The Two Sides of Xander

While watching “The Replacement,” I firmly believed that “suave” Xander was a demon imposter. “Real” Xander, to me, was perfectly in his element while acting goofy and clumsy and looking ridiculously disheveled. However, as the episode unfolded, I was quite taken aback by the realization that both Xanders were actually two halves of the same whole. The biggest concept I’ve taken away from all our talk about dopplegangers this week was that dopplegangers, although very different from the true person, have many of the same underlying characteristics. For example, in “Dopplegangland,” as the episode progresses, Willow begins to identify more and more with her darker vampire half because those traits are innately inside of her, regardless of whether she acts like it or not. Yet. In today’s episode, Xander was split in two, distributing his strong points in “suave” Xander and his weaker traits in “real” Xander. However, when Xander is a whole, he still has both parts of his personality. We talked about in class how this shows a dominant personality trait. Xander is naturally more prone towards funny and goofy Xander. This is portrayed when both halves of Xander start hanging around each other and suave Xander starts using similar phrases and making more jokes like his messier half. Furthermore, when Xander is being combined into one person, his personalities jump right back into his goofier and disheveled looking body. This just further proves that although Xander has the confidence and smoothness of suave Xander, it is much more repressed than his quirky personality that I, personally, have grown to love. At least now, after this experience, Xander can realize and accept that he is capable of accomplishing a lot, just like he saw his other half do.