You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #4

In light of 'certain' events, it feels like the right time to bring back our long-time feature, which tries to find out just why Joss Whedon loves killing so much. So, without further ado, here is kill #4:


He killed off Tara Maclay!

Who Was She?

She was the girlfriend of Buffy’s best friend Willow, and was a kind of shy girl who started out rubbish but became less and less rubbish as the show went on. By the time we reached the murky and bleak sixth season, she had become one of the better characters left on the show. We’d known this character for two seasons now, and were used to her being a reliable part of Buffy’s gang.

How Did She Die?

She was killed by an impossible bullet fired off by the (until now) consistently useless and annoying Warren, who was trying at the time to get to Buffy. The impossible bullet was fired while Tara was stood on the second floor of Buffy’s house, and Warren was outside with Buffy, shooting at her. His first shots hit Buffy, and as he ran off he fired more shots into the air for no reason. Tara just so happened to be stood by the window at this time, and one of the slugs went straight through her chest, in blatant disregard to everything you were ever taught about angles at school.

Why Did She Die?

But she was on the credits sequence! Joss put her on the title sequence for the first time, so she had a slot with all of the other regular cast members, and then killed her off in the very same episode that she first got given recognition. Do you know what that is? Mean. It meant that we could then have a season finale where Willow got mad and tried to kill first Warren (which was perfectly valid, really), and then his friends (slightly less fair of her). It also meant we got to see what Alyson Hannigan looked like with black hair and glowy veins. But that’s not the real reason he killed her off. The real reason is that Joss Whedon hates all women. Ha! You may not realise this, because the press gives him this reputation as an equal-rights campaigner who likes to give women strong roles. But nobody ever mentions how much he likes to kill off his female leads. You see, what Joss Whedon is doing here is building up the women just to knock them down, because secretly he doesn’t understand why women were ever allowed out of the kitchen in the first place. That is why Tara died. If she’d stuck to knitting and never tried to do anything, then she’d still be alive.

Joss, You Monster! Rating:
6. Upsetting, but we got over it quicker than Willow did.