Favorite scene from episode 10, season 3
Sookie dreams about Eric for the third time. She wakes up and sees Eric sitting on the back of the sofa in her childhood home. As usual, the dialogue comes first.
- I know this is a dream.
- Well, you might as well enjoy it, then.
- Will your blood ever wear off? I’m tired of dreaming about you.
- No, it’s not just the blood. You know you have feelings for me.
- Ew.
- You know you like this. And this. And you know you can’t trust Bill. That’s not my blood talking. It’s your survival instinct.
It strikes me as odd that Sookie would dream about Eric if the blood is to blame. She has only had a mouth of Eric’s blood and since then been almost drained by Bill and replenished with his blood. Is there really something left of Eric’s blood after all that? And why isn’t she dreaming these dreams about Bill if she really loves and trusts him?
There’s definitely something “extra” to Sookie’s dreams of Eric. But as to why she dreams these particular things at this particular time? I’d say it’s her subconscious processing what she has been feeling for a while. That she can’t really trust Bill. And that she does have feelings for Eric.
Those are not a stretch, really, with or without Eric’s blood. Bill just near damn drained her to death. And then gave her a big-ass speech about how he was “letting her go” so she can have a normal life. And then stepped right back into her life like that didn’t happen.
Then go back a little, and you have Russell show Sookie a file that Bill kept on her. The file that Bill “explained,” but the explanation didn’t hold water. And Sookie may not have processed it consciously, but her mind has filed it away.
And you’ve got Claudine telling Sookie that Bill will steal her “light.” Again, Bill is at the ready with his own Claudine-related bullshit, but it leaves Sookie uneasy non-the-less.
Pile it all onto the near-draining incident, and it’s only natural that deep down Sookie is questioning whether she should really trust Bill.
And as to Eric, we know from when she admitted it in Season 4, she has been drawn to Eric for a long time.
In other words, she may or may not have had Bill-blood-induced dreams, but this one doesn’t have to be due to any blood, Bill’s or Eric’s. This could be Sookie’s profound uneasy and throbbing subconscious trying to tell her something. :)
Indeed. Just because the blood causes dreams doesn’t mean that all dreams are caused by the blood. Eric even tells her so in this dream — “It’s not just the blood. You know you have feelings for me.”
However, I always think it’s interesting that he left her only a few hours before so causally after telling her he wouldn’t be around much longer, and then she dreams exactly what he most desperately wants her to know. Is that part of a psychic or emotional connection? The blood? Or what?
We used to discuss these dreams and their provenance loads — in the end, I choose to believe that his emotional connection to her and the blood do influence her dreams, though he doesn’t know he’s doing it. It’s not his will in any conscious way. But, that’s just my own speculation.
I saw this as the last, lingering effects of his blood. Partly because Sookie actually says it, which I think is the writers suggesting this explanation to us. Also, the timeline is about right (a few weeks passed from the end of season 2 when she drank his blood to the end of season three). The most significant clue is what Eric and Sookie are wearing. They are both fully clothed. In her first dream, when the blood was strongest, they were completely naked. In her second dream he was shirtless. Now, no one’s showing any skin at all. I view the level of nakedness as a barometer of how much the blood is influencing her dreams. The relatively tame nature of this dream suggests that the sexual side effects of the blood are nearly gone.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that Sookie isn’t attracted to Eric, outside of any influence of the blood. In fact, she asks herself that very question inside her dream! Dream Eric tells her that it isn’t just the blood causing her erotic dreams of him. Since the dream is a product of Sookie’s OWN BRAIN, however much vampire blood she’s drunk, this is part of herself telling her “you ARE attracted to Eric.” The part of Sookie that’s suspicious of him says “Ew,” but she doesn’t actually put up more than a token protest.
Dream Eric also brings up all the niggling doubts she has about Bill. The dream thrashes out issues that must be occupying her waking mind, as all dreams do. She muses about whether she can trust her boyfriend, about who she’s really attracted to, and about how powerful a hold Eric’s blood has on her (not very, it’s effects have nearly worn off or she wouldn’t be sufficiently self-aware to look for them). Everyone above summarized the very real reasons she has to be suspicious of Bill at this point—Eric’s warning, Russell’s warning, Claudine’s warning, his near-draining of her, the suspicious file—so it’s hardly surprising that her dreams give voice to her doubts.
What makes me think there is a slight, residual sexual effect of the blood also influencing the dream is that she’s dreaming about her doubts while kissing Eric. She could have dreamed of Bill being alternately creepy and seductive, as she did in season one after having his blood. Or she could have dreamed of Gran, Claudine, Tara, anyone else giving her this warning. But the warning comes clothed in the seductive figure of Eric. I think this is half her own, unwilling attraction for him, and half the tiny remaining amount of his blood. You can clearly see the two forces warring within her. She doesn’t come to him, as she did in her earlier blood dream, nor does she kiss him back. Yet, she also doesn’t stop him and she admits by her very silence that yes, she does like him kissing her. It’s this realization that some of her feelings for him are real, and that she DOES mistrust Bill, that impels her to Fangtasia as soon as the sun goes down, seeking Eric out.
I agree with UFG that Eric is influencing the content of her dreams unconsciously. It’s not that he controls what she dreams about. It’s that his blood, and through it his personality and his feelings for her, influence her dreams.
Lafayette told Jesus that when you take vampire blood, what you experience will depend upon a huge number of factors, among them the nature of the vampire you get the blood from. If you and the vampire know each other, that relationship can influence the effects of the blood. That’s why no V-trip is the same.
Sookie’s connection to Eric is strong, as is his blood, and that affects how she dreams when under the influence of his blood. It is telling that she NEVER has a frightening dream of him, like her blood dream of Bill. I attribute that not to Sookie’s trust in Eric, but to each vampire’s actual feelings for her. Eric told Sookie herself in season 4 that he’d never harm her. Whereas Bill came to Bon Temps specifically to abduct her (albeit with her unwitting consent), and that ambivalence shows through in her blood dream from him.
The dreams are a fascinating part of the mythology of the show. They reveal a great deal about the inner thoughts of the characters, but without telling us much directly. We have to pay attention and make comparisons to understand how much of what is seen is real. Does Eric care for Sookie? Yes, probably, given how tender he is in her dreams even in season 2. His softer feelings, well-hidden in real life, are displayed in the surprisingly tender side he shows her dream self. Dismiss the dreams and you miss much of the slow build-up in Sookie and Eric’s relationship in the early seasons.
I agree. For me the idea that the blood is the only factor is laughable. There’s so many more things that we don’t really notice before we go back in time and see them again. Sookie’s first meeting with Eric is one of those things, especially Eric and how he reacts to Sookie. When he sits on his throne, very blase and we hear his voice, very slow and dark, it is as Sookie awakens him as much as he awakens her.
I would have loved to have seen their first meeting without the influence of Bill’s blood in Sookie as the spark is there already, IMO.
Souvenirs....💔
