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Amy Madison

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Template:Infobox Buffyverse Character Amy Madison is a fictional character, a witch played by Elizabeth Anne Allen in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She made appearances in every season of Buffy except Season Five (during which time the character was stuck in the form of a rat due to a spell cast in a previous season).

Amy is a witch. Although initially starting off as a seemingly good-natured individual, Amy gradually grows to misuse her magic, eventually ending up as an enemy to Willow and her friends, becoming a bona fide villain in the series' continuation.

Appearances

Television

Amy is a classmate of Buffy Summers' at Sunnydale High School. Friends with Willow Rosenberg in junior high, she would often go over to Willow's house and eat brownies to escape her mother's abuse. Amy first appears in the Season One episode "Witch", when she and Buffy both try out for cheerleading. Amy performs poorly in the tryouts, and when a series of strange injuries to other contestants move her up in the standings, the Scooby Gang suspect that she is a witch who is using her powers to harm the other girls. It is revealed that Amy's mother Catherine, a very powerful witch, has switched bodies with Amy because she wants to relive her youth. Buffy and the Scooby Gang succeed in restoring Amy to her own body and (unknown to them) trapping her mother in an old cheerleading trophy. Amy talks to Buffy after her mother's defeat and mentions that she is now living with her father and step-mother, and that she is much happier.

Amy continues to attend Sunnydale High and reappears in several more episodes; along with Jonathan Levinson and Harmony Kendall she is one of many recurring student characters. In the Season Two episode "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", Xander Harris discovers that Amy has inherited her mother's power, having become a potent, if sometimes ineffective witch. Xander decides to blackmail Amy into helping him perform a love spell on Cordelia Chase, however, the spell goes awry and causes the entire female population of Sunnydale, sans Cordelia, to become obsessed with Xander. Caught in her own spell, a jealous Amy invokes the goddess Hecate temporarily turns Buffy into a rat. She is eventually forced by Rupert Giles to undo both spells.

By Season Three, Amy has joined a coven with Willow (now a practicing witch) and warlock Michael Czajak. In the episode "Gingerbread", the parents of Sunnydale (under the influence of the demonic Hans and Greta) become insanely paranoid about the supernatural's influence on their children, and prepare to burn Amy, Buffy, and Willow at the stake. To escape her bonds, Amy turns herself into a rat, but then, being a rat, she is unable to remove her own spell. Willow captures Rat-Amy and keeps her in a cage until she can be restored. Willow makes several unsuccessful attempts to "de-rat" Amy over the next two seasons. In the Season Four episode "Something Blue", in what writer Doug Petrie describes as "as cruel and funny as anything could be", Willow, who at the time has the power to have anything she says happen, accidentally turns Amy back into a human; however, Willow does not even notice, and a few seconds later accidentally changes her back into a rat.[1]

By Season Six, Willow has become an extremely powerful witch and permanently "de-rats" Amy by simply conjuring up an incantation. The two become friends again, though Amy now seems to be drastically different than she was before, possibly due to her long experience of being a rat. She had apparently been involved with the warlock Rack before being transformed, and gets Willow involved as well, leading Willow to become addicted to black magic. Later, when Willow decides to give up magic, Amy casts a spell on her, causing her to magically manipulate everything she touches for a while; Willow complains to Amy that this makes her attempts to give up magic even harder. Amy responds by mocking her, implying that she did it as revenge for being trapped as a rat for years. As a result Willow cuts Amy out of her life entirely.

Amy's final appearance in the television series occurs in the Season Seven episode "The Killer in Me." When asked her feelings about Amy's actions in this episode, Elizabeth Anne Allen said, "I think after all the things that she went through, there were a lot of reasons why she was so angry."[2]

Having transformed aesthetically into Warren Mears, whom she tortured and flayed in a rage over the murder of her girlfriend Tara Maclay, Willow seeks help from the UC Sunnydale Wicca Group and discovers that Amy is a member. Amy explains that she had hit "rock bottom", and was doing much better now. It is soon revealed that Amy is in fact responsible for Willow's transformation, the result of a hex placed on her apparently out of jealousy and spite. However, in the Season Eight comic book, it turns out that this seemingly random event is actually part of a larger plan orchestrated by Warren, after Amy rescued him from death in the earlier episode "Villains."

Allen says she would have liked to explore Amy's struggle to overcome her anger, so that she could "get a grip and come back to the fold with her friends."[2]

Literature

In the first issue of the Season Eight comic book story "The Long Way Home," an expedition of the United States Army finds Amy living sixty feet under the Hellmouth after its collapse with her "boyfriend," an unrevealed creature whom General Voll regards with disgust. Her first words to an exploratory member were "I'm gonna help you kill her." In exchange for their cooperation, Amy requests unlimited access to all the government's magical hardware as well as a weapons lab for her "boyfriend"; and if they succeed in taking Buffy down, Amy wants full immunity and release for the both of them.

Amy attacks Buffy at the Slayer's base in Scotland, putting her under a mystical sleep which only a kiss of someones love can undo. Raising an army of kilted zombies to battle the Slayers, Amy battles Willow mid-air before being stepped-on by Buffy's now-giant sister Dawn Summers. As Willow magically probes Amy's whereabouts, she suddenly senses a trap and is pulled through a portal, only to be "greeted" by a saw-wielding and skinless Warren Mears. As Warren tortures Willow, Amy faces off against Satsu and an awakened Buffy, who manages to channel enough of Willow's magic to defeat a demon which Amy conjured. Having seen her dreamspace while asleep, Buffy takes the form of Amy's worst nightmare: her mother. Distracted, Amy fails to notice a grenade thrown at her feet by Satsu, and as Buffy and Satsu charge into the room containing Willow, they see Amy appear and teleport away with Warren in her arms. Later, in "Time of Your Life", she and Warren are shown working under direct orders from Twilight, under whom Voll served. Together they constructed a missile covered in mystical runes and candles, and used it to destroy a Scottish citadel, killing seven of the many Slayers residing there. The couple continue to squabble over tactical and romantic disagreements; it is Amy who is able to identify the Slayers' location and powerless status in Tibet using the disguise a cat disguise, after previous magical and military attempts at detecting them failed in the "Retreat" arc.

Powers and abilities

Amy is a powerful witch with abilities inherited from her mother. These powers grow throughout the series. While initially more powerful than Willow, casting a spell to become a rat that Willow cannot initially reverse, Amy acknowledges in Season Seven that Willow has surpassed her. Willow comments that Amy's newfound power in Season Eight (which she claims has grown since the events of "Chosen") has been technologically augmented to some degree, with Amy commenting that she has grown consistently stronger stranded in the ruins of Sunnydale. In battle, Amy is able to stand up against Willow and fly by force of will.

Romantic interests

  • Xander Harris - After a spell Amy casts which was supposed to make Cordelia love Xander goes wrong, she, along with every other woman in Sunnydale, falls in love with Xander ("Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"). This attraction ends after Rupert Giles gets Amy to reverse the spell.
  • Larry Blaisdell - Amy stated that she thought Larry was considering asking her to the prom, apparently unaware he was gay and the fact that the graduation of her class occurred three years before, when Larry died.
  • Warren Mears - Amy's skinless boyfriend in Season Eight. It is revealed in "The Long Way Home" that the two had been in a relationship since "Villains", where after Warren was flayed alive by Willow, Amy saved his life. Amy refers to Warren as "sweetie", while he claims that "her magic is my skin."

Appearances

Amy has appearead in 15 Buffyverse episodes and comics.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Amy has appeared as a guest in 8 Buffy episodes:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight
Amy has appeared thus far in seven issues:

References

  1. ^ Doug Petrie discusses Amy the Rat
  2. ^ a b Interview with Elizabeth Anne Allen, retrieved 07//17/2007 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
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