I know that twenty-five years ago is a long time in the past and I know that Season 4 of Buffy aired in a cultural context very different from today, but I am once again begging you to understand that -- even though neither Willow nor Tara will describe themselves as lesbians anywhere the audience can hear until halfway through the next season, and even though they won't so much as kiss on screen until several episodes after that -- we are definitely meant to understand that Willow and Tara are sleeping together for a large part of Season 4.
They are not friends for a long time first before starting a physical relationship, as I've seen some people claim (largely to compare Kennedy unfavorably with Tara). Tara's decision to describe herself as "yours" to Willow in Who Are You? doesn't come out of the blue at all. Oz smelling Willow "all over" Tara when he comes back to Sunnydale in Bad Moon Rising isn't a strange misunderstanding or leap of logic. Willow and Tara have been "doing spells together" from the very first episode they meet, and it is not even slightly subtle what "doing spells together" is intended to be a metaphor for. Subtle enough to fool a TV network censor, maybe, but the intended audience are not meant to be under any illusions about what's happening.
By A New Man -- Tara's second episode! -- Tara and Willow are meeting in Tara's bedroom late at night to "get together" and Willow is promising Tara they'll "start out slow". Tara even lampshades this by asking "start out slow doing what?" What could it mean? Furthermore, this scene is explicitly juxtaposed with a scene in which Ethan and Giles -- who Jane Espenson, the writer of the episode, is on the record as writing as if they had a shared sexual history -- meet up at a bar to get drunk and discuss their past, with Giles indignant that somebody has recently questioned his masculinity and Ethan ruefully describing the two of them as "a pair of old ... sorcerers", musing that "the night is still our time" and (though it's played for laughs as a misdirection) seemingly telling Giles that he's "really very attractive". We know, too, from something Buffy says later, that Willow didn't go back to her room at all that night after casting a spell with Tara. Where did she sleep? Why is she embarrassed about it enough to lie when Buffy asks her where she was? For that matter, back in Hush, Tara's first ever episode, Willow and Tara do a spell together too. That episode ends with three parallel scenes: Buffy having a conversation with her future boyfriend Riley, Giles having a conversation with his soon to be ex-girlfriend Olivia, and Willow having a conversation with [... well, come on, what do you think this relationship is being framed as?] Tara.
By The I In Team -- only Tara's third episode! -- Tara is very explicitly being written as though she's a girl Willow is regularly hooking up with in secret but isn't ready to introduce to her friends yet. She's trying to gift Willow emotionally significant old family heirlooms and looking hurt when Willow doesn't want to accept them. She's saying suggestive things like "maybe tonight, if you're not doing anything, you could come over and we could ... do something" and getting (justifiably) upset when Willow tells her she's already made plans "with people" whom she's clearly not ready to introduce Tara to ("it's kind of a specific crowd ... you might feel out of place"). And Willow does end up going to see Tara that night, when Buffy in turn brushes her off to go and hang out with her boyfriend (and the rest of the Initiative). What do you think is happening when Willow knocks on Tara's door late that night and asks if she "still want[s] to do something?" and the door closes behind them? Were they staying up late to read a book or play checkers, do we think?
This is the wider context in which we're meant to understand the conversation Willow and Tara have in Goodbye Iowa. Willow wistfully says that she "had so much fun the other night, those spells...". before rushing to reassure Tara that "I hope you don't think that I just come over for the spells and everything. I mean ,I really like just talking and hanging out with you and stuff." Or Tara saying in response she's okay if that's the only thing Willow wants to do tonight and shyly admitting that she's "been thinking about that last spell we did all day." They are emphatically not friends who later fall in love and start a physical relationship. That's exactly backwards. They start off fooling around "doing spells" together, then they quickly develop deeper emotional feelings for each other. The magic -- and everything that represents -- explicitly comes first.
Yes, it won't be until New Moon Rising that Willow tells any of her friends about Tara as a possible rival or replacement for Oz. It won't be until the end of that episode that Willow will tell Tara she loves her (indirectly, at that), and it won't be until the following episode The Yoko Factor that Willow will describe Tara as "my girlfriend". And, as I said above, we won't see them so much as kiss on screen until well over halfway through Season 5. It was the early 2000s -- it was, in fact, literally early in the year 2000 -- and there were very clear limits to what the writers could actually get away with showing on network television. Not only was this fifteen years before gay marriage would become legal across the country, it was three years before Lawrence v Texas. Multiple states still had laws prohibiting same sex relationships. To modern eyes it's all a bit tame and understated, sure, but the writers were trying to be as clear as they thought they could be!
But every now and then I read posts that seem to just ... ignore all of that subtext entirely. That seem to proceed on the basis that Willow and Tara were just good friends who, sure, secretly got together at night and did spells together, but seem entirely unaware of the mere idea that this could be read a metaphor for anything. That assume because they aren't officially a couple until the end of Season 4, they can't possibly have been doing anything physical before that (as if this season isn't full of examples of the rest of the core four Scooby Gang members having casual sexual relationships with people they've yet to formally label as their boyfriend or girlfriend). Posts where people complain that Kennedy and Willow got together too quickly, in contrast to Willow and Tara who -- they seem to think -- had a much longer period of getting to know each other as friends first (when? I always want to ask, when do you think this happened?). Posts where people think Tara's just being weirdly intense when she tells Willow "I am, you know. Yours" in Who Are You?, as if the two of them hadn't been symbolically (and presumably literally) sleeping together for weeks by this point. People for whom the central metaphor of Willow and Tara's relationship -- something the show itself introduces and repeatedly calls attention to throughout Season 4 -- just doesn't exist. People who assume Willow is just randomly awkward about introducing her new platonic friend to Buffy or Xander, in a way she's never been about any other friend she's had (witch or otherwise) and that there's no deeper meaning to it than that.
And, well.
On the one hand: so what, right? People have lots of odd takes on this show. This isn't even the most egregious popular reading of Buffy I can think of. But I guess this bothers me more than some other readings I dislike because it doesn't seem like a deliberate attempt to ignore canon, the way some takes that rub me the wrong way do. People aren't reading the show this way because they want to downplay Willow and Tara's relationship: on the contrary, the people who post this way are fans of that relationship. And yet, to me, it just makes the whole thing feel ... I don't know, kind of chaste and bloodless. I mean, in this reading, Giles and his "orgasm friend" Olivia are having sex throughout the first half of the season and Buffy and Riley are having sex throughout the second half of the season (especially so in one particular episode) and Anya and Xander are having sex pretty much all season and meanwhile Willow and Tara are ... what, holding hands and looking at roses and thinking pure, innocent thoughts? I just find that kind of grating.
Yes, if the show was airing for the very first time now, in 2025, then Willow and Tara could -- and I believe would -- have been a lot more explicit about their mutual physical attraction, right from the start. But the fact that the norms and prejudices of the time meant the writers couldn't show us that explicitly doesn't mean they didn't try to make it obvious. It doesn't mean that they didn't succeed in making it obvious, for the people watching along as the show first aired who understood the metaphor. And I just think it's something of a shame that this point seems to be lost on some modern audiences.
I feel like this take on their relationship is directly influenced by a tendency, both at the time and now, for people to view wlw romances as more 'innocent' than het or mlm relationships. The number of times I've seen people discount sexual activity because 'it doesn't count if there's no penetration' is truly maddening. BtVS was *not* subtle with the Tara/Willow relationship at all and it still went right over people's heads. Yet there was still outcry about them showing a lesbian relationship on television... truly we just can *not* win here.
This assumption that women are not having sex (especilally with each other!) unless it is explicitely shown on screen/in canon is very much the flip of the over-sexualization of mlm romances imo. We see this in real life too, as many of the laws discriminating against homosexual activity are focused on sodomy specifically, including the one that Lawrence v Texas struck down. (It's technically still on the books by the way... just, fyi.) It gives me the ick due to this almost puritanical view of women as 'pure' and men as inherently corrupting/defiling, which utterly infuriates me! Women can be sexual creatures, they can be just as interested in sex as men! Even more than men, in some cases, because - spoiler! - every human is human and unless they're asexual they're *probably* interested in sex. Shows and books shouldn't need to have people kiss or have sex to *prove* the relationship.
And I know that whether we view a relationship as platonic or romantic or sexual is entirely personal preference in many cases. This is fandom, it's all for fun, we can do whatever we want. I know that! I myself write way more mlm than wlw fic. Building out a ship from crumbs and a some casual touches is legitimately one of my favorite things.
But Willow and Tara were not given crumbs! That was a full on loaf of bread dropped into our laps by the writers! If they'd been a het ship, I don't think anyone would have questioned it. If they'd been a mlm ship, there might have been full on riots...
The fact that they were women though? That changes everything. If the writers had backtracked or kept them unconfirmed a la Xena, we'd be arguing with a bunch of walls about the blatant queebaiting.
So yeah, this take on Willow and Tara being some sort of friends to lover slowburn in canon? It annoys me. They were 100% friends with benefits/casual lovers who fell in love. That can *still* be a slowburn even! Willow took so long to figure out she was in love with Tara and I remember literally screaming at my television during certain scenes. (In retrospect... it wasn't actually that long in universe, but it certainly *felt* like forever to my young self.)
Fandom is one of the best places to explore queerness in a safe way imo, but we do ourselves a disservice by defaulting to platonic stereotypes with these female characters. It's understandable, given this shit is very much baked in to a lot of our cultures, but it does mean we are limiting our view of the characters and their relationship. We can headcanon and make our own stories and have different interpretations for sure, but that doesn't mean we can (or should) ignore the facts of canon entirely.
Willow and Tara were the very first wlw canon ship I saw on television. (Not counting the Trill Situation in Star Trek.) I watched that show *with my mom* and I identified with both of those characters so much. (The fact neither of us realized I was gay at that point is honestly hilarious.) Their relationship had such a positive impact. Not just in terms of representation either, but also in the show itself. They were probably the only (mostly) healthy relationship Dawn ever saw.
I know many of us love a good toxic yuri moment, but they actually set boundaries! When Willow started lying and using and breaking the boundaries Tara set, Tara left! She left and she did not come back until Willow put in the work. She full on went 'I love you, but I will not let you treat me this way.' And that all started at the beginning - Tara not pushing Willow to introduce her to her friends, Willow telling her that "the spells" weren't the only reason she wanted to spend time with her. Those early episodes with them laid crucial groundwork for their relationship! Not acknowleding those early moments as romantic and/or sexual would, imo, make the later scenes more shallow.
Fiction is an extension of our reality, it reflects the moment in which it was created and the people/cultures who made it. Willow/Tara were a groundbreaking ship at the time for many reasons. One of them being the actual acknowledgement/confirmation of the relationship, which was a big deal both in universe and in real life. They didn't become another example of the 'close female friends' that we were 'reading too much into.' Willow already had an established and somewhat codependent friendship with Buffy (which people can and do read as sapphic sometimes), but her sleeping over at Buffy's place was not presented in the same way as her with Tara. The show highlighted those differences from the beginning, it parelled the relationship with other romantic/sexual couples. OP gave several examples of that. It's one thing to miss it, or misread it, but I've dealt with a lot of people *insisting* on it being platonic until after New Moon Rising, which honestly feels like willful ignorance at best and purposefully homophobic at worse (if you think queers can't be homophobic, please go find a decent history book).
So, yeah, I swear I'm not trying to be judgey, and I certainly didn't intend to word vomit all of this when the original post is already so wonderfully on point, but I think if people are viewing the Willow/Tara dynamic in Season 4 as platonic, they need to go ask themselves *why* they think that. Even if it changes nothing on how they personally view the relationship or characters, acknowledging that the *intent* in those scenes was to make them romantic/sexual is important.
Or, at the very least, please stop saying wlw relations are inherently better when they start out platonic rather than sexual. It has no impact on fictional characters, but it sure as hell does to every sapphic who hears or sees it. Love isn't more 'pure' because there's no sexual component. It's just different.
