True Blood Series Finale Wrapup: Sookie's Husband Revealed

And lo, HBO’s ‘True Blood’ hath not gone gently into that good night, but rather stumbled through its series finale in a shower of goopy blood that made up its final installment “Thank You.” Fans of the 7-year HBO drama proved understandably divided by Sookie Stackhouse’s ultimate end, but what does showrunner Brian Buckner have to say of the finale’s major twists? Who was that guy at the head of the table? Why wasn’t Eric around more? All these answers and more, straight from the ‘True Blood’ series finale!

[SPOILERS: The below article contains spoilers from ‘True Blood' season 7, as well Charlaine Harris’ The Southern Vampire Mysteries' series.]

‘True Blood’ is no more. Long live ‘True Blood.’ And while Bill may have bit the big one, Sookie Stackhouse and co. seemed to get surprisingly happy endings by the hour’s lapse, with yet another time jump revealing new families for Anna Paquin’s leading lady and her brother Jason. Even the supporting cast put in appearances with a Thanksgiving feast, while Eric and Pam counted their millions offscreen from the “New Blood” cure harvested off a still-living Sarah Newlin.

From what showrunner Brian Buckner told various outlets in post-show interviews, very little of the initial vision for ‘True Blood’’s end wound up changed from page to screen, while past showrunner Alan Ball had left only vauge ideas in the way of direction for the ending. Instead, Buckner espoused (via TVLine) that they’d decided to let Sookie proactively keep her “otherness” by holding onto her Faerie light, and still find a happy ending with an anonymous beau after Bill’s end

The idea was that we wanted Bill to be correct when he said that Sookie could have a normal life — the twist, of course, being that she chose to keep her powers and persevere. [Author Charlaine Harris] took a lot of abuse for choosing Sam [in the books]; we felt like it was irrelevant who Sookie wound up with. What we wanted to know was that she was happy and living the live that she wanted to lead. To introduce a stranger in the last five minutes of the finale wouldn’t have made any sense. … We basically cast the man with the best arms from our stunt crew.

For those wondering why certain supporting characters got short shrift by the finale’s end, Buckner explained that they’d only had so much time to wrap up Sookie and Bill’s story, while characters like Sam or LaFayette had largely found their happiness already. Producers weren’t sure how much time they’d have fan-favorite Alexander Skarsgard to begin with, and even Tara Buck’s Ginger wound up relegated to a deleted scene at Fangtasia (per Zap2It). Buckner also explained away Rutina Wesley’s bizarrely tangential final season story arc as Tara:

One of my chief complaints about the show we were doing is that we continually promised jeopardy and we never delivered on it. I actually didn't know what to do with [Tara and Lettie Mae] for 10 more episodes. The writing group chose to tell a story about the redemption of Lettie Mae.

So, is that really all for ‘True Blood’ after 7 years? What about that musical we’d heard of, or the possibility of a movie? It’s early to say yet, but Buckner seemed more than happy to joke about the prospect of a spinoff following Eric and Pam as billionaire heads of a multinational corporation. For now at least, Buckner remains content with the ending as is, telling Vulture:

It might be fun to do the last season over again. But you make choices. I'm sure it could be told a different way. But we can't break stories from fear of how people are going to be disappointed. And the show had to end somehow. So I'm sort of defiantly proud of what we did, with the understanding that you can't please everyone. You just can't.

Well, what do you think? Did ‘True Blood’ end as best it could, or dissolve in a goopy mess before our eyes? Speaking of goopy messes, check out the most memorable deaths from the first six seasons below, and tell us what you thought of the ‘True Blood’ series finale in the comments!