By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The series offers plenty of heartbreaking moments, but for many fans, there is nothing sadder than when Seth Green leaves Buffy the Vampire Slayer. His character Oz was a vital part of the show’s charismatic entourage, and besides that, his relationship with Willow might just be the cutest thing ever put onscreen. That relationship disintegrated in a brutal way in the episode “Wild At Heart,” and showrunner Joss Whedon later confirmed that he made this episode incredibly depressing so that fans could effectively feel Willow’s heartache.
Seth Green Leaves Buffy
Once you watch the scene where Seth Green leaves Buffy, it’s impossible not to notice how abrupt his departure from the series really was. Green, who wanted to become more of a movie star at the time, left the show to go film Knockaround Guys, a dark comedy starring Dennis Hopper and John Malkovich. Whedon described losing Green as a “heartbreaker” that led to Willow’s heart breaking right alongside the audience. “I took what we were feeling and put it onscreen,” he said, “so everybody would be on the same page.”
If you can’t remember just how bad Willow’s heartbreak was, then you might need a refresher about the episode in which Seth Green leaves Buffy as a regular cast member (he later came back for two cameo appearances). In “Wild At Heart,” Oz becomes enamored of Veruca, a pretty young woman who also happens to be both a musician and a werewolf.
The two eventually sleep together, dooming Oz’s relationship with Willow (the poor witch discovers her boyfriend’s infidelity while bringing him breakfast). Later, Veruca tries to kill Willow, but she is stopped and killed by Oz in his wolf form. The episode ends unhappily, though: Oz’s relationship with Willow is dead, and he leaves Sunnydale altogether to try to learn more about what separates him from the wolf within.
The moment when Seth Green leaves Buffy remains viscerally shocking to audiences, and it was just as shocking to Joss Whedon. He didn’t know the actor would have to leave to go film a movie, which effectively destroyed some major plans for Oz’s character. The Oz/Willow/Veruca love triangle was originally meant to be a season-long arc, but everything got condensed into a loose trilogy of episodes culminating in “Wild At Heart,” Oz’s big departure from Sunnydale.
Every time we rewatch “Wild At Heart,” the moment Seth Green leaves Buffy hits us harder than ever before. There are silver linings about this departure, though, as it cleared the deck for Willow’s later relationship with Tara to blossom. And it was rewarding to later discover just how much Oz had grown as a character since leaving Sunnydale, proving once and for all that life is that much easier when you leave the Hellmouth (unless, as Angel discovered, you only go as far as Los Angeles).
Incidentally, if you want to see more of Seth Green’s Oz character, you can always check out the canonical Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics Joss Whedon launched back in 2007. Those comics detail how Oz eventually married a woman named Bayarmaa and even fathered a son. And we can only cross our fingers that the character makes an appearance in the recently announced Buffy reboot. It’s the kind of request we might normally take up with a higher power, but we’ll settle for directing our requests to Oz himself. After all, who better to answer this question than someone with a name tag that reads “God?”