Caroline is now engaged to Stefan and all buzzing about
the engagement, a buzz she shares with Bonnie. It’s a little awkward when just
last week Bonnie and Caroline realised how much Caroline was waving her happiness
in Bonnie’s face when Bonnie’s love and life was in ruins. This kind of
exacerbates all that but at least Caroline seems to recognise that and make a
pledge about Bonnie and Enzo and continually checks whether Bonnie is ok.
Meanwhile Sybil is obsessing more and more over making
sure both Enzo and Damon are completely devoted to her. Why she doesn’t just
write them off and pick two new guys for whatever nefarious plan she has, I don’t
know. This means wandering around in Damon’s skull trying to get rid of his
feelings for Bonnie and continued poking of Enzo to try and get him to turn off
his humanity
Step one is to try and get Damon to kill Bonnie, hoping
that will solve everything but Caroline and Bonnie both derail this
Can I say again how much I’m not happy about Bonnie
losing her magic? Because I hate that she has been so depowered. Yet at the
same time one advantage of this is she isn’t being used as a tool or resource-
and is even being treated as someone valuable to protect. I hate her being so
weakened but for the first time there’s a level of caring about Bonnie rather
than as a useful tool. Is this what it takes to finally treat Bonnie as a
person rather than a disposable tool.
Eventually, frustrated she decides to visit Bonnie and
ask just why both Enzo and Damon are so completely obsessed with her,
especially Damon since their relationship is platonic.
This talk is really all about setting up another
nefarious and overly complicated scheme. Seriously, I second Caroline – why in
the name of common sense isn’t Sybil doing something with her immortal, newly
freed existence other than hang around in rural Virginia doing weird things
with hot vampire minds
So her nefarious scheme involves having Damon and Enzo
fight to kill each other unless Bonnie picks one to die and the other to live
on as Sybil’s slave. Also continuing the Hell theme, of course the one to die
will live in eternal torment
Of course no-one’s happy with this – and Damon has
recruited Stefan not to help rescue him but to help kill Enzo so Damon can live
Which is all Damon cares about now. Thoroughly broken by
Sybil’s visions of hell – a hell Damon knows he’s going to because… y’know I’m
not even going to say why. If you have been watching the last seven seasons of Vampire Diaries there’s no way you can
possibly question why Damon believes he is going to hell. Seriously, even with
this show’s broken morality, Damon is plunging his way to circles far lower
than Dante ever imagined. So his goal now is not dying.
The gang tries many ways to keep them apart, Stefan
trying to get between them and Caroline and finally Bonnie managing to make it
after throwing Sybil through a car window (that’ll teach you to wear a
seatbelt) to try and appeal to Damon. None of it works and it looks like he
will kill Enzo…
So Bonnie chooses Enzo to live and Damon to die.
Except Sybil doesn’t really want this answer. Barring a
few blips Damon is actually on Sybil’s team while Damon is still resisting. So
she’s totally going to take it back, have Damon kill Bonnie unless Enzo turns
off his humanity. Seeming to have no choice, Enzo does – and then Sybil tells
Damon to kill Bonnie anyway because a) this tests whether Enzo’s humanity
switch is on b) she’s evil and evil people don’t keep promises, duh and c)
because mind games are her thing.
It’s all getting into a complicated game of who is
killing who and who is saving who when Alaric arrives
Let’s flashback to Alaric – he’s been working from home
with intern Georgie – whose near-death experience led her to do all her
research in hell. She has some great insight about the artefact they found
which the Armoury probably first used to bring down Sybil in the first place
(and can we say now how utterly bizarre it is that Bonnie, Caroline, Stefan et
al have not even remotely tried to help with this line of research?!). Georgie’s
insight and letting small children play with ancient sharp relics (because how
else do you handle ancient, BCE artefacts than leaving them were small children
can play with them!) leads them to discover they have an anti-siren tuning fork
(of course)
Which Alaric now uses to help capture Sybil.
But Damon still leaves because Siren Thrall is powerful.
Bonnie does take an excellent moment to chew out Stefan
for being team-Damon. Yes, Stefan is devoted to his brother in an almost Supernatural level unhealthiness but as
she pointed out, Enzo is the one struggling against the siren’s hold, Enzo is
the one who was trying to help them and fight Sybil. Damon has given in, Damon
is the wrong choice.
Even imprisoned Sybil still manages to stay in his mind
when he is waylaid by Tyler Lockwood
Remember him? He’s trying to encourage Damon to come back
to his senses or kill Tyler and then be so shaken by this he becomes... what
human again? Switches his switch? Breaks the siren hold?
Did they just decided they needed a way to write Tyler
off in the last season? Because this is nonsense
It’s nonsense because even when Damon was fully himself
and with his switch set to human there’s still no certainty he wouldn’t kill
Tyler for funsies (like he did Jeremy). There’s no reason why ANYONE here would
assume that Damon would care enough about whether Tyler lives or dies to fight
his own whimsical impulses let alone fight siren command. Especially since he
can’t fight that command to stop himself killing Bonnie – and he has a bigger,
more epic link with Bonnie than he does anyone else
You can’t even play the “but the others will never
forgive him for this” card that Tyler’s throwing around because, really? Do any
of them care? Tyler hasn’t been part of any of their lives for so long it’s
bizarre to imagine anyone’s going to be torn up by his death. This whole
segment makes no sense – there is absolutely no reason to believe anyone is
emotionally invested enough in Tyler to make his death poignant, powerful or a
road block for Damon. At the same time, why is he even here? Is there a reason
why Tyler cares about Damon, Enzo or Sybil? What has he been doing since the
last time anyone saw him?
