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By Chris Snellgrove | Published
While Buffy the vampire slayer was filled with many shocking deaths, none as emotionally wrenching as the murder of Willow’s girlfriend, Tara, near the end of season 6. That death motivated Willow to become the Big Bad. It also added insult to injury for fans reeling from a season in which our main character dealt with everything from being ripped from heaven to almost being raped by his vampire nemesis, Spike. It turns out that showrunner Joss Whedon actually wanted to resurrect the fan-favorite character in Season 7, but avoided doing so because actress Amber Benson didn’t want it to happen.
How Buffy was going to bring Tara back
If you need a little Buffy As a reminder, Tara died at the hands of Warren, a murderous geek who wasn’t even aiming at her when he fired a gun at Buffy’s house. He died and couldn’t be resurrected, prompting his girlfriend Willow (who had become more or less addicted to channeling dark magic) to transform into a black-eyed villain who skinned Warren alive. Later, she endangered the world before her childhood friend, Xander, convinced her.
Buffy Fans were angry about Tara’s death because it made no sense and because she was an LGBTQ+ icon. While Benson later confirmed that Whedon did not want to insult the gay community, she also confirmed that she declined their offer to resurrect his character. So how did the showrunner intend to resurrect the character who otherwise couldn’t be brought back to life through magical means? In short, there was an aborted Season 7 storyline where Buffy would have the chance to have any wish granted and, after heavily weighing her options, bring Tara back to make Willow happy.
Amber Benson had a trust problem
On paper, BuffyThe audience would have been delighted to see Tara return, so why did this never happen? According to Amber Benson’s interview in the book. In Every Generation, a Slayer is Born: How Buffy Bet Our Heartsone of the reasons was his own career: going back to Buffy even briefly prevented him from directing the 2003 television miniseries Ghosts of Albion: Legacy. However, the most interesting thing is that she also didn’t want to return because she didn’t trust how Joss Whedon would handle her return.
In the same interview where he confirmed the Buffy The showrunner never “intended to hurt the LGBTQ+ community,” the Tara actor said, “I really didn’t trust what was going to happen to the character.” She claims she spoke to other actors whose characters were resurrected by Whedon and they told her, “Yeah, I came back… and then he just did what he wanted.” To be more specific, Benson said that these anonymous actors confided in her that “Even though he told me he wasn’t going to kill me this way, he killed me that way.”
Due to these issues, the beloved Buffy The star “just didn’t feel very confident in the situation” and refused to return as Tara. Elsewhere in the interview, he also mentioned that he previously “had some issues with someone on the show” and that “it had reached a breaking point when I was getting ready to leave.” She never named names, but it seems like she was worried about facing drama from both the showrunner and at least one of the show’s lead actors.
For Buffy Fans, these revelations add crunchy complexity to Tara’s troubled death… despite all the blame Joss Whedon received for killing her off, he seemed very enthusiastic about bringing her back and only avoided doing so because Amber Benson refused to return. But despite his thoughts on Whedon’s motivations, suspicions still linger that he only wanted to bring the character back to silence the harshest critics of Tara’s death. Unfortunately for Whedon, fan grudges are a bit like vampires: They refuse to die and always come back.
