{"id":378313,"date":"2026-09-18T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/?p=378313"},"modified":"2026-09-30T09:28:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T16:28:51","slug":"buffy-the-vampire-slayers-first-willow-episode-is-still-one-of-its-least-popular","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/buffy-the-vampire-slayers-first-willow-episode-is-still-one-of-its-least-popular\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffy the Vampire Slayer\u2019s first Willow episode is still one of its least popular"},"content":{"rendered":"

Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em>\u2019s \u201cI, Robot… You, Jane\u201d aired on April 28, 1997<\/strong>. It was the show\u2019s first Willow-centered episode, and it still tends to show up on lists of the series\u2019 weakest hours.<\/p>\n

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The ratings back that up. On IMDb<\/a>, \u201cI, Robot… You, Jane\u201d sits at 6.6<\/strong>, the lowest score in Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em> season 1. It also lands near the bottom in larger episode rankings, at 142 out of 144 for Vox and 129 for Rolling Stone<\/em>. The setup, at least on paper, has that very specific 1990s appeal: Willow falls for \u201cMalcolm,\u201d only to discover he\u2019s actually Moloch, a demon turned loose on the internet and later plugged into a robot body. What drags it down is the way it plays out, with corny execution, an awkward tone, dated cyberspace clich\u00e9s, and a final reveal that\u2019s hard to take seriously.<\/p>\n\n

Going back to early Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em>, \u201cI, Robot… You, Jane\u201d is mostly worth pulling out as a little time capsule of 1990s internet panic<\/strong>, and for the introduction of Jenny Calendar as Rupert Giles\u2019 techno-pagan counterpart and future love interest. Willow, meanwhile, is written far too passively here, especially knowing she later becomes one of the show\u2019s richest characters. You can also already spot the shakier side of the show\u2019s early monster-of-the-week run, before the serialized leap late in season 2, along with some clumsy first attempts at ideas the series would brush up against again: online manipulation, curated identity, and the collision between old knowledge and digital culture. You can find it in Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em> season 1.<\/p>\n

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer\u2019s \u201cI, Robot… You, Jane\u201d aired on April 28, 1997. It was the show\u2019s first Willow-centered episode, and it still tends to show up on lists of the series\u2019 weakest hours. The ratings back that up. On IMDb, \u201cI, Robot… You, Jane\u201d sits at 6.6, the lowest score in Buffy the Vampire … Continue reading “Buffy the Vampire Slayer\u2019s first Willow episode is still one of its least popular”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9352,"featured_media":378312,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[6869],"class_list":["post-378313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","content-category-streaming-videos"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":378314,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378313\/revisions\/378314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378313"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=378313"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=378313"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=378313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}