‘True Blood’ season 7, episode 3 reaction: Joe Manganiello and Alcide’s journey

Before we go any deeper into this “True Blood” episode, a warning: STOP READING NOW if you haven’t watched the episode that aired tonight yet. Otherwise, you are bound to be extremely disappointed and/or angry. Depending on your reactions to this episode, you may be feeling this way already.

HBO is clearly not afraid to kill people off this season, are they? Two episodes after Rutina Wesley’s Tara was killed, we saw the same thing happen tonight as Joe Manganiello’s Alcide was shot, and Sookie decided to not turn him into a vampire.

The emotional impact of this is something that cannot be stated enough: This was Sookie making a sacrifice for someone else. Part of her heart wanted him to keep living, but would Alcide really enjoyed life as a vampire? We have a hard time imagining it to be so. So much of who he was happened to be tied to being a werewolf. Nothing else would have worked.

We wish we had a more cohesive identity in the end for who this character was. He started off a rogue, but also a helpful guy. Then, he got pretty dark as a packmaster, and he spent about a season off with Robert Patrick doing some stuff that was not in the end important to anyone else. It felt like producers knew that Manganiello was a rising star, and having him on the show was a big win. Unfortunately, werewolves never turned out to be as interesting as we wanted them to be, and we often didn’t get to see Alcide doing some of the cool stuff that we wanted for him.

Also, would it have been a more impactful death had Sookie not admitted beforehand that she probably did not love him the same he loved her? That to us made the final moments for the character awkward. Even though the writing probably never met its full potential here, we’re going to be missing this werewolf the rest of the season. At least Manganiello will be moving on to some cool other gigs soon.