After Saturday’s intense Comic-Con trailer, it was clear things in Bon Temps were about to get ugly. But this ugly? And this fast?
HBO’s True Blood has spent the first half of its sixth season in set-up: vampire god Bill (Stephen Moyer) seeking faerie blood to take down vamp-genocidal Governor Burrell (Arliss Howard), Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and his flock imprisoned in Burrell’s concentration camp, Terry (Todd Lowe) feeling murder guilt, and Sookie (Anna Paquin) getting the hots for faerie-vampire Warlow (Rob Kazinsky).
[Warning: Spoilers ahead for this week's True Blood episode "Don't You Feel Me."]
It all pays out in Sunday’s crazy episode six, which leaves behind two bodies and a new romance burning bright. The episode offers plenty to anticipate in this season and the just-announced seventh — as well as a pretty good sense of who Sook is eulogizing in that Comic-Con clip. Here are the highlights:
Vamp Camp
The high-stakes faceoff between Eric and Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten), brutally orchestrated by Newlins Steve (Michael McMillian) and Sarah (Anna Camp), does not go quite as planned. Pam and Eric begin hovering just long enough for viewers to ooh and ahh, share a look of epic vampire connectedness and then rocket to the arena’s gun turrets and stake the guards. All that was missing? A one-liner from Pam.
PHOTOS: 22 New Photos From 'True Blood' Season Six
Burrell and the Newlins, not pleased, orchestrate more revenge: A caged Eric watches as Burrell injects Nora (Lucy Griffiths) with a synthetic deadly vampire disease groan-inducingly dubbed Hepatitis V. Eric, in a rare moment of sentimentality, tells Vivian he loves her — before summoning Willa (Amelia Rose Blaire), who glamours a guard and breaks them all out into the compound.
Snooping around, they uncover Burrell’s master scheme. The governor is bottling Tru Blood on the premises — and slipping Hepatitis V into it.
Meanwhile, Jason (Ryan Kwanten) hilariously joins the LAVTF. His surprisingly smart plan: to infiltrate the compound and free Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll).
Warlovin’
Last episode ended with Sookie’s dad, possessing Lafayette, attempting to drown Sook. Warlow comes to the rescue, blasting the spirit out of Lafayette with some faerie/Sith lord light.
STORY: Comic-Con: 'True Blood' Cast Teases the Second Half of Season Six
Then Billith summons Warlow, but Sookie teleports them both to the faerie cemetery. Warlow demands to be tied up, fearing nightfall — then takes Bill’s former place as tortured Vampire With a Heart of Gold, telling Sook he “despises” his nature.
Sookie offers her neck to Warlow, then bites his and drinks for herself. They immediately have sex — awesome faerie sex, complete with burst of coital Fae light.
Shifter Standoff
Sam (Sam Trammell) and Nicole (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) take off with Emma, but after Nicole chews him out about the girl’s future, Sam finally returns Emma to her grandmother.
Alcide (Joe Manganiello) comes after him, but instead of killing him, banishes Sam from Bon Temps. Alcide’s tag-along father is proud of Alcide’s mercy, and they share an awkward father-son moment that culminates in Alcide muttering, “Whatever.”
Billith Rampage
Bill, realizing Jessica has been captured, induces a coma for another frustratingly cryptic chat with Lilith (Jessica Clark). He eventually understands that Burrell has Jessica, so he downs his supply of Warlow blood — and steps into the sunshine.
That’s where it gets real. Striding through the governor’s courtyard, Bill nonchalantly takes a hail of bullets from his guards, then telepathically forces the guards to execute each other. The governor gives Bill a supervillain speech about annihilating vampire-kind, and Bill responds by taking a bite into Burrell — and then rips his head off. He deposits the drippy cranium at the foot of the governor’s statue of himself. That’s that for Burrell, in the sickest True Blood death since Sam-as-insect flew into a vampire's mouth and blew her head up.
And Vamp Camp’s next in command could only be Ms. Newlin, right?
Faerie Naming
After the slaying of three of Andy’s (Chris Bauer) faerie daughters, the sheriff’s storyline returns to cute comic relief.
The remaining girl, ”number four,” wants four names — one for herself and one for each sister. And those names are ... Adeline Braylynn Charlaine Danika. She suggests the last, and Andy replies that he was just thinking the same thing. “Daddy, how do you think I picked it?” the mind-reading girl sweetly chides.
Goodbye Terry
It happens as Terry planned last episode, but with a heartbreaking twist.
Arlene (Carrie Preston), suspecting Terry may kill himself, has a vampire glamour Terry into forgetting about the war and the Marines — and, consequently, about his request that an old Marine buddy fatally shoot him.
What follows is a glimpse of Terry at his best, happy, enthusiastically cooking at Merlotte’s, cuddling on the couch with Arlene. So when the gunshot fells him and Arlene, cradling his head as he dies, tells him to “Think about all the joy in your life,” it’s painful.
A wrinkle: Before he is glamoured, Terry leaves Lafayette a key to a safety deposit box. Sure, the box could be empty, as the plotline would then be, but it seems unlikely.
Best Line of the Night:
“There’s a town consensus about what kind of girl I am.... They call me a danger whore.” -Sookie Stackhouse
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