Willow, far from being a cut-out angry lesbian, is more fleshed out, and more terrifyingly alive, than she has ever been before. More than any other character, she has driven the momentum of the past few episodes; she very nearly drove it off a cliff.

Willow watched as Tara, the person she loved best in the world, was struck by a bullet fired by the nerdy but unconscionably evil Warren. The bullet had been intended for Buffy. Buffy lived, but Tara died in Willow's arms, inciting a propulsive grief in her that couldn't be contained even by obsession: It couldn't flower into anything less tropically blood-red than rage. Over the years Willow had become a powerful Wicca, but she gave up magic after realizing she had been seduced into a dangerous dependency on it. With Tara's death, it becomes her only ally -- her grief is so great that she can't bear the company of humans.

Willow's tirade begins with a plea to the great god Osiris to restore Tara to life (a plea that's refused) and ends with nothing less than the orchestration of the end of the world (which is aborted, but just barely). In between, she avenges Tara's death by torturing and flaying her killer -- but not before summoning, to taunt him, the woman he'd earlier nearly raped and then murdered. And, in her ever mounting wrath, she practically destroys every one of her remaining friends.

What's wrenching about Willow's behavior -- and Whedon knows it as well as anybody else -- is that it cuts against everything Tara ever stood for. She was one of the show's gentlest and most sensible characters; when Buffy confided to Tara, in shame, that she was ensnarled in an obsessive sexual relationship with Spike, Tara's response was astonishingly sympathetic. Ultimately, she would be the only character who didn't pass judgment on Buffy for that behavior.

You could argue that of all the characters on "Buffy," Tara was the one who stood most clearly for the right of human beings to live and love as they choose without having to explain themselves, and to make their own mistakes if need be. Her soft, pearlescent voice and shy, doelike eyes didn't contrast with her resolve; they were a huge part of it, and a most effective way of telling anyone who would dare to make rash pronouncements on her or her friends, "Get your hands off our business."

It's easy to understand why Willow would miss Tara so much. But anyone who has watched the show even semi-faithfully knows that Willow's rage, grounded partly in self-hatred, has been cooking all along. The show's followers know that Whedon has a penchant for dropping hints about what's going to happen, often two or more seasons in advance. In an episode several years ago, Willow temporarily became very, very evil, taking the form of a bisexual vampire seductress in leather pants and a bustier.

When she finally returned to her normal, understated, lovable nerd-girl self, she wondered aloud to Buffy and Buffy's then-boyfriend Angel (a tortured vampire with a soul) if maybe there wasn't some part of her that harbored those latent traits. Buffy hastened to reassure her, "That's your demon self. It doesn't have anything to do with who you really are." Angel blurted out, "Well, actually ? " and bit his tongue.

Now we know that for whatever reason, Willow has always been angry, and yet she's still the character we've grown to love. In last week's episode, we watched her absorb the knowledge of a hundred magic books through her very skin; the potent blackness of the type seeped through her fingers and up to the very top of her head, concentrating itself in her eyes, which grew into enormous, glittering ebony pools.

Later we watched Willow toy with Warren in what must be one of the most protracted torture scenes ever shown on television. Then she kills him, peeling his skin off in one lightning-quick zippered flash. There's something potently sexual about the act (she has denuded him in the most drastic sense) but it's nonetheless horrifying. We're shocked to find that there is a point at which we can sympathize with a murderer.

Even then, our sympathy for Willow only deepens. Buffy entreats her to stop her whirlwind of destruction, repeatedly telling her that it's the worst possible way to honor Tara's memory. While we know that Buffy's right, we can also see the angry petulant child in the normally very adult Willow, the child who realizes that someone who rightfully belongs by her side has been taken away forever. It doesn't seem so far-fetched that she wants to destroy everything both outside and inside herself, just to cover all the bases.

Beyond that, what's fascinating about Willow's ultimate return to the real world, and to her truest self, is that it doesn't come about as the result of physical force or macho posturing (not even Buffy's macho posturing). What changes her back is Xander, her best friend since kindergarten, telling her how much he loves her even as she slashes deep into his skin with invisible knife blades every time he utters it. It might be Whedon's way of saying that the best traits of men are sometimes those we associate with women.

Willow has occasionally complained of having to creep along in Buffy's shadow, but in this episode, she thrashes her way out of it. For a change, then, Buffy has all the tenderest moments. Her old mentor Giles, who had left her months earlier to return to his home at England, suddenly returns to help sort out the trouble with Willow. After working a particularly impressive feat of magic that temporarily constrains her, he pauses to take a good look at Buffy for the first time: The air in the room seems to have been reduced to the little space around them as he looks at her with tenderness and wonder and says, simply, with all the love that only the English are able to pour into even the most seemingly reserved statements, "You've cut your hair."

Whedon's finale leaves plenty of questions unanswered, most notably the fate of the twisted romance between Buffy and Spike. A few episodes back, in one of the most disturbing scenes I've ever seen on television, he attempted to rape Buffy and came close to succeeding. Now we learn that he's undergone an arduous and near impossible task, for a prize he may not have wanted: a soul.

What Spike hopes to accomplish now isn't clear, but of course, that's how any season finale worth its salt should end. Fans of Whedon and "Buffy" know that the fun of following the show is always mixed with some apprehension of where Whedon is going to take it next. You might say that the maxim he lives and works by comes from another T.S. Eliot poem, one that's both sinister and hopeful and holds the weight of the world in eight simple words: "There will be time to murder and create."

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