Should Giles have stopped Willow when she just started?

[Chosen Enemy]

When Willow started getting into witchcraft and magic, Giles didn't really want her to. However, he kind of stopped warning her till season 6, when it was almost too late. She was already addicted and on her way to chaos, . Instead he (and the rest) used Willow's magic skills in the fight against evil, maybe ignoring the fact that Willow is getting too strong that she might hurt people. And it did happen, she started using magic for all kind of stuff, including raping Tara's mind and killing Warren and almost destroyed the world.

Giles was the first one to notice that Willow's power isn't always a good thing. And he saw what was coming.
Should he have stopped her back then when she had just started? Would that have helped preventing what happened in season 6?

 

[Ripper666]

I don't think that even if he wanted he could stopp her! Willow is a powerfull witch, the magic was always inside her! And I think Giles knew that a witch could be very usefull for the future! Willow helped them lot with their witchcraft! I can't imagine that he knew how powerfull she really is, that one day she will freak out...
So no, no allegations for Giles!

 

[Selfless705]

I think Giles unfortunately could have stopped this. However, I dont think I could place the blame on him because there were so many factors which meant this was to happen. I was quite upset there wasnt more Giles/Willow at the beginning of season 6 on the basis of magick.

On the other hand, I would completely say he shouldnt have stopped her in the beginning. Yes, what happened in s6 was horrible. But the amount of lives she saved throughout the other seasons. Angels when she guest starred on that, the campus in S4, the world in s7! And I am sure there are a lot more cases. I would not say that all of these catastrophes should have happened just so S6 didnt...

 

[Aloverssoulz]

He knew she was a train wreck waiting to happen, but he couldn't just make her stop using magic. He warned her many times that she shouldn't mess with powerful magic but she never listened.

Plus i'm sure he didn't think she'd get as powerful as she became when Tara died or that she'd try to kill everyone. Maybe get herself hurt badly or killed, but never skin people alive or trying to kill her own friends.

Maybe he should have been more forceful and spoke up more about the powerful magic she was using, but she isn't a little girl, by the time she became a powerful witch she was already a grown woman.

Fathers can't get their own 16 year olds to stop smoking, so what chance does Giles have at stopping a powerful witch of whom he's not related to to stop using magic.

 

[brinkster130]

I don't think it was Giles' place to stop her from learning about magic. He knew of the potential dangers that came along with the magic and he warned her several times and made his personal feelings about it very clear. Willow decided she didn't care about those risks, she is the only one who is responsible for what happened in season 6.

 

[FlowerPower]

I don't know why Giles would want to stop Willow from doing magic. The good that she did with it far outstripped the bad. I also don't know how he could stop her other than refusing to sell her ingredients or give her books (which Willow could acquire elsewhere) and Giles never came near that. In fact, Giles *asked* for her to do spells in Passion, Living Conditions, Primeval, Something Blue, allowed for protection spells on the Magic Box in Crush and I Was Made To Love You to start and then didn't let her quit even though she wanted to in S7. He sold merchandise to her (see him all but advertising newt eyes in Out of Mind Mind) and as a librarian, loaned her magic books for a protection in Gingerbread with total approval.

What Giles could have done is make more an effort to teach her and guide her. Willow was clearly asking for clarification of his approval/disapproval in I Only Have Eyes for You and Faith, Hope and Trick and asked to be included in his spell in Faith, Hope and Trick and The Zeppo as a helping/learning experience and he kind of brushed her off or at least, didn't see it as an entry to be a mentor to her even though she was indicating that she'd be open to that kind of relationship.

Also while Giles knew that magic is corrosive, dangerous, can take a hold on people and corrupt them, I saw no evidence that he thought that Willow, specifically, was any kind of ticking time bomb until Flooded. Up until Buffy's resurrection in S6, the only spell/attitude toward magic that he sharply disapproved of (instead of being undecided) was the mess-up in Something Blue which was quickly rectified.

 

[Icarium]

It's not Giles's fault that somebody decided to retcon magic into crack six seasons into the show. 🙂

Yes, Giles should have taught Willow more but since she was doing very well until somebody decided to write her OOC in S6 - when Giles was absent - I don't think this would have changed things significantly.

 

[Kana]

I don't know really.

I never really saw magic as a good or bad thing itself on the show but it was more about one's approach and attitude towards magic that is important.

I think sometimes we tend to judge people as an extention of how we judge ourselves. I think he believed that Willow was responsible enough to handle the possible pitfalls of magic, unlike himself at that age where he was irresponsible and rebellious.

The problem was more to do with the issues behind her abuse of magic rather than the use of magic itself. I believe Giles and the rest of the Scoobies were biased and blind against the thought of Willow misusing magic. They always labelled her as the reliable, level headed one and failed to pick on the warning signs that led her to eventual decline. Giles especially saw Willow as the most responsible one out of the group. To me it's wrong but understandable, that he didn't pick up on the signs, but I don't think it's a case of magic=bad.

 

[SlayerFest]

How could he have stopped her? She didn't really start to become a danger to others until season 6. Although he probably should have had a talk with her after the events in Tough Love. She went into the restricted section, I'm not sure if we'd ever seen her do that before. He had to have known, I mean if Buffy described what kind of spells Willow used. I don't think that he would have been pleased if he'd known about that. They didn't really have a conversation about how potentially dangerous she was becoming until Flooded.

 

[FlowerPower]

How could he have stopped her? She didn't really start to become a danger to others until season 6. Although he probably should have had a talk with her after the events in Tough Love. She went into the restricted section, I'm not sure if we'd ever seen her do that before. He had to have known, I mean if Buffy described what kind of spells Willow used. I don't think that he would have been pleased if he'd known about that. They didn't really have a conversation about how potentially dangerous she was becoming until Flooded.

I bet that Giles, more than anyone, really understood what drove Willow after Glory in Tough Love. See Giles doing the exact same thing but with a flaming baseball bat instead of magic in Passion. And as for the magic part of it, the group really needed Willow's magic to survive through the last eps of S5 and the summer. No one questions Willow's eyes going dark when she's raising a necessary wall to stand between the Knights of Byzantium and them. Anya and Xander can bitch all they want about how invasive they find Willow's telepathy but they needed it and Willow's birds eye view to effectively stake the vamp.

If I were Giles, I would have made an active role to mentor her and provide carrots of magic information to go with the medicine of serious discussions about responsibility with magic. However, that's chiefly because Willow was a teenager and magic is powerful and heady enough and then useful enough to the gang to merit the adult's attention. However, I could see Giles thinking that Willow would do well with minimal direction. She all but raised herself to be a high-performing teen. She was teaching herself magic very quickly to do great thing throughout S3-5. However, I didn't see Giles's process of actively weighing what is the most proper attitude to take towards Willow so maybe not.

 

[Jules]

Everyone tried at some point to warn Willow that she was dealing with something out of her control. Oz in Season 4, Fear Itself, talks about how he has concerns over Willow tapping into Dark Magic. Tara and Willow start their relationship by bonding during spell casting. I dont think the blame could be just left to Giles.

 

[Cheese Slices]

It wasn't Giles' place to do so. Willow's a grown up and Giles has no right on her to tell her what to do, all he can do is try to warn her, but you can't always count on Giles to resolve everyone's problems.

 

[FlowerPower]

Everyone tried at some point to warn Willow that she was dealing with something out of her control. Oz in Season 4, Fear Itself, talks about how he has concerns over Willow tapping into Dark Magic.

It wasn't about dark magic. Willow just wanted to move from one level (glamors, levitation and such) to the next (conjuring and transmutation). Willow described it as a little scary and close to the primal forces as she was talking to Buffy about her eagerness mixed with apprehension but it was never understood as dark magic.

It's a good thing that Willow overrode Oz's concern (that was mixed in with trust and asserting that he'll back Willow's play) to progress to conjuring. For the first event that required conjuring/moving beyond simple levitation and glamors, Buffy and Faith would be trapped in the others' body indefinitely if Willow didn't progress.

Again making this conversation about "Should Giles have stopped Willow from using magic?" misses the point. Giles *encouraged* Willow to do magic and progress more than any other character on the show, including Tara, Buffy or Amy. He first brought her into it by giving her the vampire disinvite curse in Passion to do on her house/Buffy's house/Cordelia's car with no adult supervision. He asked suspiciously what she was doing in Faith, Hope and Trick and then when she reported and asked about his feelings about it and he gave her an abrupt "It's fine". He loaned her books and sold her ingredients. He requested spells in Living Conditions, Primeval, Something Blue, Blood Ties and The I in Team. Presumably, her level of power was one of the things that made him comfortable enough to leave in Bargaining. She wanted to quit magic after S6 and he brought her to England to train her powers so she could be a powerful weapon for good and then sent her back to Sunnydale before she felt ready because they sensed an apocalypse on the horizon.

It's to the point that Giles wouldn't be Giles if he didn't take advantage of a clear resource in the fight by encouraging Willow and that I don't think that Willow would have gone as far as she did if she didn't have Giles's materials and tacit approval and first push in Passion.

 

[Cast No Shadow]

He could have advised, but he's in no position to make decisions for her.

 

[BuffyElevated]

Everyone tried at some point to warn Willow that she was dealing with something out of her control. Oz in Season 4, Fear Itself, talks about how he has concerns over Willow tapping into Dark Magic. Tara and Willow start their relationship by bonding during spell casting. I dont think the blame could be just left to Giles.

I agree with this. At some point, all of them expressed at least a little bit of discomfort with Willow's use of magic. Willow didn't care; by the time anyone seriously stood up to her, she was way past the point of return.

 

[white avenger]

I think that, though at first Giles might have tried to discourage Willow's interest in, and obvious talent for, magic, he quickly decided that, with his own experience, he could help and pretty much control her rate of progress while at the same time utilizing her as a valuable asset on controlling the demons and vampires around the hellmouth, and I think that his plan worked out very well until the Gentlemen came to town and Willow started working with Tara, someone who, though possibly not of Willow's raw power level, had a much more sophisticated control of her magical talents.

(My old English teacher would positively go into apoplexy if she ever saw a run on sentence like that. Miss Wingard, wherever you are, please forgive me!)

 

[FlowerPower]

Another point to consider is that Giles's relationship with Willow for two years centered on her going off and hacking/doing science research by herself with little guidance from him because he certainly doesn't understand technology. Relationships work on patterns and the Giles/Willow relationship of him delegating assignments that made use of Willow's skills while providing little in the way of instruction was set when Willow started with magic.

I hear people's arguments that Willow was warned but few of her warnings pre-S6 were sufficiently clear, correct and didn't impede any necessary magical progress for Willow to have to follow them. Xander's instinctive emotional reaction against the delusting spell and Giles's warnings about not doing magic when emotions cloud energies in Something Blue (although that one was a little undercut by Giles going to Willow in the first place to yell at her for her Oz-missage flaking on...doing a truth spell on Spike and then Giles performing said truth spell when he was going blind over Spike's warnings) are the only two pre-S6 magic warnings that work for me. However Buffy sneering at spells containing an ear and how that reflects on Willow's hobby, Tara objecting to Willow enduring headaches to better combat Glory, Giles's incredibly vague warnings about doors closing in Becoming, Oz trying to discourage Willow from going beyond levitation and glamors, Tara groundlessly attacking Willow in Tough Love, Giles telling Willow that magic isn't to be trifled with and then saying that her reported magic endeavors are acceptable in Faith, Hope and Trick , etc. all fail as unambiguous warnings that Willow should have allowed to shape her life or indications that everyone knew that Willow would wind up in Black Hairsville.