So just as Warlow was coming back into our dimension, Jason was taking potshots at the mysterious stranger -- who immediately pulls a j/k and explains that he is the Stackhouses' quote "Fairy Grandfather," Niall. After some recon on the upstairs bathroom portal, he fills the kids in on the whole backstory: The faerie line from which they descend is royalty, the fae equivalent of Warlow's vampire provenance, and they've been at war for all time. The last time he returned was when Claudine sent him to a pocket hell; the time before that was when John Stackhouse dumbly sold Sookie to him.
It's only the morning since last episode (and thus last season), so Sookie's understandably a little late for work. While Arlene and Terry deal with Scott Foley's pregnant widow -- and Sam deals with a group of VUS kids led by a smarmily darling, privilege-checking sophomore (luckily played by Jurnee Smollett, who could've made even Lorena seem delightful) who wants Sam and all supes to come out once and for all -- She runs into an another halfling, the hot-as-hell Ben, and immediately begins her Sookie Dance of Conflicted Desire and Mixed Messages that usually gets boys killed. And although she doesn't ever make it to Merlotte's, she does learn a valuable lesson from Niall about turning herself into a magical nuclear bomb.
Lafayette and Emma are getting along famously, but of course the wolfpack shows up to ruin everything, knocking the shit out of stupid Sam -- much to the watching VUSers' outrage/pleasure -- and taking her home where she belongs. He makes some valid points about Luna's dying wishes, but ultimately Lala and Emma can't save him from the ass-beating he's constantly asking for.
The gun Tara was shot with is formerly secret US anti-vamp tech, wherein the bullet lodges and then emits UV rays, cooking the vamp from the inside out. (I guess this will work even in this season, where vampires just like to hang out all day not gettin' the Bleeds at all, just hanging out and talking about how they're feeling super fine in the daytime.) Eric eventually gets it out and heads off to yell at Governor Burrell, so -- as Nora's giving Pam an unbelievably sweet pep talk about Eric's love for her -- Eric bluffs his way into a meeting and attempts to pretend he's a wildlife enthusiast just long enough to glamour the Governor out of his pogrom. When Burrell shows off his anti-glamour contact lenses, Eric realizes he's going to have to come in at another angle: Namely, mesmerizing and kidnapping the Governor's lovely daughter.
Mixed throughout, we get some vague info on the Billith situation when his possession last week by three seeming Liliths turns out to be more of a transdimensional visit to a "no place" where he and a cleaned-up Lilith can spout inanities at each other. While in the real world Bill's bloodbending hookers and sucking out their blood through their faces, causing Jessica to fall on her knees and pray sweetly for (and kinda to) Bill and the rest of the cast, out in the no-place Lilith's explaining that things are coming to a head in a whole new apocalyptic way we've never seen before: He's experiencing the pain of all vampires (à la witch Marnie), but from the future -- including a future in which Jessica, Tara, Eric and the rest are put into a literal gassing chamber and burnt up alive.
Fast-moving, with a lot of nice little character moments -- Sookie being adorable, Nora's humble kindness in the face of Pam's waning shittiness, Lala and Sam as Emma's parents, Eric's sexy impression of a dorky southern birder, Jessica's complex relationship with each and all of the entities involved in Billith -- and some good signs of what's to come. Lilith's top-heavy portent seems a little pointlessly oblique (RIP, Elder Faerie!) at this point, but the revelation of Billith's tripartite nature and prophetic clairvoyance is probably enough for a single episode anyway, if you weren't expecting any of it. And of course, Niall taking the wind out of the sails of Jason's madness has already improved the season remarkably, so it'll be good to see where that goes.
Week: Bill works the prophet margin while Emma's presence divides the Pack and Niall continues preparing the Stackhouses for their inevitable meeting with Warlow. Maybe Tara will actually talk or be a person or something, but I'm sure nobody really cares either way at this point.
PREVIOUSLY
Sam decided he was Emma's dad and then immediately handed over to Lafayette to take care of, which is a very Sam set of things to do. Louisiana declared war on vampires, but the Governor is secretly trying to recreate TruBlood's corporate infrastructure for some nefarious reason. Packmaster Alcide continues slumming it with his werewolf pals. Eric gave Sookie back her house now that he can't own things, but her bigger problem is her arranged marriage to a primordial vampire named Warlow. Jessica's backing Bill up while he figures out what being God really entails, and Jason met some old creepy man and nearly crashed his old creepy car.
NOW
While Sookie's Warlow contract glows in fairy language on her bedside table, he crawls wetly back from the pocket hell where Claudine sent him after he murdered the Stackhouse parents: Onto that bridge again, pulling himself into our dimension, looking like Rob Zombie.
JASON
The creepy old who vanished when Jason tried to shoot him reappears instantly in front of the screeching car, fairy-blasting it with his magic hands. Jason does not pick up on the magical faerie magic right away, and jumps out ready for round two, but before he can shoot the man, regrettably, he says this: "I'm your fucking faerie grandfather!"
Jason: "So it's going to be one of those episodes, then."
Niall: "I've been watching over you your whole life. Very, very poorly."
Jason: "Prove it!"
Niall: "Remember when you broke your finger as a child? I didn't do shit about that. Remember that time you got molested and it fucked you up about sex? I watched silently while that went down. Remember when you won a football game?"
Jason: "Football!"
Niall: "I had nothing to do with that either. All in all, I have been exactly as helpful throughout your life as I will continue to be in this whole episode."
Jason: "Okay, why didn't you say any of this? I thought you were going to perv out."
Niall: "It is because I am useless, and because I wanted to know if you were a halfwit."
Jason: "Could you not just tell that right away? By the way I wandered bloody out into the road in the middle of the night, and hitched a ride with the first freak that drove up?"
Niall: "Yes, but I had to be sure. Now, about Warlow."
Jason: "Are you going to tell me how to fight him?"
Niall: "Nope."
Jason: "How he can be defeated?"
Niall: "He can't."
Jason: "What he is?"
Niall: "I could but I'm not going to. Get back in the car. We have a lot of nothing to do."
Niall: "Nope."
Jason: "How he can be defeated?"
Niall: "He can't."
Jason: "What he is?"
Niall: "I could but I'm not going to. Get back in the car. We have a lot of nothing to do."
FANGTASIA!
Eric: "Why is Tara screaming?"
Pam: "They shot her with magical sun bullets! I don't know what to do!"
Eric: "Have you tried breaking a beer bottle and shoving the broken glass inside her body?"
Pam: "That hadn't occurred to me, no."
It works.
Nora: "Do you think these magic sun bullets are the kind of thing General Cavanaugh was talking about, in that episode where he showed up for three seconds and said DARPA had special vampire weapons and then before he could explain, you murdered him?"
Eric: "Probably, but last season sounds really dumb when you say it like that."
Pam: "Coming out of the coffin was a good idea when we had TruBlood, even though that was mostly a PR lie to keep us safe. Now, we're fucked."
Nora: "Yeah, sorry about that. We were in a drug cult at the time."
Pam: "I didn't realize 'I was on drugs' was a valid excuse all of a sudden."
Nora: "Okay, valid, but Eric and I are more worried about the Bill situation."
Eric: (Demonstrates this by being a dick to Nora and also to everybody.)
CASTLE COMPTON
Jessica: "Bill, why are you screaming and acting up?"
Bill: "All of these Liliths zoomed up in me! It is confusing! And then also I can feel the pain of every vampire that ever had a loosely historical bad thing happen to them. Like one guy getting set on fire, or somebody getting dragged behind a truck!"
Jessica: "White guilt. It comes for us all."
Bill: "The important thing is that all civil rights are exactly the same and all minorities are exactly the same thing and we can pretend they're all the same."
Jessica: "Isn't that kind of the precise opposite of how this show started out?"
Bill: "Ah would be lying, Princess, if Ah didn't admit this show has become less sophisticated in the interim. Now if you'll excuse me, Ah must have a coma."
LILITH FAIR
Bill: "Where are we, Liliths? How come it is sunny?"
Liliths: "We are bringing you to real Lilith. We're just handmaidens."
Bill: "How come you're all covered in blood in your giant '70s bush?"
Liliths: "It's like a uniform. Our bloody merkins are the paper hats of this drive-thru."
Lilith: "Thanks, Liliths! Turn back into bloody mist in this sunny forest clearing now."
Bill: "Actual Lilith? Why are you suddenly not all bloody and naked? Where are we?"
Lilith: "You can still see my bush through this dress, though. Some other dimension or something."
Bill: "Am I Bill Compton, or God, or what?"
Lilith: "Kind of."
Bill: "Are you gonna explain one goddamn thing to me about any of this? Please?"
Lilith: "No, but it's going to take a whole hour."
SOOKIE
Arlene: "Sookie, why are you at home dreaming about fairy documents?"
Sookie: "Because it's only just now the morning from last year's finale and I am tired."
Arlene: "Some of us don't have the luxury of blah blah blah."
Sookie: "Okay Arlene, I'll come in if you stop screeching at me like a harpy."
Arlene: "Screeching like a harpy is 100 percent what I am about. Come to work!"
WORK
Terry: "Oh look, it's Patrick's pregnant wife?"
Arlene: "Who is Patrick again?"
Terry: "He was that guy. From with the smoke monster. I guess he died or something."
Arlene: "We'd better go tell her that he left her and she's never going to see him again."
Widow: "Thanks for cheering me up."
Arlene: "I married a serial killer and then a PTSD head case, so I know about disappointing husbands. The important thing is that your life is over, and you need to go away now."
Widow: "I don't even really see the point of me showing up at all. We all want to pretend that the Smoke Monster never happened, sure, but so then why have this entire scene that just blatantly illustrates that fact?"
EN ROUTE TO MERLOTTE'S
Sookie hears a man groaning in the underbrush and, to underscore the point that she doesn't need any nonsense in her life, she just keeps walking. Like a non-psychopath would do, you know, if they heard a person dying in a literal ditch but they were already late to work. Finally, Sookie remembers that she's not human garbage, and obviously stops to render aid.
Ben: "I am hot as hell, a psychic half-faerie like you, and I have fallen prey to the vampires who can smell my faerie blood and no longer have TruBlood holding them back."
Sam: "College is a very exciting time in a young person's life."
LILITH FAIR
Bill: "What the fuck are you even talking about?"
Lilith: "A tyrant is rising. It is the beginning of the end. You must complete my work."
Bill: "Can I get like one proper noun in this bitch?"
Lilith: "You proved yourself worthy when you won the battle for my blood."
Bill: "Am I God?"
Lilith: "God made me as vampire, and Adam and Eve as human. I am worshiped as a God -- as some may come to worship you as a God -- but there is no God but God."
Bill: "...And Mohammad is His prophet. WTF are we even doing."
CASTLE COMPTON
Jessica: "Bill, since you're still in a coma I thought maybe you should have some lunch. Since in this season we can just stay awake all day like it's no big deal, and all."
Bill: Coma.
Veronica: "Hey, y'all! I'm Veronica, I'm like a hooker but with blood."
Jessica: "You aren't for me, you're for my Dad. He's over there being in a coma."
Bill: Coma.
Veronica: "You know what this reminds me of is Hugh Hefner back when I was a regular whore. Let's prop him up and see if we can get something going."
Bill: Coma.
Jessica: "Bill, please eat though, okay?"
Bill's autonomous nervous system maybe -- I think it's a Holy Trinity situation and Wild-Animal Bill is one-third of the whole, like Lilith is the Father and Bill is the Son and this Wild Thing is the Holy Ghost equivalent, but of being a vampire; it's important to say that I have no evidence for this belief whatsoever -- suddenly goes bloodbender on the hooker, and breaks her bones walking her around to where his sightless eyes can see her, and then telekinesises her into a crumpled Capri Sun of a lady, and all the blood of her body shoots out of her and into his mouth. It's tidy, for everybody but Veronica; even the flexible and compassionate Jessica is freaked the fuck out by this murderous display.
Dear Bill Compton, please come out of your coma. I know that Anne Rice decided that vampires just sitting there doing nothing is a very interesting and scary thing for vampires to do, but guess what: Anne Rice is a crazy mess of a person. So.
SOOKIE & BEN
Sookie: "Our skin sparkles and sparks when we touch each other, isn't that awesome and weird and super gay?"
GOVERNOR'S MANSION
Eric konks a nerdy flack from the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, who has a (nighttime?) meeting with the Gov, and even though they are opposite sizes and shapes, he steals his clothes for a nerdy disguise, including glasses! Get it, because Eric. I mean, I guess I can see why this is funny, I just don't care anymore. He lulls the Governor into talking to him about whooping cranes:
Governor: "You'll forgive me for not having read your proposal, but I have been consumed with this vampire business."
Eric: "Good job with that, by the way. Takes a man of real vision to take a stand."
Governor: "[Instant racism, once given the go-ahead.]"
There is a story, which does kinda sound true, about some kids that got turned at a pizza joint and went home and killed their parents, told with the sort of horror you might hear in a story about how Gloreen's nephew has started wearing his pants so low you can see his underwears, and Eric's finally had it.
Eric: "Guess they were just trying to survive, those little baby vampires. Just like the whooping crane..."
Burrell: "Right but if whooping cranes posed an actual threat to the populace, we'd have to wipe 'em out. Right?"
Eric: "You could try. But they have been known to defend their territory. They charge their attackers..."
Burrell: "Still. No match for a hunter! But anyway, you're acting super creepy and aggressive about this so why don't we wrap it up."
Eric leans way over the desk and glamours him, having worked his way closer all this time: "Oh, I'll tell you what you can do, you sanctimonious sack of shit. You will stop your persecution of vampires. You will rescind your order to shut down vampire-run businesses. And you will prosecute all human-on-vampire crime to the fullest extent of the law. As a matter of fact, you now love all vampires..."
But guess what, he's wearing magic contact lenses that keep you from getting glamoured, so he summons guards and laughs at Eric getting silvered, and explains again about the sun bullets, and points out how dumb the Authority was for blowing up their government liaisons and TruBlood factories and governing body in quick succession, and he tells his guards -- note, because he only says it once -- to take Eric to "the Camp." (Which again, equating minorities is the most privileged possible thing you can do, so gross me out already, but I admit it makes sense with the worldbuilding -- but also most of all, I hope that Sarah Newlin is the Kommandant of the Camp so we can call it Camp Anna Camp, or even better, Anna Camp Camp.)
HOME
Jason: "Sookie! Meet Niall, our faerie grandfather."
Sookie: "Sometimes I worry that this show is stupid. Can I cook some food for you men? Didn't make it to work, but since we're all sitting here in my house I own, might as well."
Jason: "Grandpa can go back and forth! It's nutty! He's been tracking Warlow like Bubba Fett [no], like an intergalactic bounty hunter... Are you possibly from outer space?"
Niall: "Ugh. Anyway, when you quote 'channeled nature's memory' on the bridge with Claude, it drew him out."
Sookie: "Nice job actually explaining something for once. Gonna keep that up?"
Niall: "For as long as I can, so don't interrupt."
And thus begins the download: Warlow has been obsessed with Niall's royal bloodline for literally thousands of years, because they are 'the Original Fae," whatever that means -- I guess it make Niall the faerie version of Warlow? -- Niall's king of the tribe, which makes Sookie a Literal Fairy Princess, but not Jason because he's not even special enough to be a werepanther (or is special enough just being Jason, is how I would prefer to think of it). Warlow murdered Niall's parents and their entire village, leaving Niall an orphan -- Jason digs this part of the story -- and then after thousands of years, he got John Stackhouse to promise Sookie to Warlow. (Are we done? We are not done.) Hundreds of years after that, the Stackhouses got murdered and Warlow got blasted to a "dark realm" by Claudine, which is where he stayed, until Claude "helped." Rendering most of last year's "faerie heritage" storyline moot, if not outright doomful, in retrospect. But there is even more!
"There is a power within the fae of our bloodline, a secret that has been passed down through generations. We can channel our light into a single ball of energy that, when released, will go supernova, killing any vampire it touches. For you, this will be a last resort. Because you are only part fae, you can only use it once. And after that, you'll be fae no longer. Understand?"
Let's practice. But if you could stop saying mortifying Sam Merlotte shit, that would be really nice. We're not yet to the Supernatural level, are we?
Niall: "Manifest your light, then let it reabsorb into you. Concentrate, pour in all your love, all your pain, all your secrets, hopes, dreams. And feel how the light holds you."
Sookie: "It's like the sun!"
Niall: "Sookie, it's more powerful than the sun."
So I guess we're done making sense for the night. Did you "smell me go into survival mode"? Because I did. Well, Niall, it was a good run.
MEANWHILE
An entire scene where Eric is like, "Stop being so racist about vampires!" and the guards are like, "No!" and then he flies into the air because he doesn't feel like going to vampire death camp. All that suspense from the Governor scene, and he just says fuck it and flies away. Do you see what I'm saying? After easily thirty-five minutes of exposition -- already annoying in an episode of people speaking almost entirely in emoji and ellipses -- it's just like, "And then he flew away, okay? What a relief, right?"
He doesn't go far, though. Later on he watches the Governor's daughter take out her magic contact lenses and then appears at her window and glamours her -- her last words, fantastically enough, are "oh shit" -- so now he has the Governor's daughter.
SAM'S HOUSE
Sam: "Lafayette, how is it going raising somebody's child I kidnapped?"
Lala: "I'm watching a competitive cooking show and she is asleep. We are both covered in gay pride stuff."
Sam: "Thanks for doing the thing I don't have the wherewithal to do, that I volunteered myself for."
Lala: "It's okay, I don't deserve my own storyline. Listen, why are you being so paranoid?"
Sam: "I am afraid the real family of this child I kidnapped will come get her."
This happens.
Martha: "Can I please have my granddaughter now?"
Sam: "No, you can't."
Alcide: "Sam, I'm sorry that Luna died! Do you need a hug?"
Sam: "No, I need a fight! Because stop asking about Emma!"
They fight.
VUS, randomly lurking in the bushes: "This is amazing! I love minority-on-minority violence. Instagram that shit! Social justice forever!"
Sam's Point: He doesn't have one. If you think about it, he rarely does. He's super cute, but he's generally wrong about just about everything.
Martha's Point: The government just found out about shifters, so the Feds are going to come put Sam and Emma in weirdo jail. Also, how is any of this shit Sam's problem.
Alcide's Point: By the vaguest most tenuous thread, you can see how 1) Marcus Bozeman's Pack 2) becoming JD Carson's Pack and 3) falling under Russell's old Nazi drug-cult spell 4) led to Emma getting kidnapped once 5) he hooked up with Steve which was offensive in every possible way including this one and then 6) taken to the Compound where 7) stupid Luna and Sam got themselves jailed up and 8) Luna ended up outing herself and then puking her guts up 9) leaving Emma with only most of her family still intact. However, that ignores the fact that Marcus and JD are both super dead and Alcide, who is great, is now Packmaster, so that's just kind of rude at this point to bring up. Alcide didn't join any Nazi wolf cult, Alcide isn't on the V (that we know of), and Alcide is dedicated to making the Pack a good place for everybody including kids.
Maybe Bill, by accomplishing the impossible thing every single character keeps trying to do -- flip the whole Self over; become the thing you're repressing and thereby own the whole of creation -- has done it. From there time is all one thing, for starters. Elder knew it, that's why she was so hard to talk to. Existing outside of time is the opposite of what vampires and immortals experience: It's closer to what the shifters or the weres do, but all-encompassing. Infinity to their zero.
(I think this is the main difference from the various Fae dimensions we've visited, where time runs at variously different rates, and the pocket hell of Warlow, which seems to be the same: Lilith Fair is no place, no time, because it's everywhere and everywhen, and by partaking in this divinity at least one of Bill's selves is able to move around in the superstructure and see things from later. Which in turn is what makes his social justice visions different from Marnie's experiences with Antonia's propaganda, even though they gave the impression of being similar at first: Ghosts keep doing the same shit over and over because they can't help themselves; like the ifrit, they stay mad about shit that is already over with because they are just thoughts without bodies. This is about being able to reach backward, from the future to the present, to save everyone at once: To ensure we all go together, when we go.)
It's a show that's always excelled at playing those two levels against each other, in its own creative way: The Elder Faerie, infinity coming to us as an addled striptease. Maryann Forrester, a messiah of abundance gone tawdry, driven mad and pathetic by immortality in a tainted world. Russell on the news, that was a fairly religious experience. Miss Jeanette invented it, and was among the best before she died. Even that old locative symbolism of the graveyard between the Stackhouse and Compton houses, that eventually erupted into Faerieland. Even V, remember fucking on V and not knowing whether it was under a rainbow or in the garbage?
"When light and dark collide, our salvation is at hand."
It's something I've tried to track from the beginning, because it's the part that interests me: That in a show dedicated to representing even the most outlandish things in the most physical, often trashy way, there's something greater -- something transcendent, something that manages the impossible maybe -- revealed. The first time Pam met Jason, it was a long time ago, almost five years ago, before Maryann and well before Lilith, but it pertains: