HBO’s True Blood will come to an end next summer as the pay channel announced that the upcoming 10-episode seventh season will be its last.
True Blood ratings have never been a concern for HBO as the show was the most watched on the channel for years until Game of Thrones came along and stole the throne, so to speak. Even as it prepares to bow out, True Blood earned 10.6 million total viewers on average in Season 6 and will likely tick up as additional viewers check in to follow along with the end game.
The move to end True Blood sooner rather than later makes sense considering its stars’ careers and personal lives. Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer gave birth to twins last fall, and I would imagine Paquin would love to spend more time with her young kids and raise them. Alexander Skarsgard has been appearing in more films of late and would surely welcome some extra time to fit in more roles.
Alan Ball brought True Blood to HBO and developed the series based on the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris. While the first season of the show adhered to the plot of the books, the second season and beyond took a completely different trajectory.
By the end of Season 5, Ball decided he wanted to move on and HBO handed the reigns over to Brian Buckner. Fans had mixed responses to the first season under Buckner’s watch, much in the same way they did for several season prior. Much of Season 6 dealt with cleaning up loose ends from Ball’s Season 5.
To put his own stamp on the series, Buckner ended Season 6 by jumping forward six months in time and radically changing the show’s landscape, including renaming the Bon Temps and show’s central location of Merlotte’s. For those worrying about the fate of Eric Northman, actor Alexander Skarsgard is already confirmed to be returning as a series regular for the final season.
“We will do our very best to bring Sookie’s story to a close with heart, imagination and, of course, fun,” remarked Buckner in a press release in regards to how he plans to bring True Blood to its series finale in the summer of 2014.
