‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Preview Offers First Look at Willow’s New Girlfriend

Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Willow Rosenberg has a new girlfriend in the next installment of the reimagined series.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #2 by Jordie Bellaire and Dan Mora releases on February 27th. Boom Studios has released a two-page preview that reveals several characters not featured in the reboot’s first issue.

The pages reveal the first look at Willow’s girlfriend, Rose. There’s also the reboot debut of Cordelia Chase, who shows surprising warmth towards Willow given her attitude in the original series. The pages also show Buffy getting to know Robin Wood, who was completely changed for the new series. Take a look below.

In an interview with ComicBook.com, Bellaire discusses the changes she’s made to Willow’s character in the rebooted series.

“I think me and [editor Jeanine Schaefer] when we first started talking about the project, we both talked about how we both love Willow,” Bellaire said. “I think Willow definitely has a lot of charm being this sweet, quiet, bookish girl, but she really came into her own confidence in the later parts of the show. I just think that’s the thing that young girls need today, you know, I think we need strong female characters who are confident, not just shrinking violets. Not to say that obviously there aren’t women who are like that, still confident, but I just thought it would be a nice flip and a nice change for once to have somebody smart, to have somebody sweet, who is also confident and who can speak her mind and can be honest, and open, and frank.

“I think it’s a nice reversal for Willow to kind of start her off that way. I mean, who’s to say, though, that we won’t sort of circle back around maybe to some insecurities that she might have, because I think every person has insecurities. Right now I thought it would be cool to start her off sort of different from how we originally first saw her.”

She also discussed why they decided to make such drastic changes to Robin Wood.

“Because everyone loves him, man!” she said. “Everyone loves the Robin Wood. We can’t get enough of him. We wanted to start him earlier, start him sooner. These are some of the things that we change now that we’re doing the Ultimate universe idea. That we can embrace characters that were maybe short-lived before, I feel, didn’t get to explore the full, super breadth. Sometimes it’s like a dream in fan fiction, you know? You get to kind of explore those cool boundaries and those ideas.

“I think that’s why we wanted to bring him into the fold earlier. Because there’s no rules. We can bring in anybody as early as we want, and he’s one of those people that we loved there.”

What do you think of Willow’s new girlfriend? Let us know in the comments.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #2 goes on sale February 27th.