At this point I'm just kind of dead inside. I want to be surprised but I'm just not. As if what happened the other week on The 100 wasn't bad enough. As if The Walking Dead didn't just kill off one half of a female pairing. Oh no. We need more women who love women to die. In this very special episode of The Vampire Diaries, we get two for the price of one. For God's sake.
Cons:
Mary Louise and Nora die. In principle, I'm annoyed. And in execution, I'm also annoyed. I guess there are a few things I like about the death, sort of... like I do enjoy the fact that at least they decide to sacrifice themselves for love and for the potential greater good and all that... But even though they got to go out in a blaze of glory, it's still not working for me on the bigger level. STOP KILLING LESBIANS. SERIOUSLY. But more than that, their deaths were tied up in the Armory plot, which has got to be the most boring and inane thing this show has done since... I don't know, the last time there was some dumbass organization with secret motives, which was like two seconds ago now that I think about it.
In any case, let's talk about the Armory plot here - we're in the "three years later" zone, which has now become the present day, and we see that Mary Louise and Nora have been in captivity at the Armory this whole time, along with Rayna who has just been freed by Matt to go kidnap Caroline and do all that other fun stuff that we've already seen. Alex is looking for Enzo, who she believes is the one to have freed Rayna. She makes a deal with Nora, promising to let her and Mary Louise go if she goes and brings Enzo back to her. The catch? The Armory has been running experiments on Mary Lou this whole time, by injecting her with Rayna's blood. It appears to be killing her. Nora is thus very incentivized. She finds Enzo, but it turns out that Enzo is somewhat on Nora's side, since he has been inadvertently feeding these Rayna blood pills to Bonnie for some reason, and the news that they are poisonous to witches is a serious blow to him.
They facilitate this exchange where, in theory, the Armory is supposed to capture Rayna, and give Mary Louise into Nora's custody, but things go wrong and Rayna gets away, chasing down Nora, who she has just marked, and Mary Louise, who is weak and dying. Rayna throws her sword at their fleeing car, and the two women each grasp the sword and do some magic mumbo-jumbo that cracks the Phoenix Stone and blows up the car, killing them both.
Okay. Let's just... unpack this for a moment, shall we?
Enzo and Bonnie. We still have no explanation for that, and when exactly did Enzo give Bonnie these pills? Or did he? Why would he have? What did he think they did? This episode brought us fully and properly up to date on pretty much everything else that we were wondering about from the flash-forwards. The fact that we haven't covered this romance is starting to get less and less intriguing, and more and more annoying.
Then there's Alex, Enzo's relative of some sort or another. She is so nondescript that at one point when one of the characters said her name, I had to pause and go look her up to remember who the heck they were talking about. Why does she think Enzo would have let Rayna out, anyway? She offers no sound reasoning for that. And why did she do all her torture experiments on Mary Lou but not Nora? Was she anticipating this exact scenario and wanted to keep one of them healthy? For that matter, aren't they supposed to be this all-powerful organization that can take down vampires? Why send Nora on this quest to find Enzo instead of doing it herself? The Armory stuff is somehow both confusing and boring, which is unfortunately an all too common problem on this show.
Lastly, I have to complain about Valerie. Up to this point, I actually liked her! I thought she was interesting, and I found her selfless desire to help Stefan and Caroline really sweet. But now? Ugh. So... the main plot this week focuses on Damon offering to take on the Huntress's scar so that Stefan will be free of it. Turns out that Valerie knew this was an option the entire time. She and Stefan have spent the last three years traveling around the world goofing off and making out or whatever, and supposedly they're doing all of that in the quest to find a way to save Stefan, but Valerie was withholding the solution all along! And what's her bullshit excuse for this? She tells Damon it's because she knew that if Stefan brought Damon back into his life, Damon was going to ruin it again. Uh, hello? Stefan wouldn't even have a life to ruin if he kept the scar! Valerie is a total jerk! She can make excuses and say it was for Stefan's own good or something, but she quite clearly did this so that Stefan would have to stay on the run (i.e. with Valerie) instead of getting free of the curse and going where he really wanted to go (i.e. with Caroline). God, Valerie! Why?! I actually trusted you! The weird thing is, I think the show is trying to convince the viewers that we're still supposed to feel sympathy and connection with Valerie. But how can I, after learning this little tidbit? Yeesh.
Pros:
The thing that's so frustrating about this episode is that despite my lengthy complaints above, the good stuff in this episode was really good. My opinion is pretty polarized, honestly!
Matt doesn't have much to do, but we do finally find out why he freed Rayna. He specifically wanted Rayna to go after Stefan and put him back in the Phoenix Stone. Why? Well, it seems that Stefan is responsible for Penny's death. I'm willing to bet that Stefan wasn't personally the one to kill her, or that if he was there was something more going on. But in any case, Matt blames Stefan and is out for revenge. I love watching Matt go further and further down the path of total hatred for all vampires. I can't wait to get the full story here.
As Rayna is chasing down Stefan, who escapes from her at the news station, she keeps calling him and chatting about how she doesn't really want to kill him, but rather is being compelled by her magical powers to hunt him down at all cost. We learn that Rayna has a mystical connection with her targets, and that she can feel what they feel. As such, she has been watching him the entire time she's been trapped in the Armory, and even concedes that he's not a bad person. I can see why some people might call this idea stupid, but honestly I think it works quite well as both a plot device and a character building exercise. Rayna is still pretty bland, but I love the idea that she's a slave to her magical compulsions, and yet she's sort of complacent about it. That's actually fairly unique! She doesn't want to chase down Stefan, but she does it anyway. She doesn't necessarily want to slaughter vampires indiscriminately, which is why she's okay with the idea of Damon taking on Stefan's scar so that she won't have to go after Stefan. Also, this device allowed us to hear more about Stefan's inner turmoil through the eyes of his current nemesis. That's quite interesting! On a basic plot level, it also helps to have a somewhat reasonable answer as to why Rayna doesn't just kill first and ask questions later. There is a part of her that regrets what she's doing.
And let's talk about that inner turmoil of Stefan's shall we? Because this is what really made the episode work for me, despite its numerous huge problems. Rayna tells Stefan, and thus the viewer, that when she was released from the Armory by Matt, it made Stefan's scar open back up, and in that moment, he didn't call Valerie, or even Caroline... he went straight for Damon, even though it wasn't the smartest or most logical play. In that moment, when he realized his life was in danger again, he wanted Damon and nobody else. And Damon? Well, he has spent the last three years in a coffin. He makes the offer to take the scar with a remarkable amount of flippancy, but it makes a certain amount of sense - he feels guilty about Stefan's life being in danger, and here's something that he can do to help.
The shocking part? Stefan says yes. He's already figured out that even if Rayna doesn't kill him, he's still only got sixty or seventy years left, since his life is tied to Rayna's. Given that knowledge, the fact that he would let Damon take on the scar is a really big deal. He realizes, even if Damon doesn't quite yet, that if Damon takes the scar his days become instantly numbered, even if Rayna spends the rest of her life in captivity. There was this part of me, when I first saw Stefan agree to this plan, that felt sort of angry at him. Or not angry, exactly... just sort of disappointed, like I thought Stefan should be the ultimate paragon of virtue and always take on the burdens of the people around him. But after watching for a bit longer, I was quite proud of Stefan for making this decision. Damon offered, after all! And why on earth should Stefan have to sacrifice himself? Ultimately, I don't think Stefan is really better off without Damon in his life, but I do think we've seen a lot of Damon's mistakes really mess up Stefan's life, and that's not right either.
Damon's journey in this episode goes from agreeing to make this sacrifice for Stefan, to realizing that this will mean giving up his chance at a future with Elena, and deciding to back down and find another way to deal with Rayna. His moment of weakness here is totally understandable. What if he had to face the next sixty years with death looming over him, along with the thought of just missing out on a reunion with his one true love? Yikes. That's not an easy thing to give up. Ultimately, I think Damon doubting whether or not he should take on the scar was a good thing, because it makes his final decision to take the scar all the more meaningful - he's fully cognizant of what he's giving up. He's given it thought. And yet he still wants to do the right thing for his little brother. But here's where it gets intense - as Valerie and Damon are driving to meet up with Stefan, Rayna shows up and corners him. Valerie frantically tries to transfer the scar to Damon, but before she can finish, Rayna stabs Stefan with the sword, trapping him once again in the Phoenix Stone. And with Nora and Mary Louise's death, the Phoenix Stone has been cracked, thus potentially trapping Stefan for good.
Dun dun dun... I really, really loved the scenes where Valerie was frantically trying to do the transfer spell and then they realized they were too late. Damon jumps out of the car when they get there and runs to Stefan, yelling out his brother's name. He swears he'll do whatever it takes to fix this. He swears it'll be different next time. It broke my heart to hear Damon say that he'd messed up because he'd tried to have it all. In that moment he seemed to accept that he couldn't have a future without losing Stefan, and it made his decision depressingly easy - if dying is what it takes to bring Stefan back, I'm pretty sure Damon would go for it without question this time. Ouch.
I guess the biggest compliment that I can pay this episode is that I'm still really intrigued as to where they're going. I mean, yeah, the Armory stuff is pretty darn weak, and I've pretty much already lost interest in Bonnie/Enzo, before they've even showed how it came to be. But the Damon and Stefan stuff, and how they're tying in real questions of dependency and the healthiness of letting go... that stuff is all pretty great! And you know me... brotherly angst is my kryptonite. I guess, given my frustration with the deaths of two more gay ladies and my dissatisfaction with several of the plot threads, there's no way to give this one particularly high marks. But a lot of things about it weren't so bad. So...
7.5/10
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