True Blood viewers had a right to be skeptical going into the HBO series’ sixth season. Not only did series creator Alan Ball depart after production had begun, he left behind an array of painted-into-corner plotlines and a scattered storytelling structure. The task of getting True Blood back on track fell to executive producer Brian Buckner, a longtime writer on the show. Despite the behind-the-scenes upheaval, the series saw a major uptick in quality and, more important, coherence. Plotlines once seen as indicative of True Blood‘s worst instincts (e.g., Andy knocks up a faerie!) suddenly became plotlines indicative ofTrue Blood at its most inspired (Andy grapples with his daughters’ deaths). Going into Sunday’s finale, the show seemed like it was being steered by capable hands.

But afterwards, the hard-earned, still fragile goodwill the show had accrued over the season seemingly dissipated overnight. Sure, some recappers liked it, but the immediate Internet consensus was that True Blood had just hit rock bottom. So what happened? Was it the very appealing and charismatic Warlow suddenly backhanding Sookie? Was it the jarring time jump? Was it Eric Northman’s almost offensively inglorious “death”? What exactly was it that made people reject this finale as somehow not being up to par with Season 2’s ostrich egg finale? To find out, Vulture reached out to Buckner to get the first-time showrunner’s take on this negative feedback, plus ask about his intentions for season seven. We also used the opportunity to get an official confirmation about that Jason-Eric sex dream we were promised.

Some would argue that it’s the job of a showrunner to create a controversial season finale. Nice job!
Yeah. I mean I knew it was controversial, I just didn’t think it would be hate-inspiring.

Why do you think the finale fueled so much negativity?
Well, it’s testament to Alex Skarsgard. People want those ten or twelve weeks with him in their living room and they may have feared we were taking him away from them.

It was a relief to hear that Eric will be back as a regular next season. Can you also confirm that these infected vampires aren’t actually zombies?
Well, they’re not zombies in the way that we’re used to zombies. They’re vampires and they need to eat humans, which all vampires do. But in order to stave off the effects of this mutating virus, they need to eat more, and more often, than the vampires that we’ve been living with for the last few years. The truth is, the way TV works is everybody wants us to have the answers already, but we haven’t even gotten in the [writers’] room for season seven yet. We knew that this was a story that we wanted to tell for next season and the idea that we were going to force vampires and humans into uneasy relationships for their own protection seemed like a really ripe place for us to go and is going to create character combinations that we haven’t had before. In terms of what every rule of this mutating virus is, we still have to do that work.

Will the feedback you’ve received recently influence the story lines of season seven?
I don’t think so. Look, the blogosphere … This, by the way, is my very first time sitting in this chair, watching something like this happen. It is my first rodeo. But I have been making TV for a long time and I don’t think that we should let the audience tell us what show to make. Because I think it’s the death of television if we give people exactly what they expect to get every week. What’s the point? So the idea that we need to release material beforehand and immediately come clean with our audience and promise to not surprise them anymore, I’m not sure that’s the TV world that we want to deliver.