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Each season in episode 2, True Blood has a mother’s day, a day when someone’s difficult mother is introduced.

In season 1 it was Lettie Mae.

In season 2 it was Mrs. Hamby.

Season 3 introduced both Ruby Jean and Melinda Mickens in the second episode.

In season 4 episode 2 will introduce another mother, and I’m predicting she will belong to Jesus. That is the episode Antonia, described as Spanish speaking and fierce, begins a 5 episode arch. The 41 year old Paola Turbay has been cast in the role.

When Jesus saw Lafayette’s shrine to Our Lady of Guadelupe, he said, “That’s my girl, Tonantzin.” By whichever name, in addition to being the mother of Jesus, she is considered to be the mother of the Mexican people. Her Nahuatl name, Tonantzin, is very close to Antonia’s. Just take off  the first syllable and you’re left with something very close to Antonia, ‘Antzin.

Antonia and ‘Antzin are the mothers of sons named Jesus. They were also both very young women who became single mothers through no action of their own. One Jesus is the divine child of God and the other the magical child of a rapist.  It has been speculated that  Antonia was raped by an incubus. That would make Lafayette’s Jesus a cambion* in the tradition of Merlin and Caliban, the witch’s son in The Tempest who is enslaved to Prospero. Because of their supernatural parent, cambions are often evil, but they are not all so.

Jesus explained to Lafayette that he was  born in Catemaco, the island of witches, but that his mami dragged him to Texas, Uruguay, Portugal, and Montreal, among other place trying to escape his grandfather, who practiced black magic and had big plans for Jesus. Of  their destinations, Montreal is an interesting one for a rape victim with a history of witchcraft in her family. The subject of the first and most famous witchcraft trial in New France was a spell that rendered a man impotent. What is a fierce woman, but one who can castrate a man, figuratively or literally? Look for Antonia to be able to do both.

Can this amazonian Antonia really be reconciled to the Blessed Virgin Mary? It depends on your view of Mary. Catholics interpret Genesis 3:15 as a prophecy of her crushing the head of Satan.

I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and they seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.

This reference to a woman in the first book of the Bible is said to foreshadow the woman in the last book.

And a great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.                                                 Revelation 12:1

The icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe is an image of Mary at this moment in time.  She stands in front of the sun with the moon at her feet and stars on her head. ”Guadalupe” is probably the phonetic equivalent of the title, “She who breaks, stamps or crushes the serpent.”

With Antonia’s 5 episode arch and the characterization of her as fierce, it’s pretty much a given that she will be leaving someone in pain. The only question is who. If she is anything like her namesake, it will be the one who harms her son. The only problem is that Jesus doesn’t appear to have any enemies. Midnight Charm has suggested that Jesus is working for Bill. If this is the case, I’m not sure it’s of his free will. He may be like the witches son, Caliban, who is forced to serve Prospero in The Tempest.  Is Antonia coming to free her son from Bill? After all, he has already been identified as the snake in the garden.

If Antonia is able to free Jesus from Bill, does it cost his life? Images of the pieta in Lafayette’s house and Abuelo’s cave may be foreshadowing his death.

ETA: Although a spoiler has revealed that Antonia is not Jesus’ biological mother, I still think that she will be a mother  figure to him, possibly an aunt who raised him after his mother was killed or the incarnation of Tonatzin herself.

*Selle first proposed that Jesus was a cambion.