Summary

• True Blood chose to underwhelm fans by having Sookie end up with a nameless, faceless everyman instead of one of the supernatural suitors she was involved with throughout the series.
• Bill's influence and desire for Sookie to have a normal life played a significant role in her final decision, despite it being a choice dictated by him rather than one Sookie made for herself.
• The show attempted to wrap up the story by showing Sookie living a normal life with her faceless husband, but this ending felt unsatisfying and robbed Sookie of her agency.

During its seven-season run, HBO's horror series True Blood treated fans to a love triangle between half-fairy Sookie Stackhouse and the vampires Bill Compton and Eric Northman. They even threw in werewolf Alcide Herveaux for good measure. Despite how heavily the show focused on these supernatural romances, Sookie didn't end up with Bill, Eric, or Alcide when all was said and done. Instead, in a conclusion that left fans disgruntled, it was revealed she married a nameless, faceless everyman. This gave her the normal life Bill imagined for her, but after years of supernatural romantic drama, it felt like a letdown.

While other vampire stories, like Twilight and The Vampire Diaries angered, satisfy a portion of their fans by having their leading ladies choose one supernatural suitor over another, True Blood avoided that fate entirely. Fan disappointment over Sookie's faceless and unidentified husband was also indicative of a deeper issue: It was a choice dictated by Bill, not Sookie, which meant that even if the end, she didn't get to make her own choice. In the series' seventh season, Bill was infected with Hepatitis V -- a disease fatal to vampires. Instead of taking the cure when it was offered, Bill chose to die, and his reason had everything to do with Sookie.

Updated on May 12, 2024 by Jenny Melzer: Almost ten years after the last episode of True Blood aired, fans are still annoyed with the anticlimactic ending for the series protagonist, Sookie Stackhouse. The entire show, based on Charlaine Harris' The Southern Vampire Mysteries novels, revolved almost entirely around the love life of the first-person narrator, Sookie. In a world where fairies, vampires, shapeshifters, witches, and werewolves have all come out of the dark and into the everyday light of society, it would only make sense for the main character to end up with another supernatural characters—especially since she was one herself. This article has been updated to further explore True Blood's disappointing resolution for Sookie's character, as well as to adhere to CBR's current standards for formatting.

Sookie's Relationship With Bill Compton Was A Major True Blood Plot Point

From The Start Of The Series, It Was Always Sookie And Bill

In order to understand why Sookie's husband in the series' finale was the wrong choice, it's important to understand the history of her relationships throughout the series. In the very first episode, it was made clear that her boss, Sam Merlotte, was in love with her, but before he had a chance to tell her how he felt, Bill Compton walked into Merlotte's, sat down in Sookie's section, and ordered a True Blood.

Bill and Sookie were powerfully drawn to one another from the beginning. Bill's original motives for seeking her out were hidden until season four, but Sookie was enamored with the idea of not being able to hear his thoughts. As something that made it almost impossible for her to have any kind of meaningful relationships, the silent companionship Bill offered intrigued her, and the mystery of him drew her in.

Staking his claim on her after she allowed him to feed on her, his territorial dominion over her body and her blood was regularly reinforced by Bill's constant iconic reminder, "Sookie is mine." In the Season 2 finale, "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'," Bill even proposed to her, but before she could accept, he was kidnapped by a pack of vampire blood-addicted werewolves and dragged off to the home of Russell Edgington, the Vampire King of Mississippi. After that, their relationship was never quite the same. With the reintroduction of Bill's maker, Lorena, during Season 3, it quickly became obvious that they were falling part. When Sookie met werewolf Alcide Herveaux in her search for Bill, there was an obvious attraction between them, but even after Bill broke things off to keep Sookie safe from Lorena, she refused to give up on finding him.

A History of Sookie's Love Life In True Blood

Love Interest	How It Ended	When It Ended
Bill Compton	Sookie drove a stake through his heart after Bill asked her to use the last of her fairy light to kill him. Deciding to hold onto what made her different, she opted to stake him instead.	Season 7
Eric Northman	Despite having fallen in love with Eric, Sookie still had deep feelings for BIll. Forced to choose between Bill and Eric, Sookie decided it was better not to choose at all and broke it off with both of them.	Season 4
Alcide Herveaux	Alcide suffered a gunshot wound to the head and died instantly, but Sookie was already starting to feel bored in their relationship because life with Alcide was mundane and predictable.	Season 7, Episode 3
Sam Merlott	Sam and Sookie never actually got together in the HBO series, despite them sharing a deeper romance in the novels. Regardless, Sam pursued her for much of the show, even while he was with Tara. He didn't truly give up on the idea of a life with Sookie until he fell in love with Nicole, who would eventually become his wife.	Season 6

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It wasn't until she rescued him, and Lorena was dead, that it seemed things might get back on track for the couple, but then a dying Bill lost control while feeding on her and almost drained her. The near-death experience put her in touch with a side of herself she'd been trying to understand her whole life. Transported to the fairy realm after her brush with death, Sookie disappeared from Bon Temps for just over a year. Most believed that her affiliation with unsavory vampire types like Bill Compton and Eric Northman led to her inevitable death. The only one who held out hope for her return was Eric, who bought her home, so it would be there when she returned (and allow him entry without her permission.)

Through a brief relationship with an amnesiac Eric, and a short-lived romance with Alcide, Season 7 finally brings her back to Bill. After discovering that he is dying from Hepatitis V, she begs him to take the cure and live out his life with her, but Bill refuses. He wants her to have a better life, a life in the sun, children and a family, so he makes an unforgivable choice on her behalf, and asks her to kill him.

Bill's Attempt To Take A Part Of Sookie With Him To The Grave Was Unconscionable

Though His Intentions May Have Been Good, There Is Something Sinister Behind Them

Bill's reasons for Sookie using her fairy light to kill him went beyond his own fate, but it's hard not to look for the selfish intent behind it. Asking Sookie to kill him with her fairy light before the Hep V could would make her fully human. Since Sookie was half-fae, her smell was irresistible to vampires, so Bill argued that her life would never be normal if she held onto her fairy side. Her connection to fairy had been a troublesome burden her entire life, so initially, Sookie agreed to Bill's plan. In the end, however, she ultimately decided against doing it because fairy was a fundamental part of who she was.

Bill opted to die anyway, and Sookie made good on her promise by using a stake to end his life. However, by declining to become fully human, she effectively ruled out the possibility of a completely normal life. On one hand, it's easy to look at Bill's intentions and see the good in them, but underneath the surface, he's already dying. He's tired and ready to move on, but could it be that a part of him didn't want anyone else in the world to have what he had with Sookie? By ridding herself of her fairy light, the scent that attracted vampires to her blood would fade, so she'd be far less likely to be an appealing target.

Sookie's attraction to other supernatural beings was also a part of who she was, so in the series' attempt to put a neat bow on the story by ignoring that and having the final scene show Sookie living normally anyway, fans can't help but feel cheated. Sookie is pregnant, and she and her husband are throwing a Thanksgiving feast with almost all the characters who survived the events of True Blood in attendance. The scene has the feel of the kind of life Bill wanted for Sookie, and the man she ends up with is a symbol of that. But Sookie's life has never been completely normal, and she rarely made choices that would lead to a quiet, small-town existence -- until Bill more or less forced that on her. Even in the end, Sookie remained his.

Sookie Stackhouse Didn't Really Choose Her Own Happy Ending

After Everything Sookie Endured With Supernatural Beings, She Wound Up With A Regular Joe

If Sookie had her agency, she'd likely have chosen to end up with Bill. While Eric always loved her, their relationship was short-lived, and, as Sookie told Arlene, she never really gave herself to Alcide because she was still hung up on Bill. Bill may have dragged Sookie into all kinds of vampire drama, but it was often not of his own making. At his core, Bill was a proper Southern gentleman who could have made Sookie happy if they'd been able to keep entanglements with other vampires at arm's length.

The one issue would be their inability to conceive children together, but there were other ways they could have had a family.Moreover, while Bill believed dying was the only way to set Sookie free, even in death it's impossible to say if Sookie really let him go and was just as in love with Mr. Faceless -- or if she settled for him as a way to fulfill Bill's wish for her. True Blood took an original approach to the conclusion of Sookie's story by showing her life beyond vampire romance. However, all the questionable logic meant that it sacrificed a more satisfying conclusion for an ending that lived up to no one's expectations.

Why Sookie Married a Faceless Man In the Series Finale

One Can Definitely Argue That Sookie's Choice Wasn't Really Her Own In The End

True Blood is an outlier among its romantic vampire fantasy contemporaries like Twilight or The Vampire Diaries in that the Endgame One True Pairing for the story's central character is a man-shaped question mark, played by stuntman Tim Eulich. Executive Producer Brian Buckner admitted the storytellers wanted Bill to be right about what Sookie did with her life. "We felt like it was irrelevant, honestly, who Sookie wound up with," he told Entertainment Weekly in 2014, adding, "We wanted to know was that she was happy and living the life that she wanted to lead."

While the writers were content with that, the choice failed to land for many fans of a show fundamentally about love and self-acceptance. Like most things in society primarily enjoyed by young women, the Sexy Vampire™ trend doesn't get the respect it deserves. True Blood, by virtue of the freedom HBO's series enjoy, was equal parts shocking horror, titillation and heartfelt stories about interesting characters played by impressively talented actors.

While the allegory may not have always landed cleanly, the show tried to be about accepting "otherness" both in society and within themselves. The parallels to the LGBTQ+ experience were not subtle and completely intended. The show made a lot of controversial decisions, especially when it came to killing characters. True Blood was a weird, impressive genre series with a lot to enjoy in its seven seasons. The finale unintentionally robs Sookie of her agency and denies the audience some important closure, and while it's easy to blame Bill Compton for that, in the end it was a choice made by the showrunners.