Would Willow have stayed with Tara if she couldn't fix the damage Glory did?

[November]

Willow was a sweet caretaker to Tara after she was brain sucked by Glory. If Willow had not been able to reverse the brain suck, would she have continued to care for Tara? Would Willow have moved on to a new love interest? How would their story play out if Tara had not been healed?

 

[NotASlayer]

Yes, I think Willow would have stayed with her. I also think she would not have given up on attempts to find a cure, and Willow regularly did not know what was and wasn't a good idea to do with magic, so the chances of her doing something dangerous and foolhardy would have grown.

 

[garfan]

yes, definitely.

 

[silvermoon]

I think she would have stayed with her. It was true love. Why they saddled her with the superficial Kennedy later on is still a mystery to me. I guess Whedon really did like pretty ladies, but it was shocking how lacking in substance that character was. The line readings left a lot to be desired, esp since AH is such a strong actress.

 

[Stake fodder]

I think both. Willow would have continued to take care of Tara and searched for cures for her. But eventually, the loneliness of being a caregiver rather than in a real relationship would have led Willow to find another romantic partner. It's a situation like some spouses of a person with dementia, needing a reciprocal relationship with love. And Willow is not even elderly.

 

[DeepBlueJoy]

A lot of partners with someone with brain damage or dementia face this. Much as i have major issues with Willow's reckless wilfulness i think she would have stayed forever. Tara was her forever even if she did not always act well toward her. I also think she would have recklessly tried everything magical, also forever.

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

Tara gets sent to the Loonie bin. Willow is unqualified to serve as a legal guardian.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

Question: What qualification does one need to have to serve as a legal guardian?

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

In spite of all their worldliness, Willow is an insolvent college student who is likely dependent on her parents and lives in temporary college housing. No court in the world is going to place a violent and erratic patient who needs 24 hours a day car in her custody on the grounds they dated for about a year.

 

[garfan]

In spite of all their worldliness, Willow is an insolvent college student who is likely dependent on her parents and lives in temporary college housing. No court in the world is going to place a violent and erratic patient who needs 24 hours a day car in her custody on the grounds they dated for about a year.

of course the question becomes how thorough is the system in Sunnydale and could Willow find a way to cheat it

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

Well, it is consistent with what she did in Season 6. I mean, she basically adopted Dawn and took over the Summer's home, and intended to do so indefinitely. Hank never caught on. Dawn's School never caught on. I mean, it's Willow, so she has magic and access to every computer on the planet, so she can do anything she wants, but it's clearly not a good idea

 

[Moptop]

This should be a poll question......and I say yes, definitely.

 

[NotASlayer]

It should not be that hard to hide Tara from the system. Tara is an adult with, basically, no family who will be checking up on her, and social services only check up on adults when they know they are at risk. Her social group wasn't large and seemed to mostly consist of the Scoobies. Teachers might miss her, but people drop out of university all the time, often without telling. So, other than the Scoobies, who would know that Tara had issues?

 

[ILLYRIAN]

It makes you wonder, a carer (Willow) for a grown up girl (Tara) who wanders about in pyjama bottoms, who's not gonna love a dumbo like that?

 

[Ethan Reigns]

Willow went on to find that she could reverse the Amy -> rat transformation when the right circumstances occurred and I think she would keep Tara around because the same thing could happen there - years of having the problem followed by a cure that acts instantaneously if she just persevered. I doubt Willow would stray while she was waiting for the cure.

 

[Joan the Vampire Slayer]

To be honest - and maybe this is my bias against Willow showing - but I don't think Willow would have stuck around if she couldn't have found a way to reverse the damage Glory did to Tara.

Caring for a disabled loved one is difficult, and Willow is very self-centered and self-serving. I can't see her selflessly caring for Tara indefinitely.

 

[silvermoon]

Willow can be very self-centered but she also risks her life in season 5 to save Tara and basically went beserk in 6 after Tara's death. She almost destroyed the world over her grief. to me this shows that she would have cared indefinitely for Tara. i don't see her just callously shoving Tara aside . she was extremely protective of her .

 

[garfan]

To be honest - and maybe this is my bias against Willow showing - but I don't think Willow would have stuck around if she couldn't have found a way to reverse the damage Glory did to Tara.

Caring for a disabled loved one is difficult, and Willow is very self-centered and self-serving. I can't see her selflessly caring for Tara indefinitely.

it is showing. One of Willow's most "self-centered" aspects is how useful she is to others, and not being able to take care of Tara would be a massive blow to that

 

[Joan the Vampire Slayer]

it is showing. One of Willow's most "self-centered" aspects is how useful she is to others, and not being able to take care of Tara would be a massive blow to that

Do you really believe though that Willow would quit school, and make the sacrifices necessary to care for Tara full-time long term? Or did Willow think all along that she could reverse the damage, and Tara would return to her former self?

There is a big difference in doing something difficult if one believes it is temporary then if one knows it's permanent.

I truly believe that if Willow couldn't have reversed the damage that Glory did, she would have called Tara's parents to help, and I'm assuming they would have put her in a home, or worse, an asylum.

 

[CardboardGhost]

I think she would have stayed with her. It was true love. Why they saddled her with the superficial Kennedy later on is still a mystery to me. I guess Whedon really did like pretty ladies, but it was shocking how lacking in substance that character was. The line readings left a lot to be desired, esp since AH is such a strong actress.

While I agree that the Willow/Kennedy relationship is written very shallowly, I don't think that it's shallow because Tara is Willow's One True Love that she can never move on from. The entire point of introducing Kennedy is to show that Willow is, eventually, able to love again; Tara was her true love, and Willow can't replace her, but that doesn't mean Willow should have to always exist in endless lonely grief. The Willow/Kennedy relationship is shallow because the writers weren't interested in developing any of the Potentials as characters beyond what was absolutely necessary, which in Kennedy's case meant establishing at least the idea that she is attracted to Willow, though the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

In spite of all their worldliness, Willow is an insolvent college student who is likely dependent on her parents and lives in temporary college housing. No court in the world is going to place a violent and erratic patient who needs 24 hours a day car in her custody on the grounds they dated for about a year.

Well, the courts left Dawn in Buffy's custody while Buffy was unemployed. No income, no health insurance, no plan for paying the bills after Joyce's life insurance ran out. We know that Buffy is dead for most of this and that Willow and Tara were actually raising Dawn (also while unemployed college students!) and just convincing people that Buffy was still around by using the BuffyBot, purely because the alternative is that Hank gets custody... Hank, who is an awful parent, sure, but who actually has a source of income. When Buffy comes back, the job she gets is a minimum wage fast food place; there's no way that was actually enough to be supporting her, Dawn, Willow, and Tara (since the two of them were still living there without jobs).

We get one episode where Buffy makes a really bad impression on the social worker, but her financial situation alone should have been enough for her to be deemed unfit. And this is when dealing with Dawn, who is a minor. The social workers of Sunnydale clearly don't make the best choices, and it's not like Tara's family would have fought Willow over being Tara's guardians.

Do you really believe though that Willow would quit school, and make the sacrifices necessary to care for Tara full-time long term? Or did Willow think all along that she could reverse the damage, and Tara would return to her former self?

There is a big difference in doing something difficult if one believes it is temporary then if one knows it's permanent.

She would never have given up hope of it being temporary. Buffy dying wasn't enough for Willow to give up hope. I think Willow probably would have dropped out of school with the assumption that she and Tara would be able to go back together. She would drastically underestimate the amount of care that Tara needs, but she would be willing to do it, I think.

Probably, it would become a situation that all of the Scoobies have to participate in. Willow and Tara probably do still move into the Summers' house, and then Willow has to drop out to take care of Tara full-time. Maybe Xander and Anya move in, too? This would be meant to be temporary from the beginning, but, in the short term, there need to be people who actually have jobs to help support this household. I always wondered why they weren't the ones who moved in instead of Willow and Tara in the first place; the Scoobies were trying to decide who should take care of Dawn and picked the unemployed dorm students instead of the engaged couple with jobs?