True Blood Season 6 Episode 4 Recap: At Last Warlow Finally Revealed

By Damon Martin – Lead Writer/Editor
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(Warning: With all recaps Spoilers ahead!)

Let me get this out of the way before I even start this recap—True Blood is missing something these days and it’s more than just former showrunner Alan Ball. The show that was once at the top of my DVR list every Sunday night has now faded lower and lower as each season wore on. This current season isn’t doing much better, but I keep coming back hoping that one day the show will be redeemed.

The latest offering titled “At Last” didn’t do the job.

Vampires and Fairies and Hybrids, Oh My!

So this season of True Blood has done its best to give more than a few twists and turns through the first couple of episodes. In the debut, Rutger Hauer first appears and by all accounts it seems he will be revealed as the evil vampire Warlow, who has been hunting the Stackhouse family for generations. One episode later, Hauer’s true character is actually Niall, king of the fairies and grandfather to Sookie and Jason.

So when the new character Ben Flynn (nice name) popped up in the first episode, everyone had to know there was more than meets the eye with this latest beefed up muscle bound wanderer who just happened to be hurt when Sookie was walking by to find him. We come to find out he is a fairy, but he’s also so much more.

As this week’s episode kicks off, Jason is down for the count ailing from some unknown illness that’s put him out of commission for a big part of this season. With Sookie about to call the hospital in the other room, out of nowhere Ben sprouts vampire fangs, cuts open a vein and gives Jason some blood to fix him up.

After more than a year of teasing it’s finally here—Ben is actually Warlow—but what the hell is Warlow?

Ben/Warlow (for now we’ll keep both names to save confusion) was actually born a fairy and turned into a vampire somehow. He’s survived for centuries with both the light and dark parts battling inside for ultimate control. So when he finally gets the drop on Niall, he kills him and then a few minutes later gives him some blood to bring him back.

Instead of dispatching of the old codger for good, Ben/Warlow tosses him into the purgatory dimension where he had to spend the last 20 years after he was banished there the night he killed Sookie’s parents.
Ben/Warlow is now on a mission to get to Sookie, but he’s got a bit of a surprise waiting for him when he arrives. You see when Ben/Warlow bit his own arm to give Jason a taste of his blood, he accidentally dripped some on the floor and Sookie discovered it.

So Sookie sets her own trap for Ben complete with a fried chicken dinner and some sex (there’s an Anchorman joke in there somewhere). Before Ben can get to Sookie’s goods, she pops up her fairy ball of fire and gets ready to blast Warlow straight to hell.

On a sidenote: Coming into True Blood, we were all aware that this show was about vampires, and admittedly through the first season they did a great job of making them the central part of the attention. We also learned that Sookie was more than human right from the start because she could read minds. A few episodes later we figured out that Sam was some kind of shape shifter who could turn from human into dog (or any other animal for that matter).

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that other mystical creatures roam the area around Bon Temps, Louisiana, but how many do they really need and why does each one feel like the producers are just trying to top the last? We started with vampires. Then we got shape shifters. Don’t forget the fairies. There was a god like creature that worshipped cows. Then there were werewolves, and oh yeah were-panthers as well. Now we have fairy-vampire hybrids that can walk in the daylight, burst out light from their hands, and bite people. I’m fully aware that this is a fantasy show, but can we draw the line somewhere?

Andy’s Unnamed Fairy Daughters Are In All Kinds of Trouble

Andy has his hands full with four daughters that are all aging almost as fast as the old guy in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when he drinks from the wrong Holy Grail. Each passing day the girls are getting a few years older, and after going to bed one night feeling about 12 years old, seconds later they pop up and they’re 17!

With new bodies and hormones kicking, the girls decide to steal dad’s cop cruiser, go for a joy ride and score some smokes and beer.

The only problem is Bill and his progeny Jessica are on the hunt for some fairy blood, and these four girls have plenty of it. A little friendly coercion at the local convenience store, and a new friend in Jessica, and the four nameless girls are getting into a strange SUV headed to a party (somewhere there has to be an after school special or GI Joe-Knowing-is–Half-the-Battle-short on how this is always a bad idea!).

At the party, Bill convinces the girls to give up a bit of their blood. In reality he’s taking it to Dr. Takahashi, the original creator of True Blood, to find a way to synthesize fairy blood for the vampires. You see with fairy blood, vampires can walk in the light at least for a little bit of time and he believes this is his chance to save his race from a growing human world that seems to hate them.

The only problem is as Dr. Takahashi explains—the blood has all kinds of unknown elements that make it different from human blood, but after a few minutes outside of the host fairy, it breaks down and eventually goes back to human form. Billith isn’t happy about this so he tells the good doctor that he will keep working at it, or pay the consequences.

There’s just one small issue with Bill’s fairy test subjects—they’re all dead.

You see while Bill was down in the basement with Dr. Takahashi, Jessica was upstairs smelling the fairies and it was like they were made out of honey. Like a Kit Kat bar, Jessica quickly ate all four pieces and when Bill discovered her up stairs, the girls were all dead and she sat in horror realizing what she had just done.

Meanwhile, Andy is on the hunt headed to Bill’s place after realizing that his girls were kidnapped by a vampire.

Alcide and Sam Are Running (And No One Cares)

This will be short and sweet because these two have quickly become the marginalized characters I don’t care about this season, and judging by their storylines no one else should much either.

Alcide and his pack are on the hunt for the one lady activist (Nicole) who escaped as well as Emma, who was snatched up by Sam during all the commotion. Sam helps Nicole patch up her leg and escape before they hook up in a random hotel room running from the wolves (a bit soon for Sam to get a new lady considering his last one just supposedly died like 3 days ago).

Meanwhile, Alcide is on the hunt with his pack. If they never find Sam, and just continuously show them running for the next five episodes it would be more interesting than what’s happened with this storyline so far.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Eric decides Willa’s fate finally—he will turn her into a vampire, which is only the second time he’s ever sired a progeny in his life. Once awake from her slumber and feeding on a willing human, Willa is told by Eric that she must now go back to her father, the Governor of Louisiana, as a vampire and try to convince him that his hatred of the fanged kind is wrong (This was also the producer’s chance to get Alexander Scarsgard some screen time without a shirt on so they took full advantage).
Governor Burrell is tearing out what little hair he has left before receiving some love and comfort from his new woman—Sarah Newlin—until the guards come in with news about his daughter….she’s home but they had to invite her in.
Yep, daddy’s little girl has fangs.

The Governor tells his men to leave and it seems like maybe he’s having a breakthrough seeing his daughter, realizing that there is still some humanity buried inside of her. That is until she smells some blood on her father from a cut on his hand, and lunges for dinner.

Luckily, Sarah is ready with her gun cocked and she blasts the baby vamp to the ground and demands that he sends her to his special vampire concentration camp.

She won’t be lonely there either because both Nora and Pam were captured during the episode and will be sent to the camp to be experimented on as well. It appears Bill’s vision is starting to come true more and more with each episode that all of his loved ones will soon burn.

Overall, True Blood was once again a bit of a letdown, but that’s almost come to be expected with this show unfortunately. Only a couple of the storylines stay interesting and the continued introduction of new creatures just doesn’t keep the show going as well as it once was. Sookie’s real heat has always been with Bill and Eric, and her interactions with both characters has been very minimal this season.

Add to that the potential for great character development with both Alicide and Sam being wasted and season 6 of True Blood is definitely carrying on where season 5 ended so miserably.

What did you think of the latest episode of True Blood? Are we off base with our assessment of the latest happenings in Bon Temps? Leave your comments below.