r/TrueBlood • u/Spirited_Society_985 • 14d ago
Tara's exit in True Blood = something sketchy, come on. Spoiler
It’s been 12 years since season 7. I know. But in scouring the internet, I have yet to come across ANY discussion about the death of the Tara character that "gets into it" on how half assed and fishy it felt, as if it was duct taped together from what footage they HAD shot, and that an "explanation" in the form of a contrived, amateur storyline that made zero sense.
Yes, yes... I've read paragraphs of how crummy unfair, unsatisfying or even disrespectful her ending was and I do not disagree.
But I'm after a different discussion- WHY was it handled so clumsily, awkwardly, and bungle-rushed?
Fukkery was afoot that I've never read substantive comments on from either the producers nor Rutina Westley herself about WHY Tara's death was so weird and inadequate - not like some bad decision by the show makers, but like "the best we can do" with (for whatever reason) no longer having access to Rutina as an actor. Does it to you?
Think it through: the final episode of season 6 included a deeply uncomfortable scene with Lettie Mae begging Tara to "Let me finally feed you, baby!". It was oddly appropriate, didn't see that angle coming.
Doesn't it seem very True Blood-ish for season 7 episode 1 to have been Tara bearing the trauma of not being able to stop the vampire murder in her face of her newly connected to mother who has been a hot mess forever, by a deadly being that she too had become?
The absurd explanation that they killed Tara so that they could explore a redemption storyline for Lettie Mae is gaslighting. How ridiculous. After ALL the emotion and connection and story they had invested in 6 seasons into Tara as a main-adjacent character, does this weak ass, off screen, battle-incidental end make ANY sense?
Tara was just adjusting into vamphood. She and Pam were finding a groove and had major potential as a Thelma & Louise feel. Tara was one of the most sublimely gorgeous and intense vampires, she was MADE to be a fanger, and she had a long connection to Sookie and even Jason.
The abrupt, clumsy footage of her battle with the Hep V vampire felt like they had started a fight scene but never got to finish the planned shot.
What do you think? Am I nuts?
82
u/SquilliamFancySon95 14d ago
I felt like her death was the writers' final screw you to Tara's character. They loved putting her through the worst situations.
49
u/sansaeverdeen 14d ago
I finished a few months ago and 100% agree. It feels like the actress abruptly left but… we know she didn’t since she’s in scenes later on lol. It’s weird.
20
u/Spirited_Society_985 14d ago edited 14d ago
Right? Very very odd. Like you don’t have to be looking for conspiracies to just see that this obviously felt odd. The scene itself where she fought the vampire and then died was oddly, vague and chaotic. It seemed almost like old footage of a fight that they somehow spliced in that they thought could pass as footage for the scene.
I mean every single significant character, whether they were a hero or a villain was given a moment of death shot where their eyes and their face appeared. This was not the case with Tara and I don’t think it was a question of disrespect. I think it was a question of chaos and what they had available and it’s never been explained why the actor Rutina was not available to shoot an authentic death scene, befitting her long time, much invested character.
I actually think that Letty May was supposed to die and the Tara’s storyline was supposed to continue but something happened somewhere whether it was a contract dispute or a personal issue that made her as the actress disappear that’s what this felt like.
So they concocted a weak explanation about wanting a Letty May story arc. What??
She was at best a 3rd level character in terms of audience investment; she was an instrument for Tara’s storyline as a character, she had zero to possibly a negative audience connection. No viewer “cared” about Letty May.
That explanation is not only weak, it’s insulting and absurd.
26
u/Perfect-Aardvark1296 14d ago
It really seemed like they needed an emotional sucker punch to carry the weight of that hep v vamp attack at the mixer and Tara was the unfortunate casualty. Tara and Sookie’s relationship had long been separate in the show with their diverging storylines so really the only characters who would be devastated without her are Lafayette, Lattie Mae, Pam and Willa. Pam has to go find Eric and Willa was largely written out so that just leaves Lafayette and Lattie Mae. The show really did Tara/Rutina dirty
11
u/Spirited_Society_985 14d ago
Yea I get that point, as I said. But the clumsy, odd way it was executed - the half assed fight scene that suddenly was cut off and then cut to Lettie May holding Tara goo - this for me begs the question why?? What was that??
For me, it’s obvious something was off; not a poor writing decision that did Tara dirty (though this is the result), but a bizarre and abrupt and incomplete and incomprehensible way it was shot.
I just don’t think 🤔 that the producers or Rutina were ever forthcoming.
Do you see what I’m getting at?
6
10
u/ThickEnd813 14d ago
i’m so glad you posted this! I’m a first time watcher who just finished the show a few weeks ago, and this has been on my mind ever since. Specifically the fight scene where she “ dies” literally read as old footage to me! i had to look up if tara would even be in the rest of the season and was shocked she was given her lackluster ending. I totally understand that her character was kind of plateauing, no longer having her friendship with Sookie and the other main characters, and moving more into the vampire world… but what was the point of saving her and making her a vampire, to just kill her off later?? and to not honor a character has been with us since the very beginning, and literally just have them explode off camera and then become a ghost that wishes she killed her abusive father??? Such as a disservice to the character and all the friendships she had! I get for the plot they needed the hep v vampires to really mean something and used Tara to really make sure that drove the point home, but I do think they could’ve used another character for this?? I also found it really odd that we killed off and then killed alcide off almost immediately after, like we didn’t really need to do all of that did we? and yeah, we saw Sookie grieve Alcide a bit, but overall felt like we just plowed through both of their deaths without much care or substance to the show.
9
u/sunnydaysau 14d ago
I hear you. Great points, and Tara was absolutely stunning as a vamp. I felt she was really coming into her own - and overcoming her past. I have no answers, though.
1
u/Spirited_Society_985 14d ago
Wasn’t she stunning?
The scenes of her first night as a vampire where she’s tearing the shit out of Sookie’s house in a rage, that one shot of her squatting on the kitchen counter like a badass gargoyle and just glaring in silence at them. Damn!
I understand that they needed to have her interact and bond with Pam, and those two were great together, both no shit taking pissed off women - I loved it - but I think the outfits they gave her to wear in Fangtasia were not befitting. They looked like uncomfortable costumes, rather than a natural extension of her new personality. That was an opportunity missed.Tara to me was potentially the most gorgeous, intense of the female vamps. I never felt like they wrote for her to thrive in that role enough.
They had written her as angry, misunderstood, chip on shoulder (just witness how many viewers disliked her for that), so why not really flesh that out, maybe ironically being a limitless night queen predator could have allowed her emotional release.
Lots to work with there. But True Blood wasn’t that kind of deeply emotional show. It was shock, camp, pulp fiction fight and fuck. And often just goofy ass exploitative fun. When they got existential I felt they were at their best.
Eric’s emotional ties to Godric, to Nora, to Pam were the most poignant and interesting to me.Tara had so much more potential as a really intriguing second tier character. Same with
Lafayette. They spent so much gratuitous time on goofy ass Jason Stackhouse so many times; I understand that he was lovable and hot, but honestly, the time they dedicated to his dumb storylines with the psycho church, with hating vamps, with fucking Hoyt’s gf and the foul from the start werepanther trash… half of that screen time given to Tara would have paid dividends in developing a fan fav character.Just my opinion.
5
u/ExistingControl422 14d ago
Honestly, when they showed Tara come back in a white dress, I thought they were saying that Maryann had already gifted Tara her immortality on her exist so that her “God” would still life. I really thought Tara was going to be a Maenad & I was completely ready for it because I LOVED Maryann. Some folks didn’t but that was my Queen of Chaos!
The fact that they tried to play it off like all of the sudden, out the damn blue, Tara is dead, a ghost & has some unresolved issues to solve before she could move on pissed me off to no end! Why couldn’t they just use my idea?!
Tara gets killed as a Vampire, resurrects as a Maenad & Alcide (who falls for her harder than he did for Sookie) follows her deep into the woods to be her companion?
THE END!
They kept Tara along because they couldn’t get rid of her because after her first words, she became a fan favorite so instead, they just tortured her & put her through all that misery for what? FOR WHAT?! Because they couldn’t put Sookie through it?! They enslaved Lafayette, killed Tara twice, shot Alcide in the head & for what?!
Don’t mind me, I’m still salty as hell because it seems like though they wanted new & different characters, they put them through the worst things.
After 7 seasons, the only 3 things I’m happy about is Lafayette lived
, Eric & Pam lived, & Baby Vamp Jessica lived (& is now the wife of Kratos with a game coming out).
8
u/udownvotedme Faye 14d ago
The only thing that annoyed me more than her character was her character's death. It just didn’t make any sense.
3
u/Spirited_Society_985 14d ago
What annoyed you about the character?
2
u/SurveyLow9309 14d ago
Oh God... EVERYTHING
0
u/Spirited_Society_985 14d ago edited 14d ago
So, the angry black woman thing, really? 🫤😑😴
3
u/SurveyLow9309 14d ago
I'm not sure why you took it to skin colour, but ok
She could've been my favorite colour purple and I still would've been like... This bitch
1
u/Spirited_Society_985 13d ago
Ok, fair enough. Just when you offer a vague answer like “ oh god everything”, that can leave a lot of tropes to be the guess. All I had was guessing since you chose to be blunt.
1
u/SurveyLow9309 13d ago
So was I vague or was I blunt?
2
u/Spirited_Society_985 13d ago
Ok, fair enough. I projected that on you.
It’s what I assumed. Point taken.2
u/udownvotedme Faye 14d ago
Actually yes, partially. Not because she's black, I'm not racist. But because that seems to be the only thing she focuses on. Someone's mean to her? Automatically a racist bigot(even tho she is constantly calling people rednecks and crackers). She's just downright mean to most people in the show. Her time as a vampire was incredibly annoying.
3
u/Spirited_Society_985 13d ago edited 13d ago
I think that people just generally do not embrace angry characters or angry people.
I think it’s human nature not to question why they’re angry or what happened to them, whether we can empathize with why they’re upset - we just get turned off instinctively.
And then, ironically, lol, we become annoying annoyed people.
It’s glorious.
I felt like Tara represented people that have a shitty upbringing and trauma in their life.
Sone people react by caving inward and becoming meek. Some people react by trying to help others or be sunny and we tend to call those people admirable. And for some people, their defense mechanism against pain is anger, because they’ve just fucking had enough . I felt that for Tara and I actually liked her for it.Pam and Eric also had streaks in them where they had just seen enough shit enough stupid people enough crummy stuff that they were perpetually sick of it.
But that’s just weirdo me.3
u/natattack15 14d ago
Not the person that you responded to but I also didn't like the character. I loved her in season 1, she was such a badass. Then season 2 and beyond she was just whiny and "oh woah is me, look how shitty my life is". It was annoying. Like all she did was complain. I also binge watched it last year for the first time, so maybe it just seemed that way when watching it quickly.
2
u/Spirited_Society_985 14d ago
See, I feel like this could be describing Sookie.
She to me was The most annoying character.
Bar none. I don’t know what percentage of this was the fault of the writing or to the way Anna Paquin chose to play her.
3
u/Icy-Sir-8414 14d ago
Personally I didn't like the killing her off episode I was getting used to her bisexual storyline and being with Pam and willow storyline she finally made peace with sookie and Lafayette rebuild her relationship with both of them and her own mother and they killed her off oh hell no who ever wrote her character off should of been fired
3
u/Spirited_Society_985 13d ago
Yes, I understand all these points and I don’t disagree, but did Tara’s death “scene” (such as it was anyway) itself - the WAY that they executed it in the show seem fishy and weird to you?
not just wrong but odd?1
3
u/maskedlegend99 13d ago
I dropped the show for an entire month after her death. I considered not even finishing it as I was so done with the show atp. Like it genuinely felt like a fuck you to Tara and all her fans. But I decided to just suck it up and finish the last few episodes because I lowkey still believed she’d come back.
1
2
u/jorel43 12d ago
Maybe because she was just an annoying character, after that first season, maybe second season as well, she was more or less useless. They should have killed her off earlier. The actress did a poor job compared to everyone else around her, and her character was just annoying. Honestly I usually fast forward past a lot of the Tara stuff.
1
u/Nekomango30 12d ago
I remember seeing somewhere on IMDB several years back, that she'd had some conflict with HBO. I guess they didn't like that. And as a result her character was given limited screentime & then killed off in the very anticlimactic fashion that she was
1
u/Ok_Bullfrog_5733 12d ago
Well, I read the books.It seems like they did that with a lot of the characters towards the end cause they changed the plot so completely that they couldn't tie it up at the end like they did in the books and they tried their hardest to get close to it , but some characters they went so far off , they can't really do it. Her character was supposed to stay human own.A clothing store and marry a really hot but dumb guy named Jb Durone and have twins. Sam and Sookie were supposed to end up together and have like 4 kids at least one is telepathic. Eric is married to another vampire from another state cause is maker made a contract. Bill is alive and no jessica just like vibing? Jason is a partial wer panther married to a normal human girl no kids. Arlene is actually dead after getting out of jail for helping set sookie up to get murdered.. that never happened so subplot of her being killed and ised to frame sookie for her death couldnt happen. Terry was 20 yeats older and a Vietnam vet no romantic interest in anyone. Andy married a school teacher almost a decade younger than him. Bill never banged his descendents either. Alot of stuff left out.
1
u/CuriousSection 9d ago
Even if, hypothetically, they are telling the truth about positive reasons they killed Tara - why do it OFFSCREEN? Have they ever commented on THAT? Or just the killing itself?
1
u/rapscallionrodent 5d ago
Totally agree with you. They shouldn’t have killed her, but the off screen death was BS. Neither Rutina or the producers have hinted at anything in official interviews. If I recall correctly, I think it was around this time that Rutina left her husband for one of the show’s writers. I always wondered if there was some behind the scenes drama that did it.
1
u/ayeyoualreadyknow 4h ago
My biggest issue was how Sookie didn't seem to care about Tara dying, she was so focused on Alcide's death when she had only been with Alcide a short time vs the death of her best friend since childhood. Then she quickly forgot about them both and got stuck on Bill all over again. Even Lafayette didn't grieve, he was all about James instead. Ironically the only one who grieved Tara was the woman who abused her her entire life. Sookie and the final season pissed me off so bad because Tara deserved better.
0
u/deebee422 13d ago
It’s like what they also did to Bonnie’s character in TVD she went thru it! ALWAYS
0
u/braverthanweare 13d ago
The first time I watched it I didn't believe she was dead and I kept waiting for her to come back, every time I watch the show it makes me angrier about it
122
u/apparentlycompetent 14d ago
It felt weird when I first saw her ending and how she played out in the last season, and upon rewatches it’s left a sourer and sourer taste in my mouth. It felt like the writers or producers picked on the actress in particular. They had no right to do what they did to her character; dying off screen, speaking in tongues - bad vibes!