A shocking twist happened that left fans agape, and and EW has spoken to author Charlaine Harris exec Alan Ball, who justify the decision.

Spoiler warning: don’t read on if you haven’t yet watched Sunday’s episode of True Blood!

In Sunday’s episode, Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) killed Claudine (Lara Pulver), Sookie’s fairy godmother. While this also happens in the novels, it doesn’t occur till much later in the story, but Alan Ball says he decided to push the death forward because:

After everything that was going on with the fairies in the first episode, I think we wanted to sort of put a pin in that, but obviously it’s not over. I felt it would have more impact if it was someone we knew as opposed to just a random fairy.

He adds that they like to shake things up a little in the series, to make it different in some ways from the books:

If we did just do everything in the books, there would be no surprises. It’s not like we have a formula for what we’re going to keep from the books and what we’re going to change. If there’s a consensus that something makes sense, that’s usually the way we go.

Charlaine Harris, author of the True Blood novels, notes her surprise that Claudine was killed this early, but has faith in the storytelling:

If he can be gracious to me, I can certainly be gracious enough to wait and see where he’s going.

As sad as this twist might be, the show must go on, and in the same article, Ball gives some hints as to what we can expect later in the season:

It gets ugly between the vampires and the witches. There’s more than one fight coming up. There’s also a very unexpected romantic attachment which you’ll start to see the beginnings of I believe in next week’s episode. We’re gonna find out a lot about Jesus’ magic that’s in his family. We’re gonna get to the bottom of what’s going on with Arlene’s baby.

Sounds exciting! Were you upset about the death of Claudine, or do you think Ball made the right decision, making the death someone we were more emotionally attached to?

Source: EW.com