Sarah Newlin didn't deserve her fate: An essay.

I feel so bad for Sarah Newlin and I’m sick of people defending how the writers treated her and the fate they gave her as Pam and Eric’s slave. So here's an essay deconstructing some common talking points against her. 

The Sarah Newlin-Hitler argument doesn’t hold up (edited for clarity):

• I’ve seen people compare Sarah to Hitler due to her ambitions of genocide towards Vampires and placing of them in a prison-camp. The thing is, this happened after Bill destroyed all True Blood factories and enforced a nationwide mandate for Vampires to create more progenies, which led to countless humans being killed and eaten. The camp happened in response to Vampires proving themselves to be an extremely destructive threat to the Human race.
• This brings me to my second point: You can not compare the Vampires of True Blood to real-life oppressed classes because Vampires are inherently and legitimately harmful to humans; They literally have to feed on people to survive. Couple this aspect of their nature with us consistently seeing that many of them can’t or won’t control their urges and blatantly disregard the value of human life, or in fact, enjoy harming human life, and it is completely reasonable for people like Sarah to fear or dehumanize Vampires and take precautions in response. The show tries to push a vague allegory about how anti-Vampire discrimination is supposedly akin to racism, homophobia, etc. but this simply does not work. No real life minority inherently harms empowered classes like Vampires do Humans.
• Yes, Humans can choose to do bad things to each other, but Vampires need to do bad things to Humans for their survival. Vampires inherently have a parasitic relationship to Humans and every single one of them, regardless of personality or temperament, has a constant bloodlust that inclines them to kill on impulse. They were created by a literal demonic entity, Lilith, that wants them to indiscriminately murder and feed on the human race. Just being around each other for prolonged periods of time makes them "nest" and become batshit-kill-crazy psychopaths that literally eat babies. Vampires, by their origins and nature, are dangerous predators.
  • And sure, we’re shown a small portion of “Mainstreamers” like Jessica and Bill using True Blood, but the product doesn’t satiate their base urges and they all quickly return to using humans for sustenance.
  • Even then, Bill only became a mainstreamer after centuries of sadism and bloodshed, and Jessica kills a guy because she couldn’t stop herself from draining him completely.

Other characters are anti-vampire and don’t suffer like Sarah does:

• Hitler argument aside, it’s also important to note that Sarah didn’t even start the campaign to exterminate vampires, Governor Burrell did. Yet, Burrell dies fairly quickly by Bill’s hands. Contrastingly, Sarah is tortured for the rest of her natural life. 
• Steve Newlin, who led the Church of the Sun until he got turned into a vampire, also gets a painful but quick death, even rubbing his gayness for Jason in Sarah's face as a last laugh. Despite Eric killing him, Steve still has some sort of agency over his ending and it’s even portrayed as a triumphant moment because he uses his final words to insult and get back at his “evil” ex-wife, even though he was literally just as, if not more, “evil” and actively anti-Vampire as her before being turned.
• Shit, let’s even look at Jason. In Season 2, he indoctrinates himself into the Church of the Sun and wants to exterminate vampires just like Sarah does. He also consistently swings back and forth between empathizing with vampires and wanting to destroy their species throughout the overall course of the series, like when he goes full vampire-hunter in Season 5 and 6.  The only difference between Sarah and Jason is that she actually had the means to enact her anti-vampire plans through being the wife of Steve Newlin and side-ho of Governor Burrell.
  • Both Jason and Sarah are impressionable people with underdeveloped moral compasses. But, because Jason’s the main character’s brother, and apparently just too lovably dumb to think for himself, the show gives him a pass and allows him opportunities to learn from his mistakes without serious consequences.

Sarah's fate is cruel in the greater context of her arc:

• The writers allow Sarah to escape retribution when the Vampires overthrow Burrell’s camp in season 6, just to extend her torture into the next season.
  • Sarah goes into hiding and finds peace and growth after assuming her false-identity of Noomi, only for her new life to be brutally uprooted when the Yakonomo Corporation, along with Eric and Pam, come after her. Sarah has her new boyfriend and later her entire fucking family killed at a point in her life where she is shown to be a genuinely changed person who regrets her past.
  • Sarah visits Amber, her estranged vampire sister who’s infected with Hep V, apologizes for disowning her, and heals her with her cure-infused blood. When Eric tracks Amber down, she even insists that Sarah is a good person at heart and begs him to not hurt her only to be staked and killed by him. 
• Sarah is humanized for so much of Season 6 and is given multiple hope spots, only for her to be subjected to a cruel and torturous fate. 
  • Eric and Pam secretly keep Sarah prisoner at Fangtasia, where vampires pay to feed on her, while also managing a wildly successful, lucrative, and legitimate corporation that distributes synthetic versions of Sarah’s blood as a cure to the Hep V pandemic. They replace the Yakonomo Corporation and the True Blood product itself, and live happily ever after as Sarah is doomed to rot in their club’s basement for the rest of her natural life, long forgotten by the world. Slowly going insane, Sarah is haunted by visions of Steve (as if to imply that she wronged him when the reality was that he was an abusive and cruel husband to her before he became a vampire that she imprisoned at her camp), and when her hallucination of him tauntingly asks her what she’s thankful for on Thanksgiving, she replies “nothing,” before bursting into tears. Sarah is truly broken and miserable, meanwhile we see shots of all the other characters living happy lives and communing for Thanksgiving dinner as peaceful music plays in the background.
  • Pam’s actress said in an interview, “[Eric and Pam] are gazillionaires, Sarah Newlin is being tortured. It was like the Old West: the bad guy gets it, and the good guy gets away with the girl and everything.” We’re not meant to feel bad for Sarah, but to revel in her pain and feel fuckin' righteous about her torment. We’re supposed to feel like Eric and Pam are part of the “good guy” group while Sarah, the “baddie” gets punished. But that simply isn’t accurate.
    • Pam and Eric, despite being part of the protagonists in the show, are evil, sadistic vampires. They enjoy causing pain to humans and satiating their blood lust by slaughtering innocent people. They’re disgusting rapist-murderers, and have been for over a century. The least malicious relationship they have with a human is with their Fangtasia bartender, Ginger, who they have emotionally manipulated and abused for decades. They are not “good” people, or “heroes” despite the narrative expecting us to disregard their vile nature that's been explicitly shown and alluded to time and time again. So, where’s their comeuppance? Where’s their torture? Why is Karma only reserved for Sarah Newlin, a religiously indoctrinated woman who has been around bad influences her entire life?