Amber Benson (Tara) and Alyson Hannigan (Willow) share a kiss. (Screen capture via YouTube)
When wallflower-turned-witch Willow Rosenburg met shy, bookish Tara Maclay, it was the start of one of the show’s most loving relationships.
The pair’s first kiss in season five’s “The Body” was not only a moment for the silver screen history books – the first lesbian couple to share a televised kiss – but gave countless queer youth hope.
Witchcraft in the show came to act as a vehicle for the characters’ sexuality – a clever workaround for perceived viewer hesitations about on-screen queerness. Willow, over time, learning that her magical abilities – and her sexuality, too – were perfectly natural.