Villainess Review: Veruca (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Hard to believe that Buffy the Vampire Slayer turns 30 this year. The original movie came out in 1992 and starred Kristy Swanson in the title role, and among the cult classic's cast included David Arquette, Donald Sutherland, and the late, great Luke Perry. It was five years later that The WB gave us a TV series under the same title, with Sarah Michelle Gellar in the title role that would serve as her first breakout hit and lead her to huge things in her career. She was not the only breakout star from the series; Alyson Hannigan (Willow) went on to do American Pie and also star as Lily Aldrin on How I Met Your Mother, and Seth Green (Oz) would begin a long run as the voice of Chris Griffin on Family Guy, as well as create the hit Adult Swim series, Robot Chicken.

Buffy lasted seven seasons and had a good collection of memorable episodes, with one of them being, "Wild at Heart." In the episode, Oz finds himself drawn to a young woman named Veruca, who is the lead singer of a band called Shy. It's not the first time we have seen Veruca; she briefly appeared in a pair of earlier episodes, "Living Conditions" and "Beer Bad," but in this episode, we see Veruca conversing with Oz, as she was getting tips from Oz regarding her musical performance. Of course, Oz does have his own concerns; as we learned back in Season Two's "Phases," Oz is a werewolf, and during the moon's cycle, he locks himself up in a cage for the safety of himself and others.

That night, the moon rises, Oz transforms, and he busts out of his cage. We later see Oz approach professor Maggie Walsh (who is another dark story herself), leading to a pursuit. That's not all that Oz would encounter.

We later see a second werewolf enter the picture, clearly a female one from the looks of the creature. The mysterious she-wolf also pursues Maggie, but she ends up fighting Oz, which allows Maggie to escape. When the sun rises, Oz wakes up in his human form, but next to him is none other than Veruca, which reveals the budding singer as the female werewolf. So this explains why Oz was drawn to Veruca, it was nothing more than animal magnetism. As Veruca herself would reveal, she is different from Oz in many ways. For one, she is immensely in touch with her wolf side, and voiced her disapproval with Oz locking himself in a cage. Secondly, Veruca reveals that she remembers everything about her time as a werewolf, and enjoys hunting and killing.

We see Veruca continuously seduce Oz, who rebuffs her advances; however (and ironically), she manages to get her (literal and figurative) claws on Oz inside his cage, leading to a memorable and heated encounter. The pair ended up caught by Willow, who was about to place a curse on Oz out of scorn, but could not bring herself to do so. Right after Willow changes her mind, she ends up confronted by Veruca, who sees Willow as an obstacle in her plans to be with Oz, and decides to transform and kill Willow. She is stopped by Oz, leading to a verbal back and forth regarding their lupine nature, which sees both of them begin their transformations. The confrontation goes from verbal to physical, as both Oz and Veruca transform and fight each other, with the brawl ending with Oz killing Veruca.

"Wild at Heart" was the sixth episode of Buffy's fourth season, and aired on November 9, 1999. Veruca was played by Paige Moss, who portrayed the character in three episodes during the fourth season, with "Wild at Heart" marking Veruca's villainous appearance. Veruca definitely gave a literal meaning to the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing trope; she was quite the femme fatale and was quite vicious following her surprise reveal as a werewolf. Veruca was a villainess who was true to her word: she had no problem killing and embraced being a werewolf, and we would see that in the climax when she makes her attempt to kill Willow, though that could also be a case of Willow being seen by Veruca as a romantic rival. This was an amazing performance from Moss; she truly went all in on Veruca's murderous and bloodthirsty personality, and was also quite seductive as well. Veruca remains one of my all-time favorite Buffy villainesses, and that is due to Paige Moss' performance.

Here's an interesting fun fact. During that same year, Paige Moss co-starred in a Lifetime film titled, Total Stranger, playing the daughter of the main protagonist, who was played by Lindsay Crouse--who played Maggie Walsh on Buffy. Moss' acting career began with a recurring role on the original 90210, and she was also part of the cast of the short-lived ABC sitcom, It's All Relative, during the 2003-04 season. Her last acting role was on the Adventure Time pilot that would lead to the long running series on Cartoon Network, originating the voice of Princess Bubblegum.

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Check out Veruca's profile on Villainous Beauties Wiki!