Remember the prophecy/vision thing that told Elena she
was going to burn down everything while covered in blood
Listening to this Paige decides a reasonable
interpretation is that Elena is going to cause a peaceful non violent cultural
shift in werewolf society
Paige is, perhaps, not all that good at interpreting prophecy.
They do poke at the main thing Elena wants to change –
the need to kill for secrecy as well as the brutal despotic rule of the Alphas.
Paige puts this down to all werewolves being men except the super special shiny
Elena who can now bring a feminine perspective that isn’t all about power and
violence
It’s all very… gender essentialist. Because the
werewolves need Elena’s every so delicate, soft and gentle female touch to
bring peace and harmony? I mean, couldn’t you have made the same point by
pointing out that Elena is actually the only current werewolf in the Pack who
wasn’t born a werewolf (or wasn’t turned very young) therefore the only one
outside their traditional violent patriarchal culture rather than deciding her
gentle peaceful guidance will stem from her femininity? This is one of those
tropes which sounds positive but still paints women into a narrow roled box
even if that box is on tops of a supposedly positive pedestal
With her new insight, Elena goes to the remaining pack
members – Clay, Nick, Karl and Extra #1 and Extra #2 and decides she wants not
a pack but a family based on mutual respect and care. No orders, no demands
from the Alpha no demands of loyalty – but an offer of loyalty from the Alpha
instead
Oh why couldn’t we have this? Why couldn’t we have spent
the last 6 episodes or so focusing on this? On societal change within the
werewolves, setting up Elena as the new Alpha, a different kind of Alpha?
Instead we’ve had episodes of ominous scary Russians (and this certainly isn’t
in the books, Elena and her pack are on good terms with the Russian pack) and,
especially, their super scary assassin. Episode after episode of fighting
without actually progressing the plot any further – which is all the more
annoying because there’s this potential that screams for development
That includes this episode because no sooner did we have this
development than we’re back to The Assassin and his hidden brother being all evil
and scary, kidnapping Elena and Sasha because the two not only decided to go
into the woods alone, but then decided to split up
No, really. See, that’s another element to this show that
is so broken – when the plot, such that it is, does advance it advanced via
terrible character decision making. Like that entire episode where Clay and
Jorge just stayed in a car and watched the Assassin (which was such gripping
watching) before Clay decided to leave Jorge alone. So many times the “action”
has moved forwards only by people catching the Idiot Ball.
So Elena and Sasha are captured so we can have more
horrendous moments of Elena suffering and being tortured because Roman and the
Assassin are just caricatures of evil awfulness at this point.
So let’s go to Jeremy and his master plan to kill Roman –
this involves getting captured, being chained up and then hoping Konstantin
will free him
No, really that’s his plan
Well “plan” is overselling it. But that’s what he’s doing
We get lots of speeches about how special Elena is and
how much Jeremy cares for her as well as Roman’s ongoing angst over his dead
daughter (who he strangled). By threatening to have Elena killed – he has a
little torture camera – Roman manages to coerce Jeremy into confessing that he
wanted to invade Russia in a kind of convoluted way to convince the Alpha
Council that Roman invading the US and killing the American alpha was totally
justified. He makes this confession to Nick… with a coded message
I seem to be saying this a lot but, really? The Alpha
council is really going to buy this “confession” Jeremy makes while being
imprisoned? Really really? And Jeremy trusts Roman to keep his word and spare
Elena? And why would Roman want the confession to go to Nick? He really thinks
Nick would pass it on to the Alpha council? Why not just record it and give it
to the other Alphas? Absolutely none of this makes sense!
The coded message gets through so just when Elena managesto almost free herself from obscene, unnecessary torture, Clay arrives in wolf
form
Yes, wolf form! This is a show about werewolves! I know,
I think this is maybe the third shapeshift we’ve seen all season despite the
many many many many many fight scenes! And in wolf form Clay kills the assassin
in seconds – despite said assassin fending off him, Elena and Karl together in
past episodes. So maybe one of these werewolves should have considered going
wolfy a lot sooner than this?
The assassin is dead but his hidden brother isn’t so
expect this plot line to continue for even longer
Back to Jeremy, Konstantin finally comes through with his
side and releases Jeremy so he can leap on Roman and tear out his throat with
his teeth. Plot line finished… except now Konstantin turns on Jeremy with a
full on army of werewolves
I think there’s one episode left – so don’t expect
anything to be resolved in a meaningful way
