Season five of True Blood has concluded with its most jaw-dropping cliffhanger ever. While many fans were greatly distressed by Bill Compton’s explosive death and resurrection in the finale, I was enthralled by this turn of events. Bill is going to be smack-bang at the centre of next season’s storyline, and is the subject of intense speculation and attention right now. Also, this will be an excellent plot to showcase Stephen Moyer’s versatility as an actor, and represents a huge game-changer for the show.
Here are my thoughts on Bill Compton version 2.0…
Nature
Bill is not simply Lilith in Bill’s skin – he is still himself, with his own memories and experiences. This has been confirmed already by Alan Ball. So this is not, as some fans have been saying, a rip-off of the Locke/Man in Black storyline from Lost (massive Lost spoiler: Locke died, and the evil spirit of The Man in Black took on his form). The fact that Sookie and Eric both saw him implies that he is a physical being, not a spirit entity as Lilith was. I doubt that Lilith is going to be inhabiting his body and occasionally taking controlling him, since they’ve done the spirit possession thing to death with Lafayette. It’s possible that Bill will continue to have visions of Lilith, but my feeling is that we’ve seen the last of her and her epic ladygarden. Lilith’s quest was to find a host, and now that she has accomplished that, her powers have become manifested in Bill. My feeling is that Bill will still have free-will, and will have control over his own actions, for better or for worse.
Since he has been “reborn”, then it is plausible that he will suffer from the same uncontrollable urges as a newly made vampire does, and will be wild and impulsive. Throughout season five, he became increasingly psychotic, as a result of ingesting Lilith’s blood and being brainwashed by the Sanguinista cult, to the extent that he lost all the love and empathy that he’d once had, even towards Jessica and Sookie. Now that he is reborn, whether or not he remains a completely cold-blooded psychopath remains to be seen.
A lot of fans have been asking if Bill will be naked, covered in blood, and emitting a horrendous primal scream noise all season. Somehow, as much as I would like to see an entire season of Naked Bill, I doubt that he’s going to remain in the state we saw him in immediately following his resurrection. To have him being an entirely feral would be a waste of Stephen Moyer’s acting skills, so I think that he will be lucid, just more vicious than he once was.
Powers
Obviously he has become supercharged in some way – so will he have some previously unseen superpowers? What will he be capable of? Superior strength and speed to all vampires is a given, as is extremely potent blood, and very possibly the ability to enthrall vampires who drink his blood. Probably he’ll acquire the ability to fly, and maybe some advanced glamouring technique. Maybe he will be able to glamour a mass audience via television? Or glamour other vampires and supernatural beings? The writers’ imaginations pose the only limit to what Bill might now be capable of. Perhaps he’s immune to staking, and can daywalk? He might even have some crazy sci-fi abilities such as pyrokinesis, telekinesis, teleportation, shape-shifting, telepathic projection, time travel, prescience, resurrection of the dead… you name it!
A feeling I have is that Bill will see Lorena, in the same way that Eric and Nora saw Godric. And if Bill sees Lorena egging him on to be evil, maybe it will make him think twice.
Motivations
Now that Bill is some sort of vampire demigod, what sort of shenanigans is he going to get up to? The Sanguinistas were keen to bolster their numbers by turning new vampires, so perhaps Bill will get some new progenies? Will he set out to gain new followers, presenting himself as the new vampire messiah, or embark on a lone mission of anarchy? Maybe Steve Newlin and Nigel the baby eater could be his first disciples? Bill was an adept politician, so perhaps he will continue to try to manipulate the media, while covertly carrying out his dastardly deeds.
On the other hand, since he had a brief realization in between downing the blood, and meeting the true death, perhaps the reborn Bill will question his new role and will resist the prophecy within the Vampire Bible.
What I’m really wondering is whether Bill could be the Antichrist. It’s been mentioned in the show that “end days” are coming, and Salome spoke of Lilith’s return heralding The Rapture. What if events are spiralling towards a cataclysmic event, and Bill is the harbinger of evil? If that is the case, then another being would have to be the second coming of Christ. Sookie, perhaps? Or is this all a bit too much like Lost/Carnivale/The Stand?!
The Long Game
My feeling is that, while Bill will initially appear to be inherently evil, slowly he will come to his senses. He’s fought long and hard for his humanity in the past, after all. I know that many fans feel that Bill’s role next season is to eventually defeat Warlow, and I am in agreement. They’ve already done the “Bill and Eric outwit an ancient vampire” thing with Russell, but now Bill has been empowered it will be interesting to see a face-off between two ultra-powerful undead beings.
I think that the fairies will have an important role to play in Bill’s eventual fate. There is way more to the vampire/fairy mythology than we have seen so far in the show. My feeling is that their origins are somehow entwined. It was significant that Salome was so appalled by fairies, and said that Lilith regards them as an abomination. And let’s not forget – Bill now has four half-fairy great-great-great-great-great granddaughters. Bill has to eventually be revealed as Andy and Terry’s ancestor, and I think the existence of his living human bloodline will come into play.
I feel that the end-game in True Blood is for Bill to turn human. One reason for this is that Russell implied in season three that the fairies have the ability to resurrect dead vampires. So maybe season six could end with Bill being killed again (perhaps by suicide), and then being resurrected again by Sookie, but this time as a human. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony? The only way he can have a future with Sookie is to become human, but by becoming human he ruins his chances with her, because then she’d be able to read his mind. And how terrible would it be for him to be gifted these infinite god-powers only to have them removed, and to have to learn to live as an ordinary mortal? However, it’s been revealed that Sookie’s powers are finite – she and Bill could end up living as an ordinary human couple after all. I still think that their conversation in season three, where they dreamed of a life together where neither was a supernatural being, was somehow prophetic.
Whatever direction the writers choose to take Bill’s character, it’s sure to be a mind-bending journey that his character will embark on!
Natalie co-hosts God Hates Fangs podcast with her husband. She is currently working on a trilogy of sci-fi vampire novels.
