‘True Blood’ season 6, episode 9 preview: Anna Paquin’s Sookie, a surprise guest

“True Blood” season 6 is finally going to be showing us the Terry Bellefleur funeral service on Sunday night, and its unifying effect is taking hold in some interesting ways.

First of all, Anna Paquin’s Sookie arrives at the funeral to sit next to someone that we have barely heard a peep from all season long: Maxine! This is a nice opportunity to get a brief update about how Hoyt is doing with his new life, which is something that we’re not going to spoil for you here since it’s a nice little callback to the show’s first five seasons.

Then, we also have our first Sookie – Alcide scene of the entire season as he shows up with his hair looking like it’s been through a wind tunnel. It’s interesting how much his own personality has taken a 180 this year, but he’s back to being the relatively-kind werewolf that checks up on Sookie, and everyone else in Bon Temps. He’s still not keen to take Jason’s spot at the service, though. (Jason may be a little bit too busy trying to keep Violet away from him to be able to attend.)

Could we say goodbye to a character other than Terry in this episode? It’s possible, as you have several vampires close to meeting “the sun,” and you also have Eric Northman on a tear after getting some Warlow blood in his veins.

In case you did not know, there is already a Terry Bellefleur flashback scene that has been posted online for this episode, along with a promo that is extremely creepy and Sarah Newlin-based. We’ll have more tomorrow leading up to the episode, which is also when our full review will be posted. Be prepared: This is going to be a big one.

Photo: HBO