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."
Sookie: "You should go to a hospital!"
Ben: "Human hospitals don't understand faerie bodies!"
Sookie: "That's dumb, I've been in the hospital on this show several times. I guess the only logical response is to forget work and take you to my house and give you a sponge bath. That's the only thing that makes sense."
Ben: "You look like an old girlfriend of mine."
Sookie: "You clearly do not know the death, destruction, and literal genocide my love life spreads everywhere it goes. Even just saying that has opened your life up to a world of pain. You better enjoy this sponge bath, because it is probably the last nice thing that will ever happen to you."
MERLOTTE'S
Arlene: "Are you hipsters? I've never seen hipsters before."
Hipsters: "We're here from Brooklyn, Vermont, Silver Lake and Austin!"
Arlene: "And what is your business in Bon Temps?"
Hipsters: "To harass minorities!"
Arlene: "I feel you on that."
Hipster: "No, the other way. We want to harass them to make ourselves feel better about ourselves, not make them feel worse. They don't really matter at all, to our goals."
Sam: "Hey Lafayette, how's it going raising that stranger's child that is related to neither of us?"
Lala: "You know, I'm super gay so basically we're just doing campy gay stuff."
Sam: "Gay men are essentially tween girls, or so I've always thought."
Lala: "It's easier to think of us that way than treating us like men, because then our opinions would actually matter, and that would fuck evvvvverything up."
Sam: "Just keep being an accessory to my heterosexual story of Luna in a refrigerator."
Jurnee Smollett-Bell: "Are you Sam Merlotte? Can I bend your ear about how you should act, as a minority? I'm Nicole, I'm just a child but I think I know everything."
Sam: "Actually no, that would not be pleasant."
Nicole: "Just listen while I explain your life to you, okay?"
Sam: "Where the fuck do you get off?"
Nicole: "Are you questioning my non-supe privilege?"
Sam: "I guess I am. You seem to use these words like weapons."
Nicole: "Because I have a black grandparent, and I am a woman."
Sam: "What does any of that have to do with telling me how to live my..."
Nicole: "Stop being so racist and misogynist and do exactly what I say!"
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?"
Ben: "That is what we are going to be all about, I can already tell."
Sookie: "I know you didn't ask, but can I unload on you about how I don't want to be a faerie anymore?"
Ben: "Why would you randomly tell me that?"
Sookie: "Mostly for a scene towards the end of the episode, not really for you."
Ben: "I should go. You are a bummer and making no sense, you nearly left me to die in a ditch, and I think whatever kindness and compassion you've shown me -- while lovely -- was probably the last you've got in you, based on your swiftly returning selfishness."
Sookie: "Nope, I got one more thing in me. Go to this clearing where Russell died, there's a faerie cabaret there where you can go live."
Did you know it is called 'Hot Wings'? Isn't that so stupid?
THIBODEAUX FIELD
Andy: "Maurella, you come to this empty field from Hot Wings right now and get our babies! They keep growing up and requiring less and less constant care, which for some reason stresses me out! I don't know how to be a good father!"
SOOKIE'S HOUSE
Jason: "I guess we just missed Sookie."
Niall: "I guess I can't tell that two half-faeries were just in this house a second ago."
Jason: "Let me take you to the upstairs bath, where Warlow's face happened."
Niall: "Oh, this particular dimension? I will just go there real quick."
(He does, and Jason tries to follow -- adorably knocking into the opposite wall, of course -- and then he comes back. Who knows how long he was there, due to time and fairy things like time.)
Jason: "What happened? Was that a tiny hell in our bathroom? Did you just go to a tiny hell in our bathroom, and if so, can we talk about that because it is very interesting. It would be a very interesting conversation to have on this show, instead of all these conversations about things that should be interesting but are instead ignored so you can say shit like..."
Niall: "Yeah, I still don't feel like explaining anything."
Jason: "Exactly, like that. You know there's only ten episodes this season, right? You're allowed to say shit. You don't really have to save anything for the ride back at this point."
EN ROUTE TO HOT WINGS
Sookie: "Why are you in Bon Temps? Specifically, but in general why the fuck would you come to Louisiana at this precise moment in time?"
Ben: "Would you believe I'm just as dumb as you are? And possibly hotter? Hey, let's go on a date."
Sookie: "Yes! But no. But yes! But no. But okay! But no way! But maybe."
Ben: "What are you doing, there. Is that a stroke? Are you having a faerie stroke?"
Sookie: "No, it's just what I do to make everybody on this show fall in love with me all the time."
Ben: "With the exception of Sam and Alcide, that's vampires. Which makes it more about your precious fairy snatch than your odd behavior. But Sookie, I have a fairy unit of my own, plus I can read your actual mind. So your head games aren't going to work on me."
Sookie: "Fine. Then follow the signs to Thibodeaux Field, and that's where you will find, uh, 'Hot Wings.'"
FANGTASIA!
And so it was that the people led Lilith to the sun. And so it shall be again. As the blood ascends, two will become one. When light and dark collide, our salvation is at hand.
Pam in a pink track suit (!) pretends she has no time for Nora's bullshit, even when she gives her some fresh blood like it's coffee, but you can see she's taken an interest now that she's cooled down.
Nora, reading: "...The people..."
Pam: "Have you been up all day?"
Nora: "Yeah. This season that's totally fine. The people led Lilith to the sun..."
Pam: "Why do you keep saying that like it means something?"
Nora: "It's from the Vampire Bible. But it's been mistranslated!"
Pam: "What does that even... I mean, fuck it."
Nora: "Okay I have to go, because of something I don't feel like saying because that's this entire episode is just people acting portentous, but I do have something to say to you."
Pam: "I am being the least amount of prickly you can expect right now. Watch it."
"Eric loves you, you know. The only reason that he never told you he had a sister inside the Authority is because that knowledge could've gotten you killed. But I knew of you, he spoke of you often. And fondly. You're what he's most proud of."
By the end, they kind of like each other, and when Nora says she'll be back soon, Pam doesn't even bother commenting. I'm glad Pam isn't just a one-liner machine, I was really quite worried. But even just this scene has improved her over last year, and that's lovely. Maybe the track suits are the key.
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.
Now, I will always side with Alcide because he has good values and I will always side against Sam because he is fucking incompetent, but even accounting for those, this seems like a dumb-ass fight. Sam's reacting completely out of selfishness and misplaced honor, as usual and as always, which is fine except once again there's an actual child he is neglecting in order to do this little manhood performance. Like I will ever forgive him for what he put Tommy through -- one of the few things on this show that's ever actually gotten an emotional response out of me, to be honest -- and what, we're going to give him another shot at fucking up a perfectly darling kid? When he's still doing the same shit for the same reasons as he was way back in Season One? No way. Shift yourself into being a grownup, you idiot. Unleash the hounds, the actual hounds, knock Sam and Lala out, and get that baby. Which is what Alcide does.
CASTLE COMPTON
This is the highlight of the episode, FWIW: Jessica kneels at Bill's feet (far enough away that it's not really supplicatory; close enough that all the possible shades of meaning are included) and runs through all the things that could be happening: Is this parallel to a coma, like happened to her living great-aunt Matilda? Does "the pain of all vampires" to which he was opened before he shut down completely include Jessica's?
"Because I'm scared. It feels like the world is spinning out of control, and I have this terrible feeling out there it's just chaos and in here... I was raised on the human Bible, and then you gave me the Vampire Bible, and I don't know if I believe any of it, but... Are you Lilith? Are you God?"
He doesn't respond. Total God move.
When Bill gave her the Book of Lilith, it was not a good moment. It was the closest to her father from her other life that he's ever acted. But she did read it in good faith, I do remember that. And leave it to Jessica to skip past the boring stuff and right into the important parts: Not whether divinity has been made explicit by these things, not if a concrete God is necessary or what's happening; nor yet either whether there's a difference between Lilith and the God of Abraham, or any other expression of divinity. There is no God but God, but we spend a lot of time trying to split hairs about that. Even when it's actually untrue, like with the Big Three. Can you imagine? The simplest concept in the world, and we're so determined to complicate it that we'll actually ignore the historical facts themselves, and pretend that Allah and JHVH and Yahweh are up there, fighting, because it justifies our fractured understanding of life down here.
"Heavenly Father, I don't know the last time I prayed to You. I have been greedy, and lustful, and wrathful. I've killed people. I've lied. I've taken Your name in vain. I beg You for Your forgiveness. Please watch over my friends, if that's what they are. Please bless Jason. He's such a good man, and he's hurting, so bad. Please bless Sookie. I know she tried to kill You, but she's been good to me and she loves You. I know she does. And bless Eric, even in his anger and wrongheadedness. Bless Pam. Give her the courage to let happiness in. And bless Tara, that she may find whatever it is she's looking for. And bless Sam and Lafayette and Arlene, all the good people of Bon Temps. Even the werewolves. They know not what they do. And bless Hoyt, wherever he is. Watch out for him for me. And bless Bill. If You're him or he's You: Bless him. Please bring him back to me, I need him. We all need him."
As an early-days grab for the sense of an arc it comes off pretty desperate, but looking at it from another perspective helps: That this episode puts back together what last season tore apart, from concepts of religion and faith and fundamentalism and atheism, to characters stretched and bent out of all recognition, to a full-throated declaration that this season is connected to the ones that came before. In the words, which is why I reproduced it pretty much faithfully, you can see those desires: Pam finding a place in the world without her immortal daddy, Tara still searching, Jason in more pain than he's ever been in, Sookie just trying to do the right thing.
It's laid over a montage of everybody in their private stuff, the manipulation is visible, but as a declaration of purpose it's sufficient. And as a recontextualization of what we've seen tonight: That much like a finale is often a coda, with all the big business concluded in the penultimate episode, this season started with a bit of necessary moving-the-pieces into the story she's telling us now: That saints do the scariest shit the closer they get to God.
And so do the rest of us.
LILITH FAIR
All this, but also the thing the season so far seems pretty intent on investigating: The ruptures and discontinuities inherent in Bill's transformation itself. She talks about Sookie defying and betraying God -- at the same time she's talking to and about Vampire Bill -- in the same way Lilith and Bill keep floating the metaphor of divinity/profanity, Lilith/Bill, in their own conversation. She's praying to God, Heavenly Father, at the same time she's asking Daddy Compton to come home. And in this I think is the genius of what happened: An entire season promising an imminent God, an actual concrete Presence, has maybe delivered on that ambition.
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:
When we talk about sacrifice what we're talking about is the fact that there are things moving in the deep; leviathans and strange angels, older than time, twisting in the water. You can feel them when they move past you, or through you. You can even talk to them, make deals with them, because they're implicit in the sparks that light your skin up. You give them something, your pain or your blood or your pleasure, and they pay you back in power. Their passage deforms the universe, like Einsteinian ripples in the fabric and curves in dimensions you can't see -- but you can feel it.
My favorite description of them, the archetypes or Gods or characters in your dreams, whatever you want to call them, is Lynda Barry's: "And in my dream there was a creature. Not too friendly, not too mean. He closed my eyes and opened them." And of all the other things vampires signify, in this story, you must never forget that they are part of that deep magic: every one of them a leviathan, full of blood and demons and magic. So while Jason just made a serious social faux pas, an error in judgment during a specific time of political turmoil, he also just brushed past something that might as well be God's less lovely face.
It's my intuition that when Nora says "the People led Lilith to the Sun" is mistranslated, what she means is that Godric opened the way. That he got it half-right. And that when Sookie said he had to die because he was "the last hope for peace, and there is no hope for peace," she was more right than she knew. You don't want Godric to be wrong, because he's Godric, but he must be wrong for these people to get out of this story alive. You don't want Nora's vision of Lilith to destroy Eric's vision of Godric, but maybe that's just how it looked at the time. Maybe she was leading him, finally, to the sun.
Lilith: "You must save us. Save us all."
Bill: "How?"
Lilith: "You'll know what to do. Trust what you see."
The show implies she means the horrors, the things to come, the nightmares, the bigot abuses, the lynching. And maybe that's it, maybe "the blood ascends" and "light and dark collide" when there's an eclipse or something, and that's the best we can hope for. But something's pinging that says it's more than that. Understand that I am not ruling out the possibility that all of this is Robitussin bollocks. But I will keep thinking about it. It is going to be harder than some easy-riding cynicism to stop being so proud of him and what he's done, what he's becoming, after years of laughing at him every time he tried.
CASTLE COMPTON
Jessica's upstairs by the time Lilith brings him home, tuckered out after cleaning up what's left of ol' Veronica, but when she hears him -- on purpose or just with God power -- turn on the TV, she zooms back into his arms just in time to see his visions coming true.
Jessica: "You can see the future?"
Bill: "I can see the future."
And in that future, Tara and Eric and Pam and Jessica and the rest of them are rounded up like cattle, in prison jumpers, and the ceiling slides open, and they all burst into flame.
But you know what, I think it's going to be okay. What rises now is something better that that. He's got all the time there is, now.
WEEK
The VUS gets involved in a custody dispute that is none of its business, Steve Newlin finally has to look at what he made, Eric kidnaps a kid, Sookie learns more about Warlow's agenda and entertains a few unwelcome visitors, and Bill plays God in a few key ways.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Killing, Pretty Little Liars, Mistresses, True Blood, and Defiance for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love. A new short story, "This Is Why We Jump," appeared in this month's Clarkesworld Magazine.