True Blood Review: “In The Evening” (Season 6, Episode 7)

Enough stalling, let’s get to the tragedy. Eric manages to escape camp with Nora, taking her to Billith’s house for safety. He pleads with his old frenemy to giver her some of Lilith’s blood and save her from the virus, even pledging his life to the vampire god and promising to do whatever Bill wants. He relents, but even Lilith’s blood can’t kill Hep-V. Half mad, Eric begs Bill to find Warlow and use his blood instead, but Bill can’t do it in time and Nora dies in her brothers arms. When Terry died last week, I almost snorted instead of feeling sad, which isn’t how the lovable veteran deserved to go. But I’ve gotta say, True Blood made up for that with Nora’s death.

Watching Nora disintegrate in Eric’s arms as he screams and cries blood stands as one of the saddest moments in the series, even though there haven’t been that many. It’s almost undermined by a horribly cheesy flashback to when Eric saved Nora’s life by having Godric make her, but the moment is still painful enough to know that Eric isn’t going to be the same this season. I’m not entirely sure how he’s going to handle this loss, but I’m hoping a rampage isn’t out of the question.

Can we go back to that cheesy flashback? It takes place during the plague in England, and it has Eric with long, flowing hair, looking like a heavy metal god. Eric saves her from that plague, creating a parallel to the Hep-V tragedy, but showing us this earlier than seconds before she died would have been infinitely more effective.

Finally, we get to Billith. Aside from trying to help save Nora, he wasn’t up to much this episode, although he did show up unannounced to Arlene’s house during the day to give his condolences to both her and Andy. He also asks Sookie to give him Warlow so he can figure out a way to save their friends from meeting the sun as his premonition showed. She’s still reluctant to work with him, but saying she’s been useless for the past few years, that’s not terribly surprising.

So in the past two episodes, True Blood has seen it fit to kill of two characters, yet not exactly any of the principal cast. With only three episodes remaining, it’s a lot harder to say now whether everybody we care about will survive for sure or not. Despite Eric’s escape, it’s almost certain that he won’t remain complacent after losing Nora, and Bill plans to break back in to save his friends from an untimely death. It looks like the two most dangerous fangers are going to be on a warpath soon. We’ll have to see how Sam’s return to Bon Temps plays out, but if he tries to save Nicole, I can guess it will only take time away from the more interesting plots.

Until then, I’ll just stay haunted by the image of Eric covered in Nora’s gooey remains.