I’m going to have
another rant about Nazis. As I said in previous episodes, I truly think the
writers have opted to go for Nazi vampires because they are Teh Evil. And Klaus
needed Teh Evil to fight because he is already a leading contender for Teh
Evil. And yes it says everything about Klaus that you need to resort to Nazis
if you want to out-evil him.
The problem is that
they’re Nazis. They’re not even subtle Nazis. They run around talking about
purity of blood and master races. They. Have. Swastika. Coins. They just need
to start goose-stepping.
The problem is that
this means we have characters listen to Nazis nazi-ing everywhere, who
presumably haven’t been living under a rock somewhere, and somehow they’re
don’t realise they’re listening to Nazis. Because the writers both want to have
Teh Evil but also want to have bad guys we’re sympathetic with or will join the
good-guy side like Antoinette, Elijah and Roman. And it doesn’t work.
So we have Roman
leading Hope into a trap - to the same place he has Hayley held captive -
listening to Greta spout on about Master Races and purity but believing that
Greta only wants to protect them from hybrids, honest and wouldn’t hurt anyone!
And he’s so under his mother’s thumb which would work if he were, y’know, an actual
teenager (and would also explain why he’s actually at school). But we know he
is at least 70 years old. This guy was literally alive in World War 2 - in
GERMANY during World War 2. He cannot be this naive. He cannot be this
child-like. This whole character makes no sense at all.
Or Elijah has lunch
with Greta while she goes on about blood purity and proper vampirism without
putting two and two together.
At least Antoinette
has the sense to be vaguely suspicious. But even she seems to buy her mother’s
claim that Roman is being threatened by Hope (also, can someone please address
70+ year old Roman with 16 year old Hope? Please?) and is more concerned by the
fact that Klaus may hurt her baby brother AND that she’s dragging Elijah into
her family drama than she is that her Nazi mother may be up to some Nazi-ing.
None of these characters make sense. None of them are tolerable. It’s just a
convoluted way to drag Elijah back into the plot mainly because without an
Original, Klaus is just going to squish everything.
Meanwhile Klaus and
Caroline are looking for Hope and Caroline, headmistress of a school, thinks
they’re all over-reacting just a little bit about this 16 year old girl running
off with a 70 year old vampire. Ha-ha isn’t it fun when teenaged girls like
“bad boys” who are several decades or centuries older than them and
occasionally commit murders? Hey this is a great time to reminisce on how
Caroline was a teenager and how she sort of had a thing for Klaus, ho-ho bad
boys. Serial killing bad boys. Serial killing torturing bad boys, why it’s just
a rite of passage for teenaged girls and she totally has no regrets at all
despite her constant terror of him and aren’t we all better people now.
My urge to vomit is
rising.
Let’s leave that
aside before I just burn everything. Roman takes Hope to where he’s holding
Hayley prisoner and quickly handcuffs Hope because he’s a bad guy. Though he
insists that Greta only wants to bind their powers (despite the whole murdering
of Henry) and he gets steadily angstier as he realises that maybe just maybe
his Nazi mother is a bad person with terribad motives. Hayley also tells Hope
how being a wolf is awesome even if breaking every bone in your body to change
really isn’t and how she would never ever ever want Hope to bind any part of
herself. She also has some epic vision of Hope uniting the factions of New
Orleans because she’s technically part of every faction (personally, being the
cynic I am, I think this means everyone will hate her)
They both completely
ignore the whole needing to commit murder to become a werewolf because everyone
on this show is so terrible they had to bring out the Nazis.
He does get a witch
to do the binding - and Hayley volunteers to protect hope. It’s torturous and
agonising and awful and gets Roman even more guilty - but it does bind Hayley’s
werewolfside. She goes from Hybrid to vampire - and is now burned by sunlight
Aside: can we talk about Antoinette and Greta’s rhapsodising over abandoning daylight rings. I actually got Antoinette’s idea that by embracing a nocturnal lifestyle you managed to let go of your human life easier, that made sense. But Greta is physically disgusted by the concept of NOT BURNING IN AGONY IN SUNLIGHT. I mean, sure, sleep during the day, love your nocturnal self - but wear the ring in case someone opens the curtains at the wrong time, yes?
Hayley is still a
vampire and the witch unwisely gets too close - and is squished. They knock
Roman out but can’t flee because Hayley can’t go out in sunlight… can she not
steal Roman’s?
Greta arrives and,
hey, shock, she wants to murder everyone! Roman is shocked! And does nothing!
Klaus and Elijah arrive and spend time fighting each other rather than get
involved in actually doing something useful (it also requires Klaus to turn his
back on Elijah because hybrid Klaus is rather more dangerous than his big
brother). Hope is a witch but she also does nothing. This leaves Hayley to take
on Greta - Greta nearly stakes her, Hayley crushes her hand like a twig and they
both plunge into sunlight. And die in seconds
No, really, it’s like
freakily fast. I’m sure we’ve seen vampires survive sunlight longer than this
This is tragic but I’m
also more than a little annoyed because Hayley was a cornerstone of this whole
series and it feels like she’s been killed off in a super casual manner with a
whole lot of convoluted elements to force it to happen. And for what, to kill a
bit part villain who was ineffective, dull, moustache twirling and could have
been killed by Klaus with an ill-timed sneeze?
And where does it go
from here? Does Roman finish his redemption train? Does Elijah realise (oh
shit, Nazis bad), does Klaus have another of his epic melt downs? Does Hope
follow in her dad’s footsteps? Because that’s what I see here - lots of
characters having epicly ridiculous reactions and causing the rest of the plot
of this season to happen. Because that’s how Originals works - the plot
is driven by epicly powerful characters making epicly ridiculous decisions and
trying to fix it.
And that’s what
Hayley’s death will amount to. Because it’s not about her - nothing in this
season is about her. She appeared for a couple of seasons apparently as leader
of the city and then pretty much vanished forever. And now she’s died not for
her own storyline - but to develop one of these others characters (or inspire
one of these damn characters to make some damn stupid decisions). We’ve even
introduced a human boyfriend to have an angst fit over her death.
Oh and Declan? Is
apparently a cousin of Camille (which matters? Somehow) with Freya and Vincent
agonising over whether to tell him the Supernatural exists (hey that worked so
well for Camille). Why are we trying to make this character relevant? We’ve
already got like 3 episodes of Klaus, Elijah and Hope moping and wailing, tell
Declan to get in line.
Oh and Caroline - you
might want to look at your school’s admission policy. Near-century old Nazi
vampires are not good students.
