True Blood's Latest Fatality Talks Tonight's Episode (SPOILERS)

Warning: spoilers ahead for tonight's episode of True Blood, titled "Fire in the Hole."

This week's episode of True Blood featured what many fans will identify as one of the most shocking moments of the series...but the actor at the center of it saw the writing on the wall at the end of Season Six.

"I called it pretty early on," said actor Joe Manganiello, who played Alcide Herveaux on the HBO vampire drama. "As soon as Sookie and Alcide got together, I remember turning to a friend and saying, 'I'm dead.' You can't go anywhere from that; she needs to settle up with Bill and Eric. You can't have her break Alcide's heart, because then the audience is going to be angry with her for breaking the nice guy's heart. I told my friend, 'I bet you everything I own that I'm dead.' The other side of it is, if you look at all the other characters, Alcide no longer has anything to do with the story. If you talk about characters that you could kill and make an impact with, I was probably No. 1 on that list. Why would you keep me around? All Alcide ever did was get in the way. I had dinner with [showrunner] Brian Buckner and he cited all the same reasons I just told you."

He noted that Sookie's decision-making skills aren't at an all-time high this season; if it were up to him, he joked, Alcide would just have taken her off to someplace warm and left Bon Temps to the devices of the H-Vamps.

"[Sookie]'s got these two psychotic ex-boyfriends who have either tried to kill her or have been involved in some plot to kill her. And there's these roving packs of infected vampires, and it's still like, 'Let's keep on living here. Let's stay in this town.' What? [Laughs.] Alcide's a contractor. They make pretty good money. Shouldn't he be like, 'Let's take that money and move to Bermuda. Let's not see Bill every day at the diner. Let's leave!' [Laughs.]...I would have been like, 'Here, drink this drink.' And I would have roofied it and then stuck her on a plane and then we'd be gone. She would have woken up in some tropical place and never thought of crazy vampire town ever again. 'Sookie and Alcide go to Bermuda' -- that's my spin-off show. [Laughs.]"

True Blood returns next Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT.