Doppelgangers as a Plot Device

It seems to me that doppelgangers fit very well into the set of gothic conventions, because they take a process that feels one way, and externalize it so that it actually is that way. We see many examples of internal personality conflict, even within this one episode: Anya is struggling against her demonic proclivities to embrace the high school student within, and Faith is feeling some insecurity about the divide in her loyalties between the Scooby gang and the mayor. The difference with Willow is that her struggles are physically present in the form of an alternate Willow, and there is a clear contrast between doormat, shy Willow, and dominatrix, vamp Willow. While I don’t pretend to understand the exact rules of magic in Buffy, it is interesting that Willow was feeling a tangle of emotions and ended up accidentally conjuring herself from a separate reality. I know that Anya’s spell went wrong when Willow saw the visions of the parallel world, but there could have been a lot of other ways for it to go wrong… Why this one? Could it have something to do with the spell caster herself?

It is also interesting that the doppelgangers never seem to survive as a continued manifestation of another facet of a person. They seem to arrive, serve a purpose, and disappear, as a sort of out of body experience that leads to greater self-awareness. Still, they represent the beginning of a larger process. Willow will struggle with her role in the group and her own selfishness for the rest of the series, and the problem is only exacerbated as she becomes more and more of a force to be reckoned with in her own right. Anya and Faith also struggle with their darker and more vulnerable sides throughout the series, and their process is very similar to Willow’s, although they lack the doppelgangers to make it as explicit.

Doppelgangers as they are presented in The Transformation are entirely different. The dwarf is very similar to Guido in personality, and the primary difference is based in physical attributes. Rather than recognizing a contrast and trying to reconcile the sides of his nature, Guido is meant to recognize his own traits in the dwarf and be sufficiently disgusted to change his ways. While I remain unconvinced that Guido truly regrets any of his actions, hypothetically the contrast in physicality (which is very important to Guido) will be enough to show him that he is an unattractive person, in terms of personality. This use of doppelgangers is reminiscent of A Christmas Carol, in which Scrooge has the opportunity to view himself from a distance and see himself as others see him.

However doppelgangers are presented, we see them as apparitions that briefly highlight a disparity or reveal the possibility of change. They ultimately do not need to continue to be present after a certain point, because if they do their job correctly, the character with the doppelganger will have internalized the experience, thus absorbing something of the doppelganger into him or herself. They’re not meant to stick around and exist on their own, they are only injected to prove a point. For Willow, this means becoming a little more confident and assertive (and, yes, sometimes erring on the side of selfishness). For Guido, perhaps this only lets him know that he has to be subtler in his manipulations of the surrounding characters so that they believe that he is a good person, but even so, he has learned something from his doppelganger.