S8 also supports this with Buffy and Xander working together in Scotland while Willow went off on a magical journey.
Sorry for going off topic but since you have brought it up, I am curious how Scotland is represented in the comics (since I don't read them myself). Is is a stereotype Scotland with nothing but countryside, ruined castles, and tribes of people wearing kilts? Or is it normal, i.e. pretty much the same as Sunnydale or anywhere else (except for the weather).
That's one thing I hate with S8 (haven't read the whole thing yet I'm at the end thought and haven't started s9).
I thought S8 continued the relationships between the characters well. Buffy and Xander are still close. Willow goes her own way, she drifted away from her friends but we already saw that in S7. S7 shows Buffy being closer to Xander than Willow and S8 continued that.
I agree with [MENTION=6332]Lyri[/MENTION], I think the best thing they could have done in s8 was to not give Willow back her power, it was a great way to bring the characters back to the core and how they use to be. I like Willow as a witch, but I liked her way better when she was trying to make pencil floats!
Oh my god, this! A hundred times this! Willow was such a better character before the heavy magic arcs. I actually think that's Willow's best capacity. Not as one of the main leads they morphed her into who leads the arcs but as the primary supporting character. Her best arcs and developments came in the first three seasons, largely because the writers didn't overreach her.
Exactly!! Even s4-5 or fine with me as character development. S6 is my favorite because it actually is suppose to show that more power is not better, it is suppose to show that it's not a good thing! To me they should actually have ended s6 or at least beginning s7 with removing her powers, it would have been a nice arc closing for me! And we could have gotten s1-3 Willow back, and would have came full circle, or to me at least!
That would have been fine with me too. Plus, I could never, ever take Willow seriously in S7 because the plain fact of her using magic at all pretty much spits in the face of the the metaphor they were trying to get across in S6 (no matter how clunky I thought it was). I mean, it's a little hard to invest in Willow when she's supposed to be a "magic addict" in S6, and then, because the writers aren't skilled enough to keep her a relevant part of the series without magic, her just taking it up again because "it's a part of her now". Lame.