Rachel Hughes Witch

In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Witch" Buffy decides she wants to try out for the cheerleading squad. When trying out for the squad she meets a girl named Amy who's also trying out. Amy tells Buffy how her mother used to be a very talented cheerleader at Sunnydale and how she wants to be just as good as her mom was. We find out Amy does not make the squad and when this happens strange things begin to happen to the girls who did make the squad, like Cordelia losing her eye sight. Slowly Amy gets closer and closer to making the squad. Buffy and the gang realize she must be the witch but Amy catches on and casts a spell on Buffy making her mess up at practice so Amy is finally on the squad. The spell also makes Buffy very ill. When trying to cure Buffy, Giles and Buffy travel to Amy's house to meet her mother, or so we thought it was her mother. It turns out that Amy's mother, Katherine, is a witch and swapped bodies with Amy to relive her teen years of cheering. The gang then works on how to save Buffy and also how to Get Amy back into her original body and stop her mother. 

In this episode there is one main monster. Amy is the monster of this episode but you would not be able to tell just by looking at her. On the outside Amy, or should I say Katherine, looks like a normal high school student, but on the inside she has deep issues. The issues other than the fact she is obsessed with reliving her high school cheerleading experience through her daughters body is the fact that she is an extreme perfectionist and always worries she will not be the best. Other than her personality and behavior there is the insane jealousy that causes her to do anything to get on the squad, even harming other members of the squad with her magic. She has a room in her house where she has dolls of the cheerleaders and casts spells to make them catch on fire, go blind, get very ill, etc.  She can do things such as move objects with her mind like throwing Willow across the hall when she confronts her and moving the ax from the table to her hand when trying to kill Buffy.

Katherine is a monster in two different ways. Katherine's personality is all around nasty. She is obsessed with being perfect to the point where she puts hours in working on her cheerleading routines, going on diets, and punishing herself when she does badly by only drinking broth and dieting. Other than that she is terrible to her daughter. She feels like Amy is a wasted person and that she does nothing valuable with her life. She does not really care about Amy, only her insane obsession with cheerleading. The obvious way she is a monster is the fact that she is a witch and performs terrible spells on others to intentionally hurt them. She is an all around terrible person.




There are many parents out there that are way too hard on their kids and push them way too far to succeed academically and athletically. This episode represents that social issue. Katherine made Amy feel very worthless and that she isn't good at anything all because she wasn't good at cheerleading or interested in it. She would push her to the point of starving herself or dieting just to get her to do better and be thinner. In today's world this is still very common. Many parents still like to live their high school experience through their kids again.


In my opinion this episode shows that to be a monster you don't need to be some ugly looking character, you can look and seem totally normal. Katherine looked like a normal high school student and even acted like one too. The only thing that made her monstrous was her inner personality and the fact she had magical powers. Otherwise you would have no idea she was a monstrous character. It shows that you can't judge a book by its cover.