The deal was we wanted Bill to be correct when he said that Sookie can have a normal life. The twist, of course, being that Sookie chose to keep her power and specialness and persevere despite his belief that she couldn’t be OK without giving up her powers. Charlaine [Harris] took a lot of abuse for choosing Sam [Sam Trammell]. We felt like it was irrelevant who Sookie wound up with. What we wanted to know was that she was happy and living the life she wanted to lead. To introduce some other stranger in the last five minutes of the finale wouldn’t have made a lot of sense. So, we made a choice to say it’s “every man,” it doesn’t matter.
Besides Sookie’s story being concluded, Bill’s (Stephen Moyer) story also saw an ending – by way of the true death. Since the Season 7 finale, many people have been questioning whether this was the right decision to make on a show that has strongly drawn an allegory between vampires and the gay community. Brian addressed this matter with the following statement:
I’ve done some thinking about this one. What I will say to that is yes, True Blood is an allegory about otherness, but when you read a novel that is allegorical, it’s usually about one character. To maintain allegorical correctness across the board with 20 characters is sometimes impossible. You have to pick a center. So, for us in this story line, I think it’s obvious from the seven years that Sookie and Bill were not meant to be [in] true love forever. So now you’ve got to pick whose otherness you’re going to protect. I think the allegory to be protected was Sookie’s.
Then Brian had to justify the fact that for a series that’s staple was sex and violence, there was surprisingly no nudity in the season finale:
I know our show has made its living on sex and gore and violence, but without story that all takes on the feeling of a snuff film. The director, Scott Winant, put in better words than I could. He said I get what you’re doing here. If you’re going to go bigger and bolder than you’ve ever been, then where are you going to go. And so the more surprising ending here is this intimate, small, beautiful story of these people in a small town… To me, you want to know that these people are going to be OK.
How well did you think Brian Buckner handled the True Blood finale? Let us know your thoughts by commenting below!
Sources: Vulture - True Blood Showrunner Brian Buckner: ‘I’m Sort of Defiantly Proud of What We Did’
Yahoo’s The Wrap - ‘True Blood’ Boss Brian Buckner Talks Finale, Says Eric and Pam Could Make a Good Spinoff
(Photo Credit: HBO Inc.)
