True Blood’s lesbian fans got a little something extra in the fourth season premiere with the arrival of Marnie the Wiccan, played by out actress Fiona Shaw, and with Sookie’s BFF Tara reappearing a changed woman as a cage fighter in love with her female opponent. Besides the general lesbian-ness of it all the sex scene between Tara (Rutina Wesley) and her girlfriend Naomi (Vedette Lim) rivaled the heat of any of Sookie’s best sex scenes with Bill and / or Eric.
While the season got off with a bang for Tara, it wasn’t long before she kicked Naomi to the curb in order to save her newfound lesbian love from exposure to vindictive vamps like Pam, who’s had a hankering to tear into Tara for a few seasons.
Even with Naomi out of the picture it was wonderful to see Tara relatively happy and strong, as opposed to being perpetually victimized. As of Sunday’s season finale however, things weren’t looking good for True Blood’s lesbian and gay characters. Marnie – played by a lesbian—had been offed the week before only to return and inhabit Lafayette’s beautiful body, and two of the queer characters met with interesting ends that may or may not mean their demise.
And When I Die: Ep. 4:12 SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS
Since plot lines on True Blood move as quickly as vamps on an espresso / Red Bull cocktail, the season finale offered up a host of wild storylines with no fewer than four people biting the bullet – or did they?
First up, Marnie, the witch who’d gone off the rails once the enigmatic Spaniard Antonia --who was burned at the stake during the Inquisition—inhabited her body, met with an untimely end last week when Bill shot her following a stand-off. But the blood had barely been swabbed off the floor before her spirit found a host in the form of Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis)
The season finale begins on Halloween day with Marnie --looking fabulous as she’s in Lafayette’s physical form and he’s sporting a caftan -- demanding that Lafayette’s hot boyfriend Jesus (Kevin Alejandro) hand over his magical powers. The spirit of Marnie ties Jesus to a chair, torturing him by threatening to do bodily harm to Lafayette. Finally, Jesus relents and hands over the source of his magic to Marnie, who then stabs Jesus through the heart, thus killing off one of the show’s gay characters.
As being unlucky would have it, Tara heads to her cousin Lafayette’s abode for a visit and discovers Jesus’ skewered body. Up to this season Tara has been True Blood’s woman in peril type, despite Rutina Wesley’s buff delts and biceps, so it’s kind of second nature to bite one’s nails when Tara’s encountering danger alone.
But rather than Tara meeting with an ugly end at the hands of a witch inhabiting her cousin’s body, cut to Tara running up to Sookie (Anna Paquin) and Holly (Lauren Bowles) at Merlotte’s screaming about how Jesus is dead and how she thinks Marnie’s living in Lafayette. The three of them peel out in Sookie’s yellow – Pinto? Ford Fiesta? - car only to find Eric and Bill chained to the stake, about to be burned alive at Marnie’s hands. Oh to be a fly on the wall of Alan Ball’s bursting-with-homoeroticism brain when he dreams this stuff up.
Sookie, Tara and Holly form a circle and begin to chant, conjuring help from the dead that includes Antonia and Sookie’s Gran (the wonderful Lois Smith). Together with Sookie’s magic fairy finger touch they succeed in ousting Marnie from Lafayette’s visage and sending her on her way to the afterlife. There’s a moment when it looks as though Marnie’s sucked the life out of Lafayette with her demanding witchy ways but he comes around to likely deliver the phrase “bitch please,” another day.
Meanwhile, if you’re keeping track of the tally of dead, queerish TB characters for the episode, Nan Flanagan (Jessica Tuck), spokesvamp for the American Vampire League, who’s got a penchant for BDSM-leaning leather outfits and who at least once sensually fed on a female victim, meets her maker – as it were - at Bill’s (Stephen Moyer) hands as she attempts to get Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and Bill to turn on the American Vampire League and their beloved Sookie. Can we get a “Bitch please,” for Nan, who clearly had no idea of the power Sookie wields in and out of her Merlotte’s uniform?
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Later, Tara’s at Lafayette’s comforting him, since, not only has the love of his life been murdered, it happened physically at his hands although not his mind and spirit. But never fear, because Jesus visits Lafayette in a dream to help Lafayette let go, and remind the Lafayette that he’s a medium and Jesus is a spirit, so there may be a chance it’s not the end for the pair. Well, maybe the earthly end… Praise Jesus at any rate.
Just when all of the Halloween shenanigans are nearly over, and these include Arlene receiving a foreboding visit from her dead, serial killer ex Rene, whose spirit happens to be summoned up with the rest of the Bon Temps dead, and Sookie having a three-way feeding party with Bill and Eric to get their strength back up before she dumps them both out of her inability to choose one, Debbie Pelt (Brit Morgan) – looking not unlike an extra in the break-out indie about meth country Winter’s Bone - turns up at Sookie’s with a shotgun.
Debbie, the V-addict werewolf who was dumped in the last episode by her hunky werewolf boyfriend Alcide for cheating on him and getting hooked on V again, has it in her drug-addled brain that Sookie’s the cause of all her woes. As an aside, when is Sookie going to invest in an ADT security system so every wayward mess in Bon Temps won’t wander in to her kitchen? But back to it -- Debbie’s after Sookie for stealing Alcide, although he’s not really Sook’s type what with his warm bloodedness and all.
V’ed out and beside herself, Debbie takes aim at Sookie just as Tara walks by and hurls herself in front of Sookie, saving her BFF but taking a bullet to the head – and just when she got a beautiful new weave this season. Sookie may be a fairy but she’s not to be fucked with, especially when it comes to her loved ones. She tackles Debbie and the gun goes flying. Scrappy little fairy that she is, Sookie picks up the gun, straddles Debbie pointing the barrel straight at Debbie’s skull. A suddenly contrite Debbie pleads with Sookie for her life. And just when it looks as though Sookie will take pity on Debbie and let her live out her miserable existence, Sookie pulls the trigger and blows her head off. Sookie also seriously needs to invest in some sage and smudge that house. With her Gran’s murder in the kitchen, Maryann turning it into Plato’s Retreat for the horny Bon Temps set and various other bloody battles Sookie’s waged in her Gran’s house, a little sage couldn’t hurt.
Sookie runs to Tara and cradles her crying, and it sure looks like the end of the road for our beloved Tara. But as True Blood goes, they are all like cats – or werepanthers in this case—with many lives. There’s a good chance Bill and Eric will sense that Sookie is in danger / pain and come running to Sookie only to feed Tara their blood and revive her. At least that’s how I’d like to think of it will turn out. The only downside to that scenario is that Tara will then be drawn to Sookie’s boys and the two could end up fighting over the vamps like cheerleaders arguing over the captain of the football team. Now that would be tragic.
Let’s just pretend for a moment that it is indeed Tara’s final bow. For those of you keeping track, including Tara, Jesus and Nan, that brings the count of dead queer characters for the season up to four including Evan Rachel Wood’s lesbian vampire queen whom Bill offed at the opening of this season. That’s a bad body count for what is arguably television’s gayest show.
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