. It is a pretty good idea for a thread, really makes you think. A better projection would be say "What if Giles never killed Ben" and the effect it would have on Not Fade Away. Again, didn't mean to make my earlier reply seem like this was a bad thread, it's just the way I was thinking at the time.
 
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