As the season progressed, it became increasingly clear that the pair were destined for a romantic liaison. Willow realised that Tara was the person she loved, choosing Tara over her ex-boyfriend Oz. The two thus became one of the few lesbian couples on television and the first-ever prime-time lesbian couple which included a starring character. Wicca/spells came to serve as a metaphor for lesbianism, and love.
Not much is known about Tara's past. Her family life was clearly traumatic and she had not had many friends before meeting Willow. In the episode "The Body", Tara tells Buffy that she lost her mother when she was 17, at which point she went through a brief rebellious period. In the episode "Family", it is revealed that her father had told her at a young age that she was partially of demon descent on her mother's side. After she finds out this was merely a lie designed to keep control over her, Tara's ties with her family seemed entirely severed, leaving Willow and the Scooby Gang her only remaining loved ones, her new family. In "Tough Love" Willow pointed out that Tara had been out longer than Willow had, perhaps implying that Willow was not Tara's first girlfriend.
Tara was not officially considered one of the main characters on the show, with Benson's name not appearing in the main credits, except for one episode, her final. However, through her relationship with Willow, she did play an important role in the story on several occasions, such as at the end of the 5th Season, when the evil goddess Glory sucked her mind out, leaving her in a babbling, childlike state until Willow cured her, or in Season 6, when Willow's magic addiction (by this time, magic had become a metaphor for drug use) caused Tara to leave her, although they reconciled some episodes later.
Most important of all, Tara was killed, randomly, by a stray bullet aimed at Buffy by Warren, near the end of Season 6, in the episode "Seeing Red". As a result, Willow was propelled into a destructive fury, and soon attempted to destroy the world. According to her tombstone, seen in the episode "Help" (Season 7), Tara was born on October 16, 1980, and died on May 7, 2002 (the air date of "Seeing Red"; "Family", the episode dealing with the events surrounding Tara's 20th birthday, aired slightly out of time on November 7, 2000).
After Tara's death, it was fiercely debated whether it constituted an example of a cliché in television that lesbian relationships usually turn out badly, often with one partner dying or turning out to be evil. Joss Whedon later explained that Tara's death had nothing to do with her being a lesbian, but it was just another plot twist designed to further Willow's personality; allegedly, if Willow had still been involved with Oz in Season Six, he would've been killed just as Tara was, so Tara was doomed not for being a lesbian but for being Willow's lover. In particular, it had become a well-known cliche of the series that any couples in the series tended to have their relationships brutally interrupted when they're at their closest.
Benson was originally going to return to the show in the Season 7 episode "Conversations with Dead People", where Tara would appear as one of the many forms of The First Evil, and attempt to coerce Willow into committing suicide. However, Benson decided that she didn't want to return, believing that appearing as a form of the season's villain would ruin Tara's image and needlessly upset Tara's fans.
While speaking at the Wizard World Chicago Convention in August 2004, Joss Whedon claimed that he had planned to bring the character of Tara back from the dead at the end of Season 7. According to Whedon, the episode would have centered around Buffy being granted one "life-altering" wish. Buffy would have struggled the whole episode trying to decide what she wanted to do with the wish (including, possibly, restoring Angel's humanity). The episode would have ended with Buffy telling Willow that she'd just gotten a great new pair of shoes, and when Willow asked her if she used up her wish on new shoes, Buffy would have said, "No, silly!" and stepped aside to reveal Tara. This plan was abandoned when Amber Benson was unavailable for filming.