Although True Blood doesn’t start for nearly two weeks, the folks at HBO are apparently well aware that we’ve been craving our vampire pulp fix for months. Photos, trailers, and clips from Season 4 have been leaking out since April; now, io9 points us to the juiciest preview yet — the first eight minutes of the premiere. In it, we find Sookie in a strange, beautiful land, where everyone seems to just hang out, eating fruit that glows. But, since the True Blood universe can only stay peaceful for moments at a time, the action kicks in soon enough. Watch the clip and follow along with our predictions (as viewers who have scrupulously avoided Season 4 spoilers and haven’t read Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries) after the jump.
Sookie’s fairy godmother: In the first seconds of the clip, Sookie learns that she has a fairy godmother — and proceeds to take her to task for doing a terrible job as a protector. But the fairy godmother’s visible discomfort during their introduction seems to signal that’s she’s hiding something. Is she more than just a “godmother” to Sookie? How much does she realize about and how complicit is she in the fairy realm’s dark side?
Grandaddy: The fact that, when Sookie first lays eyes on him, he looks just like he did in her memory suggests that he may not be who she thinks he is at all. Also suspicious is the fact that he jumps through the portal with Sookie, despite the fact that he’s just been told he can’t travel between worlds (although it’s certainly possible that this is simply a selfless act of love). If he is who he says he is, will the journey kill him?
Queen Mab: The clip does a good job of characterizing Queen Mab — the fairy queen who first appeared in Mercutio’s crazy speech in Romeo and Juliet and soon popped up everywhere from Shelley’s poetry to Sense and Sensibility — as we know her from literature. A mischievous and theatrical “midwife” of dreams, she’s also know for wreaking havoc on entire populations. So, it should be pretty entertaining to watch her prepare for this human “harvest” she’s so fixated on.
Fairies and witches: It seems likely, based on this preview, that this season will feature a fairly elaborate fairy subplot. And in the Season 4 trailers we’ve already seen, a coven of witches will also be taking up residence in Bon Temps. What do fairies and witches have in common? Magic and an enemy — vampires. So, will they be friends or rivals?
Sookie: At the end of last season, it seemed like Sookie was pretty much finished with vampires. But, besides the obvious reality that ending things with both Bill and Eric forever would be terrible for the show, it looks like the witch-and-fairy business will have her thrust back into bloodsucker drama before long. Still, it seems possible that she’ll spend much of the season under neither vampire’s power.
How about you, readers? What do you think will happen in Season 4, based on this preview of the premiere?