Let’s start with the obvious: Eric Northman was hot. Duh. Not just sexy vampire hot, but chaotic bisexual energy hot. Double duh. And if you didn’t spend half of True Blood wanting him to ruin your life and comfort you afterward, I don’t know what show you were watching.
From the minute Eric slithered onto our screens in that velvet throne at Fangtasia, we knew. The long stares. The smirks. The lingering way he looked at everyone—men included.
Sookie: “You just killed my fairy godmother!”
Eric: *shrugs* “Sorry.”
His relationship with Godric was so softly charged it made us all lose our minds. It was love. It was devotion. It was centuries of loyalty that went way beyond maker and progeny. Eric grieved Godric like a widow who’d never dared to say it out loud. Eric wasn’t just big bisexual energy—he was the pettiest bitch on television.
He manipulated everyone around him just to prove a point. He served camp villain realness in every scene. And yet… when Sookie or Pam or Godric or Nora needed him, he showed up.
“I'm in no mood for lesbian weirdness tonight, Pam.”
King of playing games. King of meaning every word.
Let’s be real—the show never fully committed to Eric’s queerness. He flirted. He lingered. He vibed. But they never let him go there explicitly. And yet… we knew. We all knew. From the way he touched men’s faces, to the way he wore bisexual chaos like a designer suit, Eric was never just straight. Under all that bravado, Eric was soft.
His love for Pam, his messy, ride-or-die child. His grief for Godric, his maker and possibly the love of his unlife. His quiet loyalty to Sookie, even when he knew she’d never fully choose him.
“You were dreaming about me. That’s sweet.”
Eric wanted to be wanted. And somehow, that made him more terrifying—and more human. And then, as if Eric hadn’t already made half the audience bisexual by sheer screen presence alone, True Blood gave us that dream sequence. You know the one. Jason Stackhouse—hot, dumb, messy, loveable Jason—wakes up in bed with Eric cuddling him from behind like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Soft. Intimate. Domestic.
It was played for laughs—because of course it was—but let’s be honest: the tension? Real. The chemistry? Off the charts. The queer energy? Unavoidable. And the fact that the show never followed through? The biggest crime of all. Jason and Eric had genuine energy, and True Blood knew it. They just didn’t have the guts to let it be real.
“What I like about our show is that when you first meet Eric, you think, all right, this is going to be the villain, the bad guy. Then, slowly, when you get to know him, you realize there is more to the character than that. He’s not one-dimensional.”
Eric Northman was the Bisexual Disaster King we didn’t know we needed. Petty. Powerful. Problematic. Perfect. And if HBO had any sense, they’d give him his own spinoff—eight episodes of petty Viking chaos, bisexual breakdowns, and leather pants.
Until then, we’ll always have Fangtasia and the memory of the vampire who made being emotionally unavailable look like an art form.
The feed’s alive with repressed crushes, early-2000s chaos, and algorithmic heartbreak. Follow @glitchesinthegaydar.
