True Blood’s Executive Producer reveals if Eric Northamn is dead or returning for season 7 and much, much more about the new season ahead…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
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True Blood‘s sixth season had a few shocking moments, but there may not have been one bigger than the finale when a beloved favorite seemingly met the true death.
Following Jason staking Warlow to bring him to an end, the power to walk in the light that all vampires gained who drank his blood faded away in an instant. Luckily for the vampires in Bon Temps, it was night time and they were safely tucked away without any exposure to the sun.
The same could not be said for Eric Northman, who exited Louisiana just seconds after freeing all of the vampires under the control of Governor Burrell’s vamp camp hit squad. He bolted to Sweden where he was enjoying some time on a mountain top, where he sat naked on a lawn chair enjoying a good book.
That’s until the sun came blazing down at his now unprotected body, and the last we saw of Eric he was screaming in agony after bursting into a giant fire ball.
The next scene in the show shifted to six months later, and throughout the rest of the episode, Eric was nowhere to be seen.
On Tuesday in a post-True Blood finale interview, Executive Producer Brian Buckner revealed that actor Alexander Skarsgard will return for season 7 as a series regular, and while he wouldn’t say for sure that Eric is still alive or not, it’s hard to imagine he’ll be showing up all year as a ghost force like he’s Emporer Palpatine or something.
“I can tell you that Alexander Skarsgard is going to be a part of the next season of True Blood,” Buckner told TVLine.com. “He will be a series regular.”
In a separate interview, Buckner teased that he couldn’t say Eric’s status in the new season, but he couldn’t imagine watching True Blood without the character playing a vital part, so in other words he’s alive. There is also the over hanging cliffhanger about Pam, who went out to search for Eric before the flash forward scene in the finale and was also not seen in the final section of the show set six months in the future.
As for the driving story line in season 7, the show’s executive producer says they are going back to their roots from the beginning premise of the series when the entire idea was asking the question if humans and vampires could co-exist in the same world.
With this new Hep-V virus running rampant in the vampire community, each human must now be paired with a vampire to protect them from attack from the infected masses. According to Buckner, the Hep-V virus has mutated (as noted in the finale) and so death does not happen as quickly for the vampires who are infected, but they now must feed more frequently and in greater volumes than before (sounds eerily similar to the plot line from Blade 2).
This leaves human kind with only one choice—trust the uninfected vampires for protection and in exchange feed them your clean blood.
The new tagline for season 7 will be “For every human a vampire, for every vampire a human.”
As far as the hording mass of infected vampires that came down on Bellefleur’s Bar and Grill at the close of season 6, Buckner reveals that they are all carrying Hep-V, but despite popular belief they are not zombies.
The vampires infected are certainly hungry and eating at a much more voracious rate, but they still have all of their cognitive abilities, and aren’t mindless, blood sucking machines.
“They’re weaker and driven by a need to eat in a way that the vampires that we’ve come to know are not. They have to drink human blood in larger quantities and more frequently than before,” Buckner said speaking to EW.com. “And the other thing to clarify — honestly, it feels weird to have to clarify everything, which is essentially what next season’s job is, but they’re not going to be zombies. They’re far more organized and haven’t lost their mental capacity.”
Buckner says the writers for True Blood will head back into the office on September 3 to begin fleshing out ides for season 7 before it debuts in summer 2014.
