Season 4, Episode 19 | Aired: 2 May 2000 | Written by: Marti Noxon | Directed by: James A. Contner
Oz returns. He’s been in Tibet, training, and has learned to control the wolf. He comes back for Willow and discovers, when he sees her and Tara together, that his control slips. He transforms, is captured by the Initiative. Riley lets him out. The episode handles the Willow/Oz/Tara triangle with genuine care, and the scene where Willow tells Oz about Tara is one of the show’s most delicate.
What Happens
Oz has spent months learning to suppress the wolf through meditation and herbs — it works, until emotional turbulence. He sees Willow with Tara. He partially transforms and is captured. Riley, learning the Initiative is planning to experiment on him, helps Oz escape at cost to his own standing. Oz and Willow have their final conversation: he loves her, but his control is conditional on emotional stability, and she’s with someone else. He leaves again, more finally this time.
Key Moments
Willow telling Oz about Tara — not using explicit words but being clear, and Oz listening, and both of them sitting with what it means. Seth Green and Alyson Hannigan are both very good in this scene.
Willow and Tara’s quiet scene at the episode’s end — the first on-screen acknowledgment of their relationship — is brief and low-key and completely earned.
Monster / Villain
The Initiative, as an institution that treats Oz as an experimental subject.
Notable Quote
“I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just go.” — Oz, arriving at the right conclusion, the only one he can reach without hurting people.
Where It Fits
New Moon Rising is Oz’s final farewell episode and Willow and Tara’s beginning. It closes the door on the show’s longest romance subplot with appropriate weight.