Dead Ever After recap

Sookie's one wish is spent, her fairy relatives are gone, and her marriage to Eric is finished in all but name while the queen of Oklahoma presses the contract that will take him away. Then Arlene Fowler, just out of prison for conspiring to kill her, turns up at Merlotte's asking for her job back and is found strangled behind the bar days later, and Sookie is arrested for the murder. The case against her is part of something arranged: a group of people who hate her, backed by money and by a bargain-maker willing to trade in favors, have set out to destroy her by law first and by force afterward. Her friends, her brother, and the vampires who still stand by her hold the line while the frame comes apart. Mr. Cataliades, a half-demon lawyer, reveals that Sookie's telepathy was his gift to her fairy grandfather's line. In the end Sookie is cleared, Eric leaves for Oklahoma for good, and Sookie makes a life with Sam.

Sookie Stackhouse is a telepathic waitress and part owner of Merlotte's in Bon Temps, Louisiana, where vampires and shapeshifters live openly. She is part fairy through her great-grandfather Prince Niall Brigant, who closed Faery permanently after a war fought over his human-blooded descendants nearly killed her. Her grandmother left her a cluviel dor, a fairy token good for one wish, and Sookie spent it bringing her employer Sam Merlotte back from the dead during the fight that exposed the werewolf Jannalynn Hopper as the architect of a murder meant to disgrace Eric Northman. Eric, the vampire sheriff Sookie married by vampire custom, understood that she could have used the wish to release him from the marriage contract his dead maker signed with Freyda, queen of Oklahoma, and their relationship has not survived it. Niall has taken Sookie's cousin Claude away for treachery and her great-uncle Dermot has gone home to Faery. Louisiana still belongs to Felipe de Castro, who has never learned who killed his regent.

Sookie is living alone and working, with the fairies gone from her house and the cluviel dor used up. Sam is alive and grateful and strange with her; having died and come back has left him unsure of himself, and neither of them is willing to talk plainly about what she spent to do it. Eric will not see her, Pam is barely civil, and the marriage everyone in the vampire world knows about is over in every way except paperwork. Into this comes Arlene Fowler, released from prison after her part in a plot to have Sookie killed, wanting her old waitressing job back as though nothing had happened. Sookie refuses her. Arlene leaves the bar angry and makes sure several people hear about it.

Arlene is found dead behind Merlotte's, strangled and left in the dumpster, and the parish arrests Sookie for her murder. The evidence is circumstantial but tidy, the public quarrel is remembered by half the bar, and Bon Temps divides sharply over whether the telepathic woman who consorts with vampires is capable of it. Sookie spends time in a cell before she is bailed out, and comes home to find her name in the papers and her business damaged. Meanwhile the queen of Oklahoma sends word that she intends to enforce the marriage contract on Eric, and the vampires of Area Five begin to arrange themselves around a departure nobody wants to name.

It becomes clear that Sookie has not simply been unlucky. A number of people with old grievances against her have been brought together and financed, among them Copley Carmichael, who never got the fairy token he wanted, and Steve Newlin, whose ruined church left him nothing but his hatred; behind the arrangement is something that deals in favors rather than money. The plan is to destroy Sookie by law and, if that fails, more directly. Her defense is her friends: Jason and Michele, Bill, Sam and the lawyers Sam can afford. Desmond Cataliades, a half-demon attorney who was a friend of her fairy grandfather Fintan, arrives with his niece Diantha and tells Sookie where her telepathy actually came from, along with a warning about what is being organized against her.

The pressure moves from the courthouse to Sookie's doorstep. Eric's day man Mustapha Khan disappears, and it emerges that he has been leaned on through someone he cares about rather than turning of his own accord. Attempts are made on Sookie directly, and she discovers she has had a guard she never knew about: Karin, an older child of Eric's, set to watch her house. The murder case begins to come apart as the people who assembled it fall out with one another, and Sookie's friends work backwards from the conspirators to the death itself. Freyda arrives in person to collect what the contract owes her, and Eric, who cannot break an agreement made by his maker, prepares to leave Louisiana.

The frame collapses and the conspiracy against Sookie is broken, its members dead, ruined or scattered, and the charges against her dropped. Mr. Cataliades explains the last of her family's history: the telepathy is a gift he made long ago to Fintan's descendants who were born able to carry it, which is why it fell on Sookie and Hunter and not on Jason. Eric's contract stands. He and Sookie say goodbye deliberately rather than bitterly, and he goes to Oklahoma as Freyda's husband, ending the vampire marriage and, with it, Sookie's place in vampire politics. She keeps her house, her half of Merlotte's, and the friends who stood up for her when the parish believed she was a murderer. Sam, alive because of the wish she spent on him, finally says what he has not been able to say since he came back, and Sookie chooses him. The series ends with her ordinary life restored to her and shared.

The murder case against Sookie falls apart, the group of old enemies working against her is broken up, and the danger to her is ended rather than merely postponed. Her friends and the vampires who still owe her, including Bill, Pam and Karin, are what carry her through it. Mr. Cataliades leaves her with the answer to a question she has had all her life: her telepathy is a gift he made long ago to the descendants of his friend Fintan who were born with the spark to hold it, which is why she has it and Jason does not. Eric's marriage contract with Freyda cannot be broken, and he goes to Oklahoma. He and Sookie part deliberately and finally, each understanding that the other made a choice they could not undo, and the vampire marriage between them is over. Sookie keeps her half of Merlotte's, keeps her house, and stops trying to live in the supernatural world's politics. Sam, alive because of what she spent, is the person she chooses and who chooses her, and the series closes with the two of them together and Sookie's life her own for the first time since the night a vampire first walked into the bar.