It’s 2025, but for many gay men, it might as well still be 2008. That was the year HBO’s True Blood bared its fangs — and more importantly, bared Ryan Kwanten, in a role so oiled-up and underdressed it practically raised the national temperature. And thanks to a recent post from Glee star Kevin McHale, our collective gay thirst for Bon Temps’ hottest himbo has been gloriously reignited.
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McHale, who guest-starred on True Blood’s first season, decided to casually drop a little vampire-flavored gossip on Twitter (we’re not calling it X, be serious):
“When I was on this show, closeted 18-year-old me didn’t know how to speak to him,” he wrote, quote-tweeting a photo of Kwanten in nothing but his underwear — which, for the record, is how he spent roughly 40% of his screen time on True Blood. The man was allergic to shirts, and the gay community will forever be grateful.
McHale continued: “He invited me to sit with him and the other guys at lunch.”
And then, the kicker: “Hot AND kind?! I was down bad.”
Reader, so were we.
Let’s not downplay this: Ryan Kwanten as Jason Stackhouse was not just a sex symbol — he was a cultural event. He was the Southern-fried himbo of our dreams, the kind of man who could accidentally summon a pagan blood cult and still make you want to cuddle after. While the show offered no shortage of supernatural thirst traps (see: Alexander Skarsgård’s vampire daddy Eric Northman), Kwanten stood out because he embodied a very specific gay fantasy: hot, dumb, shirtless, and just emotionally available enough to make you think you had a chance.
He wasn’t just objectified — he was worshipped. Tumblr posts, gifs, fanfic, low-res screenshots from a paused HBO stream in 2009 — if you were a queer kid with broadband, you know you had a folder.
And McHale’s confession hits especially hard because it mirrors something so many queer people know too well: the paralyzing cocktail of attraction and secrecy that comes with being closeted. Imagine sitting across from the exact type of man you’ve been privately swooning over while trying not to spontaneously combust. We’ve all been there — at a gym, in a college dorm, maybe even just watching True Blood and pressing pause a little too often.
Kwanten wasn’t just eye candy — he was awakening candy.
That’s why McHale’s tweet didn’t just go viral — it resonated. It’s nostalgia, it’s vulnerability, it’s a reminder that being queer often means being quietly overwhelmed by beauty you don’t yet feel safe to name. And also? It’s hilarious. The honesty of “down bad” in this context is the perfect expression of what True Blood viewers felt every time Jason Stackhouse wandered into a scene looking like a Calvin Klein model who just got lost in the swamp.
Kwanten, now something of a gay icon whether he meant to be or not, hasn’t commented on McHale’s post — but his legacy lives on in meme culture, rewatch podcasts, and the eternal echo of fan thirst. Meanwhile, McHale, out and proud since 2018, continues to be a delightful source of relatability and shirtless selfies (see also: his BlueSky debut).
In the end, McHale’s post is more than a funny anecdote — it’s a love letter to a very specific queer moment in pop culture. When vampires were in, Glee was on, and Ryan Kwanten made us feel things we couldn’t quite say yet.
So here’s to you, Jason Stackhouse — forever hot, forever kind, and forever causing a generation of gays to be “down bad.”