Buffy Nearly Reversed Its Most Shocking Death To Satisfy Fans
While Buffy the Vampire Slayer was filled with many shocking deaths, none was quite so 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 salt to the wounds of fans who were reeling from a season featuring our title character dealing with everything from being plucked out of heaven to nearly getting raped by her vampire frenemy, Spike. As it turns out, showrunner Joss Whedon actually wanted to resurrect the fan-favorite character in Season 7 but avoided doing so because actor Amber Benson didn’t want it to happen.
How Buffy Was Going To Bring Tara Back
If you need a little Buffy refresher, 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. She died and could not be resurrected, prompting her 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 being talked back from the brink by childhood friend Xander.
Buffy fans were angered by Tara’s death because it was senseless and because she was an LGBTQ+ icon. While Benson later confirmed that Whedon didn’t want to insult the gay community, she also confirmed that she turned down his offer to resurrect her character. So, how did the showrunner intend to resurrect the character that couldn’t otherwise be brought back to life by magical means? In short, there was an aborted Season 7 plot where Buffy would get a chance to have any wish granted, and after heavily weighing her options, she would bring Tara back to make Willow happy.
Amber Benson Had A Trust Issue
On paper, Buffy’s audience would have been overjoyed to see the return of Tara, so why did this never happen? According to Amber Benson’s interview in the book Into Every Generation a Slayer Is Born: How Buffy Staked Our Hearts, one reason was her own career: coming back to Buffy even briefly would have kept her from directing the 2003 TV miniseries Ghosts of Albion: Legacy. More interestingly, however, is that she also didn’t want to come back because she didn’t trust how Joss Whedon would handle her return.
In the same interview where she confirmed the Buffy showrunner never “meant to hurt the LGBTQ+ community,” the Tara actor said, “I didn’t really trust what was going to happen to the character.” She claims that she spoke to other actors whose characters were resurrected by Whedon and that they told her “Yeah, I came back… and then he just did what he wanted.” Getting more specific, Benson said these unnamed actors confided in her that “Even though he told me that he wasn’t going to kill me in this way, he killed me in that way.”
Because of these issues, the beloved Buffy star “just didn’t feel super trusting of the situation” and declined to return as Tara. Elsewhere in the interview, she also mentioned that she previously “had some issues with somebody on the show” and that “it had kind of come to a head as I was getting ready to leave.” She never named names, but it sounds like she was worried about facing drama from both the showrunner and at least one of the show’s main actors.
For Buffy fans, these revelations add some crunchy complexity to Tara’s problematic death…for all the blame Joss Whedon received for killing her off, he seemed very enthusiastic to bring her back and only avoided doing so because Amber Benson refused to return. But despite her thoughts on Whedon’s motivations, there are still lingering suspicions that he only wanted to bring the character back to silence the loudest critics of Tara’s death. Unfortunately for Whedon, fan grudges are a bit like vampires: they refuse to die and they always come back.
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