15. Tara
Appeared in: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Tara is the character I'm most loathe to discuss only because of how she left the show. Lets do the background first: Tara became a love interest for Alyson Hannigan's Willow in the show's fourth season, with the characters starting college. A main character being gay on a show as influential as Buffy was still something of a big deal at the time, as was on-screen affection, but both Hannigan and Amber Benson handled it all in stride, and Benson portrayed Tara with a coy sort of charm that quickly won over fans. In addition to her sexuality making her stand out, Tara was the outsider of the group - not a full Scooby, as Buffy's gang of friends were known, but still part of the group. It's a role familiar to a lot of us; any time you have a friend group with a solid core and a couple of others who come and go on the peripheral, well, that's what you had with Tara. You've either been that person, or seen them. Tara turned out to be a fantastic partner for Willow, grounding her, and their love really inspired fans - who nearly took up flaming torches and pitch forks when Tara was thoughtlessly killed off in the sixth season, a move that was simply a plot device to bring about Dark Willow. Amber Benson - who had been an absolute Angel with the fans, chatting with them online and being incredibly approachable (as were many of Buffy and Angel's actors and writers), was asked to return in the seventh season, playing a spirit-Tara who was actually the first evil, but she declined, saying she felt it would do a disservice to the character.