?True Blood? Season 5 Spoilers: Tara?s Fate, New Characters And Zombies In Bon Temps?

True Blood fans will finally have something to sink their teeth into when Season 5 premieres on Sun., June 10, at 9 p.m. EDT. Many questions lingered at the end of Season 4.  Will Tara live or die? Is that grave Sookie is digging in the promo for her best friend? What will happen with Jason and Jessica? Will Jesus communicate from the grave? Will Terry's dark side be revealed?

Before the Season 5 spoilers, Let's start with a recap of where we left off.

Season 4's final episode, And When I Die, was a riveting finale for a season of ups and downs. Some of the rather drawn-out themes of the show -- Marnie's death plots, Sookie's love triangle and Jason and Jess' romance -- were tied together perfectly in this last episode.

Season 4 ended on Halloween in Bon Temps, with the character's readying themselves for a spooky holiday. Marnie's spirit inhabits Lafayette, leading to the most horrific event of the episode - the killing of Jesus. After tying him to a chair and engaging in an emotional conversation, the possessed Lafayette winds up killing his lover Jesus, licking the knife clean of blood afterward. This, of course, will leave Lafayette emotionally scarred for Season 5.

Lafayette, under Marnie's guide, then captures Bill and Eric to be burned at the stake. In her vengeance against vampires, Marnie utters the darkly humorous line, What goes around comes around, b------. Luckily, Sookie, Tara and Holly summon Antonia who convinces Marnie to leave Lafayette's body with a little help from Gran.

Sam buries his brother Tommy, who helped him kill Luna's jealous baby daddy. Although Sam's plotline was one of the least eventful of Season 4, the finale ended with an angry werewolf visiting the Merlotte. A juicy cliffhanger, for sure.

Arlene is scared by the ghost of Rene, who has been haunting her since she found out she was pregnant. He warns her that Terry's recently-returned war buddy, played by Scott Fowley, might bring disaster into her life.

Jason finally confesses his feelings for Jessica to her ex-boyfriend Hoyt. Although this admission goes as planned (with a beating delivered to Jason), Jason recovers with a sexy visit from Jessica who is dressed as Red Riding Hood for Halloween. After the steamy encounter, Jessica leaves and Jason is visited by Reverend-turned-vampire Steve Newlin. Bam! Another cliffhanger.

Sookie ends her love triangle by confessing her never-ending love to Bill and her lust for Eric, but deciding that she must be alone for the time being. This, of course, will change in Season 5 because we all know Sookie does not like to be single.

Finally, one of the most jaw-dropping scenes of finale comes when Tara is shot in the head after jumping in front of a bullet shot by Debbie to save Sookie.

For those of you too ravenously hungry to wait, check out spoilers regarding Season 5 of HBO's True Blood below.

Tara's Fate

Season 4 ended with Sookie clutching a seriously wounded Tara (Rutina Wesley) in her kitchen. Will Tara live? Hollywood Life revealed that viewers will be happy to learn that her fate is revealed about a minute and a half into the premiere.

But John Kubicek of BuddyTV insists that it Tara's story is not so cut and dry.

The big mystery of the season 5 premiere is the fate of Tara, who was last seen being cradled by Sookie after taking a shotgun blast to the head, wrote Kubicek. I wouldn't dream of revealing what happens to her, but I will say that there is a pretty awesome flashback where we see young Sookie and young Tara. And young Tara was every bit as bad-ass as present-day Tara.

New Characters

Returning characters confirmed for True Blood Season 5 include: Sookie, Bill, Eric, Alcide, Lafayette, Arlene, Terry, Jessica, Hoyt, Sam, Jason, Pam, Luna and Patrick, according to True-Blood.net.

Film School Rejects revealed that Russell (Denis O'Hare), the vampire king, will make an appearance during the one of the first episodes of the season.

O'Hare discussed his return, saying, It was up in the air. They were definitely bringing me back, it was just a matter of if they wanted to bring me back the last couple episodes or bring me back at the beginning. So they decided to do it at the beginning of Season 5.

What many True Blood fans are most excited about are the new characters coming to Bon Temps this season.

One of the most-anticipated newcomers is Christopher Meloni, of Law & Order: SVU fame, who joins the True Blood cast as Roman. Roman is described by executive producer Alan Ball as a politician who has a dream.

Roman's determined. He wants peace, but others have been trying to stomp out his path, Meloni told WetPaint. Think Obama with very long incisors.

Elliot [his Law & Order: SVU character] was free-form, added the actor. Roman's more thoughtful -- yet unafraid to pull the trigger. He's a man of action. Get the facts; get it done. But they both have a certainty of their view. They both think they're right.

True-Blood.net detailed six other new characters lined up for Season 5.

• New Female Vampire/Salome- ancient vampire, daughter of King Herod; potential regular
• Nora- female vampire, sired by Godric; potential regular
• Kibwe- male vampire, member of the Authority Council, from Africa; recurring
• Rosalyn Harris- female vampire, member of the Authority Council, from Texas; recurring
• Alexander- male vampire, member of the Authority Council, turned at nine-years-old; recurring
• Claudette- female faery, sister of Claude and Claudine; recurring

BuddyTV reports that two network actors will join True Blood as well. Tina Majorino, who has appeared in UPN's Veronica Mars, HBO's Big Love and FOX's Bones, scored a role as a member of the Vampire Authority's support staff. She will make her first appearance in the third episode. Along with Majorino, Todd Giebenhain, who plays the dopy grocery-store employee on FOX's Raising Hope, will play another store clerk, this time at a vender that sells anti-vampire security devices.

Jessica and Jason, Hot and Heavy?

The steamy build-up of the relationship between Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) and Jason (Ryan Kwanten) was one of the spiciest plotlines of Season 4. Come Season 5, the couple is still hot and heavy, but things get complicated quickly, according to Hollywood Life.

True-Blood.net reports that couple has to fend off external suitors in as early as the premiere episode. It's not all gravy for the pair, though. The show is casting Buddy, a friend of Hoyt's who works on the Renard Parish road crew and mocks Jason.

Strange Relationships Get Stranger

Terry (Todd Lowe) might have seemed like the ideal husband for Arlene (Carrie Preston). Last season a mysterious figure was influencing their baby and, in Season 5, Terry's behavior becomes quite odd, according to Hollywood Life.

Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) and Jesus (Kevin Alejandro) had to deal with supernatural powers and powerful curses last season, leaving Jesus dead. Their relationship, according to Hollywood Life, is far from over. Expect some spookiness to go down when he returns to the scene of his boyfriend's murder.

Zombies in Bon Temps?

A zombie craze has swept primetime television as of late, with everything from AMC's hit The Walking Dead to up-and-coming series The Awakening and Zombies vs. Vampires. But will zombies crop up in Bon Temps?

On True Blood message boards across the internet, users consistently comment on the possibility of the zombies being added to the series.

In reference to Tara's fate in Season 5, one commenter conjectured, I bet she'll be some sort of zombie.  Arlene and Terry mentioned zombies and someone accused Pam being one. Terry and Arlene mentioned zombies.  We had lots of hints of zombies.

Speaking of subtlety, or the lack thereof, the TB writers were dropping 'zombies' like anvils in the finale, quipped another. I believe it was Mary who mentioned this in another thread.  Based on how the writers dropped hints in the previous finales, either Terry's military buddy--Mr. 'I-heard-you-were-dead'--is a zombie or Tara might be.

According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald last year on Alan Ball, the producer is quoted as foreseeing zombies as the next big trend: We have a line in the last episode of True Blood this season where it's Halloween and they're all dressed up, and somebody goes, 'I'm a zombie. Don't you know zombies are the new vampires?' I've heard zombies, I've heard angels. I don't know. That's one of the great things about it all, nobody knows. It's just going to be one person who does something from a place of pure passion and that's going to catch attention.

Unfortunately, for those living-dead lovers, True-Blood.net insists that there will be no zombies in Season 5. However, the writing staff is researching lesser known supernatural creatures to appear.