It’s Lizzie and
Josie’s 16th birthday. Which means a big party and Lizzie making everything
about her as usual. There will be a lot of teen drama about this. Yay.
But there’s still a
story about this shiny knife of why-has-Alaric-kept-this-my-gods-doesn’t-the-supernatural-world-have-someone-more-qualified-to-handle-this-aaargh-I-can’t-even-get-up-without-asking-Hope-for-help
to deal with. And the latest monster to collect the knife is… Alaric’s dead
wife Jo
Jo, as we recall from
the Vampire Diaries trainwreck, is Josie and Lizzie’s mother who was
killed on her wedding day to Alaric by her evil twin (since her whole family
has twins and oh, one is destined to kill the other at age 22 and no-one has
told Lizzie and Josie this yet) and her family magically stuffed the babies
into Caroline’s womb. Vampire Diaries went to some strange places.
Alaric is pretty
suspicious about his dead wife coming back from the dead and points a crossbow
at her. Well, I get the suspicion but, as Jo points out, this is Mystic Falls.
Everyone has come back from the dead at some point. She also makes a hilarious
comment about Alaric looking “seasoned” since he’s 16 years older than she
remembers.
Alaric tries to keep
this from his daughters but they quickly find out and don’t remotely respect
his no because he’s helpless and useless anyway so discover their biological
mother. Lizzie is kind of hostile to Jo, having the idea that bonding with her
is somehow disloyal to Caroline. While Josie instantly wants a closer
relationship. Alaric wants to keep her away from them until he is sure that Jo
is who she says she is. Which involves testing and that huge huge hugely useful
lie detector orb which really really could have been really super useful in The
Originals. Where were you little plot breaking orb? All the tests point to
her being the real deal
Dorian’s research
does turn up the idea of people being resurrected in order to murder someone
though. So she’s still a risk
Teenaged angst time!
So Hope is all crushing after Landon but at least she is self-aware enough to
recognise this. She also tries to make peace with Rafael - he’s super angry at
her for kicking out Landon for his own good but he also needs Hope’s help. He
agreed to be Lizzies date for the party and, especially since he just slept
with her (which he regrets) he feels he needs to do right by her. Which means
learning all the ornate, rather old fashioned party etiquette which Mystic
Falls loves so much. Hope is happy to teach him since Aunt Rebekkah has a weird
fixation with this kind of nonsense.
This gives them
chance to bond, Rafael admit he’s not all that into Lizzie and Hope to realise
that he’s still mourning for his dead girlfriend and kind of working through
his issues by being afraid of letting Lizzie down. Honestly that amount of
angst means you probably need to not date for a while. Hope seems to agree and
encourages him to be honest with Lizzie
They also discuss
family and friendship and I like how you can see their histories in their
views. Hope has no time for friends and is all for family - after all, she’s a
Mikkaelson, surrounded by people who don’t like them very much but at the same
time have the epic, almost unhealthily intense family bonds. While Rafael, an
orphan, has never known family to be reliable but has learned to rely on people
like Landon
They get to discuss
all this because Penny the evil one casts a spell locking them in to make
Rafael late to the party
Why? Well she has
mutual plots. One is MG who still has a desperate crush on Lizzie and Penny
agrees to give him one more chance with her before finally promising to give up
and not being constantly heart broken by her disinterest. And this begins to
work with Lizzie impressed by his charm and epic dancing skills (he’s a vampire
I’m not impressed) as well as how he knows everything about her (I’ve always
found this less romantic and more than a little creepy. I mean it’s sort of an
admission of stalking)
But when Rafael
finally gets there, Lizzie is quick to dump him for Rafael and maybe MG will
stop chasing the woman who isn’t really that into him. While Rafael tells
Lizzie that he isn’t actually that into her when she’s clearly already making
plans to have sex with him (and it’s a little… desperate there Lizzie. Invest
in some batteries, hon and tone it down a bit).
Penny’s second step
is to go to Josie, pointing out she’s spent the entire time preparing for THEIR
party, helping Lizzie get ready rather than getting ready herself. Josie is
constantly sacrificing herself and Penny calls her out on seeming to think any
kind of self-care or self-regard is selfish.
Duly inspired Josie
goes back to see Jo, talks hair and bonding and history and romance before
going for a walk to the party. At which point Jo is overcome by Evil Murder Impulses.
Oops, I would say someone should have predicted this but they did, they just
didn’t do anything about it.
Possessed Jo has
buried Josie alive and demands Alaric give up the knife or she dies. Alaric
wants to but Doria and Emma have said “hell no” and have already skipped town
with it to stop him giving it up. Sensible people.
So what does he do?
What he always does when he has a problem - turn to Hope. She recruits MG and
Penny (since she’s learned about friends) and they go to find Josie - running
into zombies along the way. These zombies Penny and Hope kill by hitting them
in the head rather than use magic… which seems odd but hey one of the writers
has been watching way too much Walking Dead. MG’s vampire hearing finds
Josie and the day is saved
But Jo realises she
is a risk to her children. If she is possessed again she could hurt them. And
there’s only one way to protect her kids - have them siphon away the power that
controls her. And which keeps her alive. I think having Alaric behead her would
achieve the same goal without traumatising her daughters but then we wouldn’t
get the beautiful, emotional goodbye scenes.
Penny catches up with
Josie to double down on the fact selfishness is ok - and how compatible they
are. She kisses Josie… who says she hates Penny and kisses her back. I love
that we’re finally getting something from these characters than utter enemies -
but this is still going to be a trainwreck.
And the big bad
arrives! Looking kinda cheap-horror-filmness he declares he is the Necromancer
and wants the knife. Dorian and Alaric act like Necromancy is totally not
intimidating which is kind of weird because zombies but hey, grandstanding.
Alaric swears epic vengeance which would mean something if his epic vengeance
wouldn’t involve asking some teenagers to do his vengeing for him.
