4 and 5

When Tara and Willow meet, their proficiency at magic is about the same, but Tara's knowledge of the craft far exceeds Willow's. Tara reveals that she has been practicing magic for most of her life, as her deceased mother had also been a powerful witch. Throughout season 4, Tara acts as a partner and guide in Willow's witchcraft, teaching Willow spells and performing magic together. Willow, however, is inherently talented, despite being new to the craft, and begins to progress much faster than Tara in the fifth season, including experimentations in dark magic. Tara struggles with understanding her place among the Scoobies with Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), the leader, with whom she has a very friendly relationship; Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), Willow's friend since childhood; and Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), their mentor. Tara's primary role throughout the series is that of Willow's partner. She feels somewhat useless until the fifth-season episode "Family" when the entire Scooby Gang (Spike included) makes it clear that she is unquestionably a part of them. The episode introduces some of Tara's blood family: a cold, authoritarian father who has lied to her all her life (telling her that her magical powers are a result of her being part-demon on her mother's side); an overbearing brother; and a judgmental, repressed and repressive cousin; all of whom Tara dismisses at the end of the episode.^[10] Tara later reveals in "The Body" that her mother had died when she was 17. In the following episode, when Dawn is acting out, Tara confides to Buffy that she had to deal with her brother after her mother's death. No more of her backstory is revealed in the series.

As Willow's character grows more self-assured and powerful through the seasons, Tara takes over some of the role of being placed in peril and needing to be rescued. The fifth season's primary villain, or Big Bad, is Glory, a goddess too powerful for Buffy to fight alone. Glory tortures Tara in order to gain information on the Key, but Tara asserts willpower and resists Glory, resulting in Glory stealing her sanity, and prompting Willow to go searching for retribution. Glory states she feels "buzzed" after feeding on Tara's mind, indicating Tara's powerful intellect (and possibly suggesting her power as a witch).

Buffy scholar Ian Shuttleworth writes that Benson was able to "admirably" portray the same range of emotions inherent in Tara although the character loses her identity.^[11] Willow's powers are significant enough that she is able to battle Glory more effectively than Buffy, if not completely successfully.^[12] In the final episode of season 5, Willow uses her magic to restore Tara's sanity, significantly weakening Glory in the process.

Tara also becomes a guide of sorts, and a maternal figure. She appears to Buffy in a dream in the fourth season finale "Restless" to tell her about the arrival of Buffy's sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) and act as a translator for the voiceless First Slayer. Following the death of Joyce Summers and Buffy's sacrifice to save the world at the end of the fifth season, Tara and Willow move into the Summers house, taking Joyce's bedroom and becoming Dawn's surrogate parents.^[13]

6 and comics

Tara becomes more outspoken during the sixth season about the ethics of Willow's use of magic, cautioning Willow that she depends too much on it. The dynamics of their relationship suddenly turn during "Once More, with Feeling". Willow had cast a spell on Tara to alter her memory in the preceding episode and Tara finds out about it during "Once More, with Feeling", the musical episode of the series. Tara was given a prominent role in the musical due to the skill of Benson's voice: she sings a love ballad to Willow, a duet with Giles, and backup in two other songs. The musical nature of the episode compelled the characters to express what they had been feeling secretly, or had refused to admit to themselves. Tara's song is a fervent and explicit expression of love for Willow which she had not made clear to the audience until this point.^[14] Tara later sings with Giles that she will leave Willow if she does not change. Self-conscious about her singing abilities, Hannigan requested not to be given a song and sings only a few lines in the episode. Critics saw this as Tara's personality becoming more forceful as Willow begins to show signs of weakness as she is overtaken by her addiction.^[15][16] Tara challenges Willow to go for a week without using any magic. Willow almost immediately breaks her promise, however, and Tara leaves her at the end of "Tabula Rasa". Tara remains a part of the group, spending time with Dawn, and non-judgmentally acting as Buffy's confessor when Buffy divulges she has a painful and compulsive sexual relationship with Spike, a vampire whom she loathes.^[17]

Despite their separation, Tara remains devoted to Willow's recovery and supports her in her decision to abstain from using magic. She is, according to author Lorna Jowett, one of the few characters who is never seduced by evil.^[17] Shuttleworth notes that most Buffy characters go through a rite of transformation except for Tara.^[18] Among female characters she is the most virtuous. Like the other Buffy characters in the series whose names have symbolic interpretations, Tara's name resembles the Latin terra, meaning "earth." She is solidly grounded, with Willow attached to her, and Benson's body more naturally representative of women.^[19] Tara is wholly feminine both in dress and demeanor, as opposed to Buffy and (less) Willow mostly dressed with trousers and jackets, but never seeks male approval. She is clad in earthy, natural colors, long flowing skirts and clinging blouses, with an intent to comfort instead of arouse as other women on the show are dressed.^[20] Her admonishments to other characters are always made with love, with their best interests at heart.^[17] Even Tara's last words, commenting that Willow's shirt is stained (with Tara's own blood), indicate her preoccupation with the welfare of others.^[21]

Tara has also appeared in The Long Way Home, Always Darkest, Retreat, and the one-off Willow.

Viewer response

Although lesbianism had been addressed on U.S. television before Tara was introduced to Buffy, her relationship with Willow was heralded as a milestone.^[28][29] Previously depicted lesbian relationships had not shown characters as sexual beings, or even touching each other.^[30][31] Despite this, Tara and Willow's relationship was not heralded with any specific fanfare on the show; they are treated as other couples. Their relationship was frequently the subject of storylines, but no specific focus was on their identity as lesbians or the coming out process. Limited to what could be shown by the network, Tara and Willow are shown as consistently affectionate but not overly sexual.^[4] Manda Scott in The Herald wrote in 2002 that the lack of realistic displays of touching or kissing between Willow and Tara made their relationship implausible, but because no other portrayals of lesbian relationships were on television, its importance is undeniable.^[4] Tara and Willow did not kiss until the fifth-season episode "The Body", which focused on the death of Joyce Summers. Not until Buffy moved from The WB to UPN in 2001 were Tara and Willow shown in sexual situations. Benson later recalled the issues of working with censors:

There was a big kerfuffle—they didn’t want us kissing on the show, and Alyson and I were both like, “Hey, this is bull[shit]. We should be able to kiss." And it was only after one of the crew members, who was gay, took us aside and said, ‘Hey, just the fact that the characters are having this positive relationship and they’re being portrayed as normal human beings—who just happen to be two women in love—that what’s important, not the physical stuff.” So, it was really just about saying hey we are two people and we are in this relationship and we are functioning like normal people. Just having a normal relationship, I think, that’s the biggest thing that we did.^[3]

Like Whedon, Benson was surprised at the strength of the reaction to Tara's death. It indicated to her what kind of impact the characters had:

I thought I was on some science fiction show. I had no clue I was going to have some sort of impact on a whole group of people... Alyson and I would get letters, and you don't realize the impact you're making until you really start thinking about it. When kids come up and say, 'I didn't kill myself because of Buffy and your relationship,' it blows your mind. It wasn't about two women making out. It was about two women who fell in love with each other and happened, just happened, to have the same genitalia.^[26]

The Big Bad of the seventh season is the First Evil, who taunts Buffy and her friends by appearing as loved ones who previously died. Whedon asked Benson to appear as Tara to Willow in "Conversations with Dead People", but Benson turned down the role, concerned about what fans of the show would think about an evil Tara. Instead, the producers used Cassie, a character who dies early in the seventh season and speaks for Tara, telling Willow to kill herself.^[32] Whedon also considered bringing Tara back in a storyline where Buffy would be given one wish to be granted, but the possibility did not come to fruition.^[33]

Writer Peg Aloi calls the backlash at Whedon "staggering", and summarizes Tara's effect with Willow, stating that they were a single unit the moment they met: "Willow's need for approval and Tara's need for unconditional love allowed their supernova trajectory its singular, incendiary thrust toward its triumphant but tragic end; like all witches who burn, martyred by flames, they move on to a place where their gods are the right ones."^[34]

Political aspects

As a show with an obvious feminist agenda, Buffy and its female characters at times represent, or provoke questions and conversation about, such political and economic themes as gender roles, implicit stereotypes, in-groups and out-groups, and, with Tara's appearance on the show, sexuality and gender identity-based cultures. Politics is, to paraphrase Buffy's comment to Quentin Travers in "Checkpoint," about power: who has it and who does not. Tara frequently does not; before she meets Willow, that is, and during her suffering from Glory's assault. It can be argued, as by the writers here, that simply by virtue of her attachment to Willow she is endangered by characters including Glory and by powers external to the Buffyverse including Mutant Enemy.

Pasley, the Buffy scholar, writes of the cultural climate coexistent with the show's original run and its later, lasting fandom,

Joss Whedon's basically apolitical intentions showed in his obvious surprise at the bitter, politically charged reaction to Tara's death... Though rooted primarily in the anguish viewers felt over the death of a beloved character, the criticism converged on the idea that Whedon had lapsed into the "Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché," a subset of the broader pop culture cliché in which a minority character is introduced only to be killed or turned into a villain.^[35]

The term "Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché" was ideated and popularized by members of a forum, "The Kitten, The Witches and the Bad Wardrobe," following the events of "Seeing Red". Their arguments and conclusions led to an online FAQ page, "The Death of Tara, the Fall of Willow and The Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché FAQ." Among other topics, the FAQ analyzes the forensics and metaphors of Tara's death and Willow's descent into vengeance. Among their statements: "Tara attracted many fans who are marginalized in society because they are shy or gay or stuttered or all three," and the Cliché is "likely to increase the incidence of homophobia in society, and make gays and lesbians of all ages feel unwelcome and disliked."^[36]

In his piece "The Tara Controversy," Pasley wrote,

Recognition of the cliché was quite widespread by the spring of 2002 thanks to a highly entertaining documentary called The Celluloid Closet (1995) that happened to be showing frequently on cable television. Full of alternately hilarious and chilling clips from old movies that few Buffy viewers were likely to have encountered, the documentary gave the impression that every third film made in the 50s and 60s featured a predatory lesbian villain or a tortured young woman, often trying to "go straight" after falling inadvertently into lesbianism, who dies tragically in the last reel. ... [But] Tara had been on the show for almost three years, so she could hardly be seen as mere cannon fodder. The elements of self-loathing and violence that the Celluloid Closet films associated with homosexuality were never shown to be part of Willow and Tara's relationship. The two characters' story arc showed the women becoming more confident and powerful as an acknowledged couple than they had been before. The Evil/Dead Lesbian Cliché generally involves a partner killing herself or her lover, but Willow's murderous rage was directed outward at her lover's murderer.^[37]

Pasley considers the liability held by Mutant Enemy, too:

Perhaps the worst mistake that Whedon and his writers made was waiting until Tara's last episode to actually picture her naked in bed with Willow and then having the murder occur immediately after, thus apparently linking death with a homosexual act. That put it close enough to the Celluloid Closet paradigm to bring many politically minded critics and fans down hard on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and destroy much of the political cachet it had acquired since Tara came on the show. Suddenly denounced in many quarters where he had previously been a darling (liberal-leaning pop culture journals, Buffy fan websites, the gay press), Joss Whedon expressed dismay that his reluctantly made decision to kill off Tara "made people I actually like angry... it didn't anger a bunch of morons." His response to the criticism was to spell out more clearly than ever that his shows have no intentional political messages to deliver. "I never court controversy," Whedon told E! Online. "I don't really care about issues. I didn't care about the one I introduced with Tara, and I didn't care about the one when I killed her. I cared about narrative and what I needed to do to Willow." What he needed to do at that point was turn an enraged, recolored, magically supercharged Willow into the show's primary villain for the last few episodes ("Villains," "Two to Go," and "Grave")...^[38]

As Willow says to Buffy about Tara, "It's complicated."^[39]