Willow Rosenberg

Willow Danielle Rosenberg was portrayed by Alyson Hannigan. Riff Regan played Willow in an unaired pilot that sold Buffy, and Adam Busch played another version, thanks to a spell, as an alternate character whose personality seeped into her, in the seventh season episode "The Killer in Me". Willow is the show's only character known to be Jewish as well as one of the most prominent lesbian characters in American television.

In Season One Willow's major "powers" were her intelligence and computer skills, as well as marked snarkiness. Her initial interest in Wicca lies more in the spell-casting portion rather than the faith itself; she sees magic as a way of hacking the universe, and an extension of her computer skills.

Trivia

 * Willow's dark turn in Season Six may be an homage to X-Men's "Dark Phoenix Saga", of which Joss Whedon is a huge fan. Both characters (Willow Rosenberg and Jean Grey) have red hair.
 * A new species of sea slug found on the West Coast, Alderia willowi, was named after this character in a tongue-in-cheek tribute due to Alderia willowi's rare reproductive dimorphism and Willow's own unique sexuality shifts during various seasons and episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.