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"I'm a waitress. What the fuck are you?!"

“You mess with the bull, you get the horns.” And so it was on last night’s “True Blood” Season 2 finale.

The big day’s finally arrived for Maryann and the God Who Comes and she has just about everything she needs for her holy union: Mothball-infested old lady wedding dress? Check. Bloody ostrich egg? Check. Slighted, contrary maid of honor? Check. Human sacrifice? Ch—dammit! Sometimes you can do all the planning in the world and still end up waiting til the last minute for everything to fall into place.

But fall in place it did, once Bill arrived with Sam to the Circle of Death. Maryann walked down the aisle and Andy followed, adjusting her train. (Normally this duty’s reserved for the MOH, but it proves slightly difficult when you’re being restrained against your will, as was Sookie’s case.) Bill offers Sam in exchange for Sookie and Maryann concedes. Sookie wails in horror, protesting Sam’s fate as her black-eyed peeps bind and gag the bootylicious barkeep. In a flurry of chanting and vibrating (Lafayette: “Worship him bitches!”), Maryann and her masses summon the gods. Eggs brings forth the holy dagger and hands it to Maryann, who plunges it deep into Sam’s chest. Sookie pleads with Sam to “use [his] gift” and Bill urges Sookie to use hers.

Sookie tunes into Sam’s thoughts, which tell her to create a distraction.While Maryann fixates on the bloody knife, Sookie runs to the rotting, meaty totem and hurls the ostrich egg into the crowd before toppling the structure. Livid, Maryann plants her fists into the dirt and yanks them out to reveal her gnarled, piggy claws. Sookie books it out of the sacrificial circle and Maryann chases after her. Sookie seems to be doomed to suffer the fate she so narrowly escaped in episode 3, until Maryann comes face to face with her marital bull. She retracts her claws to fawn over the bull god and it gores her viciously. Her gullet oozes dark, tarry bile as the animal transforms into Sam, who yanks out Maryann’s blackened and decayed heart-type organ. She falls to the ground, a zombified corpse.

QUESTION: How did Sam change into the white bull? Did he just happen to see a white bull? Or maybe he channeled the bull-horned statue at the ceremony? Doesn’t he have to see the real deal to transform?

Once Maryann’s been smited, Bon Tempians are immediately released from the trance and sent to stumbling around and trying to figure out what the hell’s going on and why they’re all wearing togas and viney headdresses. Sam opens Merlotte’s the next day and everyone gathers for stiff drinks and speculation. Was Maryann an alien? Was it a conspiracy by large pharmaceutical companies? Or maybe a trap setup by the liberal media? (BTW, that woman in the striped shirt at the bar? That was Charlaine Harris, the author behind the Sookie Stackhouse novels.)

Sookie, Sam, and Bill are the only ones who truly know the answer, and pledge to keep it that way. Lafayette prefers not knowing, but Eggs, who awoke to find his hands stained with blood, wants the truth. He corners Sookie in the bar parking lot and pleads with her to unlock his memory. Stunned at what he sees and realizing the crimes he’s committed, Eggs runs off heartbroken.

Sam decides to take a few days off and heads home to his parents’ house. The parents we’ve glimpsed in Sam’s rare flashbacks are actually his adopted parents. Sam’s on a mission of self and demands to know who his real parents are. Upstairs, Sam’s sickly adopted father passes him a crumpled piece of paper containing the names Melinda and John Lee Mickens.

Later that evening, Eggs returns to Merlotte’s to find Andy and confess to the murders. A good idea in theory, maybe, but executed poorly, ie, by shoving the bloody murder weapon into the cop’s face. When Jason sees Andy on the ground with a knife centimeters from his eyes he pulls the trigger on Andy’s gun and blows Eggs’ brains out.

Across town in a French restaurant (which, according to Bill, humans seem to love and go there often to celebrate), Bill gives Sookie a gift — round-trip plane tickets to Burlington, VT. “Why Burlington?” you ask. “Ben & Jerry’s?” No, Vermont’s the only state that allows vampires to get married. Bill slides a black velvet box across the table and asks Sookie to “do him the honor of becoming his wife.” Sookie manages to ruin the moment by sobbing and carrying on about how she doesn’t know who/what she is. She runs to the ladies room for a breather and when she returns, ready to accept, finds Bill gone and the dining room in shambles. This is likely the work of Eric, who’s been charged by the Queen with “taking care Bill” because P.S., she’s the one forcing Eric to sell V through Lafayette.

Episode 12 was a memorable, and fitting, end to Season 2. While Season 1 puttered to a close with a weak resolution (Renee’s box of Cajun dialect acting tapes and Idiot’s Guides to Killing Waitresses and Grandmas), last night’s episode capitalized on a season’s worth of pandemonium. Maryann’s death scene was epic (part zombified Nazi a la Raiders of the Lost Ark part Tales from the Crypt). With the climax arriving only 30 minutes into the episode, another 30 minutes remained to establish possible plot threads for Season 3. And based on what I saw last night, the show only looks to get better.

QUOTABLE QUOTES:

Maryann: “You’re the maid of honor. You have to lick the egg.”

Sheriff Dearborn: “You might have your faults Andy, but at least you have pants on.”

Woman at the bar: “God bless those jeans. I would wear him like a scrunchy.”

Andy: “In my book, we ain’t heroes if no one remembers.”
Jason: “Not-uh. It’s like if a tree falls in the woods, it’s still a tree, right?”

SEASON 3 SETUP:
*The secret behind Sam’s true family
*Bill’s fate at the hands of Eric/Queen Sophie-Anne
*What is Sookie?
*Will Jason face consequences for Eggs’ murder?

(Photo by Prashant Gupta/HBO)

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Tags: Anna Paquin. Stephen Moyer, HBO, movies & tv, season finale, True Blood.