True Blood Season 3
I really thought I had the outline for season three figured out. And then I saw this week’s episode. Now, I’m completely confused about where they’re going and frankly, I love it. They’ve got storylines from three separate books going on and they fit together seamlessly. I’m really just amazed at how the writers take the base materials of the books and expand upon them into the world of the show and truly make it better.
But I’m still loving speculation based on the books.
Let’s leave some of the storylines to the side. Arlene and Terry, Jessica, the entire fucked up thing with Sam Merlotte’s birth family and the gross dog fighting bullshit, Lafayette and Jesus, all of these are wholly new for the show and I don’t think will have any of the elements from the books involved. Which is awesome because they work so perfectly and bring to life characters that were sometimes little more than bare sketches on the page.
The main story of the season has to do with Russell Edgington, King of Mississippi, and that’s book 3, Club Dead. All the important beats have been hit on the television screen. Sookie meeting Alcide. Eric coming to the mansion. Lorena torturing Bill in the slave quarters. But the way the show got there was so much richer. I adore the way that Queen Sophie-Anne’s V selling endeavor has been paralleled with Russell’s Nazi werewolf patron saint ritual thing. I love the entire Nazi werewolf thing in general. And bringing it all the way back to Eric’s human past was a stroke of genius. It’s so much fuller than on the page. But it also leaves me in the dark because we’re all the way up to the end of the book and only on episode 6! Sookie is going to kill Lorena in the opening minutes of the next episode. She has to. And then what’s left? Returning to Bon Temps, defeating the werewolves that come after her, and rescinding the invitation to her house that both Eric and Bill currently have. I don’t think it’s going to play out like that exactly.
The Tara storyline has come from a brief mention in book 3 and then several scenes in book 5, Dead as a Doornail. First of all, I think it was really smart to conflate the book Franklin Mott and psychotic Mickey into a single character onscreen. It’s been great to see just how Tara ended up under his power since all we got to see in the book was how bad things had gotten with Mickey. I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to believe that Franklin is really head-on-a-stick-dead, “just” from getting his head bashed in with a mace though. There was no puddle of red goo. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. But hopefully next season she’ll be able to settle down with JB. Lord knows she deserves it.
The Jason storyline is both new to the show - the cop stuff with Andy - as well as taken from book 4, Dead to the World. Now that Jason has met Crystal’s fiancée back in Hotshot I think we’ll learn about the werepanthers in short order. Calvin Norris has already been introduced (sadly far nastier than in the books) and there’s clearly a Big Secret going on in Inbreedingville. Lafayette will probably be involved in the revelation since he’s now got reason to get back at the rednecks. I think that by the end of the season Jason will have been abducted, held captive, bitten repeatedly, and be stuck waiting to see if he turns panther at the full moon. I’m not sure how that will tie into the rest of the story though.
Because everything will somehow come together with the Nazi werewolves, I feel confident. It’s such a great invention and I think it’ll be the broadest canvas upon which to weave all the other threads. How they ultimately come together? I have no clue. But I feel absolutely certain that the final reveal of the season, the cliffhanger we’ll be stuck with during the hiatus, will be Eric Northman’s amnesia. I think they’ll do away with the entire witch war plot but that there will be enough whatever magic with the climax of the werewolf plot to leave him memory-less. Why else would he get his own special vendetta against Russell Edgington? This will leave Debbie Pelt as a loose end however. I think it’s more likely that Sookie will kill her in the beginning of next season than at the end of this one.
And the big question of What is Sookie? I’m feeling it’s less and less likely that she’ll turn out to be “just” part Faerie. Demons exist in the book-verse, do Angels?
Then again, I was way off, I mean seriously big time major league off, on nearly all of the key plot speculation I had at this point in season 2. I nailed it for Tara and that’s pretty much it. Interesting that I had the same fate in mind for Eric…
But I’m still loving speculation based on the books.
Let’s leave some of the storylines to the side. Arlene and Terry, Jessica, the entire fucked up thing with Sam Merlotte’s birth family and the gross dog fighting bullshit, Lafayette and Jesus, all of these are wholly new for the show and I don’t think will have any of the elements from the books involved. Which is awesome because they work so perfectly and bring to life characters that were sometimes little more than bare sketches on the page.
The main story of the season has to do with Russell Edgington, King of Mississippi, and that’s book 3, Club Dead. All the important beats have been hit on the television screen. Sookie meeting Alcide. Eric coming to the mansion. Lorena torturing Bill in the slave quarters. But the way the show got there was so much richer. I adore the way that Queen Sophie-Anne’s V selling endeavor has been paralleled with Russell’s Nazi werewolf patron saint ritual thing. I love the entire Nazi werewolf thing in general. And bringing it all the way back to Eric’s human past was a stroke of genius. It’s so much fuller than on the page. But it also leaves me in the dark because we’re all the way up to the end of the book and only on episode 6! Sookie is going to kill Lorena in the opening minutes of the next episode. She has to. And then what’s left? Returning to Bon Temps, defeating the werewolves that come after her, and rescinding the invitation to her house that both Eric and Bill currently have. I don’t think it’s going to play out like that exactly.
The Tara storyline has come from a brief mention in book 3 and then several scenes in book 5, Dead as a Doornail. First of all, I think it was really smart to conflate the book Franklin Mott and psychotic Mickey into a single character onscreen. It’s been great to see just how Tara ended up under his power since all we got to see in the book was how bad things had gotten with Mickey. I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to believe that Franklin is really head-on-a-stick-dead, “just” from getting his head bashed in with a mace though. There was no puddle of red goo. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. But hopefully next season she’ll be able to settle down with JB. Lord knows she deserves it.
The Jason storyline is both new to the show - the cop stuff with Andy - as well as taken from book 4, Dead to the World. Now that Jason has met Crystal’s fiancée back in Hotshot I think we’ll learn about the werepanthers in short order. Calvin Norris has already been introduced (sadly far nastier than in the books) and there’s clearly a Big Secret going on in Inbreedingville. Lafayette will probably be involved in the revelation since he’s now got reason to get back at the rednecks. I think that by the end of the season Jason will have been abducted, held captive, bitten repeatedly, and be stuck waiting to see if he turns panther at the full moon. I’m not sure how that will tie into the rest of the story though.
Because everything will somehow come together with the Nazi werewolves, I feel confident. It’s such a great invention and I think it’ll be the broadest canvas upon which to weave all the other threads. How they ultimately come together? I have no clue. But I feel absolutely certain that the final reveal of the season, the cliffhanger we’ll be stuck with during the hiatus, will be Eric Northman’s amnesia. I think they’ll do away with the entire witch war plot but that there will be enough whatever magic with the climax of the werewolf plot to leave him memory-less. Why else would he get his own special vendetta against Russell Edgington? This will leave Debbie Pelt as a loose end however. I think it’s more likely that Sookie will kill her in the beginning of next season than at the end of this one.
And the big question of What is Sookie? I’m feeling it’s less and less likely that she’ll turn out to be “just” part Faerie. Demons exist in the book-verse, do Angels?
Then again, I was way off, I mean seriously big time major league off, on nearly all of the key plot speculation I had at this point in season 2. I nailed it for Tara and that’s pretty much it. Interesting that I had the same fate in mind for Eric…