VERUCA. BtVS Demon/Monster/Villain.
A female werewolf. Veruca first appears as a singer with her band Shy in “Beer Bad.” Oz is instantly attracted to her.
In “Wild at Heart” Veruca’s identity as a werewolf is revealed when she and Oz wake in each other’s arms, naked and outside. Unlike him, she remembers all that happened during the night when they were both wolves. He says that except for three nights a month, he is a regular guy. In contrast, she says that the wolf is there all the time, and the human face is just a disguise. “God! Somebody’s domesticated the hell out of you!” she exclaims, criticizing him for caging himself on the full moon nights.
VERUCA: I can help you, Oz. You’re scared. I was too, but then I accepted it. The animal - it’s powerful, inside me, all the time. Soon you just start to feel sorry for everybody else, because they don’t know what it’s like to be as alive as we are, as free.
OZ: Free to kill people. I won’t do that. You shouldn’t.
With her band Veruca sings, “You might become something I need to destroy.” Having embraced her wolf side, she has no conscience about killing people. She says to Willow, “Sometimes you have to, you know, to keep what’s yours. Sometimes you have to kill. How about that – the sun’s almost down.” She intends to kill Willow in order to both free the wolf aspect of Oz and to have him to herself, but he fights her in Willow’s defense, becomes a wolf, and then kills her.
Veruca makes Oz aware that the boundary between the human and the wolf in himself is unclear, and that his wolf side influences himself as a human. They are attracted to each other because they are both werewolves. Although he resists her, he is affected by her unrestrained sexuality, and kisses her as he locks her in his cage with him instead of telling someone about her, as Willow points out. Veruca is therefore the catalyst for Oz’s decision to leave Sunnydale on his own to find a resolution to his werewolf problem.
Assigned to Joanna Lehmann.