TV Revivals: Should ‘True Blood’ return to HBO with Alexander Skarsgard, Anna Paquin, cast?

Through the first three seasons, we’d argue that “True Blood” may have been one of the most-popular series on television. Viewers loved it, critics praised it, and it set the tone for twisted supernatural drama in the way that we see it now on many other shows.

Unfortunately, something happened along the way that caused things with this show to go sideways. Following the departure of Alan Ball, nothing ever was the same in the show’s final years. Warlow and Mr. Gus were far from exciting villains, we had too many people coming and going, and there were so many controversial storylines with Sookie and Bill in particular that fans were left guessing. Some shows that we’re featuring this month in our TV Revivals series are here because they are amazing and we want to see them back; others, meanwhile, are here because they need redemption and are worth more than they way they ended. This one has to be considered the latter.

How it ended – Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) died, while Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) eventually fell in love with a mystery man and was expecting a child in the closing minutes. Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) went into business with Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten), making millions on a new blood product following the Hep V outbreak that took place at the end of season 6 / early on in season 7. Many heroes had a happy ending, and sat down for dinner with each other four years after the main events of the finale in a great place. With that being said, these endings were so far disconnected from the show that it was hard to care about many of them. This finale remains regarded as one of the worst-received of the past several years.

How it could continue – We see two different approaches to righting the show with “True Blood.” The first is that you rewind from the closing flash-forward and show how Sookie met this man, and some of the problems that awaited her moving forward from Bill. We have a hard time imagining that this was smooth sailing! Also, you could see Eric and Pam’s rise to power in the business world.

Another idea is to merely set the show months removed from the end of the flash-forward, and tell a new story almost as though this was not really the end. Given that this is a world where there are always new threats waiting in the wings, the writers could think of reasons to throw Sookie back into the fire.

Can it be brought back? – Why not? The show drew big ratings for HBO throughout its run, and even to date “Game of Thrones” is the only thing they have that draws significantly better ratings. The big issue here is just getting the cast rounded up again given that so many of them are now on other shows and off doing other things. Also, HBO would need a super-compelling reason to bite at this again, given that they have a reputation of great programming (for the most part) that they don’t want to ruin by bringing back a show that is already polarizing, only to not deliver on the material.

Do you think that “True Blood” should return, even for redemption if nothing else?