It's 'All Change' In Season Four of True Blood

The highly anticipated True Blood season 4 premiere proved to be a delicious feast of A+ to sink your teeth into. The season three finale was laced with the theme of resurrection; each character searching for a way to rise from the ashes of their current state of being, Sookie Steakhouse (Anna Paquin) more so than any one else. After blindly trusting vampires, it was time for Sookie to return to her own kind – Fairies.

We catch up with Sookie and her fairy godmother, Claudine (Lara Pulver), in a magical land of “light fruit” eating creatures. As Sookie takes one out of a basket, she sees her granddaddy, Earl (Gary Cole), in the distance. Though he has been missing for twenty years, he explains he has only been in that world for a few hours. Immediately Sookie telecommunicates to him that this is a trap. Not remembering this is a world full of her kind, she is confronted by the queen, Mab and forced to eat the “light fruit.” As Mab attempts to go near her, Sookie releases her light power, reserved for evil beings, proving her assumption correct.

Everyone turns into ugly goblin like creatures, the “light fruit” becomes maggot infested and the sparkly magical world crumbles into a dark desert landscape. Sookie and her grandfather run away from the hideous Mab and are directed by Claudine’s brother to a portal that leads them to the Bon Temps cemetery where Sookie’s grandmother, Adele was buried. Because Earl ate the “light fruit” he begins to die and disintegrates into the earth leaving Sookie his watch.

In typical Sookie fashion, she returns home after her traumatic sci-fi experience, awakening Bill and Eric in their graves. Expecting to have the privacy of rifling through old photos of her family and friends to soothe her pain, she is accused of trespassing by contractors working on her house. A worker threatens to call the police, and when an officer arrives it is none other than her brother, Jason, who informs her that he sold the house thinking she was dead because she had actually been gone for over a year.

Bill and Eric arrive on the scene soon afterwards, along with Sheriff Andy to complete this little reunion. Bill attempts to apologize for betraying Sookie and thinking she was dead, while Eric one-ups him by saying he had never given up on her. Obviously threatened by his presence, Bill commands Eric to leave and Andy demands to know where Sookie has been all this time. Though Bill covers for her, Sookie is still unwilling to forgive him for betraying her. After the testosterone battle, Jason confronts Andy about using V.

The premiere continues, tying up all the loose ends of the lives of the more minor characters. Lafayette, sporting his new frohawk, and his nurse-boyfriend, Jesus have been trying their hand at witchcraft and attending séances. Arlene, the red headed waitress continues to worry her child is evil when she comes home to find her baby has decapitated Barbie dolls. Tara has completely changed her persona, from her name to her sexual orientation, as a cage fighter in New Orleans.

Sam Merlotte has joined an anger management therapy group of shape shifters since shooting his brother, Tommy in the leg, while Tommy has been taken under the wing of Maxine, Hoyt’s mother to turn him into a good Christian boy. Jessica and Hoyt, the half vampire half human couple, clearly have their own wrinkles to iron out, but they never cease to compromise.

Just as the lives of the minor characters seem relatively dandy, no True Blood episode could be complete without multiple cliffhangers. When Jason delivers food to Crystal (his lover from season 3)’s community, he is repaid by being locked into an Ice Box.

A woman from Lafayette’s séance enters a heavily guarded home, owned by Bill Compton, A.K.A. the new Vampire King of Louisiana, which is no surprise. And in the final moments of the show, just when Sookie thinks she is alone, she turns around to find Eric Northman accompanying her. He reveals he is the one who purchased her house making her his property as well.

The fate of each character is very fitting, and the premiere has set up a well-proportioned taste of what has been brewing in the twelve and a half months that Sookie has been away from Bon Temps. As the series progresses, the lives of the characters which were once heavily intertwined, have veered further away from each other. At the beginning of the series, Sookie was the center of all the drama, but now her plot line as the protagonist has become the least intriguing. Aside from her love triangle with Bill and Eric, the other characters have realized how unreliable she is, particularly as a friend to Tara and a sister to Jason.

Her sporadic disappearances over the years have caused her relationships with them to take the back seat, leaving her to fend for herself at the end of the day. So will Sookie seek out Tara? Will she be the one to find Jason in the icebox? Or will she continue exploring her newfound fairy side, holding a grudge against Bill and fighting her lust for Eric? Stay tuned this summer, because as usual, True Blood will be full of surprises to quench your thirst.