I agree that it makes narrative sense - when so much of the season arc is based on Willow going to the dark side, it's a rather logical move to kill off her love interest.

However, two points. Firstly, there was then and to some extent still is today, a remarkable pattern in pop culture where lesbian characters did increasingly appear, but suspiciously often ended up killed or in any case denied a happy ending. The Willow-Tara relationship was quite notable, as you point out, for how natural and non-stereotypical it felt - until its abrupt end that did very much fit the usual pattern. Not too surprising if lesbian viewers got particularly upset.

Secondly, Whedon did rather go out of his way to make her death as upsetting as possible - not only to Willow, but also to viewers. I'm neither LGBT nor a SJW (or at least, I don't see myself as such, I don't know what you think ), but for me too, Tara's death remains one of the most shocking and upsetting moments I've seen on any TV show.

Remember the background: earlier in the season, Tara finds herself forced to break up with the woman she loves, because Willow repeatedly works mind spells on her in Once More With Feeling and Tabula Rasa. Which then results in Willow spiralling out of control, but by this point in the season she's sort of semi-recovered and Tara is seeing her again. Then you get to Seeing Red and for the first time ever, you see Amber Benson promoted from guest star to series regular appearing in the main cast credits. That episode is pretty shocking earlier on with Spike attempting to rape Buffy, but then seemingly ends on a more positive note with Willow and Tara having made up and being together again. And then, out of nowhere, Warren's randomly fired bullet that just so happens to hit and kill Tara.

I mean, really. He clearly wanted to make it as painful as possible, raising Tara fans' hopes with the credits and the relationship getting repaired before cruelly dashing them, so he reaped what he sowed. Good thing Benson refused Whedon's invitation to add insult to injury by having her appear as The First Evil-as-Tara in season seven.

I have no idea how much Captain Marvel in the movie was altered from the comics version to 'appease SJWs', but as for Rey, um, they were continuing the story with a new hero anyway. I'm a little unclear on how having a new female Jedi character is 'altering the long-standing franchise' any more than having a new male one. And while there are plenty of valid reasons to be unimpressed by The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, I really don't think Rey ranks among them. Not that her character is all that well-written, but honestly, this is Star Wars, you can't exactly claim that for most other characters either.

I think your point here is the most fundamental problem of this Tor article. As you say, Endgame is meant as a coda to the entire MCU until now and needs to touch on characters and storylines from all movies. If most of those movies had male titular heroes with women mostly as love interests or side-kicks, then Endgame wouldn't be serving its intended purpose too well if it was suddenly dominated by female characters as the author seems to expect. They already kind of shoe-horned Captain Marvel into the Avengers last-minute in such a way that prior fans of the MCU are more likely to be irritated than enthusiastic about her. They already allowed Gamora and Nebula to represent the Guardians almost on their own with minimal screentime for most of their male (and tree) colleagues.

So really, the premise of this article seems misguided from the start - if you feel (and I would actually agree with that) that the MCU until date hasn't done too well in terms of heroine representation, it's absurd to expect improvement in Endgame. Expect it in new movies in the next phase.

Agree with you here - not that it isn't very unfortunate to lose the sole woman from the original crew, especially before she even got a solo movie, but I don't see anything wrong with the how or why. The author did touch on a point that I was also wondering about: wouldn't Nebula have had some idea of how Thanos managed to obtain the Soulstone on Vormir? And if not, shouldn't it have been kind of a big priority to research that before launching this whole plan? During that scene I was going 'wtf, don't tell me you weren't aware of the sacrifice part beforehand'.

Agreed, and with most of the rest as well.

This is the part where of course I have to stop agreeing with everything. Not about Asher-Perrin or the article, but about the way you blame 'these people', i.e. 'SJWs', i.e. anyone who dares to speak up about minority, female or LGBT representation in pop culture, for a weak article written by one person. That's weak logic and you wouldn't put up with it for a minute in the reverse case.

On a related subject, I wonder what you'd make of the linked article? The topic is obviously comparable, but I thought its points were much stronger - not in the least because it does actually consider how much they could reasonably expect given the premise of the movie.