True Blood Season Premiere Recap With Spoilers: Jesus Gonna Be Here

Generally speaking, we don't do a lot of catching viewers up when start our recaps; the episode speaks for itself, and we just let you know what you missed.

For the Season Seven premiere of True Blood, though, a bit of a primer is justified, since if you somehow missed the Season Six finale, none of what happened tonight will make a lick of sense.

Last year's finale featured a time jump that set up the final season with a series of surprising revelations: Bill is now a best-selling author, Sookie is in a relationship with Alcide, Sam sold Merlotte's to Arlene and became the Mayor of Bontemps and Arlene converted Merlotte's into Bellefleur's Restaurant.

Bill and Sam had become determined to keep the uneasy peace in Bontemps by pairing up local vampires with human families; the vamps would feed off of the families in response for providing protection. To ease the concerns of those not happy with such an arrangement, Bellefleur's was hosting a human/vampire mixer to get everyone acclimated.

It is to no one's surprise that the party was crashed by a gang of crazed, Hep-V-infected vampires.

That swarm attacks quickly and viciously, creating panic and pandemonium. Eventually the H-vamps are turned away, but not before a lot of terror is sown and Tara is killed (as is, as far as I can tell, Kevin Ellis of the Bon Temps police...but that's not revisited again in the way Tara's is).

As they're making their escape, they also kidnap Holly, Arlene and Nicole, who is still pregnant with Sam's child.

At home, Andy gets the call that all hell broke loose at the restaurant. Taking his gun, he goes to help, leaving Adilyn locked in the house with Jessica standing on the porch to protect her; he tells Adilyn not to let her in under any circumstances.

Back at the restaurant, Sookie can hear everyone's thoughts; everyone is blaming her for what happened, mostly calling her a slut. Andy arrives and asks where the vampires went who took Holly and Arlene, and he's told that Alcide and Sam are out looking for them; Vince sees a dog wander in through the back door and then morph into Sam, naked; Sam heads into his office, not realizing he's been seen. Tara's mother, injured, is given some vampire blood to heal her, over her (brief) objection.

Bill gives Andy ideas as to how he might find the infected vampires, whom he says will be nesting. Andy divides the police force into a few places to look, and eventually agrees to bring Bill with him, even though he strongly objects to the one-vampire-one-human rule being applied in this case.

After "hearing" a thought from Alcide that blames her for the state of the town, Sookie takes off on her own.

James and Jessica get on the phone and he tells her she has to feed. She tells him she's not hungry.

(For those a bit confused, he was recast between seasons and James's hair color changed as Nathan Parsons took over the gig from Luke Grimes.)

Vince accuses Sam of being a dog; Sam pulls him aside and first tries to deny it but later tells him that he'll talk to him about it later, and asks him to keep it quiet to help keep the peace in town for now.

Bill announces that they have to send everyone home for their safety and starts pairing up vampires with their humans; he sends James with Tara's mother Lettie Mae. Sam at first says he doesn't need a vampire at his side but is persuaded he has to stick to his plan.

Sookie, walking home, gets a phone call from Alcide and ignores it. When he calls her right back a second time, she tosses the phone.  Heading home through the woods, she trips on a corpse.

In Morocco, Pam plays Russian Roulette with a gun meant to kill vampires; the man she's competing against boasts that he's won dozens of times and that doing it makes him feel alive. After he is destroyed, Pam demands to see her maker, and is given a piece of paper.

Back at the Bellefleurs' home, Adilyn talks to Jessica through a half-open window, confirming the rule that vampires cannot enter without an invitation. She asks if Jessica plans to kill her and Jessica says no; she asks what if Jessica can't help it and there's no response. 

The two start to bond over boys -- Adilyn has a crush on Wade -- but they're interrupted when a H-vamp shows up and Jessica has to leap into defensive mode.

Alcide comes to Sookie's and yells at her about walking home alone; she accuses him of thinking terrible things about her. He first denies it and then defaults to it being unfair. She tells him that might be, but she's stuck with knowing these things anyway and now Tara is dead. She asks to be left alone for now, and he goes.

Jason, driving home with Violet, starts confiding in her about losing Tara, but they're distracted by getting near his home and finding a group of anti-vampire vigilantes carrying guns around. He tries to convince them to head home, but they resist until Violet puts the fear of God into them. Jason sends them off again and this time they go.

James escorts Lafayette home; he tells James that he can feed from him soon, but that first he needs to cope with the night by getting high. James tells him he's sorry about Tara, but Lafayette says he actually feels relieved; that he mourned her the first time. James tells him that all of his friends died in Viet Nam when he was a teenager, but that he had been a draft-dodger and a pacifist. When his best friend died, James went to give condolences and his friend's dad beat him mostly to death with a baseball bat. That was the night a vampire saved him. James feeds on Lafayette.

Back on the road, James pulls over and gets out of the car to argue with Violet; he's upset that she is emasulating him -- she refuses to sleep with him, she won't let him do his job. They argue briefly and ultimately have sex on the hood of the cop car.

Back at the Bellefleurs' house, Jessica continues her standoff with the H-vamp. Adilyn opens the window and Jessica tells her to go in and be safe. She has Adilyn drink a bit of her blood so that the pair share a blood bond, and then she goes to the H-vamp and continues keeping him at bay.

Heading into her home, Lettie Mae is high from the blood she took from Willa earlier in the episode. The reverend tells her not to give Lettie Mae anymore blood; that she has problems with it. he offers her a place to stay in the church basement, since with Eric and Pam missing and she had been staying with Tara, which is a place she isn't comfortable returning to right now.

Cut to Pam, now in a crowded room and looking for someone called Najat. She's offered a child to feed on -- "the only clean blood in North Africa is child blood -- but passes, demading information instead. She takes the information, which she doesn't believe, but she's assured it's correct.

Back at Sookie's, she climbs into bed with Alcide and puts his hand around her; they tell one another "I love you" and start to make out.

Andy arrives at his destination with Bill at his side, and they find evidence that the H-vamps have been nesting in the building they've found. Andy calls out for Holly but gets no response. The pair make their way deeper into the building where they three bodies hanging upside down and gutted. Andy throws up and makes his way out of the room, but finds himself face to face with the vigilante group led by Vince. They hold the sheriff, and then Bill when he joins them, at gunpoint ranting about how they were betrayed by the mayor when he told them to put trust in the vampires.

Bill defuses the situation by clarifying that the sheriff had been home in protest of the deal with the vampires during the scene at the restaurant tonight. They are then willing to let him go and kill Bill, telling Andy that he "doesn't want to see" what comes next. Andy says that in fact he does, as he's got an unpleasant history with Bill. He wants to be the one to kill Bill if someone is going to do it. Vince gives him the gun, and Andy turns it on the vigilantes. He talks them down, although the vigilantes say that the conflict isn't over.

At another location, a number of hostages are panicking. They're in Shreveport, and there are people being held hostage and used as H-vamp buffets. As the hostages start to panic, Nicole says she hasn't felt the baby kick.

Andy drops Bill off at home, telling him that they're not and never will be good -- that he only saved him because he needs his help. Bill turns to face his home and flashes back to when he was young and leaving for the Civil War, saying goodbye to his own kids.

As dawn approaches, Jessica remains standing by, waiting on the H-vamp to leave. He won't. Adilyn starts to panic and invites Jessica in, saying she trusts her. Jessica says she shouldn't. Desperate to save her life, Adilyn runs out into the yard so that Jessica has to run inside to stop her from falling into the hands of the H-vamp. As Jessica runs up to the attic to sleep, the H-vamp burns up on the porch outside.

The next morning, the reverend is delivering a sermon when Sookie joins the congregation. She puts her hand on Lettie Mae's shoulder and Lettie Mae yells at her to leave the house of God. Everyone starts murmuring terrible things about Sookie in their heads again, and she gets up to go, but then stops and outs herself as a telepath to the whole room, saying that she can hear them all and at least Lettie Mae has the decency to say it out loud. She tells them that she loves the town and its people even though they hate her. She accepts partial responsibility for what's happening but says that nobody can be more help in understanding the vampires than she does -- that she wants to help. She asks them to let her.