If you’ve Googled “How To Kill A Maenad” or “How Do You Kill Maryann Forrester from True Blood?” then I have good news for you. You have come to the right place. This is directed to all the True Blood fans in Ottawa who essentially put their Sunday nights on lock between 9-10.

This is the bottom line. You can’t kill a Maenad. Maryann Forrester is immortal, and Sam Merlotte has every reason to run. Here’s some clarification on what she is, who she is, and how she is presented in the books by Charlaine Harris, the author of Living Dead in Dallas, the book series that True Blood is based on.

What is a Maenad?

I’ll summarize it here. Maenads were the handmaidens of Dionysus, the Greek God of excess, alcohol, and sex. They were essentially his groupies. His stark raving mad groupies. Think the Beatles, and all of those frenzied girls in Dodger stadium going bananas. This would be an accurate comparison to the kinds of parties that Dionysus used to throw and how these women would react as soon as they got a whiff of his Axe body spray. Suffice it to say, there was a lot more than music going on at these ancient parties. It was more like a lot of sex, booze, and murder. Ritualistic sacrificial murder. The Romans also referred to Dionysus as Bachhus, the drunken God of wine,  as some of you may know him if you ever studied the Iron Age’s mythology. She can’t be killed or reasoned with. Legend suggests that Dionysus made these handmaidens immortal, like him, as companions, and to collect tributes to him, in the form of sacrifice, and in an effort for his legacy not to be forgotten through time, when the world of man changed. She’s older than everyone in True Blood…Godric, Eric, Jesus, you name it. She’s been around forever. That’s the story of what a Maenad is according to Greek mythology, but there are theories that she is also what early man perceived as the embodiment of evil and lack of control. They even intimate on the show that she has a variety of different names…interesting angle.

She attacked Sookie as a gesture to Eric Northman, as he owns Fangtasia, an establishment that sells alcohol. She seeks followers to gain sacrifice for the God she still worships, and essentially acts as an ambassador for. In the show, Eric doesn’t seem to be able to put his finger on who attacked Sookie when she describes her exchange with the beast in the forest, however, in the books, Eric clearly is not aware of what these creatures are capable of, but had had an encounter with one in 1800′s, in Russia, that saw him and some other vampires forced to stake one of their own who had gone mad after coming into contact with a Maenad. In the books, the vampires concede and pay tribute, realizing they are up against a force more powerful than they could have imagined.

Bon Temps is screwed. However, as for those of you who saw last week’s True Blood, Sookie has some ability to physically thwart Maryann, or at least throw her off. I have no idea what this is, but it’ll be interesting to find out. I’m certain that will play some angle tonight..hopefully. Television, even cable television doesn’t follow the scrip to the ‘T”, because then everything would be too predictable.

Ottawa True Blood, True Blood Ottawa, Can You Kill A Maenad?, Maryann Forrester True Blood, How Do You Kill A Maenad?