‘True Blood’ season 6, episode 9: What did Alexander Skarsgard not want to do?

Let’s start this “True Blood” season 6 article out with a very big SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched last night’s episode yet, don’t read on unless you’re okay with ruining EVERYTHING for yourself in advance.

Now, we turn to the story at hand: Trying to get over almost everything that transpired within “Life Matters.” While we said in our review last night that no long-running character passed away, we meant that in reference to the series regulars that have been there since the beginning, and not so much a slam against Michael McMillian’s Steve Newlin. He has been a part of a few seasons now, but to be fair, this felt like the character’s time to go. He has not had much use this season save for one scene that led to so many of the characters meeting the sun, and keeping him alive would have gone against the Eric Northman character. He just went through the wringer and executed a series of bloody killings just for the sake of getting some of his friends out of a dangerous situation, and the last thing he was going to do was let a frequent flip-flopper / traitor live to see the other side.

In the video below, executive producer Brian Buckner explains that this was something that Alexander Skarsgard was not particularly enthused about doing, with the major reason for that being that he simply liked to work with Michael, and he knew what Steve suffering the true death would mean.

Now, we don’t know just what will become of Eric moving forward. Although he freed his friends and loved ones (including both Willa and Pam), it still did not seem to calm the void inside of him caused by the death of Nora. While he ventures off into parts unknown, next week’s finale is going to tie up some of the loose ends from earlier this season, and also potentially set the stage for what will happen in the future.

Photo: HBO