alter ego: counterpart: second self: doppelganger
a) one remarkably similar to another b) one having the same function or characteristics as another
True Blood is structured around character pairings. Each major character and some minor ones have alter egos who share many characteristics and find themselves in very similar situations. Studying these pairings can provide insight into the characters and also allow us to make predictions about upcoming seasons.
There are some surprising parallels between hero and villain in Season 1 of True Blood. One is a monster who finds his humanity in Bon Temp while the other is a man who loses his and subsequently turns into a monster.
Both are new men when they arrive in Bon Temps. Rene, whose name means reborn, has indeed been born anew with a new name, background, and Cajun accent. Bill has a new life as a mainstreaming vampire and dons the mantle of a landed Southern gentleman. After his speech at the Descendants of the Glorious Dead, his accent, too, seems to start growing thicker and more old fashioned in accordance with his new persona.
Additionally both men arrive in town as murderers with hidden agendas and go on killing sprees once settled in. They ingratiate themselves with the locals and both fall in love with waitresses from Merlotte’s.
Bill and Rene both discover Sookie’s secret and have issues with both vampires and women. Even though Bill is a vampire himself, he is a self-loathing one who doesn’t like or approve of any of his fellow vampires. Rene is a bigot who doesn’t believe that humans should be interacting with vampires.
Both vampire haters believe women should be attractive, innocent, and compliant. The names of Sookie and Drew’s sister, Cindy are linked with the ‘s’ alliteration at the beginning of their names and the ‘ee’ rhyme at the end. Sookie and Cindy are both waitresses who have relationships with vampires, and to confirm the connection between these two characters, Rene tells Sookie that she reminds him of his baby sister. Sookie and Cindy also share an independent spirit that refuses to be squashed, not to mention an over protective, domineering older male authority figure with an explosive temper that can turn violent. Both are the perpetrators of domestic violence.
Since adult siblings don’t usually move from town to town together, let alone share living quarters, the relationship between Drew and his sister is, at the least, odd, which is how the human and vampire worlds view Bill and Sookie’s relationship.
At Big Pattie’s Pie House, when Sookie and Sam first learn about Drew, the description of him as a loner with a mysterious background could equally be Bill’s. This raises the question of what Bill might be hiding about his recent past.
It is the killer’s unusual fixations with women society deems inappropriate for them that ultimately leads Rene to kill Maudette, Dawn, and Amy and Bill to kill the Rattrays, Uncle Bartlett, and Long Shadow. Alan Ball made a point of equating the two killers by pointing out that Bill’s body count in season 1 was no less than Rene’s. Both killers are masters of deception and of deflecting blame from themselves, which is why I have not attributed Adele’s murder to Rene.
Since it is Bill who needed to remove Sookie’s source of love and stability in order to win her back after she broke up with him, it is possible that Bill killed Adele and planted a false memory in Rene’s mind.* That would provide another parrellel between Bill and Rene because it is be not unlike what happened to Jason when he believed that he had strangled Maudette when it had actually been Rene. While we can’t say for sure whether Bill killed Sookie’s grandmother, it is clear by his lack of remorse for all the other murders that he is as much of a sociopath as Rene.
Bill has a habit of stepping in and protecting Sookie in situations she is confident that she can handle on her own. It is one of the recurring causes of friction in their relationship. Rene does the same thing to Sookie when he assaults a drunken customer who pinches her bottom. She has to tell Arlene make Rene not to interfere.
Jason, the town’s alpha male, is singled out by Rene and Bill who have ambivalent feelings about him. For Rene he is the ultimate bachelor, watched, emulated, and secretly despised. Conversely, while Bill gets off to a rocky start with Jason, after he saves Sookie at the Fellowship of the Sun, Bill comes to identify with him as a fellow soldier.
Sookie and Jason both are deceived in particularly personal ways and taken advantage of by Bill and Rene. In fact, to carry out their agendas, Rene and Bill completely usurp Jason and Sookie’s lives and ultimately put their lives on new trajectories. Jason heads into the arms of the Fellowship of the Sun and Sookie into the supernatural world.
Sam tries to save Sookie both Bill and Rene, but he ultimately fails, just as Rene fails to save Sookie from Bill with his warning about vampires and Bill fails to save Sookie from Rene.
Sookie has to save herself from Rene and ultimately, will have to save herself from Bill, too. For although he finds his humanity through her, all he ultimately offers Sookie is death.
*Midnight Charm develeoped the theory of who really killed Adele Stackhouse.
Revised to include the theory that Bill murdered Adele Stackhouse. 11/08/09
I did see it, and thank you.
Yes, a very strong underlying theme of the whole of True Blood is how often humans can be convinced of a lie. Big lies, small lies, all sorts of lies for all sorts of reasons. When a young, beautiful, innocent girl is convinced of the basic decency of a brilliant Sociopath it is a metaphor for innocent, unquestioning Americans allowing all sorts of despots and criminals to run their political affairs, even when it is obvious that they are as corrupt as the grave, whitewashed though they may be by a compliant media.
Rygee, great piece! You really delivered from your early speculation.
But hey, I just caught up at the Wiki and I see my Adele theory caused a little trouble. I told you I was a glutton for punishment.
I thought you handled the argument stemming from my little bombshell, having to do with the 13 year old Bellefleur child, was spot on and strong. It’s amazing and terrifying the excuses being made for Bill while innocents are being held to impossible standards. It’s going on everywhere on the net that touches on TB, to be honest.
I understand why you think now that Rene did NOT kill Adele, but I am not convinced. I keep remembering how Bill is so quick to implant false memories (and he wishes he could glamour away Sookie’s pain and bad memories) and nothing about that murder really points at Rene. It all points at Bill.
Here is one odd fact/clue True Blood inserted that I think is relevent:
When Bill comes home to find Eric in his bathtub, he is carrying dry cleaning. His dry cleaning consists of a brown shirt and brown pants. Bill is wearing– a brown shirt and brown pants, exactly the shade of his dry cleaning. So we can assume Bill has at least duplicated one pair of clothing in his wardrobe. Why would he only do that for an innocuous BROWN pair of clothing? Might he have more than one pair of duplicate clothing?
Bill went nuts on the hearth with the pronged toaster just after Bud and Andy have spoken to him about Maudette and Dawn, and he flashes back to his making at the hands of Lorena and he is extremely ANGRY. Cut to Sookie later, maybe one scene? finding Gran. End of Ep.
Sookie was in danger of being stolen by Sam. She had broken up with Bill yet again and was on a date with Sam that very night, at the DGD meeting right in Bill’s FACE. Later, Sookie deliberately did not invite him to have coffee with her and Sam.
Bill had time (Sookie suggested he could get to his home from hers in one minute in the s2 finale) to wiz over to Gran’s, kill her within what? 30 seconds, with his vampire speed and anger?, and vampire back to his house, shower and change into duplicate clothing, and vampire back in time to come up behind Sookie mere moments after she’s found her Gran. Just in time to comfort her, and to threaten Sam when he comes in. Later, Sam found him upstairs standing by Sookie’s window. Why was he upstairs when everyone else was downstairs? When Sam left he opened the shutter and “examined” the cut in Sookie’s window screen.
Later, it was BILL who suggested to Bud and Andy that Gran was not the intended target. The implication is he told them, off camera, about the cut screen and everyone conveniently agreed that the killer was after for Sookie.
Sookie later tells the Bunkie (?) Sheriff’s Deputy that vampires wouldn’t kill by strangulation.
Have we ever seen a vampire on TB resist a fresh, bloody corpse? Don’t you think if he HAD to Bill could in fact resist a bloody corpse, especially when he had to hurry out of there before Sookie got home?
Keep in mind, Sookie has NOT slept with Bill at this point and EVERYONE in Bon Temps seems to know this little fact. All of the residents seem intensely interested in watching to see if the good girl, the sweet girl, the notoriously virginal Sookie will finally yield to the vampire. Why would the methodical killer Rene kill Sookie, whom he liked, when she had not even done anything yet? Using a different, far messier MO?
And I suppose you read my skeptical comment on the Wiki about not believing Rene would think Gran was gone but Sookie was home.
It was not until the NIGHT OF THE FUNERAL when Bill and Sookie have sex for the first time. Bill had gotten everything he wanted within days.
Bill is a brilliant Sociopath, both now and in his human life. Recall how casually he told the DGD audience that he wanted to kill the Bellefleur boy because his screaming was driving him crazy. His FRIEND had to point out to him that killing the boy would have amounted to murder. And please, this “time of war” crap is just that, crap. A soldier doesn’t KILL his own comrades on the battlefield. Doing so is a dishonorable disgrace to the soldier as well as illegal. Not every soldier will revert to barbarism, and quite frankly the Southern Armies might have been a rag tag bunch of children and old men with a few Bill’s here and there, but they were not known for their lack of honor on the battlefield, mostly due to the example of their notoriously honorable General, Robert E. Lee.
Ah geez, I’ve gone on way too long. Thank you for listening to me and putting up with me. I can be very intense at times but I REALLY do not mean to offend anyone and if I ever have offended you then I apologize. :~)
Please forgive my grammar and spelling mistakes, I’ve had a couple glasses of wine.
Wow! Now that makes sense; Bill did it and glamored Rene. That’s also how the cat could have been killed; he had Rene do it for him. My other idea about the cat was that it was the redneck trio, but this is better.
It made me heart sick to have to go back on that theory. I devoted about half of the Alter Ego post to it and then had to delete it.There was even a charming little footnote attributing the theory to you. I did mention a lot of the points you just made, especially about Bill lying about what a vampire is capable of to the police. He didn’t drain the Rats or Uncle Bartlett, and he had sex while that woman was bleeding out all over the bed.
I’m going to have to check out Bill’s dry cleaning. I thought that he might have a second change of clothes. He knew he would be seeing the police again that night if he did it, so he could have just changed back before returning when he heard the taxi.
*Don’t worry about the typos. I have plenty that I need to clean up, and I don’t have your excuse.
Don’t worry about going back on the theory. It’s quite difficult at the Wiki to suggest that Bill is anything other than a flawed and tragic hero, at worst. Every excuse is made, even by those who are Team Eric all the way. Bill lovers have taken over and dictated the parameters of the True Blood debate. The same people who defend Bill are awfully quick to make the very worst assumptions and judgements about any other character, usually when it means Bill will look better by comparison.
I think the Wiki is a pretty good, easy place to develop and polish theories. Challenges are good but sometimes scenes like Bill’s story of the Bellefleur kid just aren’t open to interpretation. The facts are there in black and white–the character TELLS the audience, and TB shows them, all it needs to know to make a judgement call on HIM.
Wow yeah, I kind of hate Bill. Lol. Sorry.
Don’t know why you apologized to me. You have never come remotely close to offending.
If your theory is correct, then it fits neatly with the idea that Rene is Bill’s alter ego.
Jason had a false memory of killing Maudette when it was Rene all along and by the time Amy was killed, Jason was convinced that he had killed all the women. What fantastic irony if Bill implanted a false memory and Rene believed himself to be Gran’s killer when he was innocent of that one at least.
PS Did you see that I responded to your comment from a few days ago? Don’t feel the need to respond. I just want to make sure you didn’t miss it.
Totally. Vampire stories used to be very Freudian, all about the sex. TB has taken allegorical story telling to a whole new level. It’s everywhere you look, even in minor details like names as you have so eloquently pointed out.
Vampire stories are never REALLY about vampires. That’s why I like them so much.