Buffy almost made her most shocking death to satisfy the fans

by Chris Snelgrove
| published 9 seconds ago

while Buffy the Vampire Slayer was filled with many shocking deaths, none as emotionally wrenching as the murder of Willow’s friend Tara near the end of season 6. This death set Willow off to become the big bad. It also added salt to the wounds of fans reeling from a season where our title character deals with everything from being kicked out of Heaven to being nearly raped by her vampire beau, Spike. As it turns out, a showrunner Joss Whedon actually wanted to revive the fan-favorite character in season 7 but was held back because actor Amber Benson didn’t want it to happen.

How Buffy was going to get Tara back

if you need some Buffy Refreshingly, Tara dies at the hands of Warren, a murderous nerd who didn’t even aim at her when he fired a gun at Buffy’s house. She died and could not be resurrected, causing her friend Willow (who was more or less addicted to channeling dark magic) to become a black-eyed villain who stripped Warren alive. Later, she endangered the world before childhood friend Xander talked her out of it.

Buffy Fans were angry about Tara’s death because it was senseless and because she was an LGBTQ+ icon. While Benson later confirmed that Whedon didn’t mean to offend the gay man communityShe also confirmed that she turned down his offer to revive her character. So how was the showrunner going to revive the character who couldn’t otherwise be brought back to life by magical means? Long story short, there was a canceled Season 7 storyline where Buffy would get a chance to get any wish, and after weighing her options, she’d bring Tara back to make Willow happy.

Amber Benson had a loyalty problem

on paper, BuffyThe audience was very happy to see the return of Tara, so why did it never happen? According to Amber Benson’s interview in the book Into every generation is born a slayer: how Buffy ended our heartsOne reason was her career: to return to Buffy She was even briefly prevented from directing the 2003 TV miniseries Ghosts of Albion: Legacy. However, what’s more interesting 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 she confirmed the Buffy The showrunner never “intended to hurt the LGBTQ+ community,” said actor Tara, “I didn’t really 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’m back… and then he just did what he wanted.” More specifically, Benson said these unnamed actors believed her that “even though he told me he wasn’t going to kill me that way, he killed me that way.”

Because of these issues, beloved Buffy The star “just didn’t feel super confident about the situation” and refused to return as Tara. Elsewhere in the interview, she also mentioned that she had previously “had some issues with someone on the show” and that “it kind of came to a head when I was getting ready to leave.” She never named names, but it sounds like she’s worried about dealing with drama from both the showrunners and at least one of the show’s main actors.

for Buffy Fans, these revelations add some crunchy complexity to Tara’s troubled death…for all the blame Joss Whedon received for killing her, he seems very eager to bring her back and only avoided doing so because Amber Benson refused to return. But despite her thoughts on Whedon’s motives, suspicions still linger that he just wanted to bring the character back to silence the most vocal critics of Tara’s death. Unfortunately for Whedon, fan grudges are a bit like vampires: they refuse to die and they always come back.