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For me, the most difficult aspect of Tara's death is the meaningless and random nature of it. When dramatic things happen in Joss Whedon's worlds, they happen for dramatic reasons. That is one of the ways we distinguish it from our own world. When people die and there is no reason for it, we feel an unsettling intrusion of our own reality into the carefully constructed heroic world of Buffy. In Buffy's reality, when heros die, it is for the greater good and there is a clearly defined reason for it:

• Angel was killed and sent to Hell to save the world from Acathla.
• Spike died saving the world.
• Buffy died saving the world, twice. (Slayer trumps Vampire, even with a soul)

"How very touching his meaningless death was."

Cyvus Vale
"Angel - Not Fade Away"

When death comes without meaning, we are uncomfortably aware of our own world and our own mortality where death is all too real and often comes to the best of us unexpectedly and for no reason we can understand and to no purpose that we can use to frame the event. When this happens in Buffy's world, the act is jarring:

• Tara dying from a random gunshot.
• Joyce dying from a post-op aneurism.
• Anya being cut down from behind by a Bringer.

Yet when this occurs, Joss has often had the characters soften the blow for each other, and by extension for us, by imbuing the random death with significance.

Xander: "Did you see what happened? I mean, was she..."
Andrew: "She was incredible. She died saving my life."

"Buffy - Chosen"


But better still, is when the death can be given true significance. Either by later introducing an additional key piece of knowledge that we the audience don't possess, or by the characters themselves using the death to further a noble end.

Then, when Fred died, I wasn't gonna let that be
another random horrible event in an otherwise
random horrible world. So I decided to use it.
To make her death matter.

Angel
"Angel - Power Play"


The nice part about this path to redeeming death is that, with enough imagination, the statute of limitations never expires on the potential for the character to return to rewrite history.

In the Star Trek universe, Lt. Tasha Yar died a meaningless death when actress Denise Crosby wanted to leave the series. Two years later, Ronald D Moore and a talented writing staff gave her death the meaning it should have had. Her destiny was that through death she would save the lives of over forty billion people and prevent a war that would destroy the Federation from ever occurring.

"Captain... it may be a matter of seconds or minutes...
but those could be the minutes that change history...

Guinan says I died a senseless death in the other time line.
I didn't like the sound of that, sir. I've always known the
risks that come with a Starfleet uniform. If I am to die
in one, I'd like my death to count for something."

Tasha Yar
"Star Trek:TNG - Yesterday's Enterprise"


Where do we go from here?

The Buffy story continues in the comics and in other formats and I for one am not yet willing to give up all hope that we will live to see history rewritten yet again to give Tara's death the meaning it truly deserves.