Season 2 of Alan Ball's growing-in-popularity adult vampire show came to an end Sunday on HBO. The True Blood Season 2 finale tied up the major plot threads of the season and set up several more that will be key story elements moving forward into the third season.

Join us as we look back on some of the things that happened this season and in the finale, and as we look forward on what things we could be seeing next season.

[Warning: Spoilers Ahead]

You've been warned - If you're reading this, I expect that you've seen the episode, so some spoilers will be mentioned. Let's get to it then, shall we?

The End of Maryann

The focus of the finale is on putting an end to Maryann Forrester (Michelle Forbes) and her wicked ways. As we know, she has the entire town under her control and sporting black eye contacts, the kind that makes people eat raw hearts and start community orgies.

Anyway, that craziness aside, Maryann is getting ready for her very special day, preparing to make a sacrifice to the bull-horned god of evil so she can marry him. Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) is the worthy sacrifice in her mind and her maid of honor absolutely must be the show's leading lady, Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin).

There's a bunch of usual weirdness around this situation with them forcing Sookie to drink blood and lick a big ostrich egg, a nest that Tara and Eggs built on the bed of Sookie's grandma, and a tree made of raw meat, but we've come to expect that from scenes involving Maryann. We also got to see Jason Stackhouse and Deputy Andy try to be the annoying heroes for 15 seconds before finally enlisting in Maryann's zombie army against their will.

On the other side of town, good ol' Bill Compton is back to help save the day and he joins with Sam to form a plan to put an end to Maryann. We don't know what that plan is yet but we soon find out it involves poor Sam almost dying and Maryann getting horned to death and her heart getting ripped out. Poor Sookie didn't know what was going on and we got a lot of her screaming and crying as Sam got introduced to Eggs' ability to use a knife.

I was so thankful when Maryann got put down as I was not digging that whole situation all season long or her crazy interest in Tara, another character I wasn't entertained by this season.

The Other Stories

With that plot thread finally coming to a close, we still had half the episode left!

During the main event, we also got a few scenes for the other storylines also taking place around that time. We only got one scene of big bad Eric Northman, played by rising star Alexander Skarsgård and that involved him getting owned in a game of Yahtzee by Queen Sophie-Anne, the vampire Queen of Louisiana.

Although it was only one scene, it was very important and has implications for the future of the show. The scene finally presented viewers with a purpose for the vampire mistress as she demonstrated some harsh negative emotion with Eric. As it turns out, that vampire blood that Eric asked Lafayette to start selling is actually hers and he was doing it under her orders. She was not impressed finding out that Bill knew that Eric had done that. This is something to be explored in True Blood's third season.

The other storyline we got a bit of is that of Hoyt and Jessica's relationship. Hoyt became a major player this season compared to last year where he played a guest role here and there. He represents pure innocence and goodness and he's a good balance for Jessica whom we thought was on the right track. Unfortunately, Hoyt's zombified mom ruined that for them and it sets them apart.

After the Maryann situation, Sam goes to his foster parents who abandoned him after the shock of him shapeshifting into a dog years prior. He's on a mission to find his true parents who he's warned against as being bad people from his foster mom. His dying foster dad however, gives him the info he desires.

Click to continue reading about where every character is left off, and info on True Blood's Season 3...

True Blood Alexander Skarsgard Eric Northman Vampires

The Characters

Let's briefly go through a bunch of the characters and where they left off.

  • Eggs: Met his end after he lost control after realizing all the things he had done while under Maryann's control. He went crazy on Andy and got shot by Jason in the head during the process
  • Tara: She's a mess and with Eggs dying near the end, multiply her usual emotions.
  • Jason: While naive, cocky and annoying, did have one pretty funny moment and that was his reaction to seeing Maryann's dead body on the ground after Sam ripped her heart out.
  • Andy: Deputy Andy's no longer drinking and he's got his badge back - he's just bitter as hell as no one in the town remembers the horrible things they did, but he won't forget.
  • Sam: I feel real bad for Sam. He’s the true hero in all of this and the only one that seems to make sense all of the time. He is trustworthy, and doesn’t have any bad intentions. Yet he’s the one who always gets the shaft; parents abandoned him, Sookie never chose him, the one girl he met like him was killed, he had to sacrifice himself for the town only to have no one know what he did.
  • Jessica: It was nice at the end to see Bill and her finally get along and understand each other after all that’s happened. It's too bad she took a 180 after that and the last scene we got with her was her attacking some dude at the truck stop.
  • Hoyt: He went to the Compton house to bring flowers and mend his relationship with Jessica - she was busy feasting on some trucker elsewhere.
  • Bill: Back in romantic form, with no Eric to interfere. He bought a pretty dress for Sookie and set up the perfect night for her and to pop the big question. Too bad he instead got Sookie being all dumb and to top it off, he got kidnapped!
  • Eric: The popular character had a prominent role this season but was surprisingly absent in the finale other than his one scene with the Queen which sets up a plot thread for next season.
  • Sookie: By the time she finally made up her mind that she wanted to marry Bill, he was kidnapped and her next mission is to find him.
  • Maryann: Dead!
  • Lafayette: Is back to normal and working at Merlotte's bar. He is still selling V on the black market though for Eric.
  • Terry: Terry got a larger role this season as well and now he's hooking up with Arlene and getting along with her kids. I like Terry and he was a pretty funny zombie main henchman for Maryann.
  • Bud: The soft-spoken sheriff has re-hired Andy as a deputy. I wonder what issues they'll have to deal with next season...
  • Sophie-Anne: The queen is selling her blood. Why?

Quick Thoughts On The Season

Overall for the season, the pacing was off and the slow-to-develop Maryann storyline wasn’t really the good part of the season. It was the vampires, notably the different groups of them we met, Godric, Eric and even the Queen who finally showed some life (get it, she’s dead!) in her scene with Eric.

Luckily, this episode did clean most of that up but a lot of it I could have done with out. I still love watching the show and characters in it regardless, and I look forward to the new storylines we get next year.

Click to continue reading about True Blood season 3 and what we might see...

True Blood Season 2 Cast Poster

True Blood: Season 3

Here’s what we know so far about what will be explored next season:

  • Eric is working for the queen who’s making him sell her blood. Why?
  • Sam Merlotte is on a quest to find his birth parents whom he’s warned are evil
  • We know werewolves will play a major part of season 3 – Does this relate to Sam’s family heritage?
  • Bill is mysteriously taken in the last scene while waiting for the very mean Sookie to return from the washroom with her response to his proposal – who took him?
  • Jessica, whom we were lead to believe was on her way to reunite with Hoyt and live happily ever after, instead went to a truck stop to feed - Will she continue this rampage or will Hoyt's goodness save her?
  • What happens with Hoyt's mom and Tara? They're both emotional wrecks now, more than before if you can imagine it.

As I mentioned above, season 3 of True Blood is in development. The massive increase in ratings from when this show hit the airwaves for its second season and the successful sales of the first season on home video helped the execs quickly make sure they had more True Blood in their long term plans and after just a few episodes into season 2, season 3 was confirmed.

The End

Just to give you an idea of how much this show has grown, season two's premiere had a viewership 51% greater than that of season one's finale and 157% over season one's premiere. Impressive, right? Not only that, but season 2's premiere makes it HBO's most-watched original program since the final episode of The Sopranos.

That being said, I'm curious as to how the ratings continued throughout this season and especially at the end. I have a feeling there were some big drops because a lot of people didn't dig some of the storylines of the show.

A definite highlight of the season was some of the earlier stuff about the vampires and the rescue of Godric, Eric Northman's maker. That guy was an awesome character with an infinitely interesting past, but he had lost his way and saw no more purpose in living after having lived such a long life and realizing the nature of both humans and vampires, not knowing who's more at fault. That had a big impact on Eric and Sookie but by the finale, that had long been forgotten unfortunately.

Hopefully, next season we'll get back to more of the vampire hierarchy. I'm excited for more.

What did you think about the finale and what are some of your favorite moments/characters of the season?

True Blood season 3 begins next June.

Sources: EW, The Live Feed