True Blood Season Four: Identity Crises For All

Executive producer Alexander Woo teases season four of the hit US vampire show (mild spoilers)

Issues over identity will play a big part in season four of True Blood , reveals executive producer Alexander Woo in an exclusive interview in the new issue of S FX (out next Wednesday).

“We have a world of characters that can shape-shift: werewolves, shape-shifters, and were-panthers,” he says. “There are themes of identity there. Then there is a great sense of identity when you are a werewolf being part of a pack. Alcide has always been a lone wolf and not wanted to be so much a part of the pack, but we ask, ‘Can he get away from that?’ Also at the end of season three, Sam tells Tara to get the hell out of town so she can get away from everything that happened to her by running away. We will see how Tara deals with that and if leaving Bon Temps really changes who you are.”

As for Sookie, she, “has to question that she is so alluring to vampires because of something magical in her blood rather than her herself,” while Sam, “has reinvented himself, but how successfully he’s done that is a different question. As we’ve seen in flashbacks, he was living off the grid, engaging in criminal activities. When he is brought into the midst of his birth parents and brother, he seems to revert to who he was – a man filled with rage enough to shoot somebody. It’s not clear if Sam has been successful in reinventing himself either.”

Woo also teases, “More than one fan has noticed that Russell Edgington (Denis O’Hare) wasn’t killed at the end of season three, which leaves a crack of the door open. That speaks to how extraordinary Denis was and what a great character that turned out to be. We didn’t have the heart to excise him from the world right away and I think it was one of the more successful parts of last year.”

Read the full interview, packed with even more revelations (including what vampire Eric’s identity crisis will be and why the show hasn’t packed off Bill to Peru like in the books) in the new issue of SFX, out next week.

True Blood season four begins in the US on 26 June and arrives in the UK on FX at a later date.

Dave Golder
Freelance Writer

Dave is a TV and film journalist who specializes in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He's written books about film posters and post-apocalypses, alongside writing for SFX Magazine for many years.