Tara is a shy young woman with magical talents who falls in love with Willow Rosenberg, one of the core characters.

Tara grows from a reserved girl who is unsure of herself to being the moral center of Buffy's circle of friends, named the Scooby Gang.

Her relationship with Willow is consistently positive, and the first recurring depiction of a lesbian couple on prime time network series television in the United States.

Whedon upheld that it was the necessary course to take to propel Willow's story arc further; both the show's producers and Amber Benson deny that there was any malicious intent behind the decision.

[1] Tara is introduced in the fourth season episode "Hush" as a college student who attends a Wicca meeting where Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan) goes to find some like-minded people.

Benson almost missed a callback audition because she left town, but the casting department postponed the session so she could return and read.

She favors Tara in the end, causing some of the show's fans to react angrily on the fansite message boards, with some leaving homophobic remarks and characterizing Benson as overweight and unattractive.

Benson, who was referred to as "astoundingly non-Hollywood" by a Scottish journalist,[4] frequented the boards and read the comments, finding them hurtful and taking some of them personally.

Buffy scholar Jeffrey L. Pasley summarizes the planning behind the relationship: Whedon chose to sidestep the "statement" opportunity presented by Willow's turn to homosexuality, even as Buffy the Vampire Slayer was celebrated in the gay and lesbian community for providing the first committed same-sex relationship in the history of series television.

Well aware that they were breaking new ground and being closely watched, the Buffy braintrust elected to depict the relationship honestly but unsensationally, avoiding the prurient ballyhoo that had accompanied fleeting homosexual encounters in other series like Ally McBeal and Party of Five.

Yet by design the relationship was treated matter-of-factly, with little comment made on its lesbian nature and little overt change in the characters' behavior.

To work within the censorship imposed on their relationship, writers used allusions to spells and witchcraft to symbolize their affection and growing sexuality.

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.

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.

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.

[12] In the final episode of season 5, Willow uses her magic to restore Tara's sanity, significantly weakening Glory in the process.

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.

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.

Series writer and producer Marti Noxon was unable to read some of the mail because it was so distressing, but she counted the response as a natural indication that television simply had few strong female role models, and no lesbian representation.

"[26] Author Rhonda Wilcox writes that Tara's death is made more poignant by her earthy naturalness representing the "fragility of the physical".

"[27] Kaveney concurs with the opinion that the series avoided playing a cliché, "proving that it is possible for a queer character to die in popular culture without that death being the surrogate vengeance of the straight world".

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].

[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.

Instead, the producers used Cassie, a character who dies early in the seventh season and speaks for Tara, telling Willow to kill herself.

[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.

[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".

"[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.

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.

[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.

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."