'True Blood' Premiere Recap: It's Fairy Complicated

The episode "The Sun" in a nutshell

What happened:

• Jason meets his fairy godfather.

• Bill has visions of Lilith.

• Eric confronts Governor Burrell.

Body count: 0

Nudity count: 0

New people and places:

• Niall, Jason's fairy godfather

• Willa, Governor Burrell's daughter

• Nicole, a supernatural activist

• Ben, a half-fairy

Best line: "Down here, organic means you play the fancy piano at church." — Arlene

What's the deal with … Ben's motives? Was his meeting with Sookie really a coincidence?

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After last week's frenetic season premiere, things are (thankfully) starting to settle down on "True Blood." There's no need anymore to watch with a Wikipedia page open.

Storylines are consolidating, which gives them some room to breathe. As fun as it can be to watch action-packed sequences like the Authority showdown at the end of last season, the show is at its best focusing on relationships.

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By now, we've seen a lot of different permutations — Sookie with Bill, Sookie with Eric, Sookie with Alcide. But "True Blood" can still delight us with not-so-obvious pairings, like Sam and Lafayette's friendship or Tara and Pam's developing romance. And we're looking forward to seeing how some new blood freshens things up in Season 6.

Jason and Niall

Right, so Warlow is NOT Warlow. The old man driving the car turns out to be Jason's fairy godfather, Niall! He was just messing with Jason, who admittedly probably shouldn't go around blabbing about Warlow. But hey, this is Jason — he doesn't always think things through like he should.

Niall gives us some more details about Warlow: He's the oldest living vampire, he's fast and clever, and Sookie's fairy godmother (Claudine) blasted him into a dark realm when he killed their parents.

They head to Sookie's house to examine her bathroom, which is a portal to this realm. Niall checks it out and returns all gooey and gross. "It's worse than I thought," he declares.

Arlene and Terry

Yeah, so remember how Terry killed his army buddy Patrick as a sacrifice to that fire monster last season? Well, his wife comes by Merlotte looking for him! Terry is freaked, of course, but leave it to quick-thinking Arlene: She confirms the wife's (wrong) suspicion that Patrick ran away with another woman. Arlene's so good with her fake sympathy, she really ought to think about becoming an actress!

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Andy

Meanwhile, those fairy daughters of Andy's just seem to keep growing and growing. He takes the four girls to the field to find the fairy world portal, but his calls to Maurella go unanswered. Looks like Andy will have to be a stay-at-home dad for awhile yet.

Sam, Alcide, and Lafayette

At Merlotte's, a group of hipster tourists comes in looking for organic food. "Down here, organic means you play the fancy piano at church," Arlene tells them.

One of the tourists peels away to chat up Sam. Her name is Nicole and it turns out she's a supernatural activist. She wants Sam to "come out" as a shifter and share his story in order to start a dialogue between humans and supernatural creatures. Her own grandparents were freedom riders in the Civil Rights fight. But Sam refuses to help her and demands she leave him alone.

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Back at Sam's house, Lafayette is watching Emma (how cute are they playing dress-up!). When Sam gets home, though, he's followed by Alcide and Emma's grandmother. They've come to get Emma! Alcide points out it's only a matter of time before the authorities track Sam down and that Emma will be safer with her fellow werewolves.

Sam doesn't want to hand her over, and he and Alcide tussle. One of the other wolves beats up Lafayette (oh no they didn't!). In the end, the pack takes Emma away. Unbeknownst to all of them, Nicole and her activist group filmed the whole encounter!

Eric, Pam, Tara, and Nora

At Fangtasia, Tara is in pain. Whatever the SWAT team shot her with isn't letting her heal and seems to be burning her from the inside! When Eric returns, he digs out the bullet — turns out it emits UV light. Nora is shocked that humans are starting to fight back.

"If humans want war, we'll give them war," Eric growls. We love Angry Eric!

He manages to infiltrate the governor's mansion disguised as a geeky wildlife department manager. (So disturbing to see Eric looking like a nerd.) But when he tries to glamour Gov. Burrell into striking down his anti-vampire regulations, Burrell laughs in his face. He's wearing special contacts that prevent glamouring! Security guards quickly surround Eric.

But this is Eric Northman we're talking about — he flies off before any guard can even think about pulling the trigger.

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He flies to the window of the governor's daughter, Willa, who also works as his aide. She's already taken her contacts out to get ready for bed, which means Eric can glamour her.

Willa invites him in (though does anyone really need to be glamoured to invite Eric into their bedroom?).

Sookie

After a haranguing phone call from Arlene, Sookie is on her way to Merlotte's to work when she happens upon an injured man on the side of the road. Hearing his thoughts, she learns that Ben is also a half-fairy!

Ben seems like a sweet guy (which really should set Sookie's internal alarms off, but whatever), so Sookie takes him home to clean his wounds. He says she reminds him of his high school girlfriend and that it's been a long time since someone was so kind to him.

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Later, as she walks him down the road, Ben asks her on a date, but Sookie isn't ready to jump into another relationship. Considering her ex just turned into some sort of vampire demi-god, who can blame her? Sookie runs away, but we have a feeling this isn't the last we'll see of Ben.

When she gets back home, she meets Jason and Niall. The fairy godfather imparts some more information about the evil Warlow — he's been obsessed with their family for thousands of years and has been killing them one by one.

But the fairies in their family have a special power that can fight him off: They can channel their power to become supernova-like. Sookie can only use the supernova once, as a last resort; after using it, she'll no longer be a fairy.

Bill and Jessica

When all those different Liliths rushed inside Bill, something happened to him. A concerned Jessica jumps out of bed to find out what's happening, but Bill himself doesn't seem to know. He can sense the pain of other vampires — he starts seeing flashes of ones who are getting tortured and killed. Suddenly, Bill collapses and goes into some sort of coma.

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He enters some kind of dream world where Lilith (not naked or bloody, but fully clothed) tells him that "events have been set in motion." A tyrant is rising and it is "the beginning of the end." Sigh, can't Lilith be a little more clear? At least she clears up the fact that he isn't God. As for how Bill can save them all, Lilith tells him he'll know what to do when the time comes.

Meanwhile, Jessica hired a blood-stitute (like a prostitute, but to give him blood instead of sex). But instead of feeding on her, Bill does this horrifying thing where he sucks all of the woman's blood out of her mouth and into his own! Jessica screams and cries, but Bill is still catatonic.

When he finally awakes, he sees a TV news report about a vampire being dragged behind a truck full of rednecks. Jessica realizes that Bill saw that event — before it happened! Bill can see the future.

Bill has another premonition flash: Eric, Pam, Jessica, and others are standing in a white room. Suddenly, UV lights go on and they burst into flames. They're all about to die!

"True Blood" airs Sundays at 9 PM on HBO.