Supernatural Meets American Horror Story In The 80-Episode Show That Redefined Fantasy

Published Sep 13, 2026, 7:00 PM EDT

Faith Roswell is a Senior Writer on Screen Rant's Classic TV team. Since earning her degree in Creative Writing over a decade ago, Faith has written articles on film and TV from a variety of different angles. Faith now combines her knowledge of psychology with her love of monster movies to give more insight into what makes the best ones. 

You may have read her Screen Rant lists and features covering horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, or read her Amazon Top 10 book, "Movie Monsters of the Deep."

Faith has had an extensive career as a writer, appearing on BBC live radio, researching true crime for Rotten Mango podcast, and writing for publications including Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, and The Daily Jaws before beginning here at Screen Rant. 

If American Horror Story had the heart and tone of Supernatural, the result would be the HBO fantasy series that redefined the genre. For a genre so heavily associated with magic and looking at the world we know in a different way, fantasy can be surprisingly limited. Even the best fantasy TV shows of all time tend to follow the same themes, with many being heavily inspired by medieval England or Harry Potter. While J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece The Lord of the Rings is arguably the blueprint for all fantasy since, one HBO series broke the mold entirely.

Since Twilight brought fantasy romance stories involving creatures like vampires and werewolves into the mainstream, these kinds of stories are practically a genre of their own, but one of the best examples is based on a novel series that was written earlier and eclipses Twilight in terms of creativity. HBO's True Blood is gory, campy, and more daring than it was given credit for. True Blood's seven seasons reference the uncomfortable parts of America's history and challenge stereotypes, while featuring some of the best character writing in an urban fantasy TV show.

How True Blood Redefined Fantasy

Based on Charlaine Harris' bestselling book series, The Southern Vampire Mysteries, the first season of True Blood was explosive, unhinged, and unparalleled from the moment the iconic opening credits played. Despite the show being overshadowed by the first Twilight movie almost immediately, True Blood held its own through setting, character writing, and (sometimes literal) buckets of gore. Urban fantasy is a staple of the genre and many urban fantasy TV shows are considered masterpieces, but most have stuck to the same locations, like a gloomy New York, or a romanticized UK.

On the other hand, True Blood's action is centered in the fictional small town of Bon Temps in Louisiana. Bon Temps is a place full of contradictions, with the atmosphere being close-knit, gossipy, sometimes judgmental, and vibrant, while existing in the shadow of the Confederacy and its "Descendents of the Glorious Dead." Quoting the bigoted language sometimes used towards the LGBT+ community and applying it to vampires, True Blood satirizes prejudice without trivializing it, and places often-marginalized characters in central roles, which few other fantasy shows of the time did.

True Blood's campy tone, many sex scenes, and copious amounts of blood hid the fact that the show openly explored modern civil rights, and while this layered theme is exactly the kind of intelligence people now expect from HBO, the show itself was not. HBO had become known for prestige dramas, while True Blood is wildly different. However, the series' influence can still be felt on the platform. HBO's best TV shows are mostly serious dramas and epic high-budget sagas, but True Blood opened the door for shows like Game of Thrones, which also pushed the boundaries for fantasy.

True Blood's Southern Gothic horror influence can be seen in later shows like American Horror Story, which has darker humor, but a similar colorful aesthetic combined with some extremely disturbing scenes. However, True Blood is less of a horror, and more of a supernatural soap opera with more depth than expected. The show's deep emotional connections would later be reflected in Supernatural, which took a very different direction but features the same emotional core and family theme as seen in True Blood.

Where True Blood Went Wrong And Why It Is A Must-Watch Anyway

A harsh reality of watching True Blood is the fact that the show went downhill towards the end. While the first season put the show on the map, it was not so well-received by critics, who gave True Blood a 63% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating. The next few seasons dramatically improved, with the second and third seasons being masterclasses in character writing, focusing on Tara and fan-favorite Lafayette. That said, the final two seasons were so poorly received that they have significantly lowered the show's overall Rotten Tomatoes scores, with 68% and 73% from critics and audiences respectively.

True Blood made major changes adapting the source material, but this left the show with nowhere to go. After great success with its small-town Southern American setting, True Blood tried to expand, introducing more supernatural creatures and escalating the conflicts until they reached an apocalyptic level. The show could have continued indefinitely if it had become more like a supernatural soap opera, but the expansion of the world worked against the factors that made it unique in the first place. Deep existential questions worked for Supernatural, but not for True Blood.

The seven seasons of True Blood
Season	Year	Rotten Tomatoes critics rating	Rotten Tomatoes audience rating
1	2008	63%	86%
2	2009	89%	89%
3	2010	91%	87%
4	2011	72%	81%
5	2012	79%	70%
6	2013	44%	51%
7	2014	44%	46%

Even with its loss of quality and deeply polarizing ending, True Blood is still worth watching. No matter how many jokes the show makes about Bon Temps, the first few seasons feel like a love letter to the South, rather than a mean-spirited parody, and no other supernatural or fantasy TV show has come close to emulating this tone. The fan-favorite characters still feel ahead of their time, even today, and as True Blood never took itself too seriously, it never asked its viewers to, making the series a fun must-watch.

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  Ryan Kwanten

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  Kristin Bauer van Straten

True Blood is a horror/fantasy drama series created by Alan Ball and starring Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, and Alexander Skarsgård. The series follows the life of Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress with telepathic powers that lives in a fictional town in Louisiana. In this town, a new synthetic "drug" has allowed vampires to escape their coffins and roam amongst the living.