So, after last week’s mayhem and Klaus’s machinations he
and Dahlia are about to become magically linked. Dahlia also plans to kill
Freya as she bonds to Hope
Back at the house Cami is telling a very emotional and
angry Elijah (very upset over Gia’s death) about Klaus’s plan. Starting with
the fact Elijah’s plan, the plan he and Freya had, wouldn’t have actually
worked (we learned this last week when Dahlia mocked Freya). Klaus’s plan
involves the link. Elijah can’t see how this is a good idea since Klaus’s power
will make Dahlia unstoppable – but Klaus needs time to get the RIGHT
ingredients to kill Dahlia, unlike the wrong ones Elijah and Freya had.
Klaus and Dahlia complete their link – and Klaus then
daggers himself, putting them both into comas. Freya then wakes up.
Marcel faces Rebekah having just killed herself to avoid
Marcel having to kill her – the plan being that she would be reborn back in her
original (Original) body. After a moment of angst and worry, it works and
Rebekah, the Original model, wakes up (and points out if Marcel is still
compelled to kill her it’s going to go much worse for him). Marcel makes it
clear how much he cares for Rebekah and how terrible what Klaus compelled him
to do was.
Cami tries to talk Elijah round but he’s incensed over
Gia’s death and, rightly, says Klaus will do whatever he needs for Klaus and
Rebekah and Marcel arrive just before he rants at Cami. Of course telling
Elijah that Hayley and the Crescents have been cursed doesn’t make him any
happier – he zooms off when he gets the message that Dahlia has been
incapacitated.
He arrives to find Freya with Hope. Still very miffed.
But intelligent – he realised that Klaus was right, their ingredients wouldn’t
work. They needed the blood of the witch that Dahlia loved the most – and that
is not Freya; that witch is their mother, Esther. Inconvenient since Esther is
dead, but they have her body (or one of her many bodies). They will need to
revive her.
This is the trouble with Originals, they just don’t stay
dead.
Speaking of, Davina is doing her Kol resurrection spell
despite Vincent warning her that she is using her one shot to use super
ancestor power the Regent gets and she’s using it on a less-than-pleasant
person. Hilariously, Davina insists that Kol isn’t like his brothers (HA! Kol
the honourable one! HA!) Vincent warns Davina that even while the Mikkelsons
fight, in the end they will always support each other.
To those siblings and the complications of Klaus’s
plan – to resurrect Esther to get her
blood to kill Dahlia will mean hijacking Davina’s Kol resurrection spell (and
therefore lose Kol). Elijah suggests just dropping Klaus and Dahlia in a pit (a
good plan), Freya suggests White-Oak-Staking Klaus which will kill Dahlia too
(and, as Marcel points out, him and every other vampire descended from Klaus).
And there’s another problem – the dagger is melting. Dahlia/Klaus is not easy to keep down.
So Rebekah and Elijah go grave robbing while Rebekah
reflects that she swore she would stay a witch until she brought Kol back and
here she is, a vampire, and outright sabotaging Davina’s attempt to bring him
back. Bonus angst for her being in a body that has to kill to lie (well, not
quite) and can’t have kids. Klaus’s spite has stolen from both of them. Elijah is
equally enraged that Klaus killed Gia to make a point. Klaus also took Hayley,
though Elijah, naturally denies that that’s a swipe at him or that she is “his
to steal”.
Freya and Marcel are looking for Kol’s ashes so they can
swap them, Freya being all snarky at them working with Klaus while Marcel tells
her this is how it works with the Mikkaelson’s: you love and want to kill each
other at the same time. Marcel finds the urn – and Freya finds the white oak
stake. But the urn is empty.
Because Davina already has the ashes. Rebekah drops in
and Davina see she is back in her vampire body and is quite scathing. Rebekah
isn’t having that, archly pointing out she has loved her brother for
generations longer than Davina has even been alive. Davina backs down and even
apologised. Rebekah then asks for Davina’s help to bring back Esther. Davina
refuses and uses magic to break Rebekah’s neck (remember when being an Original
meant you were powerful? Oh no, that never applied to Rebekah) while singing
the praises of Kol the serial killer
Freya and Marcel try to slow Dahlia’s melting of the
knife down – and fail. So Freya draws the stake. Marcel tries to stop her,
begging her not to do it as killing Klaus will kill him as well but Freya can
see no other choice. Which is when Klaus wakes up and grabs her wrist. Dahlia
also awakens and also reveals she’s melted the link between her and Klaus as
she claims the White Oak stake. She tries to stake Klaus but Marcel knocks him
out of the way. Dahlia and Freya vanish – but likely not without taking a drop
of Hope’s blood first
At the crypt Davina completes her resurrection spell and
wakes… Esther. Elijah swapped the ash while she was playing with Rebekah.
Davina is dramatic and Rebekah quietly chokes her unconscious while Elijah
shackles their mother and disappear, leaving Vincent to find Davina. Marcel
arrives as Davina is vowing to lead all 9 covens against the Original family
until every last witch is dead fighting mighty immortals the family is
broken. Marcel asks her to delay and find Dahlia, reminding her yet again that
if Klaus dies so do all the vampires he has created and would everyone please
remember this before going all gung ho to kill him already?!
Camille decides to put a pause on their desperate battle
for survival to chew Klaus out for being unappreciative and Klaus shows all of
his massive feelings for Camille by being utterly struck dumb by her – awesome acting.
On to Klaus meeting Elijah and Esther with Elijah being
all kinds of snarly and Klaus being in awesome high spirits. Rebekah arrives
for a rendition of her own anger at her brother. Klaus hits back that he needs
to manipulate and force them because they fought him at every turn leaving him
no choice (probably worth remembering here that Elijah’s plan wouldn’t actually
have worked). Elijah asks about Gia and Hayley and Klaus puts them down as “collateral
damage.” Elijah hits him. Elijah is officially done with Klaus
Victor and Camille look after hope in the magic-less bar
and Victor asks Camille exactly why she feels like she owes the Mikaelsons and
why she’s even still in New Orleans – pointing out he has the good sense to
walk away from his legacy though Camille sees him dumping his legacy on Davina –
a teenager who doesn’t know any better. Camille admits the truth, she has “complicated
feelings” for Klaus, a monster.
Dahlia drags Freya to an empty yard, lays down her magic
circle and continues to talk about how terribad her sister was when Klaus, Rebekah
and Elijah arrive. With Esther.
But Dahlia has other tricks – she uses magic to shatter the white oak stake into dust – dust which the 3 Originals then breathe in. They collapse, choking with livid red veins covering their skin; as Dahlia puts it, burning them from the inside out
These leaves Esther to confront Dahlia as Esthers last
four children die (Dahlia strangles Freya). Esther distracts her and strangles
Dahlia with her chains, giving Freya chance to break the magic circle and purge
the dust from the Originals. Elijah throws the prepared dagger to Klaus and he
stabs Dahlia with it.
To a vision of a summer meadow and a young Dahlia and
Esther together. Dahlia is dying and Esther apologises for not standing by her.
They hug and forgive each other – and turn to stone (or so it seems)
Klaus says they’re officially orphans. Because Klaus can
drag depressing angst out of any victory.
Aftermath! The statues are reduced to dust. Marcel and
Elijah have a little funeral for Gia. Klaus drinks to his victory but only with
Rebekah who points out the absence of the rest of the family – and she’s still
not over him forcing her back to her real body. Klaus has a further plan – he intends
to hand the city back to Marcel and raise Hope with the help of Freya and
Rebekah: Rebekah points out the “Elijah sized hole in the room” as well as
Hayley. This is not what happiness looks like.
Freya asks to see Rebekah – now Freya has the chance to
choose her own fate she wants to offer Rebekah the same – the chance to
reinhabit Eva Sinclaire’s body
She chooses to become a witch again (will someone please
tell me why there are these people on The
Vampire Diaries/The Originals who
so hate being immortal, invulnerable and super powerful?). At least, when she
explains it to Marcel, she doesn’t seem to think it’s a permanent thing. She
and Marcel kiss.
Klaus goes to Camille’s bar for a whole shed load of
those Complicated Feelings.
On full moon in the swamp, Elijah meets Hayley on the few
nights she gets to be human. Hayley makes Elijah promise to be there for Hope, she
doesn’t want Klaus to be the only influence on her.
So we close not just with Klaus reflecting on how
everything has not quite worked out – but also with him sharing a drink with
Elijah.
Elijah & co, you daggered Klaus and tried to take his
baby from him. What did you expect to happen? Frankly, given that and the fact
that Klaus is hardly known for his moderation, his vengeance was quite minor,
really. There has been a whole lot of bad decision making from the Originals
this season. Some of it makes sense because of their endless angsty issues, but
a lot of it doesn’t as well. A lot of the later issues these last few episodes
would have been a lot more minor if most of the cast had bothered to
acknowledge Klaus’s fatherhood rather than casually assuming that separating
him from his daughter was an acceptable or reasonable act.
Honestly, I’ll for calling Klaus an evil bastard and
insisting that the best thing his siblings and everyone else could do is flee
to a different city, perhaps even a different continent. But running off with
his daughter? Yeah, everyone should have seen this coming even if Klaus were
even tempered and moderate. Which he is not. Ever.
On the whole I think they did a good job of creating some
pretty compelling plots for the Original family. Ultimately it’s hard to dredge
up an antagonist to face off against creatures as powerful as these, it was one
of the main problems of the first season, how do you find people powerful
enough to be more than road block for them? The answer is clear – the Originals
themselves. Their family drama provided the antagonism
The only thing is, unless they decide to introduce more
aunts, siblings and lost 3rd cousins, we’ve kind of run out of evil
relatives. And they’ve sorely overused the whole resurrection meme. The white
oak stake has also been taken out of play which renders them even more
invulnerable
I do think they need to emphasise the emotional instability
of vampires, how their emotions are so much more heightened than humans (Kol
and Rebekah provided and excellent chance to expound on this). It’s necessary
to explain the Originals. The family is a constant train wreck of high emotion,
of reckless, short sighted foolishness and a complete inability to think when
they’re angry/sad/in-love/feeling any emotion at all. By highlighting this we
would have much more reason to follow, for example, Klaus and his endless
parental issues. It makes the high drama that afflicts the family make so much
sense
This season did something… interesting with POC. But not
necessarily good. Three of the Original family – Rebekah, Finn and Esther –
were all resurrected into the bodies of Black people. This meant we have Black
people in much more prominent roles and wielding considerable mighty power… but
ultimately they were black skin on white characters. The actual Black people
they possessed received little characterisation and now are all dead except
Vincent – and the minute he was back to himself he took a hasty step backwards
declaring that the teenaged Davina should lead the covens, not him. Rebekah is
back in Eva’s body and Vincent is still around but what role will they play?
Other POC who are not being piloted by ancient White
people haven’t been that prominent this season. Marcel has been very much on
the sidelines and with little plot of his own and that largely at the beginning
of the season. Gia looked like she was going to be introduced as a meaningful
love interest for Elijah – before being fridged and it becoming clear the whole
point of her existence was Elijah’s pain and, ultimately, more Mikaelson family
drama. Josh has been completely separate from the entire cast, connecting only
really with Aiden and being completely superfluous from the other storylines.
This leaves me torn over the resurrected POC, they
ensured more and more prominent Black people on screen – but POC who weren’t
meat suits for white people faded further into the background.
We’ve already discussed the treatment of gay people onthis show – since then it has only been exacerbated by Josh’s absence AND the
writers claiming there would be a lot of focus on Josh as part of the grieving
for Aiden… which didn’t happen; in fact Josh fell into the plot box once Aiden
died which is understandable given that was his one and only plot line and
Aiden only had more prominence for the epic fridging at the end of the season.
The women are mixed – we have some powerful women:
Dahlia, Freya, Davina, Josephine La Rue – but there’s always a but. Dahlia is
evil, Freya enslaved and in need of rescue, Josephine dead and Davina
incredibly annoying. She has power but it makes not the slightest lick of sense
for her to be Regent of the 9 Covens, for them to choose a teenager to lead
them and her decisions are dubious to say the least. All of this is backed by
her total obsession over one thing – or one person – Kol. Pretty much all of
Davina’s motivations this season crystallised into Kol while singing his
praises: not only is the only motivation of this powerful witch her boyfriend
(she literally dedicates herself to leading all the witches in New Orleans
because it will get Kol) back but she looks ridiculous doing so as she
continually puts Kol on a pedestal. Kol – the Original who may actually be the
most evil of them all.
Then there’s Hayley, again powerful, influential, a
leader of her people – but the label of “mother” has eclipsed all else. She
married Jackson for Hope. She tolerates Klaus for Hope. She turned her back on
Elijah the man she loved for Hope. Hayley is an awesome character but
everything about her has turned into “mother”.
Camille is more complex, but often a tool for Klaus
because of the Complicated Feelings and Rebekah annoys me. Why is Rebekah so
much weaker than her brothers? As a vampire she was always secondary and weaker
for no reason. She’s reborn as a witch and… she knows no magic. Why? Kol and
Finn were reborn as witches and were skilled, powerful, experienced and
knowledgeable spell casters. Rebekah? Nope, she may as well have been human.
We have a lot of powerful women on this show but there’s
always an element that holds me back from waving the flag
