Recap / True Blood

The events of True Blood.

Season 1

It's the summer of 2009. We open in Bon Temps, a (fictional) small town in Louisiana in the (equally fictional) Renard Parish, part of the Deep South. Events center largely around "Merlotte's," a bar operated by a number of main characters: owner Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell), cooks Lafayette Reynolds (Nelsan Ellis) and Terry Bellefleur (Todd Lowe), bartender Tara Thornton (Rutina Wesley), and waitresses Arlene Fowler (Carrie Preston), Dawn Green and Main Character Sookie Stackhouse. Sookie is a socially-awkward 25-year-old woman who nonetheless gets asked out a lot — she is played by Anna Paquin — but has no romantic life, and indeed is still a virgin, because of her Telepathy and, more importantly, Power Incontinence, forcing her to perceive every thought her dates have — many of which are inevitably lecherous (she is played by Anna Paquin).

True Blood takes place in a World of Weirdness: while Sookie's telepathy is an open secret (all her coworkers know about it, and put up with it to varying extents), a more notable event in the Back Story is that vampires came "out of the coffin" in 2006, declaring themselves to the whole world. This was made possible by the invention of "TruBlood," a synthetic substitute for human blood, allowing (some of) them to "mainstream" as Vegetarian Vampires. The big event of the Pilot Episode, therefore, is the presence of Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), a genuine honest-to-God vampire, as a guest at the bar. This immediately causes problems: in addition to Fantastic Racism, vampire blood is a powerful stimulant and hallucinogenic, and two enterprising locals attempt to subdue Bill with silver and then drain his blood for profit. Sookie scares them off and makes first contact with the Romantic Vampire Boy, noticing that she cannot detect his thoughts... meaning she could potentially have a normal relationship with him. The Official Couple of the show is born.

Sookie lives with her grandmother Adele Stackhouse (Lois Smith), as her parents died when she was young; her older brother, 28-year-old Jason (Ryan Kwanten), lives in their late parents' house and works as part of the Bon Temps road crew, alongside his best friends Hoyt Fortenberry (Jim Parrack), victim of My Beloved Smother, and Ragin' Cajun René Lenier (Michael Raymond-James). This facilitates his numerous sexual conquests, and he is introduced getting it on with Maudette Pickens, who reveals that she has had sex with a vampire before. (And took video.) During sex, Jason gets rough and inadvertently chokes Maudette to death. Appalled at himself, he flees the scene.

Sookie's Black Best Friend is Tara Thornton. She takes a job at Merlotte's in the pilot episode, largely out of desperation, but spends most of her time arguing with her mother, Lettie Mae (Adina Porter), an inveterate alcoholic. Lettie Mae begs her for money so that she can see a witch doctor, "Miss Jeannette," who lives out in the bayou; this woman claims she will perform an exorcism. To Tara's skepticism, the exorcism works — her mother goes cold-turkey and stays sober for the first time Tara can remember — and Tara later visits the witch doctor herself to see if she can get her own life straight. This includes throwing up and a vivid hallucination in which she stabs a younger version of herself, finding blood on the knife blade aftewards. Therefore, Tara is a little perturbed to meet the witch doctor, Nancy LeGuare, working at De Soto Pharmacy in the next town over; the whole thing was a scam. This and a number of other setbacks result in her driving blindly drunk down the road, crashing her car after swerving out of the way of a woman and a pig. She is freed from jail by Maryann Forester (Michelle Forbes), a local philanthropist, who believes in giving people second chances. This turns out to be a Sequel Hook for the next season.

Sookie's relationship with Bill (in which Their First Time is also her first time) is somewhat stymied by a Love Triangle between her and Sam, who is cautious of vampires and is certain Bill will lead her astray. Sam, lacking any other outlet, begins a Friends with Benefits situation with Tara. However, his first priority is always Sookie. This leads to The Reveal: Sam, who is frequently seen in the company of a border collie, is capable of shapeshifting, transforming into any living animal. Of course, Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing... leading to awkwardness when he falls asleep on Sookie's bed in border-collie form and reverts back to butt-ass-naked-Sam form.

The characters of Bon Temps, of course, form their own tapestry against which all of this is foregrounded. Terry is an Iraq War veteran; There Are No Therapists, of course, to help him with the situation. His cousin Andy Bellefleur (Chris Bauer) works for the Sheriff's department; Andy is conscious that very few people treat him with the respect he (thinks he) deserves, including his own boss Bud Dearborne (William Sanderson). Arlene is a single mother juggling two children and a job; her relationship with René becomes foregrounded when he proposes to her, and she commandeers Merlotte's to have an engagement party. ("Fifth time's the charm!")

Sookie's telepathy brings her to the attention of Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård), The Sheriff of "Area 5" and supervisor of all vampires there; he runs a bar called "Fangtasia" in nearby Shreveport and orders Bill to bring Sookie there so that she can figure out who is stealing from the bar. She can't read any vampires' thoughts (they are, after all, dead), but by interrogating human accomplices she determines that it was the bartender, Longshadow. Once revealed, Longshadow attempts to kill Sookie, and Bill stakes him in self-defense. However, "Ape Shall Not Kill Ape" is a big thing in vampire society, and Bill, for his crime, is sentenced by The Magister (Željko Ivanek) to turn a 17-year-old girl named Jessica Hanby (Deborah Ann Woll) who has been abducted against her will. Jessica was home-schooled by conservative parents and finds herself caught between the freedom of her new status and longing for her family. Bill, a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire who is a Friend to All Children, is still not prepared to deal with the most capricious force known to human- or vampire-kind: a teenager. He foists her off on Eric so that he can get back home to Sookie.

Jason is arrested for the murder of Maudette Pickens, but mostly as a formality: the video she took shows that she faked the whole "death by strangulation" thing, and Jason defuses the idea that he might have returned later and murdered her by simply pointing out, "I ain't that smart!" He then hooks up with Dawn, Sookie's co-worker, though they break up when he learns that she too has had sex with a vampire. This leads to a certain amount of existential confusion on his part when Dawn, too, shows up dead. When Sookie's grandmother Adele invites Bill to speak at a Civil War meeting — Bill fought for the Confederacy just prior to being turned — she too turns up dead. However, Jason is oblivious, as he's having his own problems: Dawn accused him of The Loins Sleep Tonight. To fix this, he turns to Lafayette, the local flamboyantly-gay hustler with connections. Lafayette hooks Jason up with "V" — vampire blood. (Jason immediately overdoses, leading to a series of Black Comedy scenes as he attempts to get rid of a Raging Stiffie.) Eventually he hooks up with a free-thinking Granola Girl type, Amy Burley (Lizzy Caplan), who also likes to use V. However, Lafayette, who learns from his mistakes, won't sell him any more. So they follow Lafayette as he visits a schlubby hikikomori vampire named Eddie (Stephen Root) who, it is implied, trades his blood for sexual favors; they then kidnap Eddie to guarantee themselves a steady source of V. Eddie, naturally, has problems with this arrangement; but so does Jason, who despite everything knows right from wrong. Amy eventually stakes Eddie to get rid of the evidence. They decide to give up V after one last trip... But when Jason awakes from the trip, Amy is dead. He turns himself in, having concluded that he must be related to the murders somehow. However, there is another thread, one which he himself has missed: all of the slain women have shown sympathy and interest in vampires.

Since Bill has simply disappeared (cf above re: Jessica), Sookie asks for Sam's help in getting to the bottom of the situation. They travel to nearby Bunkie, LA to enquire about a waitress, Cindy Marshall, who was also a known "fangbanger" and was also murdered. She has no known acquaintances; her brother, Drew Marshall, skipped town the day of his death. In the hopes of talking to him, Sookie and Sam convince the Bunkie sheriff's department to fax Drew's picture to Sheriff Dearborne; however, it never gets to them, so they never get to see that Drew Marshall is the name René Lenier was born under. When Sookie's car breaks down outside Merlotte's, "René" offers to take her home; she picks up on his memories of various murders, and realizes what's going on. A Chase Scene ensues. Sam attempts to intervene, but Drew, a Serial Killer, is up to the task of defending himself; Bill, who by now has returned, attempts to intervene, but can only do so by passing through direct sunlight and is almost burnt to a crisp; fortunately, their various distractions are time enough for Sookie to seize a shovel and apply it directly to Drew Marshall's head. The man who kills vampire-lovers is dead.

Lafayette, taking trash out to the dumpster behind Merlotte's, is kidnapped by an unknown assailant.

After a two-week Time Skip, Bill has recovered from his injuries. Tara introduces Maryann to her friends; Maryann, privately, asks Sam if he thought she'd never find him; Sam looks appropriately unnerved. Jason is released when the ligatures on Amy Burley's neck match those of Drew Marshall's belt; he's proselytized to by a lawyer working for the Fellowship of the Sun, a Christian hate group preparing for all-out war against vampires, and he confesses to Sookie that he might have found his purpose in life. Sookie thanks Bill for risking his life to save hers, and the two reaffirm their relationship with each other. And Andy Bellefleur, drunk over his failures as a detective, is urged to go home by Sookie and Tara. When he finds his car, there's a corpse inside it.

Season 2

Picking up immediately from where the first season ended, Andy opens an investigation into the corpse in his car. It is a woman, with three huge scratches on her back and a hole in her chest where her heart was ripped out. Tara is astonished to recognize Nancy LeGuare, the pseudo-exorcist. Andy, whose drinking is getting out of control, is soon stripped of his badge.

At the end of the previous season, Bill paid a visit to Sookie's only remaining relative — a great-uncle who was exiled from the family after a 12-year-old Sookie picked up on his pedophiliac interest in her — and killed him for wronging his beloved. Sookie is therefore the beneficiary of a small inheritance, which she decides to gift to Jason instead. Jason puts the money to work immediately: he has been told of a leadership camp, the Light Of Day Institute, run by the leaders of the Fellowship of the Sun, Steve and Sarah Newlin (Michael McMillan and Anna Camp), but had to give up on the idea due to lack of funds. Now he finds himself bussing up to a camp alongside a number of other trainees, particularly Luke McDonald (Wes Brown), who quickly becomes Jason's frenemy. Jason shows immediate aptitude and is quickly recruited into the "Soldiers of the Sun," Newlin's "elite spiritual army." Sparks also fly between him and Sarah Newlin.

Lafayette is in a torture dungeon somewhere with five other humans. His captors keep taking people away, sometimes returning them and sometimes not. One of his fellow prisoners is a redneck who insulted him at Merlotte's for being gay (only to have Lafayette beat him and his friends up in return). The two bury the hatchet and begin to work on an escape plan, but this is stymied when the redneck mouths off to their captors — none other than Eric Northman. They are beneath Fangtasia and Eric is looking into the disappearance of Eddie. Lafayette knows nothing and is eventually released, but only after the vampires feed on him non-consensually — vampires have often been used as an allegory for uncontrolled sexual expression, so it's perhaps not surprising that Lafayette's actions from here on out treat the incident as though he were sexually assaulted. Terry Bellefleur, the Iraq vet, knows PTSD when he sees it even if he has no idea where it came from. Meanwhile, Lafayette is shaken when Eric's Number Two Pam (Kristen Bauer Van Straten) visits him and orders him to resume selling V. Vampires have an empathic connection with anyone who drinks their blood, so Lafayette can only assume they are simply using the simplest way possible to track down V users.

Eric has gotten tired of Jessica and returns her to Bon Temps; Bill, as her maker, is ultimately responsible for her. "I Hate You, Vampire Dad" is present but downplayed, especially when Bill introduces her to Sookie; Sookie sympathizes with Jessica's confusing situation, enjoying the fact that her family no longer has the power to force her to live a certain way but simultaneously missing them. She cajoles Sookie into taking her back to her family's house in Shreveport to say goodbye one last time, but this almost instantly spirals out of control when Jessica is seen by her family and her father prepares to punish her. Bill barely prevents Jessica from killing her father, and has to glamor the whole family within an inch of their lives to maintain the masquerade. Jessica, meanwhile, heads to Merlotte's... Where she meets Hoyt. He's completely accepting of her vampire nature, and it's not long before they're back at the Compton house, making out and maybe doing more... Before Bill busts in and throws Hoyt out. "It's for your protection, not hers."

After salvaging the situation at the Hanby house, Bill berates Sookie for her bad judgment, and she hops out of the car to walk (the 20 miles) home alone... Only to be attacked by a towering creature with horns and claws. She suffers three huge scratches on her back, just like Nancy LeGuare did. The scratches are poisoned, and Bill turns to Eric for help. Here, Sookie learns that the Sheriff of Area 9, Godric (Allan Hyde), has gone missing; it's believed he's been kidnapped by the Fellowship of the Sun. It's not just that he's the Sheriff of Area 9; it's not just that he saved Eric's life; it's also that Godric is one of the oldest vampires in existence — it's later revealed he was turned during the reign of Julius Caesar — and humans should not be able to capture someone so powerful and canny. Therefore, Eric wants to mount both a rescue mission and an intelligence operation, and he wants all his assets — including Sookie and her unique abilities — to head to Dallas, TX and focus on the problem. Sookie agrees, though only after forcing him to release Lafayette (see above).

Tara continues to live with Maryann Forester and one of her projects, Benedict "Eggs" Talley (Mehcad Brooks). Sparks fly between them, but Tara is put off when Maryann throws A Party, Also Known as an Orgy and Eggs is undisturbed by the sexual excess. (She probably would also be put off by the sight of many of the guests having their eyeballs turn all black, but she doesn't notice.) Sookie invites her to move in with her — not just so that someone is minding the house while Sookie is gone in Dallas, but permanently, in recognition of their sisterly bond. This leads to Maryann and Eggs moving in too, and Maryann begins to befriend — and in some cases black-eyes take-control-of — the residents of Bon Temps.

The one person who is absolutely concerned about this is Sam. Flashbacks show he has some sort of history with Maryann, after an incident in his youth when the young shifter was living on his own and stole from her, and that she knows about his abilities. He offers to pay her off — it doesn't work; money isn't what she's looking for — and then prepares to leave town. However, he's distracted by the newest waitress at Merlotte's, Daphne Landry (Ashley Jones). She's not a very good waitress — in point of fact she's astonishingly bad — but Sam cuts her a lot more slack when they start sleeping together... And, more importantly, he learns that she is a fellow shifter. Her go-to animal is a pig, and she has three long-healed scars on her back.

Sam isn't the only one finding out he's not the Last of His Kind: checking into the Hotel Carmilla, which caters to vampires, alongside Bill and Jessica, Sookie is surprised to meet a bellhop, Barry Horowitz, who can also read minds. However, he's not interested in making friends, and even turns down Sookie's offer to teach him to control his Power Incontinence. Meanwhile, she agrees to help find Godric by teaming up with Hugo, a fellow fangbanger romantically involved with one of Godric's subordinates, and pretending to be interested in Rev. Newlin's church as a wedding site. Meanwhile, Jessica, who has been taught to glamor, "borrows" a businessman's Palm Pilot and uses it to catch up with Hoyt. The conversation doesn't go well, as Hoyt is being hovered over by his mother Maxine (Dale Raoul); Maxine cancels Hoyt's phone plan, on the grounds that a girl who calls him that late is up to no good, so Hoyt jumps in his car and drives to Dallas to see Jessica. Since she's alone, they pick up where they left off, with Hoyt even going out of his way to set up candles and rose petals to make Jessica's first time memorable. Meanwhile, Bill is taken off his guard when his own maker, Lorena Krasiki (Mariana Klaveno), drops in to visit: vampires cannot harm their own makers, because those are the rules, so Lorena's presence is are the only Restraining Bolt that will stop Bill. "I Hate You, Vampire Dad" is very present, with flashbacks showing Bill's history as a vicious, sociopathic killer alongside Lorena... and his Heel–Face Turn as he chose to abandon that life. This broke Lorena: All Love Is Unrequited, and she has always harbored a thing for her progeny.

The Two Lines, No Waiting converge as The Plan goes off. Sarah Newlin, feeling excluded by her husband, sleeps with Jason. "Holly Simpson" and her fiancé "Rufus Dobson" visit the Fellowship's church. Sookie reads from Rev. Newlin that the Fellowship do indeed have a captive vampire locked in the basement, whom they intend to execute publicly (by exposing it to sunlight) as a show of power. She also learns that The Mole has tipped him off; she and Hugo are imprisoned for their subterfuge. (Hugo, aforementioned mole, complains about being imprisoned.) However, what Rev. Newlin didn't know what Sookie's real name was; once he learns it, he has his The Dragon, Gabe, take Jason out into the woods to be executed as a traitor. Jason fights his way free and returns to the church. Bill, with his preternatural hearing, knows that Sookie might be in trouble, but Lorena prevents him from leaving; Sookie instead sends a psychic wave to Barry about her circumstances, and he alerts Bill. (Bill gives Lorena a Tap on the Head — with a 52" plasma TV — to incapacitate her; Eric, listening in, has already taken off.) Bill stumbles on Hoyt and Jessica at it... but only bids them return to Bon Temps before things get truly out of hand. Gabe returns to the prison cell and prepares to rape Sookie... Only for Godric to arrive and off him. He orders Eric to take Sookie away to safety, but Eric instead volunteers as a Heroic Sacrifice to save his maker. Rev. Newlin summons his Soldiers of the Sun, armed with stakes, silver and wooden bullets; Godric's enforcers show up with Bill; Newlin takes Sookie hostage; Jason arrives with a paintball gun and shoots the (actual) gun out of Newlin's hand; it looks like it's going to be a bloodbath... Until Godric steps up and negotiates a cease-fire, wanting to set the example that humans and vampires can live in peace. Newlin refuses, clearly ready to die for his cause... but is confused when none of his followers share his sentiment. Everyone goes home alive (except for Gabe), and Jason gets in a parting shot by telling Newlin he slept with his wife.

Back at the vampires' nest, there's a party to celebrate the successful rescue. Jason apologizes to Godric for the Fellowship's actions, but Godric merely thanks him, pointing out Jason helped to save a lot of lives today. Jason also makes peace with Eric (he was a V user last season) and Bill. Bill is cagey about why he didn't run to help Sookie despite her two days of captivity in the church basement; Sookie finally understands when Lorena comes to the party. She's still territorial over Bill, despite the fact that Bill — clearly, empirically — does not love Lorena. She's about to Murder the Hypotenuse when Godric steps in, not only with the weight of his position as Sheriff of Area 9, but with the weight of moral authority:

"This human has proven herself to be a courageous and loyal friend to our kind. And yet you treat her like a child does a dragonfly, pulling off wings for sport. No wonder they hate us. ... You've had hundreds of years to better yourself, yet you haven't. You are still a savage, and I fear for all of us, humans and vampires, if this behavior persists."

At Godric's orders, Bill escorts Lorena from the nest. Therefore the two of them are outside when Chandler's Law goes off, exaggerated: Luke arrives with a message from Rev. Steve Newlin. The message is that he's wrapped in silver chains and wearing a bomb.

Though only a few people (human and vampire alike) were actually killed, a number more are wounded — including Eric, who tried to Human Shield for Sookie and took a few chain links for his trouble. He begs her to suck them out, which she does, to Bill's ire: Sookie is now linked to Eric empathically the same way she is to Bill. (There's another Love Triangle going on, incidentally.) Additionally, ingesting blood directly from a vampire can lead to Erotic Dreams about them, and Sookie is occasionally plagued by intrusive fantasies about Eric.

In the aftermath, Godric's suitability as Sheriff is questioned. Nan Flanagan (Jessica Tuck), a spokeswoman for the American Vampire League who has been on in-universe TV interviews as early as the pilot episode, comes to relieve him of his position, especially after he admits how the Fellowship took him captive: he surrendered, wanting to protect other vampires from harm. Having realized that he has done more harm than good, Godric decides that Redemption Equals Death, and prepares to meet the sun. Eric, weeping, begs him to reconsider, and Sookie stays with him until the end. Their mission complete (or as complete as it's going to get), Eric, Bill, Sookie and Jason prepare to return to Louisiana, with the Stackhouse siblings getting one more moment to reaffirm their love and loyalty for each other... and to watch the Newlins, completely insulated from their actions, back on TV, sniping with Nan Flanagan. (Sarah, with big fake smile: "I hate your hair.")

Back in Bon Temps, things are going downhill. While Sam and Daphne are continuing their romance, Daphne has been trying to lure him to one of Maryann's parties. She's throwing another orgy on Sookie's front lawn, with everyone involved showing the black eyes of the hypnosis. One of them places a bull's-head helmet on Maryann while others drag Sam in, with Maryann producing a sacrificial knife and preparing to kill Sam. Only the presence of Andy Bellefleur, still armed, shuts everything down; Sam escapes, shaken to know that his girlfriend works for his mortal enemy. (Remember the woman and the pig Tara dodged in the first season? Maryann and Daphne.) He later confronts Daphne at gunpoint, and Daphne explains that Maryann is a maenad, a follower of Dionysus (the god of wine in Classical Mythology), whom the Maenads are trying to summon. She wants Sam partially because, as a supernatural being himself, she cannot influence him. After this, Maryann thanks Daphne for her services and then has Eggs murder her; Sam later finds Daphne's corpse in the walk-in refrigerator at Merlotte's with her heart ripped out. Immediately after, the sheriff's department shows up; Sam's been set up. Andy Bellefleur arrives to provide counter-testimony as an eye-witness, but his explanation — which involves a bull in a dress with claws — isn't precisely credible. Sam is jailed, leaving him easy pickings for Maryann; only quick thinking, and a willingness to shift into a common house fly, keeps him free. He shows up outside the hotel room Andy Bellefleur has been slumming at, knowing Andy is the only person he can trust. Meanwhile, Maryann makes a dish called "hunter's souffle" which Tara and Eggs gobble up with abandon... binding them even closer to Maryann, as the dish happens to include a freshly-harvested human heart.

Hoyt and Jessica return to Casa Compton and begin to resume their carnal explorations, only for Jessica to discover something humiliating: as a vampire, she has a Healing Factor... and it apparently extends to her hymen. Sex will always involve pain for her. Hoyt comforts her, and offers to bring her to meet his mother. Maxine is, of course, not precisely supportive — even before she falls under Maryann's spell. Hoyt and Jessica keep her at Bill's house for her own safety, where her unkind words to Jessica almost lead Jessica to attack her. Hoyt, who despite everything loves his mother, takes Maxine home, where Maxine continues her tirades; she reveals, among other things, that she lied to Hoyt about his father's death, telling him that he (Mr. Fortenberry) was killed fighting off robbers when he actually Ate His Gun. Hoyt comes to understand the extents to which My Beloved Smother will go to keep her son — the only thing she has left — in her life.

Bill, Sookie and Jason, returning, are astonished at the changes. They return to Sookie's house — Maryann's house, now — and are confronted with the lady of the manor; Bill tries to bite her, but her blood is toxic to him. When Maryann grabs her, Sookie — who perhaps borrowed the ability from Captain Marvel — shows the ability to emit light from her palm, driving Maryann back. They flee, while Maryann wonders at who — or perhaps what — Sookie is. The two travel to Lafayette's, where Lafayette and Lettie Mae have kidnapped Tara. Using a forceful combination of glamor and telepathy, they free Tara from the mind-control, and learn Maryann's true nature. Bill, therefore, resolves to visit the Vampire Queen of Louisiana, Sophie-Anne Leclerq (Evan Rachel Wood), the only person who might know how to defeat a maenad. After an episode's worth of stalling, Sophie-Anne explains that maenads cannot die, because they believe themselves immortal; the only way to kill one is to get them to choose it.

While this is going on, Tara begs to be allowed to return to Sookie's house to free Eggs. Sookie and Lafayette are not so stupid, but Lettie Mae is desperate for a way to show her daughter some love. Tara is immediately re-hypnotized, and when Sookie and Lafayette go in after her, Lafayette is captured too. The same thing happens to Jason and Andy as they try to reassert order. Sookie is now held captive, the only one who can resist Maryann's control... but still forced, by sheer dint of muscle, to serve as a bridesmaid in Maryann's upcoming wedding. It's all down to Bill and Sam... So Bill surrenders Sam to Maryann, and he is hung on Maryann's ritual offering where he is stabbed. Sookie, reaching out to Sam, hears him thinking really really loudly that she ought to cause a distraction by pushing over all the ritual furniture; she does, and Maryann transforms into bull-wearing-a-dress-with-claws form in order to chase her. But Sookie is saved by an actual bull, whom Maryann immediately begins to worship as the incarnation of her god. The bull gores her with its horns, and Maryann accepts that she herself is to be the sacrifice, embracing her death. Of course, the bull is Sam, who rips out Maryann's heart — the only bit of the plan that was kept offscreen was for Sam to drink Bill's blood to enhance his Healing Factor. The two sides of this Love Triangle have come to an understanding; and, more importantly, the immortal maenad Big Bad of the season is dead.

In the traditional denouement, Hoyt goes to reconcile with Jessica. Unfortunately, she's already left — resorting to picking up truckers at rest stops. She attacks her unsuspecting victim while Hoyt, disappointed, leaves a bouquet of flowers at the Compton house door. Meanwhile, Sam goes to see the adoptive parents who abandoned him. He wants to know who his real parents are. They give him a name and address.

Eggs seeks out Sookie: something he and Tara have discussed is that, while under the black-eyes hypnosis, they have no memory of what they did. He insists that Sookie restore his memories, despite her warnings that he won't like what he sees. She's right: Eggs learns he wielded the knife in the ritual murders of Nancy LeGuare, Daphne and more. Distraught, he runs to Andy and begs to be arrested. He's still holding the knife — it's evidence, it's the murder weapon — but it results in Andy, fearful, on the ground, while Eggs looms above him — tears in his eyes, begging to be understood; don't you understand, this is the last thing those poor women saw — with the blade in hand. Then a gunshot: Jason, armed, saw his friend Andy in danger. Andy Bellefleur takes the pistol, wipes off Jason's fingerprints, and takes responsibility for apprehending Bon Temps' latest serial killer, while Tara is left crumbled over the corpse of the first man she truly loved.

Bill rents out the entirety of a French restaurant to take Sookie out on a date. As a parting gift, he gives her airline tickets to Burlington, VT. When Sookie asks why they'd need to go there, he takes out the other part of the gift: an engagement ring. But Sookie can't think straight: everything's been crazy, she has no idea if she's even human (Maryann certainly didn't believe she was), and — if you pay attention to the timeline]] — she and Bill only met 47 days ago. She runs to the bathroom to compose herself. There, she tries on the ring... and the sight of it on her finger tells her everything she needs to know. With a brilliant smile, she heads out to accept his proposal.

Someone sneaks up behind Bill and wraps a silver chain around his neck. When Sookie emerges from the ladies' room, the place is empty.

Season 3

Picking up immediately where the second season ended, Sookie reports the situation to Kenya Jones (Tanya Wright), one of Sheriff Dearborne's four deputies. Sookie proclaims it a kidnapping, but Kenya is skeptical: Man proposes, woman turns him down and hides in the bathroom, why wouldn't the man pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here? Of course, Sookie is correct: Bill finds himself chained and stuck in the back of a car with several mooks, who drink his blood for the high. Bill manages to free himself, wrecking the car, but finds himself somewhere in Mississippi. He calls to Jessica — she doesn't understand it because he's never taught her about it, but a maker can attempt to summon their progeny at any time. At Sookie's urging, Jessica follows the summons, and they find the destroyed car along with the corpse of one of Bill's kidnappers. The corpse has a brand on it, the "wolfsangel, a German symbol that was used extensively by Those Wacky Nazis and is also associated with werewolves... Which is exactly what Bill, somewhere else, finds himself cornered by.

The fight — which Bill was largely winning — ends when the werewolves' master arrives: Russell Edgington (Denis O'Hare), vampire king of Mississippi. He has Bill escorted back to his mansion, where Bill meets Russell's vampire lover Talbot (Theo Alexander). Russell admits that he ordered Bill brought to him — voluntarily, not kidnapped; he executes one of his werewolf minions for incompetence — because he wants Bill's help: he is extending a marriage proposal to Queen Sophie-Ann Leclerq, but so far she is refusing. That said, Russell's plan involves Bill cooperating with Lorena. Bill shows his opinion of that by, at the mere sight of her, grabbing a burning lamp and setting her on fire.

Tara, still broken over the death of Eggs, falls in with a visitor to Merlotte's: a vampire named Franklin (James Frain). Franklin turns out to be a private eye who was sent by Russell to investigate Bill, but in the meanwhile he helps Tara out of a few problematic spots, and they become sex partners. This, of course, goes wrong for Tara when Russell realizes he can use her to get to Sookie; he kidnaps her and brings her to Mississippi, where he intends to murder her, turn her and then marry her — not necessarily in that order.

Jessica is having problems of her own: remember that trucker she was seducing at the end of the previous season? She went a little too far, and now he's dead, his corpse hidden in the Compton House basement. Bill is, of course, nowhere to be found, so Jessica has no one to seek guidance from. She eventually asks Pam, who recommends she rent a chainsaw from a home-improvement store. When she returns with it, however, the corpse is gone: disposed of by Franklin, who had hoped to get intel from Jessica. Meanwhile, Hoyt tries to move on with his life: he moves in with Jason at Chez Stackhouse and starts dating a girl named Summer (Melissa Rauch). Jessica, who is still 17, is naturally upset to see her ex taking his new date to Merlotte's — especially as it's only been a couple days since the break-up.

Jason is convinced that his calling in life is to become a police officer, and attempts to wrangle his way into the Sheriff's department. Andy Bellefleur has a hard time turning down the manpower: when the sheriffs are called out to investigate a headless corpse which Hoyt and the road crew found in a ditch, Sheriff Dearborne pulls a "Screw This, I'm Outta Here" and officially Turns In His Badge, leaving Andy the ranking officer. He puts Jason on the phone lines at first, but Jason — who by now has paramilitary training from his time with the Light of Life organization — wants to get in on the action. To this end, Andy takes him on a ride-along to a drug bust in Hotshot, LA, where former football star Jason successfully tackles an escaping perp. He also spies a beautiful woman crying in the forest outside of the dilapidated shanty town. Jason later meets this girl at Merlotte's and learns her name is Crystal (Lindsay Pulsipher). The chemistry is immediate and palpable.

Lafayette, trying to keep Tara from being Driven to Suicide, takes her to an assisted-living facility for elderly and not-quite-right-in-the-head patients. There, his own mother Ruby Jean Reynolds (Alfre Woodard) lives under the care of God himself: a Hispanic nurse named Jesús Velasquez (Kevin Alejandro). Sparks fly, and after some dancing around, the two enter a relationship.

Sam has succeeded in tracking down his birth parents, Melinda and Joe Lee Mickens (J. Smith-Cameron and Cooper Huckabee). They live in squalor with their second son Tommy (Marshall Allman), and — when they visit Bon Temps — are impressed by what Sam, bar owner, restauranteur and landlord of a set of apartments, has made of himself. However, it becomes clear to Sam that his family see him as a meal ticket first, a family member second, and he banishes them from Bon Temps. He then has to go back once he realizes that their main way of generating revenue is shifting into canine form and then entering dog-fighting rings, a duty they've now put on Tommy's shoulders as Melinda is too old. (Joe Lee is a bog-standard muggle.) Sam rescues Tommy from the ring and takes him back to Bon Temps, where he employs Tommy as a bus boy; however, Tommy revels in his newfound freedom and becomes wildly overconfident, disturbing the other residents in the apartments (such as Arlene and Terry) with his debauchery. He accuses Sam of being no better a father than Joe Lee, which really gets to Sam, driving him to the bottle.

Arlene starts out the season with an extra-sensitive nose, and realizes what it means: pregnant women have enhanced sense of smell. She debates over what to tell Terry, whom she's only been dating for a couple of weeks; but when she sees a doctor, she learns that the critter is some 10 weeks along, meaning she's been pregnant since before the Pilot Episode — in other words, back when she was dating first-season Big Bad and Serial Killer Drew Marshall. Terry, who is a good man, offers to stand by her no matter what — even after learning of the child's less-than-stellar genetic heritage — but Arlene realizes she does not want to bring such a child into the world. Merlotte's newest waitress, wiccan Holly Cleary (Lauren Bowles), helps her perform a ritual which will call upon the Mother Earth to arbitrate the pregnancy, to terminate it or preserve it by Her will, and gives Arlene a decoction to drink. Arlene wakes up the next morning with a mess of blood between her legs, and Terry rushes her to the hospital... Where she learns that the fetus survived and is indeed thriving.

Sookie refuses to give up looking for Bill, and Eric — somewhat begrudgingly — assigns her a bodyguard, non-evil werewolf Alcide Herveaux (Joe Manganiello). Eric himself refuses to get involved, despite the presence of the werewolves: a flashback to World War II shows him and Godric confronting a wolfsangel-branded were. Additioninally, even more flashbacks to his mortal youth depict how his entire house, save Eric himself, were slaughtered by a bunch of weres, led by a man who stole his father's crown. Meanwhile, Alcide wouldn't mind help with his own problems: a new gang of werewolves have taken up residence in Jackson, MS, and his girlfriend Debbie (Brit Morgan) left him for their leader. Meanwhile, Bill accepts Russell's offer — Sheriff of some portion of MS, in exchange for Bill's fealty — and phones Sookie to break up with her, before taking Lorena as his new lover. His somewhat unkind claims of having to constantly hold back for fear of harming Sookie are demonstrated when, during sex, he doesn't bother putting a paper bag over Lorena's head and instead twists her head all the way around, knowing her Healing Factor will let her survive it.

Eric is driven to join the search for Bill when The Magister shows up and accuses him of selling V — which, of course, he has been doing, on orders from Queen Sophie-Anne. (Russell's analysis of the situation skips straight past the "Category Traitor" to something much more mundane: ever since The Great Revelation, vampires have been taxable, and Queen Sophie-Anne is broke.) Eric and Pam pin it on Bill, whom The Magister immediately demands. Eric, upon seeing his father's crown in Russell's collection, also swears allegiance to the King of Mississippi, as revenge is a dish Best Served Cold.

Russell succeeds at capturing Sookie. Frustrated by Bill's disloyalty, he has him sent to the slave quarters, where Lorena is to kill him. Meanwhile, he interrogates Sookie, wanting to know why she's such a big deal. Sookie, of course, doesn't know, though she can attest that her grandfather was also a telepath. He then renews his proposal to Queen Sophie-Anne, who this time accepts ungracefully. Meanwhile, after proposing a night of "passion", Tara — remember, Franklin kidnapped her and brought her to Russell's house? — bites him and feeds on his blood. Franklin's Too Kinky to Torture — he thinks it's hot, as a matter of fact — but with the resulting Super-Senses and Super-Strength, Tara is able to smash Franklin's head in with a mace and then make her escape with Sookie. Sookie runs to the slave quarters to try to save Bill while Tara procures an automobile as an escape vector — fortunately running into Alcide, who has his van nearby. However, Sookie ran into the slave quarters without a plan or any weapons, and Lorena takes the opportunity to Murder the Hypotenuse. However, Sookie's blood is — as it always has been to vampires — the tastiest thing ever, and Bill takes advantage of Lorena's comparative intoxication to throw the silver chains around her neck. Sookie stakes her, and she, Tara and Alcide load Bill, barely alive, into the back of the van. Bill continues to deteriorate as they drive, and Sookie finds a sharp edge so that Bill can feed on her blood. But Bill, barely conscious and not in control of himself, almost drains her dry. When Tara finds this, she kicks Bill out into the sunlight and has Alcide drive away. Bill, for some reason, isn't burned to death on the spot. This will be important later.

Tara and Alcide take Sookie to a hospital, where Jason joins them. The doctors are unable to give Sookie a blood transfusion — she apparently does not have a blood type, and her body is rejecting everything they pump into her. It eventually falls to Bill, remorseful over having inadvertently almost killed her, to feed her his blood with its healing properties. Sookie, meanwhile, spends the entire coma in some sort of garden-like dream world where she meets a woman named Claudine (Lara Pulver), and a bunch of other people who apparently share Sookie's talents. However, the garden is an Empathic Environment and darkens when Bill enters the room. After awakening, Sookie and Bill officially break up: Sookie is still pissed that Bill didn't do a thing to help Tara escape Franklin, and besides it's become clear that a Differing Priorities Breakup is inevitable: they can't lie in the sun together, they can't have children together, they'll never even fall asleep in the same bed unless they're in a carefully-controlled environment (like the Hotel Carmilla). They pledge their eternal love for each other... and then walk away.

Russell, of course, isn't done. He beheads The Magister, showing his disdain for The Authority, the Omniscient Council of Vagueness which rules vampire America. He then sets his sights on Sookie directly, attacking Compton House and almost defeating Bill while Jessica is distracted with werewolves. Meanwhile, Alcide's ex-girlfriend, Debbie, leads the attack on Sookie's house, wanting revenge for her new boyfriend whom Alcide killed during the escape. All three fights are at a stalemate when the unexpected happens. Talbot, you see, was left behind, and in a snit set his sights on Eric. The two have been making out, and going further, when Eric seizes the opportunity to kill the only man Russell ever loved. Russell, hearing his progeny's death, departs immediately, breaking the stalemate; Jessica defeats (and feeds on) the werewolf, Bill scares off Debbie, and he and Sookie reunite (and have sex). Bill then finds himself in the dream-world with Claudine, apparently a side-effect of the large amount of Sookie's blood that is now in him instead of her; he uses his Super-Speed to catch Claudine, despite her defensiveness, but very specifically refrains from harming her, wanting merely to know what Sookie's true nature is. Upon awakening, he explains: Sookie is a Half-Human Hybrid and part faerie. The reason Claudine has been warning her away from Bill is that faeries have not been seen in hundreds of years: they were, it's believed, hunted to extinction by vampires. Meanwhile, Russell — in defiance of the American Vampire League, who have been attempting to get the Vampire Rights Amendment passed and have been characterizing vampires as largely harmless — breaks into a TV station and murders the news anchor in cold blood before giving a bone-chilling and effective Motive Rant:

Do not turn off the camera! You have seen how quickly I can kill. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Russell Edgington and I have been a vampire for nearly 3,000 years. Now, the American Vampire League wishes to perpetrate the notion that we are just like you. And I suppose in a few small ways we are. We're narcissists: we care only about getting what we want, no matter what it costs, just like you. Global warming, perpetual war, toxic waste, child labor, torture, genocide... that's a small price to pay for your SUVs and your flatscreen TVs, your blood diamonds, your designer jeans, your absurd garish McMansions — futile symbols of permanence to quell your quivering, spineless souls. But no, in the end, we are nothing like you. We are immortal. Because we drink the true blood, blood that is living, organic and human. And that is the truth the AVL wishes to conceal from you. Because let's face it, eating people is a tough sell these days. So they put on their friendly faces to pass their beloved VRA... but make no mistake, mine is the true face of vampires! Why would we seek equal rights? You are not our equals. We will eat you. After we eat your children.
Now time for the weather. Tiffany?

Jason tries to get into Crystal's pants, despite her general unwillingness — while she's clearly attracted to him, she also has an Arranged Marriage with a man named Felton, one of the dealers at Hotshot. When she tries to run away, her father Calvin brings Felton to Merlotte's to look for her. When Calvin starts antagonizing Jason and Crystal, Sam steps in, his temper already rubbed raw by the shit with his parents and wit Tommy, and beats Calvin to a pulp. Lafayette, Jesús and Crystal attempt to drive Calvin the 20 miles to the nearest hospital, but it becomes clear he won't make it... so Lafayette stops at his own house and gives Calvin V. Afterwards, Calvin disowns Crystal for disobedience: all he wants is for her to marry Felton and have his babies and keep the bloodline pure. She realizes she can't have any meaningful relationship with Jason unless he gets the whole story, and so waits for him at Chez Stackhouse... as a panther, because she too is a were. This caps off a week of madness for both Jason and Tara: during the chaos surrounding Calvin's brush with death, she's kidnapped by Franklin, who feels betrayed that she never loved him and makes preparations to murder her. He's stopped by Jason, who has a shotgun. Obviously, Franklin isn't scared by bullets... So Jason doesn't tell him the bullets are made of wood until after he's already blown Franklin to smithereens. He brings Tara back to Chez Stackhouse to recover, and Sookie drops in to help. Here, Jason, burdened by his guilty conscience, finally admits the truth about his role in Eggs' death. Sookie urges him to confess to Tara instead, which he does. Tara, in Tranquil Fury, corners Andy Bellefleur at Merlotte's and demands he corroborate, accusing him of hypocrisy for accepting a medal and a promotion after "apprehending Bon Temps' latest serial killer." To her surprise, Andy breaks down in Manly Tears: he explains that Eggs, so far as he could tell, was trying to commit Suicide by Cop, and that Andy himself was trying to de-escalate the situation when Jason stepped in drew a conclusion that was both empirically reasonable and completely wrong. He apologizes to Tara, claiming that, could he go back and do anything differently to save Eggs' life, he would.

Hoyt, taking Summer on a date to Merlotte's, admits to Jessica (while Summer is using the ladies' room) that he can't stand Summer. This is of some confusion to Tommy, who is trying desperately to hit on Jessica, telling Hoyt things like, "She's out of your league" — showing that he hasn't bothered to actually learn about anyone nearby. Later that night, Summer offers herself to Hoyt: she's a good Christian and was waiting until marriage, but for her big bear, she's willing to break the rules. But Hoyt, as politely as possible, tells her no. The next evening, he returns to Merlotte's and admits to Jessica that he loves her. But Jessica can't say anything in response: after Bill broke up with Sookie and taught her to use her Super-Speed in a fight, the two commiserated over how their loved ones would be better off without them. Tommy tries to get a dig in and Hoyt punches him in the face. So, when Hoyt gets outside, Tommy shifts into bulldog form and attacks. Jessica, overhearing the commotion, grabs bulldog!Tommy and flings him into the woods, before piercing her own skin so that Hoyt can heal. From that point on, the Beta Couple are back on. But Jessica still has burdens to confess: she admits that she lost control and killed the trucker. She also admits that she's not going to stop: she tried TruBlood and can't stand it. She can't be a Vegetarian Vampire; she needs real blood. Hoyt, without hesitation, offers his own, and later puts the down payment on an apartment so that he and Jessica can live together. This is to the frustration of Maxine and Summer, who it turns out were conspiring to get Hoyt away from Jessica. However, not all is perfect: the shot of Jessica and Hoyt smooching in delirious happiness settles on a Creepy Doll abandoned on the floor. This will be important later.

Tara rekindles her no-strings-attached relationship with Sam, but mentions that he barks in his sleep. She is astonished to learn why, and returns to Sookie's house to see her Sister Of Choice for basically the first time all season. When she asks what happened to Sookie's bedroom, Sookie admits it was a werewolf attack, causing Tara to shy away. Tara, it transpires, has had enough of the World of Weirdness. After visiting her mother (who is fucking Reverend Daniels), she drops by Merlotte's one more time, smiling at the building... And then drives away.

Sam has had enough of Tommy's attitude, and fires the kid. While he and Tara are getting it on, Tommy uses wire cutters to disable the security alarms on the bar and steals all of Sam's money. When Sam figures this out, he grabs a gun — when he rescued Tommy from the dog-fighting ring, he had and surrendered a Beretta M9; now he has a Walther P99; Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys? — and chases the boy, wanting his money back. Tommy protests that he has nowhere else to go: Sam took away his family and then took his future too. When Sam points out that Tommy could just, you know, get a job, Tommy retorts, "I Never Learned to Read!" He walks away, sure his brother will not shoot him. But the last shot of Sam this season is of him leveling the pistol and firing.

Jesús, impressed with the healing abilities of V, suggests he and Lafayette take some together. (Lafayette remarks on the turn-around: earlier this season, he was trying to avoid Lafayette for being a drug dealer. And keep in mind that this whole season takes place in a mere nine days.) They trip together, seeing their ancestors and the history that spawned them... But Lafayette continues to have hallucinatory after-effects. He calls Jesús for help, and Jesús admits that he is a "brujo." ("...Who's a nurse, who's a guy," Lafayette quips.)

Eric has been telling Sookie that she should not trust Bill, and she arrives at Fangtasia to find out why this might be true. Eric takes this opportunity to imprison her in the torture dungeon. He then approaches Russell, who is carrying around Talbot's remains in a large crystal vase. He is not here to fight, but rather to bargain one more time: he has, he believed, devised a way to make "daywalking" — that old vampire desire to feel the sun on their skin without the typical "Kill It with Fire" side effects — possible. All Russell will need is the blood of a faerie... such as the blood found in Sookie Stackhouse. Bill — who has been clued in on The Plan — corroborates the evidence, Russell agrees, but under one condition: that Eric will try first. They do, and Eric steps into the daylight for the first time in a thousand years. Russell, ecstatic, joins him.

This is when Russell discovers he's been Lured into a Trap: Sookie's blood doesn't stop the destructive power of sunlight, only slows it down. Eric reinforces the dilemma by putting silver handcuffs on both himself and Russell. He has condemned them both to a Cruel and Unusual Death.

Of course, it's the second-to-last episode, so we can't stop there.

Sookie is furious that Eric is willing to perform a Heroic Sacrifice, and — under Russell's angry but accurate tutelage — unlocks her Hand Blast powers, separating the chain of the handcuffs. She then drags Eric back into Fangtasia, where she, Pam, Bill and Eric debate on what to do with Russell. Eric has been seeing visions of Godric's ghost, encouraging him (Eric) to Turn the Other Cheek, and when Bill and Eric can't come to a conclusion, Sookie solves the problem herself with silver chains. (It's not like any of them can really go outside anyway.) After a good day's rest, Eric calls Alcide, who brings his van: in his mild-mannered non-werewolf form, he runs a construction company, and he, Bill and Eric drag Russell to a construction site where they bury Russell in concrete. He's immortal, so he won't die... But he sure as heck isn't getting out before the show's Series Finale (especially with this rate of Webcomic Time). Afterwards, Bill offers Eric a handshake... And then claps Eric in silver before burying him alive too.

Jason and Crystal learn that the DEA have learned about the drug ring in Hotshot and are planning a raid. Crystal is insistent that they get the civilians out: true, her father Calvin and brother-slash-fiancé Fenton are drug dealers, but the rest are helpless, inbred hicks, victims who don't deserve punishment. Jason finally agrees, but the plan goes wrong almost immediately: Fenton refuses to dump the illicit goods, and blows his father away to take command of the pack. As the price of Jason's life, he demands Crystal go with him. Crystal surrenders, and tells Jason that the pack of werepanthers is now his responsibility. Jason accepts. He's then hauled in by the DEA, and Andy Bellefleur tells him he's just squandered his one chance to be a cop. Jason, at peace, proclaims that he made the right choice.

Bill reports to Sookie that both Russell and Eric are dealt with. He plans to kill any vampire who has tasted Sookie's blood, including Queen Sophie-Anne, to keep Sookie safe. However, the plans are interrupted by Eric, who is already out — he called to Pam, his progeny, much as Bill did at the top of the season. Eric asks Sookie if Bill has admitted that, in his former position as Queen Sophie-Anne's "procurer," he was sent to obtain Sookie. He asks also if Bill has admitted that he let Sookie, at the end of the pilot episode, get beat within an inch of her life so that he could feed her his blood and force the telepathic bond (and erotic fantasies) on her. Sookie, furious, breaks up with Bill once and for all. She also rescinds Eric's invitation into her house — True Blood's vampires operate by the rule that vampires have to be welcomed in — and declares herself done with vampires. Of course, that leaves the question of what she's going to do instead: the cast is scattered to the four winds. Eric's going back to Shreveport; Jason has new responsibilities in Hotshot; Tara's been Put on a Bus; Sam's shooting his brother; Hoyt and Jessica are in the honeymoon phase; Lafayette is having PTSD flashbacks; Arlene and Terry are preparing to welcome a new life into the world; Bill has invited Queen Sophie-Anne over as a pretext and is now trying to kill her. Sookie herself is at loose ends. She finds herself in front of Adele Stackhouse's grave, wishing she could speak to her grandmother again... And then realizing that this is the garden from her dream zone. Claudine and others emerge from the woods and suggest she come with them to find herself. Sookie agrees, and all the fellow faeries and half-faerie hybrids teleport away; the last shot of the season is of the empty graveyard where they once stood.

Season 4

Picking up immediately where the third season ended, Sookie and Claudine planeswalk to the faerie realm, where faeries and humans are having a party. Claudine explains that she is Sookie's Fairy Godmother and has been looking out for her as best she can (which, given Sookie's Weirdness Magnet status, is only so much). Sookie sees Barry, the bellhop, in the company of his fairy godmother; she also sees Gran's husband Earl, who looks exactly as he did the last time she saw him — which was at her fifth birthday party. (Sookie is now 25.) Everyone is eating glowing fruit, which (according to Barry) tastes amazing. Sookie is introduced to the queen of the faeries, Mab, who explains that she is summoning all faerie progeny and hybrids to this side dimension and preparing to pull out of the human world entirely. When Mab tries to force the glowing fruit on Sookie, she realizes she's going to be trapped here against her will, and makes a run for it. She and Grandpa Earl make it to the portal just before it closes, landing back in Bon Temps' graveyard. But Earl had already eaten the fruit during his hour-long sojourn into the faerie realm, and now cannot survive in the human world. He gives Sookie his pocketwatch to give to Jason, and then dissolves into dust.

Sookie returns to her house, which is being swarmed over by workmen who threaten to call the cops. "The cops" turn out to be Deputy Jason Stackhouse of the Sheriff's Department. When Sookie asks him the date, he explains it's October 21st. Sookie is confused at all that happened in two weeks, and Jason explains that it's not: The faerie realm is one of those "Year Outside, Hour Inside" situations: Sookie left at the beginning of October '09; today it's mid-October 2010. Jason sold the house because he couldn't bear to face it anymore, and everyone thought Sookie was dead. Bill covers for her by claiming she was on a deep-cover assignment for him, and promises to publicly take responsibility — in exchange for having Andy Bellefleur Clear My Name of the murder charge.

We spend time catching up with other characters and what they've gone through in the Time Skip:

• Hoyt and Jessica have traded domestic bliss for Like an Old Married Couple. Jessica doesn't like cooking for Hoyt because it's all dead, and Hoyt turns out to be something of a Manchild. On top of that, Jessica isn't as satisfied as she hoped she'd be with vampiric monogamy, longing for the taste of others' blood. And there's a Creepy Doll, that always follows you: both complain of having thrown it away and that it keeps coming back.
• Tara is in New Orleans making a life as a Mixed Martial Arts fighter, and is in a relationship with a fellow fighter, Naomi (Vedette Lim). However, The Main Characters Do Everything, and once she hears of Sookie's return SMS from Lafayette, she hightails it back to Bon Temps.
• Sam is in anger management classes after having shot Tommy. Calling it "anger management" is not the entire story: he's actually made friends with a clutch of fellow shifters, Emory (Chris Butler), Suzanne (Christina Moore) and Luna (Janina Gavankar), with whom he can share everything. He and Luna flirt with the idea of a romance, somewhat stymied by Luna's admission of being a "skinwalker" — someone who can shift into any animal, including another human.
• Tommy is still limping around with his leg in a brace, but has been "adopted" by Maxine Fortenberry: he needed a mother, she needed a son, it's codependent but still beneficial. She is teaching him to read. That said, Tommy is still looking for ways to get ahead, and considers defrauding Maxine when someone tries to buy her land and the natural gas suspected to be under it.
• Jason is still looking out for the clan of inbred werepanthers up in Hotshot. This turns out to be an elaborate Honey Trap: Felton and Crystal return after a year on the run. They've been trying to breed the next generation of werepanthers, to no success; so instead they capture Jason, turn him, and use him for stud services.
• Andy Bellefleur has become addicted to V.
• Arlene has had her baby, Mikey Bellefleur. She is certain that evil is In the Blood, and is starting to crack under the pressure. (Terry's doing better, but then Terry always had a touch of Cloud Cuckoo Lander anyhow, so his ability to comfort Arlene can be lacking at the best of time.) At one point, Jessica gives him the creepy doll, which he takes to immediately. This does not reassure anyone.
• Eric bought Sookie's house. Since he can enter it without needing her permission, he begins to press his side of the Love Triangle even more aggressively than before. (He also proves to be a responsible landlord, having made and continuing to make improvements to Sookie's house — though one of them turns out to be a steel-reinforced hidey-hole where he can sleep.)
• The entire political situation in America has changed in the wake of Russell Edgington's big announcement, and the Fantastic Racism against vampires has gone up several notches. Bill, Eric, Nan Flanagan and others in the American Vampire League are now pushing the Friendly Neighborhood Vampire angle harder than ever before, to mixed success.

The big plotline of the season ends up being a coven of witches led by Marnie (Fiona Shaw) and attended by Jesús and Holly. Jesús has been trying to get Lafayette to join this coven for a while, confused at Lafayette's unwillingness to embrace his own potential as a magic-user. Indeed, once Lafayette joins the link, the whole spell is supercharged. However, the spell itself is a concerning one: Marnie attempts to bring her dead parrot, Minerva, back to life, and actually succeeds at getting it to flap around for about 15 more seconds.

One of the members of the coven turns out to be a deep-cover operative working for the Vampire King of Louisiana: William Compton, the First of his Name. (Flashbacks show how he won the fight against Queen Sophie-Anne with the help of AVL mooks and their wooden bullets.) Her report is a big deal to King William: necromancers, who can control the dead, pose an existential threat to vampires, who are dead. Thus, the next night, while Lafayette and Jesús drag Tara to the coven meeting, Bill sends Eric to intimidate the circle into dissolving. Marnie tries to defend herself with the power of her coven, but is possessed by someone (Paola Turbay) and unknowingly casts an Easy Amnesia spell on Eric; Sookie finds him walking by the side of the road, shirtless for some reason, aware that he is a vampire but having absolutely no idea of anything else about himself. Pam begs Sookie to keep Eric at her house, and to not tell Bill: she suspects that Bill let Eric walk into danger on purpose and will now have him executed for posing a danger to The Needs of the Many. In Bill's defense, Eric is a threat: as he was essentially Really Was Born Yesterday, he is weirdly adorkable but also completely uncontrollable; when Claudine comes back to appeal to Sookie one more time, Eric instead drains her dry.

Tara, Lafayette and Jesús promise to deliver up Marnie to Pam, since she's the only one who has any clue what spell was cast or how to reverse it. This might be harder than it sounds, as the individual who possessed Marnie is clearly watching over her. As the season progresses, that individual draws Marnie into flashbacks to the Spanish Inquisition, when she (the individual) was being burned at the stake for witchcraft; during these flashbacks, she teaches Marnie spells. These spells may relate to the vampires' distaste for necromancers: apparently, during the Inquisition, one witch, wanting to pull a Taking You with Me against vampires who were themselves part of the Catholic Church, necromance'd every vampire in a 30-mile radius into committing Suicide by Sunlight. Many of them want to kill Marnie, despite the Authority's insistence that no human blood be spilled, and Pam tries to confront Marnie directly while attempting to un-amnesia Eric. Unfortunately, the individual once again takes over Marnie and casts a rotting spell on Pam, who finds her face beginning to melt off. Once again, Marnie has no recollection of the spell she cast, leading Tara, Lafayette and Jesús to pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here once they realize that the situation cannot be controlled. Tara hides out in Bon Temps, while Jesús takes Lafayette to meet his grandfather, a powerful brujo named Don Bartolo (Del Zamora), in the hopes of enlisting aid.

Jason manages to free himself and escapes, eventually getting the drop on panther!Felton and killing him by landing on him with a sharpened stick. However, Crystal proclaims him the new leader of the Hotshot pack (via Klingon Promotion) and promises that he will soon turn into a werepanther. Jason flees, eventually being tripped over by Hoyt and Jessica, who are driving past on unrelated business. Jessica gives him some of her blood, and Jason recovers quickly; however, as the full moon approaches, he handcuffs himself to his bed in fear of becoming a panther. When Sookie offers to stay with him, he takes the first opportunity to bolt. Sookie, chasing after him, stumbles across Alcide and Debbie, who (despite living three hours away in Shreveport) are here with their new pack, led by Marcus Bozeman (Dan Buran), for a bonding exercise; from them, Sookie learns that being a were, unlike being a zombie or a vampire, is not transmitted orally. Jason is safe. Of course, he doesn't know that; he's out in the woods having a panic attack. Jessica, via her empathic connection to him, comes to keep him company. The Ship Tease is on.

Bill learns of Eric's survival and, as Pam had predicted, petitions the Authority to have an execution warrant passed for him. Eric goes peacefully: he has heard some of whom he used to be, and doesn't particularly like himself. However, he petitions Bill to look after Sookie, revealing the depths of his love for her... And Bill decides to let him go. Eric rushes back to Sookie, and the two consummate on the river bank.

Bill has imprisoned Marnie and attempts to interrogate her. Instead, she allows herself to be possessed by the individual who has been working with her. She casts a spell on one of Bill's sheriffs — who turns out to have been one of the Catholic vampires who imprisoned her — and uses him to make her escape, though not before proclaiming that Antonia Gavilán de Logroño has returned. Bill, hearing this name, has an Oh, Crap!: it's the necromancer who turned the Spanish Inquisition into such a vampire disaster. He puts the entire kingdom of Louisiana on lockdown, ordering every vampire bind themselves with silver so that they cannot comply with a Suicide By Sunlight spell.

Terry is puttering around the house when he sees that little Mikey has, apparently, written something in marker on the wall: "BABY NOT YOURS." This freaks everyone out. Even worse, a book of matches catches fire, resulting in Terry and Arlene's house burning down. In the terror of the evacuation, Arlene can't find Mikey... because he's already outside with his creepy doll. Sam, who owns these apartments, comes to perform damage control; Holly's place also burned down, but she takes the opportunity to flirt with Andy Bellefleur, who mostly returns the sentiment.

Tommy returns to his parents to reconcile with them. Melinda is glad to see him, promising that she has left Joe Lee for good. This is a lie: Joe Lee shows up and puts a chain around Tommy's neck, intending to use him to further the family's dogfighting-ring business. Tommy fights back, killing Joe Lee on purpose... and Melinda on accident. Sam helps the sobbing boy hide the bodies, and the two begin to bond more. However, Tommy discovers something new: he is now able to change into other humans, including Sam.^note Luna mentioned that you only become a skinwalker by killing another one — her mother suffered a Death by Childbirth — which implies there was much more to Melinda Mickens than she ever let on. He takes advantage of the ability by, while Sam is working to salvage the burned apartments, heading to Merlotte's, firing Sookie, and, when Luna arrives at Sam's trailer, accepting her advances. However, he kicks her out the moment Their First Time is over, leading Luna to call Sam (the real one) in a fury the next day. Sam, of course, has no idea what's going on... and, in her defense, Luna is able to get past the Conflict Ball fast enough to help him piece it together.

As part of training Jesús, Don Bartolo throws a snake at him. The snake bites Jesús. Don Bartolo then locks him and Lafayette in the room, telling them it's Lafayette's job to fix the problem. It's a Training from Hell, but it's not focused on Jesús: It's focused on Lafayette, who turns out to be the second medium in the franchise after Marnie, and who apparently is a much more powerful one than she is. Returning to work, he learns the identity of the third: little Mikey Bellefleur, who is being entertained by the ghost of a woman named Mavis (Nondumiso Tembe).

Tara is confronted by Naomi, who has learned that her girlfriend "Toni" has been lying about everything. To clear her name, Tara takes her around Bon Temps, showing Naomi not only who she really is but what she was trying to escape from. Naomi decides to give Toni a second chance, or perhaps give Tara a first chance. However, they are interrupted by Pam, who still wants revenge on anyone who helped cast the rotting spell on her. The two escape only because a bunch of bystanders have poured out of Merlotte's and are livestreaming the event, something the AVL will literally murder Pam for; Pam leaves, swearing vengeance. Tara convinces Naomi to run for her life. Walking home amidst the ashes of her latest failed relationship, Tara is accosted by... Antonia, who promises vengeance against the vampires. Tara joins her coven and begins aggressively recruiting. This culminates in Antonia once again casting her Suicide By Sunlight spell. Maxine Fortenberry watches her neighbor, who did not heed Bill's safety precautions (or, due to being off the grid, never heard about them), march into the sun to her doom. Sookie goes into the basement to literally sit on Eric and try to keep him from following, while Jason, having learned about it from her, races across the graveyard, concerned Jessica will also be caught in the spell. He's right to be: at Compton House, while the silver chains hold Bill, Jessica succeeds at freeing herself, and, heedless, charges into the sunlight. Only a diving save from Jason keeps her indoors before Antonia runs out of Magic Points and has to stop channeling the spell.

As the furor dies down, Bill rushes to get ahead of the news and release an official statement, claiming the vampire, Beulah Carter, was Driven to Suicide by loneliness and Fantastic Racism. Antonia watches in frustration: due to Bill's preparations (and Jason's quick thinking), Beulah Carter was the only casualty of the spell. Bill then calls her, surprised to hear Tara answer the phone, and suggests he and Antonia meet at the Bon Temps graveyard at midnight to negotiate. Though both sides agree to come alone, both have backup — Antonia's followers under an Invisibility Cloak spell, Bill with Pam, Sookie and Eric nearby. (The latter two explicitly come to offer their services.) King William offers Antonia a cease-fire, asking only that she reverse the spells she cast on Pam and Eric... which Antonia finds amusing, given that she cast them in self-defense on the only two vampires who have, at least as of yet, attempted to harm her. Unfortunately, the Wild Card is Eric: his Blood Knight tendencies overwhelm him and he attacks. In the chaos, Sookie is struck by an errant round, requiring intervention from Alcide (who is there for some reason) and an emergency transfusion of Bill blood to heal; and Eric himself ensorceled by Antonia. The coven officially have their own pet vampire.

Lafayette becomes officially possessed by Mavis. She breaks into Andy Bellefleur's house, where Terry and Arlene have been staying, and kidnaps both Mikey, the creepy doll, and Sheriff Bellefleur's M9 pistol. She then returns to the house she lived in — currently occupied by Hoyt Fortenberry — and tries to take care of "her" son. Flashbacks reveal that Mavis, a side piece to a white male, was set up in this house her lover, but encountered problems when she became pregnant: the father could not afford letting anyone in Bon Temps (especially his wife) know who he'd been doing on the side, and first took care of the baby and then Mavis herself. All that was left was the creepy doll, which Mavis bought for her son, and Mavis herself, Barred from the Afterlife due to the Unfinished Business of wanting to hold her baby boy one more time. While Sheriff Bellefleur and Deputy Stackhouse set up a cordon, and Terry and Arlene fret, Jesús comes over, and his ability to read supernatural situations allows him to help Mavis explain herself. Jesús and Jason dig up the backyard, where they find the corpses of not only Mavis herself but also her infant son. Mavis cradles the boy one more time and then departs for the next world, thanking Jesús and Lafayette for their assistance.

Sam comes to talk to Luna, who tries to dissuade him: she has a jealous ex-husband. However, her daughter with the man, Emma, takes to Sam immediately. Meanwhile, Marcus warns his pack to stay out of the vampire/witch conflict, showing a level head and the ability to grasp the big picture. Both Debbie and Alcide come to respect him. Sam doesn't feel quite the same way, when he discovers — the hard way — that Marcus is also the jealous ex-husband. To distract Emma from the arguments, Sam offers to take her and Luna camping, allowing him and Luna to explore their attraction away from crazy exes and crazy skinwalking brothers. Marcus, meanwhile, comes to Merlotte's and demands Sam meet him; Tommy takes a message for him. When, that night, Sam shows up, Marcus has his mooks beat him; but one too many punches breaks the glamor, and they discover it's actually been Tommy the whole time. Alcide, who never liked this whole thing in the first place, scoops the boy up and takes him to the hospital.

Jessica officially breaks up with Hoyt, having realized that the monogamy he wants is simply not satisfying to her. Hoyt reacts poorly, kicking her out and commissioning Jason to bring her a box containing her possessions, upon which Hoyt has scrawled, "YOUR STUFF, MONSTER." (Jason blacks this out with Sharpie before delivering it.) Jessica is left with no one to turn to except Nan Flanagan, who is in town on official business, and who finds herself quickly cured of any desire to experience parenthood. However, when Jason arrives with the box of stuff, she also realizes she is free of attachments. The two get it on — in the back of Jason's pickup truck, for some reason, even though she's at Compton House and it's completely empty. Well, no one ever said either of these two were smart.

Compton House is empty because Nan Flanagan has organized a "Festival of Tolerance" event in Shreveport, and the entire household has decamped there. Antonia plans to unleash Eric there and turn the entire festival into a mockery. Meanwhile, Sookie is approached by Debbie — whom Sookie is skeptical of, given that the two had their Designated Girl Fight the previous season. However, Debbie has turned over a new leaf: she has accepted that Sookie is important to Alcide and attempts to offer any help Sookie needs. And Sookie needs help. The next we see Debbie, she's approaching Moon Goddess Emporium (Marnie's shop, Antonia's headquarters) to offer Antonia the allegiance of the Shreveport werewolf pack. It's a distraction: Sookie is infiltrating the store from the second floor, where she finds Eric the Pet Vampire. They are then cornered by Tara, who has a gun. Tara upbraids Sookie for her foolishness: "You always been stupid, but comin' here has gotta be about the stupidest shit I ever heard of. Are you even listenin' to me?" Sookie takes the hint: Tara is thinking at her, that all the humans here are actually Antonia's prisoners, and that Antonia's planning to take Eric to Shreveport, and that if Sookie were to attack right now, she'd have a chance to escape... A few "accidentally" missed gunshots later, Debbie drives Sookie to Shreveport, while Antonia brings Eric via her own transportation, locking the doors of the HQ so that nobody can leave. When Eric draws the vampire guards off, Antonia mind-controls them too. She then sends them directly at Bill. Only intervention from Sookie, whose Hand Blast powers turn out to Dispel Magic, save the day: she un-sorcels Eric, who returns to himself and helps turn the tide.

During the chaos with Mavis, Terry and Arlene found Andy's stash of V. Terry drags him out into the wilderness for an intervention, helping Andy confront his demons. However, he then makes Andy walk home. While he's out, Andy meets and is seduced by a faerie named Maurella.

Alcide drives Tommy back to Merlotte's: apparently, the whole skinwalking thing is Cast from Hit Points, and Tommy is dying. He wants to say goodbye to the only person who ever truly looked out for him. Afterwards, Sam goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge: with Alcide's help, he tracks down one of Marcus's mooks, but the man refuses to give up his boss's location. Sam also gets help from Luna because it turns out that Marcus has kidnapped Emma. That said, Emma finds it easy to get to a phone because Marcus is distracted with other priorities: he's trying to seduce Debbie. In Alcide's bed. (Alcide is momentarily confused when Emma calls Luna from his house.) While Luna escorts Emma out and Alcide keeps Debbie away, Sam and Marcus fight; Sam gets the upper hand, but leaves him alive, knowing that he has already proven how small and pathetic a man Marcus is. Marcus, as though to prove the point, grabs Sam's gun and opens fire. Alcide finishes the man. He then formally abjures Debbie, whom he believe has cheated on her. (In Alcide's defense, she definitely put herself in a bad position. In Debbie's defense, she had clearly declared her intention to stay with Alcide. That said, nobody was around to hear it but Marcus, and he sure isn't going to mention it.)

Back at Compton House, Bill has had enough. He declares that he, Eric, Pam and Jessica are going to strike directly at Moon Goddess Emporium and end the threat once and for all — regardless of Innocent Bystanders. Sookie, hearing this, storms out; she has no intention of letting Tara die. She recruits Jason, Lafayette and Jesús, who volunteers to be the Double Agent: he wants to get Antonia out of Marnie and rescue his friend. He is, therefore, both surprised and unnerved to discover that the evil mastermind is not Antonia, but rather Marnie herself: Antonia, who has Healing Hands and turned to necromancy solely to save her village from a plague, is appalled at Marnie's disregard for Innocent Bystanders, while Marnie, the Extreme Doormat whom no one took seriously, is pleased at her new office as Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass. She's still the most powerful witch in the state: she's erected Some Kind of Force Field around the HQ, and vampires can't breach it because it's sun-flavored. However, Holly and Tara have been combing through the archives and eventually find a spell that will let them take down the forcefield. Unfortunately, Marnie wove telemetry into the field: when they breach it, she knows, and she manages to capture Lafayette and Sookie as well, leaving only a confused Jason pacing outside. As her followers continue to agitate for desertion, Marnie eventually murders one of them in cold blood — though she continues to insist that it was self-defense, having a hard time accepting how far she has fallen.

Antonia makes one more attempt to escape, only for Marnie to bind her to her forcibly. However, Lafayette — himself a medium — sees it happen. This allows Jesús to solve the puzzle: he drags the follower's corpse back into the bathroom and has Lafayette help him (use it to) cast a spell that will sever Antonia from Marnie entirely. Marnie, meanwhile, offers to negotiate with the vampires, but things go sideways when Pam tries to use a RPG to breach the forcefield (it doesn't work). Marnie then casts a spell which begins dragging the vampires towards the forcefield, which will surely kill them. (Jason tries to drag them back, bless his soul.) Sookie, not pleased with this, uses her powers to break the circle, and Marnie traps her in an ever-shrinking ring of fire. This is when Jesús finally succeeds at casting the spell: Antonia leaves forever. Bill and Eric burst in, and Bill puts an end to Marnie with a MP5K. The threat is over.

In the denouement, Sookie finds she still can't choose between Bill and Eric, while Jessica and Jason dance around their mutual (and already-consummated) attraction. Meanwhile, Jesús confronts his guilt over helping to lead his mentor Marnie to her death; however, Lafayette reminds him that he also saved a bunch of lives. That being said, remember how Lafayette is a medium, and how that barely played into the final confrontation? (What if he had offered to host Antonia so that she could have a witch-off with Marnie?) This is a Chekhov's Gun, because all of this is the second-to-last episode of the season... And that episode ends with Marnie possessing Lafayette, ready to work her will on the world once more.

In the morning, Jesús figures out what's going on, but too late: Marnie takes him captive and then steals his magical powers by murdering him. She then takes Bill and Eric captive, takes them to the graveyard that separates Sookie's house and Compton House, and prepares to burn them both at the stake as revenge. Sookie, meanwhile, is having her own problems: it's the Halloween Episode and everyone is in costume, prompting flashbacks to the death of her grandmother. Holly points out that Halloween got its start as Samhain, the day when the veil between this world and the next is thinnest. This turns out to be of use when Tara informs them that Marnie is back: the warding spell Holly casts ends up summoning the souls of the dead — including Grams, who forcibly yoinks Marnie out of Lafayette. Marnie protests that she was finally being taken seriously for once — she wants to remain and complete her Unfinished Business — but Antonia reminds her that a(n un)life of eternal torment is no fun... And that leaving the vampires to that life is the best revenge Marnie can ask for. She and Antonia depart for the other side, with Gran reminding Sookie that there's nothing scary about being alone before heading out with them.

In the actual denouement, we clean up some loose ends.

• Jason confesses his attraction to Jessica to Hoyt, who doesn't take it well. One of the (formerly) most stable friendships of the show is broken. Jessica, meanwhile, confesses that she's looking for Friends with Benefits, unwilling to commit after just getting out of her very first long-term relationship.
• Lafayette mourns Jesús, but Jesús forgives him and reminds him that they aren't separated for good: "Dude. You're a medium. I'm dead. I'll always be with you."
• Sam buries Tommy, and is equally charmed and alarmed when Maxine Fortenberry names him (Sam) her honorary son. He is then cornered by weres who want to know what happened to Marcus Bozeman.
• Terry is ambushed by a pal from the Corps: Sgt. Patrick Devins (Scott Foley), in town to catch up. Terry is pleased to see him; Arlene is surprised to learn he exists.
• Andy, sober, shows up and asks Holly out on a date.
• The whole gang's here: Alcide gets a phone call that someone dug up a parking lot. He realizes that Russell Edgington has escaped. And Jason is surprised when a snappily-dressed Rev. Steve Newlin shows up at his door... And bares vampire fangs.

Sookie helps Eric and Bill heal by offering them her blood, one on each wrist. She then decides what to do about both of them. While each makes their case, and Bill magnanimously offers to stand aside, Sookie takes Gran's words to heart, and realizes she doesn't need either of them. Any hopes of a One True Threesome are dashed. The two, moping around Compton House in suddenly-mutual sadness, are then confronted by Nan Flanagan. She admits that she has been ordered to put the two of them to death for their handling of the necromancer affair... and that she realized she was next, quit, and left. As the Authority is a Resignation Not Accepted type, she is now on the run. She seems halfway to convincing Bill and Eric to join her... Until she threatens Sookie as collateral. Then they kill her, having — inadvertently — joined La Résistance one way or another.

At home, Sookie heads to the refrigerator, calling out to find out if Tara is home. The person who's home is Debbie — armed with a shotgun and demanding revenge. Tara makes a Diving Save; blood splatters out of her head. Sookie tackles Debbie and wrests the shotgun from her. Debbie, with the business end of the shotgun tucked under her chin, begs for mercy. Sookie doesn't give it. She then scrambles over to Tara, crying out in horror. The credits roll over her panicked screams for help.

Season 5

Picking up immediately where the fourth season ended, Lafayette and Sookie call for aid for Tara. The answer comes in the form of Pam, who is here on unrelated business. With no other recourse, Sookie has Pam turn Tara. As a result, Tara is alive... But the flipside is that she isn't exactly happy to be a vampire, given the immense amounts of trauma they have inflicted on her over the past four seasons, nor is she happy with Lafayette and Sookie for inflicting this choice on her. This culminates in Tara locking herself in a tanning bed — it's the ultraviolet component of sunlight which is dangerous to vampires — and trying to fry herself to death. Only Pam's intercession stops her.

Bill and Eric, cleaning up after the mess last season, overhear Sookie's cries for help, but decide not to intervene: time is of the essence, with agents of The Authority coming; and besides, didn't Sookie just dump them both last season / a few hours ago? It's too late for them; agents of The Authority are already waiting outside Compton House. But Bill figures out a way to sabotage the car they're in, which explodes; while the vampire driver survives, he's unexpectedly killed from behind by the other agent, Nora Gainsborough (Lucy Griffiths). She is a Chancellor of The Authority (a member of the cabinet), but also Eric's sister — Godric turned them both. She has made arrangements for Bill and Eric to escape into anonymity; Eric leaves Pam the bar, and Jessica becomes regent in Bill's absence. ...But agents of The Authority already have the drop on them.

Sam is being pursued by elements of Marcus's pack, led by Rikki Naylor (Kelly Overton), who want revenge for his killing of Marcus Bozeman; they also want his corpse back. Alcide saves him by explaining that he did it, and the two lead the pack to where Bozeman was stashed. However, when called upon to ritually feed on Marcus to accept his Klingon Promotion to Packmaster, Alcide refuses, despite the disapproval of Marcus's mother Martha (Dale Dickey), and the oldest member JD Carson (Louis Herthum). Martha continues to haunt Sam's life: she's Emma's grandmother, after all, and while Luna hopes Emma will turn out to be a shifter, she might also be a were, and if so she'll need someone to train her. All of this is complicated when Sam goes to visit Suzanne and Emory for dinner: he finds both of them shot to death on the porch. Not long after that, muggles wearing Barack Obama masks arrive at Luna's house and open fire. Emma escapes by going were; Sam and Luna aren't so lucky and are rushed to the hospital with gunshot wounds. Emma ends up with Martha, and Luna accepts, with some frustration, that she is safest there.

Debbie Pelt's car has been found abandoned a quarter-mile from Sookie's house. Naturally, Sookie lies about the situation, though Lafayette is frazzled to his last nerve in having to back her up. Alcide also takes up the case, commissioned by Debbie's parents; to him, Sookie tells the truth. Alcide gets Mr. and Mrs. Pelt off the case by lying about what happened to Debbie. This also clears the way for Alcide and Sookie to finally act on their long-Unresolved Sexual Tension... Though they can only do so when Sookie is roaring drunk, which ends with her vomiting on his shoes.

Sgt. Devins wants to talk to Terry about what remains of their fireteam: two of the three others are dead, and the last is off the grid. What's really suspicious is that the two dead ones were caught in cases of arson. They track down the last remaining soldier, Brian Eller, who is holed up in South Dakota, as Devins believes he is the arsonist. Eller claims that he is actually hiding from their actions in Iraq: on July 4th, the squad were getting drunk and high to blow off steam, when Iraqi civilians complained about them using a temple to do it. Words were exchanged, and then bullets when an Iraqi sniper opened fire; in the ensuing chaos, all the civilians were slain, with the last one cursing the Americans with her last breath. This woman apparently invoked an ifrit, an Islamic demon of smoke and flame — this is the cause of the arson, including the fire that consumed the Bellefleur home. (It wasn't Mavis.) Devins doesn't believe in this kind of superstitious nonsense, but the demon consumes Eller's hidey-hole, and Eller himself, as Devins and Bellefleur watch.

Bill, Eric and Nora are taken to The Authority's headquarters in The Big Easy, where they are interrogated by the head of The Authority, Roman Zimojic (Christopher Meloni), and his right-hand woman Salome Agrippa (Valentina Cervi). Roman has been aggressively pushing the "Friendly Neighborhood Vampire" mainstreaming agenda, but has run into opposition from the "Sanguinistas," a group of conservative vampires who worship the original vampire, Lilith, and see humans as little more than cattle. Salome, who during her mortal life became famous after some contretemps with a religious figure named John the Baptist, seduces both Bill and Eric to find out what their intentions are; both disavow any affiliation with the Sanguinistas. (It's Nora who turns out to be the Double Agent.) However, they are still to be executed for their actions concerning the necromancer. But before they were captured, Alcide managed to inform them that Russell Edgington had escaped... And Bill and Eric, who have by now established a working relationship as equals, offer to dangle themselves as bait for Russell in exchange for a stay of execution.

As last we mentioned, Jason had been visited by a now-vampire Rev. Steve Newlin. In addition to being turned, he has now come out of the closet, and wants to press his suit to Jason. Jason turns him down politely. Newlin turns out to now be a part of Roman's administration; he is now doing PR spin for The Authority, parroting the exact opposite sentiments that he did during his leadership of the Light of Life Church. (He also visits Jessica and offers to buy Jason off of her. Jessica retorts that she doesn't sell her friends.)

Bill and Eric realize they aren't going to be able to catch Russell by themselves; they need even more bait. So they visit Sookie, interrupting her (attempted) tryst with Alcide. She agrees to help them, and they track Russell down to an abandoned hospital. After a kerfuffle with some were bodyguards, they succeed at capturing Russell. However, it's all a False Flag Operation: while Eric believes Nora is the one who dug up Russell due to her Sanguinista leanings, the true mastermind was Salome, due to her Sanguinista leanings. When Roman attempts to execute Russell using a fancy smartphone-controlled gizmo, it doesn't work, allowing Russell — who is, after all, the oldest known vampire, having been turned before the time of the Roman Empire — to turn the tables and stake Roman.

JC Carson emerges as the primary candidate for leadership of Marcus Boseman's pack. Alcide challenges him, with help from Rikki Naylor. In general, JC wins: he's hopped up on V and he's interested in a level of savagery which Alcide (and Martha) derides but the rest of the pack seems fine with. However, they take some objection during the ritual challenge: JC announces that the leader of the pack will be the first one to hunt down and kill a college track star who has been kidnapped for the occasion. Alcide fights JC to let the boy escape, and JC gets the leadership spot... But begins to abuse his power by forcing his pack to take V. Alcide, fretting, retreats to a trailer occupied by his ailing father Jackson "J.D." Herveaux (Robert Patrick), to try and figure out what to do.

Hoyt falls in with some dudes. They turn out to be the Malevolent Masked Men behind the Obama masks; the news labels them a hate group, and they don't dispute it, modeling themselves on The Klan (only with masks of the current president instead of white hoods). To help Hoyt "get over" Jessica — and encourage him to become The Fundamentalist — they abduct Jessical and leave her, silvered, in a room with Hoyt and a gun with wooden bullets. Hoyt can't find it in himself to forgive Jessica, but he does help her escape. As he attempts to walk back to Bon Temps, he is kidnapped.

Terry insists on leaving his family to protect them. Arlene is sure he is off his meds, and she and Holly hire Lafayette to conduct a seance and convince both Terry and Patrick that the crazy Iraqi lady has forgiven them. Lafayette is doing a great job of this until the crazy Iraqi lady actually shows up. She declares that she will spare either Patrick or Terry... So long as the other is killed. Terry decides to offer Sgt. Devins a fair fight, but all that goes out the window when Devins abducts Arlene and holds her prisoner at Merlotte's. Since he has the only gun, it seems like Devins will win... But Arlene stabs him from behind with a pencil, and while he and Terry scuffle she gets the gun. As Terry holds his commanding officer, who gave him orders that condemned his entire squad to death, sees the crazy Iraqi woman one last time, encouraging him to do what is right. Terry shoots Devins, and the ifrit makes off with the corpse, leaving Terry and Arlene to look after their family.

Jason and Andy are taken by a local politician to the weirdest nightclub ever: "Hot Wings," which is in a nearby pocket dimension and is run by faeries. Here, Jason encounters Hadley, who has escaped to safety with her son; she accidentally lets slip that vampires killed Corbett and Michelle Stackhouse. (Jason and Sookie had been told that their parents drowned in a flood.) Jason takes it into his head to bring his parents' killer to justice; Sookie just wants to find out if it's true. She enters the nightclub with Jason, meeting not only Hadley but Claude Crane (Giles Matthey), who has taken over for the slain Claudine as Sookie's faerie godmother, as well as some of his remaining sisters (including Cadmilla Luddington in an early role). Claude explains that he was the faerie who helped Sookie and Earl escape Queen Mab's realm at the beginning of the fourth season, and that those fae who disagreed with the Queen's decree came here to make their own way. Claude's faerie magic helps Sookie enter a Pensieve Flashback of her parents' death, learning only two things: the vampire was named "Warlow," and her parents' bodies were found by Sheriff Bud Dearborne. She asks Dearborne if they might have been killed by vampires, and Bud admits that there was evidence to suggest it, though they did not interpret it correctly at the time. Sookie then receives a Tap on the Head from Bud's new girlfriend.

Sam has been using his Super-Senses to help Sheriff Bellefleur hunt down The Obamas, finding many more of them than expected. Luna also joins them, after accidentally skinwalking into Sam — leading Andy Bellefleur to be extremely confused when a second Sam walks in. They find the house where Jessica was kidnapped — Hoyt left during midday, promising to send help — but she is not able to explain much of the situation to them. However, they have found the website that The Obamas use, and they recognize, via distinctive clothing, that one of them is Sheriff Dearborne.

At his ex-wife's pig farm, Dearborne is preparing a ritual slaughter: he will feed both Sookie and Hoyt to the pigs (who, like their non-televized counterparts, will eat absolutely anything). However, the whole situation goes sideways when one of the pigs turns out to be Sam, who engages the Obama mooks hand-to-hand. Meanwhile, the Sheriff's department arrives. Dearborne refuses to stand down, and Andy is forced to shoot him, while Sam and Luna — now back to her original form and back in control of her shapeshifting — help round up the others. Sookie and Hoyt are saved. The Obamas are done for. However, Luna's ability to retrieve Emma is complicated when Russell and Steve Newlin visit JC's pack and Russell forces Martha to gift Emma to Steve as a pet werewolf.

After killing Zimojic and declaring her true allegiance, Salome invites all the vampires present — Nora, Eric, Bill, the remaining chancellors, Russell and Steve Newlin — to engage with The Authority's most holy of holies: a vial reportedly containing Lilith's blood. Salome invites them to drink, and Eric whispers aside to Bill, "It's vampire blood. We're vampires. It's not gonna do anything." One Gilligan Cut later and the entire party is wandering down the streets of New Orleans, stoned out of their minds. They break into a bar and slaughter the wedding party happening there; while they do, they hallucinate Lilith (Jessica Clark) returning in the form of a naked woman covered in blood. However, Eric is confronted by his conscience, Godric, who reminds him that this is wrong and begs Eric to save Nora from her fanaticism. Eric struggles with this as the episodes pass. Bill, on the other hand, seems completely committed; as Salome discusses how to reverse the mainstreaming agenda, it's Bill who suggests they bomb the only five TruBlood factories in the world, making the Vegetarian Vampire lifestyle impossible. Russell, meanwhile, is back to his obsession with daywalking; when Salome and the others refuse to support him, he strikes out on his own, with Newlin in support.

Hoyt gets Put on a Bus, maybe because he's become a truly awful person this season. He decides to take a job on an oil rig in Alaska, and before he goes, he asks for one last meeting with Jason and Jessica. He asks Jessica to glamor him into forgetting both her and Jason; tearfully, Jessica complies. Hoyt Fortenberry leaves Bon Temps for his new life. Meanwhile, Sookie consults with Maurella, now heavily pregnant, on a scroll she found under Gran's bed. It turns out to be an ancient fae contract promising the next Stackhouse daughter to a vampire named Warlow. That daughter is, of course, Sookie herself.

Bill has Jessica summoned to Authority HQ, where she is perturbed to find her father figure has become a Bible-thumping fundamentalist. Sam and Luna, having learned of Emma's fate, locate Newlin while he's on a PR junket and hitch a ride with him. And Pam gets in trouble: when the new Sheriff of Area 5, newly appointed, struts in and demands their fealty, Tara makes him shorter by a head, leading to Pam's arrest when she steps in to save her progeny from a grisly fate. Jessica makes stray observations that there seems to be Unresolved Sexual Tension between Pam and Tara. The stage is now set for a major confrontation with the Authority... and, more importantly, no one's in Bon Temps to stop Russell Edgington from making a play on Sookie.

Jessica solves this by demanding to be allowed back to Bon Temps, there to turn Jason. Once she gets there (and after Jason uses wooden bullets on the two vampire security mooks Bill sent with her), she explains the situation, and Jason and Sookie fall back on the nightclub. The Plan is put into motion: Jason stands guard over Sookie's Stack House with a shotgun, only for Russell and Steve Newlin to instantly glamor him into revealing Sookie's true whereabouts: the nightclub. There, the eldest faerie strides forth to do battle with Russell. She underestimates him grievously, and Russell drains her dry — gaining, amongst other things, the ability to see the magic entrance to the nightclub. He shrugs off a veritable hailstorm of Hand Blasts... But it's enough of a distraction: Nora has finally come to her senses and made an escape with Eric, and Eric arrives to stake a distracted Russell.

Martha shows up with Rikki, who is having an adverse reaction to the V: she has news of the further depredations of the Shreveport pack, including JD assigning the younger members for use as sex slaves. Alcide, his Heroic Resolve renewed, challenges JD a second time and, afterwards, declaring a newer and nobler direction for the pack. Meanwhile, Maurella hunts down Andy Bellefleur — remember, she is heavily pregnant, which Andy thinks is odd given that they got it on barely a week ago. He is explaining the situation to a disappointed Holly when Maurella unexpectedly goes into labor. She gives birth to four healthy baby girls — before walking off to leave them in care of their father, because apparently that's what Andy agreed to without reading the fine print.

At Authority HQ, things are going a bit Off the Rails: Bill begins seeing hallucinations of Lilith the naked woman covered in blood, telling him that he is The Chosen One who will lead vampires into a new era of global domination. It doesn't take long before he realizes that Salome is seeing the same thing, as are the remaining chancellor Mauve Shirts. Those Bill kills without breaking a sweat, but Salome is different: to her, he swears fealty. But the result is that the whole place is consumed by infighting, which makes it all the easier for Sam and Luna to sneak around. Sam hatches The Plan: Steve Newlin returns to take his dog for a walk. Since the existence of shifters is barely common knowledge — Bill has to brief the Security Mooks after he catches Sam — and the existence of skinwalkers still a secret, nobody but the audience realizes that it's Luna in disguise. Unfortunately, the escape attempt goes awry: "Newlin" is caught by the last Mauve Shirt Chancellor and roped into a press interview to do damage control after video leaked of Russell and Newlin (the real one) breaking into a fraternity house and slaughtering the inhabitants. Luna is still weakened by her stint as Sam, and she downshifts to her real form — before taking the opportunity to announce, live on television, that they are being imprisoned in New Orleans. The chancellor moves to attack, but is prevented by some quick thinking by Sam, who apparently has access to internet from a decade in the future: he was doing the Ant-Man Thanos Butt Theory long before it was cool. Of course, skinwalking is Cast from Hit Points, and Luna begins to vomit blood.

Eric convinces Sookie to help him (try to) snap Bill out of his religious obsession. She still cares for him, but even more than that, Tara is asking on behalf of Pam, and Sookie owes Pam. So Eric, Nora, Tara, Jason and Sookie set out, armed to the teeth with stakes, crossbows, wooden bullets and more (Sookie even has an M4 Carbine, though she never once uses it). Jason holds the lobby, Guns Akimbo, while Nora and Eric disable the security systems and Sookie and Tara free Jessica and Pam... and Tara and Pam immediately start kissing. (Sookie: "Oh, okay." Jessica: "I Knew It!") Pam and Jessica then escort Nora, Jason and Tara out of the building, but Sookie and Eric stay behind to go after Bill.

Bill doesn't need help: he's staying with Salome while she ritually ingests all the remainder of Lilith's blood. Of course, Bill planned ahead: the stuff in the ceremonial vial is a fake, laced with silver, while he kept the real deal for himself. Bill stakes Salome; Eric and Sookie arrive right as he opens the vial of Lilith's actual blood. None of their warnings or protests make a difference, and Bill drinks all the remaining Lilith blood. He then explodes into Ludicrous Gibs.

...only to re-emerge from the pool of blood as a naked man, covered in blood, ready to kill whatever's in front of him.

To Be Continued...

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