“Oh my god. I’m cured. I want the boys.” – Tara Maclay
Tara is such a sweet heart. Without doubt, she is the most genuinely nice person in the entire world, real or otherwise. She is so reasonable, and level-headed. Those traits she holds through out, but when we first see her she is the uber shy, conservative almost innocent in nature type of person. Like i have already mentioned in the Willow blog, it’s Willow who ends up breaking Tara out of her shell, making her into the amazing person we all have grown to love by the end of Season 6, when she sadly dies.
My opinion might be slightly jaded, because, as i have previously mentioned, i originally watched BTVS when i was around 6 or 7, so when i re-watched it almost a year and a half ago, i knew the big plot moments already. So when Tara was finally introduced in the beginning of season 4 in a Wiccan group Willow joins, i already knew how their relationship would progress, so i immediately saw the intense spiritual and sexual chemistry. For all of you out there who more clearly remember your first time watching the BTVS series, was it that obvious when they first met? I mean, if it’s not there immediately, it has got to be there by the end of ‘Hush’. I mean, when Willow and Tara use their combined magic to push that soda machine against the door, WOOOO sparks!
I love Willow and Tara. I mean, honestly, what is not to love? Willow and Tara are TV’s first lesbian couple that were serious legit lesbians. It wasn’t a phase for either of them. They are gay. 100% no exceptions. (Not even Oz as we’ve learned!) Although it wasn’t between them, BTVS produced the first lesbian sex scene in television history (Willow and Kennedy). It was a major risk to have a lesbian couple, even in todays television, crazy religious people get all fired up over gay and lesbian couples being depicted as normal. Which they are. I absolutely LOVE they way Joss Whedon and Marti Noxon had Willow and Tara have their first kiss. It was in the episode ‘The Body’ and although we know that Willow and Tara had kissed before, the first time the audience actually saw it, was when Tara was comforting Will in her time of sorrow when Joyce died. And i think that is incredibly awesome,
because it wasn’t done in a sleazy way to get more ratings, it was done as a girl conforming her girlfriend in a time of grief. Through out Tara’s relationship with Willow she really develops into a much more ‘complete’ person, so to speak. She gains so much self-confidence and reassurance from her time with Will and The Scoobies, the way Joss allowed her character to grow and progress is truly amazing and very realistic. I love how my early-mid of season 6, Tara is just fed up with the amount of magic Willow is using, she doesn’t succumb to the fact that Willow is addicted to magic, she stands up for how she feels about it, something i think season 4 Tara wouldn’t have ever dared to do.
I really love the dynamic of the relationship between Tara and Dawn. It’s not super in your face, but i feel like its a little prevalent that Tara sort of becomes a mother-figure to Dawn after Joyce’s death, and even more after Buffy’s death at the end of season 5. To me, the most obvious proof of this is in OMWF when Tara pokes her head into Dawns room and Dawn says something regarding how she is happy that Tara and Willow aren’t fighting anymore, not knowing that Willow put a spell on Tara making her forget that fight.
Of course, Tara’s death. Her death is probably one of the most important of the entire show, the only other one that rivals it is Joyce’s. But Joyce’s only effects the show emotionally, where Tara’s death triggers a crap-ton of horrible events. I hate that Tara dies. I hate how random and sudden it is. I hate how it makes Willow feel. I hate that it makes me cry every time i watch it. With all that said, Tara’s death most defiantly fits into how Joss tends to like to kill off his characters. Tara had finally obtained a magic-free, happy, honest and open relationship with Willow. She was so happy, she had what she had always wanted. So in the true nature of Joss, she had to die. One super significant part about Tara’s death, which goes back to what i was saying about her being so sweet and caring about other people, is that after she got shot by Warren’s stray bullet, she doesn’t acknowledge the pain she’s in, but instead, she looks at Willow and just says, “Your shirt…”. It’s so completely the nature of Tara to notice other peoples misfortunes before her own, in this case, noticing her blood spattered on Willow’s top before knowing her own pain.
I love Amber Benson as Tara. It isn’t until you view just about anything else she is for you to truly appreciate how amazing she is. And that doesn’t mean that her work as Tara is not impressive, it is. Standing alone, her work on BTVS is wonderful. But when you compare it to something else, and you really see her range both emotionally and physically as an actor, she really becomes mind-blowing then. She is much more wild and, well opposite of Tara as far as i can tell. Plus, she is so remarkably beautiful. I can’t get over it sometimes. No wonder she turned Willow gay, she could probably turn just about any one gay.
Tara Maclay: Kind, compassionate, powerful, smart and self-sure.
“Google.” Google. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Sept. 2012. <https://www.google.com/search?num=10>.
Whedon, Joss, and Marti Noxon. Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Los Angles, California, 1997-2003. Television.
buffysavedmylife 