Buffy almost reversed her most shocking death to please fans

Pa Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 day ago

For now Buffy the Vampire Slayer was filled with many shocking deaths, none as emotionally wrenching as the murder of Willow’s girlfriend Tara at the end of season 6. This death spurred Willow to become the Big Bad. It also added salt to the wounds of fans who have endured a season in which our main character has faced everything from being plucked from the heavens to almost being raped by her vampire nemesis Spike. As it turned out, the showrunner Joss Whedon actually wanted to resurrect the fan-favorite character in Season 7, but avoided it because actor Amber Benson didn’t want it to happen.

How was Buffy going to get Tara back

If you need a little Buffy rising, Tara died at the hands of Warren, a freak assassin who didn’t even aim at her when he fired his gun at Buffy’s house. She died and couldn’t be resurrected, causing her friend Willow (who had become more or less addicted to imparting dark magic) to turn into a black-eyed villain who skinned Warren alive. She later put the world in danger before her childhood friend Xander talked her off the edge.

Buffy fans were outraged by Tara’s death because it was senseless and because she was an LGBTQ+ icon. Benson later confirmed that Whedon did not mean to offend a gay man communityshe also confirmed that she turned down his offer to resurrect her character. So how was the showrunner going to resurrect a character who otherwise couldn’t be brought back to life by magical means? Long story short, the Season 7 storyline was interrupted where Buffy was given the chance to grant any wish she wanted, and after weighing her options, she brought Tara back to make Willow happy.

Amber Benson had a trust issue

on paper BuffyViewers would love to see Tara return, so why has it never happened? According to Amber Benson’s interview in the book In every generation a slayer is born: How Buffy stole our heartsone reason was her own career: going back to Buffy would even briefly keep her from producing the 2003 miniseries Ghosts of Albion: Legacy. More interestingly, though, 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 Buffy The showrunner never “wanted to hurt the LGBTQ+ community,” actor Tara said, “I didn’t really believe what was going to happen to the character.” She claims she spoke to other actors whose characters Whedon resurrected and that they told her, “Yeah, I came back… and then he just did what he wanted.” To be more specific, Benson said these unnamed actors confessed to her that “even though he told me he wasn’t going to kill me that way, he killed me that way.”

Because of these questions, the beloved Buffy star “just didn’t feel very confident about the situation” and refused to return as Tara. Elsewhere in the interview, she also mentioned that she had previously “had 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 she seemed worried about facing drama from both the show’s host and at least one of the show’s lead actors.

For Buffy fans, these revelations complicate Tara’s troubled death… for all the blame Joss Whedon received for killing her, he seemed very enthusiastic about bringing her back and shied away from it only because Amber Benson refused to return. But despite her thoughts on Whedon’s motivation, there are still suspicions that he only wanted to bring the character back to silence the most vocal critics of Tara’s death. Unfortunately for Whedon, fan resentments are like vampires: they refuse to die and always come back.