6.2 The Sun *spoilery speculation*

Episode as described pre-airing: A long-lost relative reveals himself to Jason and Sookie. After Tara is victimized by a new government weapon, Eric takes matters into his own hands in an effort to thwart Burrell’s anti-vampire initiatives. On the road to work, Sookie is drawn to a handsome stranger who shares her faerie abilities. Sam is unnerved by supernatural-rights zealot Nicole (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), and is confronted by Alcide and Martha (Dale Dickey) about Emma’s future. Bill contemplates the scope of his heightened powers.
Written by Angela Robinson; directed by Dan Attias.

My recap below the Read More for those who want to avoid my spoilery speculations.

If it weren’t for my worrying about Rob Kazinsky’s snow-white ass getting naked on my screen sometime soon, I would have enjoyed this episode even more than I did, but every time he’s on screen, I find myself bracing myself for some kind of Ben/Sookie horror. But “The Sun” was definitely a fitting title for this episode since light was shown on a whole lot of subjects!  So what was revealed? (And not Ben’s ass — yet — thank God!)

Rutger Hauer isn’t Warlow, he’s faery grandfather Niall. And if you’ve ever had questions about how the name is pronounced, apparently it is Nye-uhll. After chewing Jason out about foolishly spilling his guts to someone who could have been Warlow, Grandpa Niall is full of information about both fae and vampire Warlow.

Jason and Sookie turn out to be descended from the original — and royal — fae bloodline, which really does make Sookie a faery princess and Niall a tribal king of the fae.  (Jason, however, is no fae prince since the gene “skipped him.”)  Niall also has a long history with Warlow, who not only killed Niall’s parents, but Niall’s whole village thousands of years ago.   Niall, who was three at the time, did not actually see Lilith’s progeny, but did hear his name, so he knew who to blame for his being the sole survivor of the massacre.  He has been tracking the ancient vampire across various dimensions since then and he says that Warlow, who is probably the oldest vampire walking the earth, has an obsession with their fae bloodline.  One of Niall’s sons, John Stackhouse — the one who wrote the contract to give Sookie to Warlow — obviously met the ancient vamp but Niall still never has.  (And no, no explanation yet as to why Johnny Stackhouse signed that contract!)  When Claudine blasted Warlow with her light on the bridge the night he killed Sookie’s parents, her fae power sent him to a dark realm where he has been imprisoned — until now, that is.  Apparently, Sookie’s channeling of nature’s memory released him and now he’s in Bon Temps!

Where’s Warlow? Niall may not have seen Warlow, but we get a quick glimpse. The episode starts out with a very hairy Warlow coming through the portal on the bridge. He was clean-shaven when he attacked Sookie and Jason’s parents on the bridge, but apparently he didn’t have access to any razors in the dark realm where Claudine’s magic imprisoned him.  And that is the last we see of Warlow for the time being…or is it?  Further speculation below…

Bill is not a god, he’s a prophet. Apparently, the three woman (vampire angels?) who entered Bill were there to escort him to a visionary sunlit plane where he meets with Lilith, who is no longer soaked in blood.  And just as an aside, apparently modern merkin makers are so used to everyone being waxed that they have no concept of what a natural woman’s pubic hair looks like when left alone.  Between Lilith and her followers, you could make a wig for your head from what they were all sporting in their nether regions.  Lilith (with that giant fur muff still visible through her diaphanous gown) tells Bill that only God is God, but that with a tyrant rising — apparently, it’s not Bill! —  Bill is going to be the savior of vampire kind, a prophet in Lilith’s and the vampire god’s name.  When Bill plaintively says he doesn’t know how to be the vampire Moses, Lilith tells him he will know what to do if he follows what he sees.

And what does Bill see? The future, supposedly.  Part of his vision is that all the vamps we know — and several vamps we don’t know yet, although I recognize them as new cast — will be imprisoned and burnt en masse by humans.  So Bill must save vampire kind!

So, does this mean Bill is actually being set up to be a hero again?  I’m still skeptical, and the gruesome death of a blood prostitute Jessica brings in to feed the apparently catatonic (but caught up in trance) Bill is why.  The casting call asked for someone with contortionist skills and now we know we why. Veronica from Human Edibles was turned into a human juice box, with her blood sucked out of her as if through an invisible straw, and her body crushed afterwards. I suppose from a vampire God viewpoint, Bill’s feeding in the catatonic state could be considered a miracle, but it was still horrifying, even to Jessica.  And it underscored that while Bill may be saving vampires, humans are still just food in his new beliefs.  So, yes, Bill may be saving vampires…but at what cost? Nothing is black and white in True Blood world, so let’s not consider Bill heroic just yet.

The humans’ new anti-vamp weapons are pretty damn scary.  Eric managed to remove the bullet that is torturing Tara from inside, discovering that it is a silver bullet that emits UV rays — nasty! Eric decides he’s had enough, so he goes straight to the source, Governor Burrell. Taking the clothes and the appointment of a representative of the Fish and Wildlife Department, Eric infiltrates the Governor’s office to talk about…whooping cranes.  But the Governor wants to talk about vampires, including little child vampires who killed their mama and daddy.  As Eric (quite reasonably) points out, they were probably just trying to survive…like whooping cranes.  After a steely face off in which Eric describes vampires whooping cranes as a “tough fucking bird,” Eric gets down to business in trying to glamour the Governor into giving up his vampire persecution.

Unfortunately for Eric, the Governor is wearing the humans’ new anti-glamouring contacts, and before we know it, armed (with silver and UV bullets) guards are attempting to escort Eric to “camp,” which doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.  For all the advancements have made in their study of vampires, there is one thing they did not know — some vampires can fly, and Eric is off into the sky and safety before the guards knew what happened.

But Eric is not gone. Instead, he’s making the acquaintance of Gov. Burrell’s bright and pretty daughter Willa, who has conveniently removed her anti-glamouring contacts just before Eric floats outside her window.  I sense that Eric is going to have a new bargaining chip in dealing with the governor shortly, and Willa — who seems like a nice girl so far — is certainly going to have an interesting night.

Nora can occasionally be useful.  Still not a Nora fan, but I felt my personal chill thawing a bit when she told Pam that while Eric may not have told Pam about Nora — for Pam’s own safety — he had told Nora about Pam.  And Nora knows that Eric loves Pam and views his progeny as his greatest achievement.  Awwwww!  And then Nora did something useful with all her former Lilith worship and read my favorite little tidbit of the night: the prophecy! “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 and when light and dark collide, our salvation is at hand.”

Why is that my favorite little tidbit?  It’s because of that one little phrase, “two will become one.”  I have been wondering for a while why Eric would have told Sookie that “they will be one” when he offered her his blood, and finally a hint!  (I actually wrote a whole fic, still a WIP, about that blood exchange, so it’s definitely a favorite theory of mine!) Could Eric and Sookie’s mystical union in season 4 be a part of the prophecy?  Soooo exciting if it is true!

Alcide is already acting like a dick as a packmaster.  Sam tried to explain that Luna had asked him to take care of Emma before she died, but that didn’t matter to Alcide, who decided he knew what was best for any wolf  — including Emma — and insisted (with his fists) that she had to come with him and grandma Martha.  How Alcide thinks that authorities are more likely to find Emma with Sam than with her own grandma, I don’t know.  Have the threesomes been frying your brain cells, Alcide? Or is it just that power trip you seem to be embarking on?

Ben appears. And he’s handsome, charming, diffident to her, and suspicious as hell to me.  In fact, I think he may be Warlow.  WTH, MVB? Have you lost your mind? Check out the weirdnesses I noticed last night:

• Warlow appears on the bridge and the next morning Ben is lying in Sookie’s woods, supposedly injured by a vampire, thinking about how his blood must have drawn the vamp’s attention.  Must not have been a very strong vamp since Warlow is still alive and since he was bit on his forearm.  Or maybe… it wasn’t another vamp at all since the place where Ben was bit was easily reachable if he, say, used his own teeth.
• But what about the sun? Ben was out in the sun, so he can’t be a vampire!  Well, Bill is about to go out into the sun as Lilith’s prophet, and he’s still a vampire.  And what do we know about Warlow’s powers?  He’s born of the first vampire and he loves faerie blood.  For all we knew, he’s either immune from sun himself or drank the entire faerie club already in order to meet Sookie.
• Spoilers indicate that Ben did time in solitary confinement in prison.  Check out the video below, first posted in March, of another actor reading for Ben’s role.  Who do we know who was just released from imprisonment? Why, Warlow…

• There have also been stories that we will actually meet Warlow in the first couple of episodes — but we won’t know it at first. And while there has been a lot out there about Rutger Hauer playing both Warlow and Niall, I have to wonder if that was a plant by HBO themselves.

So, for now, I’m hoping that Ben (and his shiny white ass) will turn out to be Warlow until something disproves it. It does my Sooric heart good!

Other minor points from last night’s episode

• If Bill is not the prophesied tyrant, who is? Governor Burrell?
• Eric using his mad voice with Pam and Nora is pretty damned scary.
• Arlene handled dealing with Patrick’s pregnant wife brilliantly and was comedy gold in this episode to boot.
• I thought Jessica’s prayer was kind of lame, but it served as a good device to see what all the characters were facing as conflicts this year.  Eric has to deal with his anger and “wrongheadedness,” huh?
• I don’t entirely trust the VUS members.  It’s easy to ask someone to out themselves when you are not the minority facing repercussions in question.  And what the hell are they doing filming Sam and the weres fighting?

Overall, an intriguing episode, and one I would rate as an A-.  What did you think?