Buffy the Vampire Slayer is full of memorable characters, among those Oz, played by Seth Green, who abruptly left in season 4 – and here’s why. The 1990s saw many unforgettable TV shows that, with time, have become classics, and one of those is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon. Based on the 1992 movie of the same name (written by Whedon), Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on The WB in 1997 and lived on for seven seasons, coming to an end in 2003, and it was a big success with critics and viewers, even making way for a franchise with spinoffs, novels, comic books, and video games.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer follows Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a high school student who comes from a long line of young women chosen by fate to battle evil forces, and are referred to as “slayers”. This grants her powers that increase her physical strength, endurance, agility, healing, intuition, and even some degree of precognition, usually in prophetic dreams. Buffy does her best to live a normal life but also learns to embrace her destiny as a vampire slayer. Over the course of seven seasons, Buffy and company met a variety of characters, including a werewolf thanks to Daniel “Oz” Osbourne (Seth Green).
Oz made his debut in Buffy the Vampire Slayer in season 2 as the lead guitarist for the band Dingoes Ate My Baby, and he stood out for his detached and ironic approach to life. Oz set his eyes on Willow (Alyson Hannigan), who he started dating, and wasn’t surprised when on a date with Willow he saw Buffy defeat a vampire, simply saying that it “explains a lot”. Oz joined the Scooby Gang and not long after was revealed to be a werewolf. During his time in college, he met Veruca, a female werewolf, with whom he cheated on Willow and who made him see that he’s “the wolf all the time”. This led Oz to leave in the first episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 4 in order to try to better understand his lycanthropy, and he returned in the final episodes of the season only to learn Willow was now in love with Tara Maclay, and so he left Sunnydale for good.
Oz’s departure was abrupt, but leaving in Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 4 wasn’t part of the original plan. In an interview with The AV Club in 2007, Seth Green explained that he approached Whedon as he didn’t feel they were seizing the character’s potential and what they were doing with Oz was “in drastic opposition” to that, and as he was getting other opportunities outside the world of Buffy, he asked to be let out. Green added that he was “bound to a series-regular contract” yet Oz didn’t do much, and he had an opportunity to do a movie (the comedy Knockaround Guys), so he requested to be let out for six episodes. However, the writers decided it would be easier to write Oz off entirely, and so he only returned for a couple of episodes to wrap up his arc.
Although that was the end of Oz’s arc in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, the comic books continued to tell his story, especially in the 2009 story arc Retreat, where it's revealed that he returned to Tibet where he met fellow werewolf Bayarmaa and formed a family with her. Oz became one of the most memorable characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it’s a shame that his character didn’t reach his full potential and had to leave so soon.