Elena was introduced to Sasha last week, a man claiming
to be her father, and his two children, her half-siblings. The whole idea of
Sasha opens up a big can of worms for Elena – which she vocalises.
On the one hand this is usually kind of clumsy – a character
happily narrates their internal conflict with all the precision and accuracy of
a trained therapist. On the other it’s actually pretty well done as she
explains all her concerns to Clay – the fact she had given up on finding her
family, the fact she has a new family with Clay. The fact she has few memories
of her (presumably) adoptive family and she feels this may jeopardise them. She
has a lot of reasons to not want to open this door.
Of course, the life she’s currently living isn’t shiny either. Sasha even has to help her kill another of the Spanish wolves gunning for her. Jeremy is still playing great draconian alpha, dictatorial, unquestionable and not making great decisions. So far most of the new wolves he’s called in have been cannon fodder, except for Bucky, the traitor. He makes his move with Eduardo’s remaining wolves with another nifty fight scene with Elena and Clay fighting off another attack, with lots of bodies on the ground
One thing Bitten is making a point of doing is emphasising Elena’s skill. She isn’t second to Clay and she doesn’t need his protection. They aren’t letting her “only female werewolf” status turn her into a victim. Here she is clearly as dangerous as Clay – and even saves his life. Still, it does emphasise that they are constantly under siege and this isn’t the life she wants to live
We also have an interesting aside with Elena cooking for
the influx of wolves Clay challenges her on this – that she doesn’t have to
cook for them but she responds that just because she’s a woman doesn’t mean she
shouldn’t cook. There are two ways this
can be pulled out: one, Elena isn’t just going to refuse to cook just because
it’s a sexist stereotype (ultimately, there’s a lot of wolves here and they
need to eat) and/or she’s not going to refuse to cook for other men because she’s
engaged to Clay.
While Elena’s life is all rough and read – it’s clear
Sasha isn’t exactly having a rosy time. Firstly, his son Alexei is approaching
his first change and being on the move is not really the best way to deal with a
new, out of control werewolve. And then there’s Roman, head of the Russian
pack, who is willing to torment witches and listen to random prophecy in an
attempt to hunt him down. He even comes to America and drops in on Jeremy just
as Jeremy is finishing of Eduardo to look for Sasha
Sasha’s far from thrilled about this – since Roman has been out to get him for a long time and is even responsible for killing the mother of Alexei and Katja
If Elena was willing to talk to Jeremy before she certainly
isn’t now since he’s not much into listening to her and seems interested in
maintaining peace with Roman – there’s a decent chance he would hand Sasha
over.
I think the lines have been pretty clearly drawn now for
the themes of this season. What is family and how do they want to live. Mainly
this is Elena with obvious choices between Sasha and Jeremy. But it applies to
everyone – there’s Clay confronted with the demands Jeremy puts on him and life
with Elena. And there’s Jeremy himself, taunted this episode by Eduardo that he
has not family and no legacy, that his family line will also die out. There’s a
question there as to whether Jeremy himself has a family, and if so then we
have to look again at how he is treating them.
