Buffy’s Meanest Character Secretly Called Out Show’s Laziest Trope In First Episode

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 30 seconds ago

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, without a doubt, the tropiest TV show ever created. Thanks to geeky showrunner Joss Whedon, the series was always channeling some of the most popular tropes of film and television, all while creating a few of its own. Eventually, this led to a minor bit of internet history: the helpful website TV Tropes began as a Buffy fan site before it expanded to cover pop culture of all stripes. Long before that site was created, Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran a stake through the laziest trope of them all!

When Willow Rosenberg is first introduced in “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” she is presented as a mousy, geeky girl. This is mostly due to how she dresses, and the character’s fashion evolves over time, revealing her to be one of the sexiest of the Scoobies. In short, Willow is the living embodiment of the “Beautiful All Along” trope, in which minor changes to someone’s appearance reveal them to have been a secret hottie all along. Even wilder, resident mean girl Cordelia draws attention to this in the first episode when she dunks on Willow’s choice of clothing.  

Mean Girls: Sunnydale Edition

Need a few crumbs of context? According to TV Tropes, “Beautiful All Along” is the trope in which a character (almost always female) is initially presented as someone who isn’t conventionally attractive. Eventually, she takes off her glasses, lets down her hair, and/or updates her wardrobe, and voila! The Ugly Duckling character is revealed to be a beautiful swan. It happens to Rachael Leigh Cook in She’s All That, Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries, Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, and so many more examples.

It also happens to Alyson Hannigan in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the first two seasons of the show, she wears childishly bright, mostly oversized clothing that emphasizes that she is a very nerdy character trying to hide rather than stand out. Her fashion becomes fitted and confidently quirky in Season 3. As befitting Willow’s college debut, seasons 4 and 5 show her experimenting with a mixture of bohemian and contemporary styles, and she was often dressed far better than Buffy. She eventually settled into a sexy ‘90s style that alternated between darker palettes for Season 6 and warmer palettes for Season 7.

Buffy Called Out Its Own Lazy Trope

In retrospect, it’s clear the plan was to make Willow look more overtly sexy over time. That’s why we got early glimpses of Alyson Hannigan as a smokeshow, like when she dons a midriff-bearing Halloween costume in Season 2 and meets her leather-clad, dommy mommy vampire persona in Season 3. Those early episodes reminded us how hot Willow actually was, something that her geeky wardrobe from the early seasons did its best to obscure. But in a kind of meta-moment you can only find in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cordelia actually calls out what the show is doing to Willow in the very first episode!

In “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” we get a vintage Cordelia moment in which she apparently gives Willow an earnest compliment. “Nice dress!” As soon as the geeky girl smiles, though, Cordelia follows up with her sick burn. “Good to know you’ve seen the softer side of Sears.” A sheepish Willow says that her mother picked the outfit out, allowing Cordelia to squeeze in yet another insult. “No wonder you’re such a guy magnet.” The scene is very effective at defining who these characters are: Cordelia is the sexy bully, and Willow is her mousy target. However, there’s more going on in this scene than you might think.

Black (Magic) Swan

If you pay close attention to Cordelia’s insult, she doesn’t actually call Willow ugly. In her overly cruel way, she is pointing out that Willow might just be a “guy magnet” (as in, attractive to others) if she wore better clothing. This is exactly what happens later in the show: Oz, her first serious boyfriend, takes special notice of her when he sees her sexy Halloween costume. She and Xander also share some forbidden smooching after he notices how good she looks in her homecoming dress. Furthermore, she meets Tara (the love of her life) at the height of her experimental fashionista phase in college.

Long story not very short? Willow is the ultimate Buffy example of the “Beautiful All Along” trope. All it takes is an improvement in her wardrobe to show everyone in Sunnydale how sexy she really is. Incidentally, that wardrobe change also helped audiences realize how gorgeous Willow actor Alyson Hannigan is. In 2004, one year after Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired its final episode, she was voted one of the sexiest women in the world by FHM!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the king (or should that be queen?) of TV tropes, and Willow was the ultimate embodiment of the “Beautiful All Along” trope. But the show was also famous for turning tropes on their head and generally subverting our expectations. In the very first episode, not only did Cordelia effectively call this trope out, but she foreshadowed exactly what would happen to Willow: she’d eventually ditch the mousy clothing, start dressing stylishly, and become one of the loveliest ladies in all of Sunnydale.