It’s time, Tru Believers, to watch the very last episode of HBO’s vampire romantic drama, True Blood.
Overall, this final episode is slow and sweetly-paced, funneling down from the crazy, too-many-characters and plot lines of the past several seasons to a gentle, musing (and ultimately narratively safe) tale of people trying to find themselves and growing up in the process.
Luckily, since this is TV, they all eventually do. Hoyt and Jessica, Jason and Bridgette, and — of course — Bill and Sookie all find their own version of a happy ending, with very few surprises along the way; it’s a very safe finish to seven seasons of fangbangery.
As always, spoilers ahead. So keep reading at your own peril.
We start this ultimate episode watching Bill call on Sookie in her front room.
“To my mind, nostalgia and suicide don’t mix,” says Sookie.
All roads lead to this path, says Bill. He wants Sookie to look to her future. Sookie’s having none of it.
She finally asks him, straight out, “Why are you doing this?”
Bill is weary; he belongs with his long-dead family. He’s sick of being a vampire. He doesn’t want to deny Sookie children, a normal life-span, a normal death.
Bill can’t swear Sookie off because he can’t. Because he loves her too much. So much that he wants her to kill him, faerie-style.
“Use your light on me and you will be done with vampires forever,” he says.
Kinda makes sense, really – she uses up the last of her faerie light, and Bill gets a final kindness. If she does this, she becomes human, and he gets to be free.
Sookie says hell no.
The final bit of intro credits rolls. Definitely one of my favorites, right after Dexter’s.
True Blood Season 7, Episode 10: “Thank You”
Written by: Brian Buckner
Directed by: Scott Winant
Surging car full of Yakuza soldiers racing to Sookie’s house. Mr. Gus in Fangtasia, drinking alone. Pam and Eric downstairs. Eric frees Sarah Newland, and tells Pam he’s gonna kill Mr. Gus.
“I’ve tried trusting, I’ve tried sharing,” he tells Pam, “and it’s just not f*cking workin’ for me.” Yay Eric! We’re all a little aroused, now.
Pam gives Sarah some of her blood so Pam can always find Sarah when she’s frightened. Sarah crawls out the underground railroad, knowing everyone wants her dead.
Mr Gus is making an origami animal with a $100 bill. Eric and Pamela call Mr. Gus down to the basement, and then pull some Matrix-style super-moves to get the drop on the two redshirt Yakuza with guns. Mr. Gus flees out the same tunnel Sara left. Eric grabs some gasoline and a Zippo and sets the entire tunnel on fire. Poor Japanese Elvis.
Eric shows up to gut the Yakuza who were on their way to grab and/or kill Sookie, and doesn’t even stop to say hello. He piles the bloody corpses into the back of the hotrod car they showed up in and burns rubber down the road, seat-dancing and finally (finally!) returning to the bad-ass vampire we’ve always loved.
Pam finds Sarah hiding out in and abandoned Merry Go Round, eating from a discarded carton of food. “This is where Eric turned Willa,” says Sarah, just before asking Pam to turn her, and offering her body in the process. Pam’s not really interested in the sexy games, but she does want Sarah Newland’s blood. Chomp chomp.
Bill gets up out of his moody chair to find Jessica (and Hoyt — d’awww!) at his front door. After some Hoyt and “Vampire Bill” pleasantries between the two men, Jessica jumps right in. She doesn’t want Bill to die, but she wants him to know that she will be fine if he chooses to self-actualize and meet the true death. Because Jessica is still the most decent person on the show.
Bill takes his dying man liberties to presume that Hoyt will ask Jessica to marry him. Jess is horrified, but Hoyt steps up to the plate like a man. “Yes sir, I do,” he says. Jess pulls Bill into another room and tells him to shut up and listen.
She starts to give him hell for his “marry my vampire daughter” shenanigans when Bill chokes on his own breath. He tells Jess that she’s the only daughter she has left, and he’d never been able to see his own daughter walk down the aisle. Bill’s speech is getting more and more antiquated, and we get to see him as he becomes more and more the man he’d been as a human. In the 19th century.
Jess leaves the room with Bill to have some alone chat time with Hoyt, so she can ask the young man to marry her that very day. For Bill, of course.
Cut to Sookie, alone, at her kitchen table, grandma’s bathrobe on, and a mug in her hand. She’s doing some heavy thinking, and we can tell by the way she looks questioningly around the room. Flashback time! Yay! Let’s hope this is the last one, ever. It’s Tara and Sookie, running into the house out of the rain. Gran is there, making them some hot chocolate in the very same mug Sookie is drinking from in the present. Tara starts thinking about how she’s got the hots for Jason, and Sookie reads her mind. Sookie thinks boys are nasty, and that she’ll never have a family due to her mind-reading powers. Gran rushes in to tell Sookie that she can have any kind of life she wants, and to stop that defeatist kind of thinking.
The next morning, Sookie heads over to Jason’s house and meets Bridgette, who’s cleaning up in the kitchen. Sookie reads Bridgette’s mind and finds out that this girl thinks Jason is the sweetest man ever. Sookie approves.
Sookie sits on the bed to get some advice from Jason (wha?) on what to do with Bill. She’s not sure if she wants to give up her faerie powers, even to become “normal.” Jason’s got no clue what to do, but he will love her either way. The phone rings, and it’s Hoyt.
He’d like Jason to come and be Hoyt’s best man in the wedding to Jessica. Jessica then calls Sookie to get a wedding dress. Oh, god, they’re going to end the final season with a wedding. Sigh.
Bill’s at home in his leather vampire chair, sipping on a glass of Tru Blood. Andy, Arlene and Holli show up at the Compton place. Andy’s gonna do the ceremony. Vampire Bill wants a word with Andy in the dark office, greek statues and arty paintings of automatic weapons on the wall.
Bill reminds Andy that the sheriff is the last Compton heir, which means that when he dies, Andy gets the whole estate. Bill is asking Andy to rent the house to Jessica and Hoyt for the sum of one dollar per month, and maybe even look the other way if the newlyweds forget to pay. It’s a touching scene between these two.
Jason and Hoyt get ready in another room in the Compton place, and Jason admits that Bridgette is still back at Jason’s place. They have a little meeting of the (little) minds and Jason tells Hoyt he’s super glad that Hoyt is back in Jason’s life.
“We got to live every day like it’s our last,” says Jason. “And if we do that, it puts everything in prescription for us.” Bro hug!
It’s time for the wedding. Bill goes to walk Jessica down the aisle. Jessica is beautiful in a short, cream-colored lacy number of a wedding dress, red hair curled with flowers in.
Please let something crazy and bloody happen here. Please make it happen. We’re only 35 minutes in. Please go crazy.
Jessica is worried about Bill, dying as we watch.
Sookie is starting to hear Bill’s thoughts – this has never happened before. Bill loves Sookie with everything he has.
Andy reminds everyone that love is love, plain and simple. Even thought he state won’t recognize this (gay) vampire marriage, God surely does, he says.
Jessica and Bill start bleeding from the nose. Sookie hears Bill begging for her to set herself free while Jessica and Hoyt exchange vows. This may be the longest wedding on TV ever. Reaction shots from the whole main cast.
“You may kiss your vampire bride,” says Andy.
That’s IT? Oh, man. Come ON. Not enough blood or sex at this wedding.
Jason takes Sookie home and she admits to hearing Bill’s thoughts. Jason is aghast, agog, and full of confusion. Sookie also tells Jason that Bridgette is sweet on him, and he has Sookie’s permission to sleep with Bridgette. On the way to the airport. Awwww, how sweet. Come on, Jason, DO IT.
Sookie takes her dead old boyfriend Alcide’s truck to the Reverend Daniels’ church, looking for some advice. He talks to her about free will and making up our own minds about what we want to do with our own lives.
Sookie leaves the Reverend with a cryptic comment about how help is on its way and it will all be over soon. Then she calls Bill and tells him she’s ready, has made all the arrangements, and it is now time for him to meet the true death, at the cemetery at sundown. She dresses all in black, and heads to the grave site at twilight.
The mournful sounds of cellos overlay Sookie’s short walk to Bill’s soon-to-be-current grave. Vampire Bill leaves his house for the last time, and walks to the cemetery with the same musical accompaniment. The two lovers hug for the final time, each expressing their own sadness at the inevitable. Then there’s a last kiss. Because of course there is.
Bill steps away first, and simply tells Sookie, “Thank you.” He climbs into the coffin that had been placed in the ground hundreds of years ago, which is somehow still intact.
“Bill,” says Sookie, just before lighting up, “I’ll never forget you.”
She’s not ready to give up her faerie light, however, and refuses to kill him with her light. Time to grab a big stake from somewhere and explode poor Mr. Compton into mushy vampire guts. Oh, look, a handy shovel. Sookie straddles Bill in the coffin, checks to see if he’s sure one last time, grabs yet another soulful kiss, and stabs him clean through the heart. Love makes us do crazy things, doesn’t it?
Bill explodes all over the coffin and Sookie’s face. Now that’s a death scene.
Cut to black. Fade back in one year later with Eric as a product spokesperson for New Blood. Eric and Pam are giving testimonial for the cure for Hepatitis V. The coolest vampires ever give the story behind New Blood. De-fanged, indeed.
Three years after that? New Blood goes public on July 11. Eric and Pam are rich vamps. The next thanksgiving, in Bon Temps, the turkey goes in the fryer, Sookie’s pregnant, and Jason and Bridgette have three little ones of their own. Sam, Nicole, and their little girl appear at the party, which includes Jessica and Hoyt, Arlene and bassist-vamp Keith (with all four of Arlene’s kids), Lettie Mae and Reverend Daniels, the drunk woman from Bellefleur’s and her hubby, Andy and Holli, LaFayette and James, Sam and Nicole with their two kids, Bridgette and Jason and their brood of three, Adilyn and Wade, and Sookie and some random bearded guy tho looks a lot like Alcide but isn’t. So, in the end, coupling off is the way to go.
Eric and Pam are back at Fangtasia, while Pam presides over a vampire who’d paid $100,000 to suck the blood out of Sarah Newland’s inner thigh. She’s still seeing Steve Newland in her crazy visions.
Fade out to Led Zeppelin’s epic rock ballad, “Thank You.”
Here’s the cast of the show saying the exact same thing:
https://youtu.be/4Bl9VVclScE
