10 Buffy The Vampire Slayer Episodes Everyone Remembers For ONE Awesome Scene

10. The Body - Willow And Tara's First Kiss

Amid the most tense and emotionally charged episode of the entire show - season five's sixteenth episode, The Body - there is one beacon of light.

With the whole gang going into meltdown, Tara acts as a level-headed and stabilising force. Willow is panicking, barely able to hold herself together, but Tara comes through with a few kind, sensible words and a kiss - something so small and yet so big in such a desperate time, both on- and off-screen.

Joss Whedon deftly utilised the kiss to juxtapose the deep misery that permeates the rest of the episode - which kicks off with a long, music-less reaction scene of Buffy finding her mum's lifeless body on their sofa - giving the necessary glimmer of love and hope to see everyone through.

And the brilliance of this scene is not just in what it does for the episode itself, but in helping 2001's viewers see homosexual affection not as something to mistrust or fetishise, but something that can provide the same sense of belonging and comfort as heterosexual or platonic love.