Posts tagged: The Vampire Diaries Season 7

The Vampire Diaries S07E07 “Mommie Dearest” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on ITV2, Weds 11pm
Writers: Chad Fivelash, James Stoteraux
Director: Tony Solomons

Essential plot points:

• Flash forward three years: Damon and Alaric are racing towards the studio where Caroline is being held captive, Damon falls into the trap and is shot from behind with vervain darts.
• In the present: Stefan tries to win Lily over to become an ally in the fight against Julian. He tries to convince her that she has fallen for another monster, like his father.
• Flash back to Thanksgiving dinner with the Salvatore family and Damon’s father has forced him to kill his pet turkey for dinner. Later, as punishment for stealing some money he burns Damon’s hand with a cigar.
• Matt finds more compelled humans in the Grill. Caroline asks Valerie to syphon off their compulsion. They have no bite marks so are not being kept as blood bags, just being kept alive for some reason.
• Caroline had taken a pregnancy test which came back negative. However in the Grill she gets sick, suspiciously like morning sickness.
• Enzo and Bonnie find Oscar’s car and a dagger that’s hidden in the boot. Enzo is convinced it will kill Julian so picks a fight with him.
• After  Julian has his throat nicked Stefan and Damon discover that Lily had her life linked to Julian so that if one dies, they both die. Regardless of this Damon rescues Enzo from being killed by Julian and stabs Julian himself.
• Lily tells Stefan that it was she who stole the money from his father to buy train tickets to take her and her two sons to safety, away from his monstrous father. He caught her in the act and beat her.
• Bonnie does a little research and finds out that the dagger will only work if it has the Phoenix Stone in the hilt. Julian is alive and Lily arrives just in time to stop him killing everyone.
• Valerie reveals the secret of her and Stefan’s unborn child to Caroline. Wanting to make absolutely sure that she isn’t pregnant she gets an ultrasound which shows no babies. But Valerie figures out that they are cloaked and syphons the cloaking spell unveiling the twins inside Caroline.
• Lily starts to have doubts about Julian. She confronts him about Valerie and Stefan’s baby, which Stefan told her about earlier, and asks why he would risk his life while hers is tethered to his.
• She tells Stefan and Damon that they were right and she has a plan for them all to kill Julian.

The Good:

• The mirroring between Lily’s husband and her current lover is nicely done, though a tad obvious. She literally looks in a mirror while they both ask for her forgiveness in the same way, separated by a couple of centuries.
• There was a lot of “Is she? Isn’t she?” with Caroline’s unexpected pregnancy. Firstly, the pregnancy test says no, then she gets something that is suspiciously like morning sickness, then the ultra sound says no and finally they are uncloaked. Valerie was determined to uncover the mystery; she wants to make sure that Alaric doesn’t lose his children like she lost her’s. This is a nice touch for her character development, you can’t help but like her even though she can be horrible at times.

The Bad:

• Matt is out of the picture now. He drove off at the end of the episode after being pissed at Bonnie for “hanging out” with Enzo. He’s gone for the help of Tyler and Jeremy but it feels like he was a spare part for the entire season so far so his character has been shoved back on the shelf until they need a human in the story line again.
• Bonnie and Enzo’s budding romance seems a little forced at the moment. It was confirmed a couple of flashbacks ago that they end up together so they are being pushed together somewhat unnaturally. They’re almost loose ends that didn’t have anybody so they might as well end up together.
• The whole pregnancy angle is still a bit much to get your head around too. The actor, Candice King, is pregnant in real life so the makers of the show had to either cut the character for a while or just work with it. Cutting Caroline would have been a bit risky as Elena is also absent from this series and they might have lost a big chunk of viewers had both gone so they decided to go with working it into the storyline. Can vampires actually carry babies when they are technically dead? The episode skirted around the problem by basically shrugging and saying “why not?” but this doesn’t really address the issue. Hopefully they will come up with something more concrete in later episodes.

And The Random:

• The sword battle between Enzo and Julian is pretty exciting. Who knew that Enzo was such a good swordsman?
• This episode had quite an uncomfortable family Thanksgiving dinner with Stefan and Damon torturing Lily to try to persuade her that she has fallen for yet another psychopath, probably not the best way to convince someone onto you side. What was surprising was that it was Stefan’s idea, it seems more of a Damon thing to do.

Review by Georgina Tyson

Read our other reviews of The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries S07E06 “Best Served Cold” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on ITV2, Weds 11pm
Writer: Darren Genet
Director: Caroline Dries

Essential plot points:

• Flash forward three years to Damon talking to Alaric about his fiancé… who is revealed to be Caroline (!?). Damon is concerned that whoever is hunting Stefan will use Caroline to draw him out. Caroline comes on TV as a news reporter with a bleeding head and a message for Stefan.
• In the present Lily invites everyone to a party to introduce them to Julian and try and secure a truce. Stefan wants to use the opportunity to kill Julian for killing his unborn child; Damon wants Julian to stay alive for six months so it hurts Lily more when he is killed.
• New Jo is struggling in her body; because she is a vampire in a human body it rejects the soul and starts to decay. Alaric has to say goodbye but it gives him closure.
• Valerie taunts Caroline about Stefan not telling her Valerie’s secret. Caroline wants Valerie out of Mystic Falls
• Enzo goes to the party. He finds out the Julian wants Oscar’s car so he goes to find it first.
• Stefan tries to kill Julian but all does not go to plan. Lily intervenes before Julian can kill both Salvatore brothers.
• Bonnie and Matt follow a party guest, who is obviously compelled, to the school. There they find a whole room full of compelled people attached to drips.
• Valerie watches Alaric’s wedding video and realises that Jo’s twins are still alive. She does a locator spell and finds out that they are now developing inside Caroline (which explains the engagement to Alaric in three years time)
• Stefan tells Damon what Julian did to make Stefan hate him so much, Damon agrees to help kill Julian as soon as possible.

Good points:

• Even though an earlier flashforward heavily implied that Alaric and Jo’s unborn children were still alive there was still a huge twist when it was revealed that Caroline is now carrying them. The coven moved them to her body when Jo was dying to save them. There might be some problems, though, with a vampire carrying mortal babies.
• Julian recounts his experience being trapped in the Phoenix Stone for a hundred years. He would wake up every day (sounds a bit strange to have a soul wake up) and try to escape but he would end up killing the person he loved most in the world, Lily. When he is attacking the Salvatore brothers Lily tries to stop him and he looks as if he is about to kill her, almost making his worst nightmare true.
• The rapport and tension is slowly building up between Enzo and Bonnie. In an attempt to make Lily jealous he tells Bonnie to say she’s his date to the party. Bonnie fixes Enzo’s tie while Lily is watching and it creates a hot little moment for them both.
• Some more depth was given to Valerie’s character. She was moved by Alaric’s story of his wife being taken from him while she was pregnant with their children and she watched the wedding video and found that the Gemini’s chanting, which everyone assumed was them trying to send Kai back to the prison world, was actually meant to save the babies and remove them from Jo’s dying body. She lost her child but she helped Alaric find his.

Bad points:

• Lily is very hypocritical and hard to work out. She stops Julian from killing Damon and Stefan and tells him that she will not see her children hurt, but she’s perfectly willing to hurt them herself. It was her idea to make Damon suffer without Elena for another 80 years.
• The writers are still determined to push the Nora and Mary Louise relationship drama into the forefront. It’s really difficult to care about it because they’re both such unlikeable characters who get barely any screen time and their relationship is hard to fathom anyway. Nora is a bitch to Mary Louise who just moans about it and dresses in more revealing clothes which is uncomfortable for her and uncomfortable to watch.

Random:

• Stefan has a dream that he has a son in the 1800s, and he is teaching the child, Jacob, to shoot. It was a nice look at what could have been, though it was actually Stefan’s mind torturing him.
• Caroline suggests a new name for Valerie: “Matilda Pettigrew from Liverpool, England” which she pronounces in a fake posh British which is definitely not Scouse.
• Nora shows Julian how to play Candy Crush on his new phone, not really the most important invention of the 21st Century.
• In a highly enjoyable little scene Damon and Stefan talk about killing Julian but use an analogy involving furniture so as not to reveal too much to the other vampires with super hearing.

Review by Georgina Tyson

Read our other reviews of The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries S07E05 “Live Through This” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on ITV2, Weds 11pm
Writer: Rebecca Sonnenshine
Director: Kellie Cyrus

Essential plot points:

• This episode’s three-year flash forward sees Bonnie in what looks like a mental institution being visited by Enzo. She rushes into his arms and they kiss.
• Jumping back to the present, Bonnie is worried about the effects of the Phoenix Stone and takes it to Oscar to discuss it.
• Both Jo and Oscar are not in their right minds; they seem confused by the world and don’t recognise their loved ones.
• Valerie steals Matt’s car to find Julian and is joined by Stefan and Damon. Lily and the rest of the Heretics are hot on their tail.
• It is revealed that Julian is actually dead and it is his body that everyone is looking for. This is the reason Lily wanted the Phoenix Stone: to bring him back to life.
• The Phoenix Stone is actually a container of lost old vampire souls. It can’t bring just anyone back from the dead. This means that someone else’s soul is in both Oscar and Jo’s body.
• The Heretics catch Valerie trying to burn Julian’s body and she is cast out. She tells Stefan and Damon that Lily was the one who gave Kai the idea to put Elena under the Sleeping Beauty spell. Damon vows to kill Julian to hurt Lily.
• Enzo offers Lily the stone but tells her to chose: him or Julian. Lily chooses Julian and uses the stone to resurrect him.
• Valerie finally tells Stefan that she was on her way back to him when she was ambushed by Julian who killed their unborn baby. Stefan also vows to kill Julian.
• Bonnie tells Alaric that it wasn’t Jo that they brought back; it is some unknown old vampire. Alaric offers to help the mystery woman.

The Good:

• The build-up surroundind Julian has now reached its crescendo – he is finally here. And he doesn’t know how much danger he is in with Damon, Bonnie, Stefan, Valerie and Enzo all wanting him dead. If only he had a family of all powerful witch-vampire hybrids… oh wait. It’s set to be all out war.
• When Jo was resurrected there was a feeing of, “everyone who dies, comes back to life in this show, so where’s the peril? The threat?” Well now we have our answer. It’s nt Jo who came back…
• The flash forward was intriguing as ever. Bonnie and Enzo somehow end up together. They spent a lot of this episode flirting and building chemistry.

The Bad:

• The Stefan and Caroline relationship still doesn’t feel believable, and the fact that he didn’t tell her about Valerie and the baby implies that it’s not going to last that long anyway. We know it isn’t still going three years from now from a couple of flash forwards ago so it’s hard to buy into it now.
• Did the new Jo have to be another person who’s confused by the modern world? It’s a trope that the writers have used quite a few times before: old supernatural being awakens or comes back to life and isn’t used to mobile phones, or cars! We’ve just had a load of them introduced at the start of this season and now we have another one.

And The Random:

• Damon teasing Stefan and Caroline about their relationship and cracking jokes made for the most awkward car journey possible for Stefan and Valerie, but it was  hilarious for viewers to watch.
• Perhaps it’s a vampire thing where Caroline and Stefan can wake up perfectly made-up and with immaculate hair, completely ready to start the day with just a change of clothes. What an easy life that would be!
• Damon turning over a new leaf lasted roughly half an episode. It’s all about revenge again, but that is the best kind of Damon.

Review by Georgina Tyson

Read our other reviews of The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries S07E04 “Age Of Innocence” Review

Airing in the UK on ITV2, Weds 11pm
Writer: Neil Reynolds
Director: Jeffrey Hunt

Essential plot points:

• Flash forward three years and we see Alaric has twin daughters and Damon pays him a visit. Alaric does not look happy to see him.
• In the present, Caroline and Stefan manage to convince Nora to remove the vervain spell so they can finally be together properly.
• There is couple drama between Nora and Mary Louise. Nora is doing far better at adapting to the 21st century than Mary Louise who struggles to remember that their love will not be prosecuted any more.
• Damon convinces Bonnie and Alaric to test the Phoenix Stone’s resurrection power on Oscar so that he can get Elena’s body back from Lily. It works but the side effect is an insatiable hunger and Oscar kills an entire bus of tourists.
• It’s Halloween so, of course, there is a ball at Whitmore Academy. This one is Heaven & Hell themed. Caroline and Stefan spend the ball having to babysit Nora and Mary Louise who have threatened to kill one student per hour that Oscar is not returned.
• Meanwhile Enzo is convinced that Valarie is up to something and after convincing Matt to let him look through the town’s security cameras he accuses Valarie of killing Oscar. Valarie admits it and tells him to ask Lily about Julian. They team up to stop Julian coming back into Lily’s life.
• After a talking to by Lily Damon decides to send Elena’s body away with Tyler so that he is not obsessing over her and and move on with his life and find out who he is without her.
• Alaric and Bonnie are successful in bringing Jo back to life.

Good points:

• Damon letting Elena go, at least for now, means that he can finally move on and everyone can finally stop mentioning Elena every five seconds! Obviously, because she was the main character for the first six series, her name will crop up a few times but for the first couple of episodes it’s too much. It is an exciting prospect to see an Elena-less Damon.
• The flash forwards are continuing, this one gave us a glimpse of Alaric’s future where he gets everything he ever wanted. Good for him! Looks like the Phoenix Stone not only resurrected Jo but the twins that she was pregnant with when she was murdered.
• Caroline and Stefan can finally touch each other and the tension that has been building up finally broke. However Caroline might ruin the relationship if she continues to be neurotic about Stefan and Valarie’s past.
• One thing that The Vampire Diaries can do very well is making you identify with one of the antagonists. Valarie might be a stone cold bitch but she has a solid reason to be that way. And now she has finally returned to her true love, Stefan, only to find him in love with someone else. She can’t tell him why she didn’t return to him sooner for fear of Lily’s reaction to what Julian did so she must suffer Stefan’s resentment or indifference.

Bad points:

• There are definitely too many heretics. Beau (the mute) was not even seen or mentioned in this episode. He is the one we know the least about.
• The drama between lesbian couple Nora and Mary Louise is a little forced. It’s hard to care about these characters and empathise with them in the same way as Valarie because they’re so unlikeable. Nora is extremely mean and cutting and Mary Louise is very uptight and clingy. The only redeeming quality in each is that after many squabbles they realise in the end that they love each other and that’s all that matters. It would be far better if they didn’t keep asking Caroline for fashion tips while threatening her, it seems childish and silly.

Random:

• There was a lovely little moment when Caroline and Bonnie have a hug in the dorm room they are sharing and have a chat about their day. This culminates in Caroline saying, “Our lives are weird!” which is probably the understatement of the year.
• Damon and Stefan need to hide Oscar’s body from Nora and Mary Louise so they hang it out of the window. Luckily it’s Halloween and it just looked like a hyper realistic zombie decoration!
• Bonnie trying a load of different spells to bring Oscar back was highly entertaining, especially when she accidentally set him on fire and shouted, “Oh crap!”

Review by Georgina Tyson

Read our other reviews of The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries S07E03 “Age Of Innocence” Review

Airing in the UK on ITV2, Weds 11pm
Writer: Melinda Hsu Taylor, Holly Brix
Director: Michael Allowitz

Essential plot points:

• Three years from now Stefan calls Tyler (he’s back!) to ask if he’s seen Caroline because he needs to warn her about something (we assume it’s the vampire hunter that staked Caroline at the end of the last episode). Stefan sets fire to his precious car but saves his diary from the inferno.
• In the present day Bonnie is keeping up the diary entries for Elena when she has more visions of suffering people and blacks out for 10 minutes.
• Alaric lies about destroying the Phoenix Stone.
• Caroline learns that Lily sent Valerie to check on Stefan in 1863 to make sure he was happy. She dis more than that and took his virginity – she was Stefan’s first love. She left but promised to come back for him. He received a telegram a few months later but she never showed up at the rendezvous point. It is later revealed (but only to the audience) that Liy was pregnant with Stefan’s baby and Lily’s lover at the time beat her until she lost the baby and then he took her on a ship to England.
• Damon, Bonnie and Alaric go to kidnap the missing Heretic, Oscar, and find him enjoying freedom and wanting to desert Lily’s family. It turns out he was sent by Lily to check on Damon in 1863 so they know each other (they met in a bar, because it’s Damon… so of course they did!). He even saved Damon’s life back then. They ask him to syphon Bonnie’s visions but he finds out they are caused by the Phoenix Stone so knocks them all out out and steals it.
• Valarie tells Lily that Stefan has moved on and forgotten about his mother in order to help Lily move on from worrying about her son. But after spending the day with him and speaking to Caroline she realises this isn’t the case and her heart softens. She releases Caroline from captivity.
• Bonnie, Alaric and Damon capture Oscar and get the Phoenix Stone. Bonnie agrees to help Alaric figure out how to bring Jo back to life. Damon calls Lily about a trade: Oscar for Elena.
• Valarie finds Oscar’s location and after confirming that his mission was to find Julian for Lily and that his plan is to exchange Julian’s location for his freedom from the Heretic family she kills him to make sure that Julian never comes back.

Good points:

• We learnt a lot more about the Valarie and she is the most interesting Heretic so far. She has an aura of spite and anger about her, like the world has done her a massive injustice. In this episode it is revealed why. She was taken away from her love, Stefan, and the baby they conceived was killed in her womb by the man her adopted mother, Lily, was infatuated with. She was then trapped in the prison world for many many years so could never go back to Stefan and explain. This new depth of character is interesting and it is intriguing why she will still not explain to Stefan now while she actually has a chance. Though she did put the vervain skin spell on Caroline so the Stefan can’t touch her which shows some jealousy and longing still lingers!
• Oscar was a very unusual but interesting character although it looks like we won’t see him again. He had an old Damon vibe about him; carefree and pleasure seeking.

Bad points:

• This was a bit of an exposition episode. Not a lot happened but a lot of new information was given.
• Another new character, Julian, was introduced. There are already so many Heretics that none of them have a three dimensional character yet (the lesbian couple that are just “mean girls” and then there’s the mute who we’ve barely seen, let alone heard) so adding another family member in so soon just means we have one more person to remember – or not remember. He had such little screen time and is an asshole that only thinks of himself; that’s it so far. It looks likely he will return and become the main villain but should they be adding another villain to the already heaped pile?
• Stefan is still extremely passive at the moment and he hasn’t seemed that bothered about Caroline’s predicament. This makes their romance a little unbelievable – if it was Elena kidnapped and it was a few seasons ago Stefan would be running around doing everything he could to get her back. Also, even though he was the main subject of this episode he hardly seemed to be in it.


Random:

• The song that plays at the start of the episode is Bring Me The Horizon’s “Throne” which is being used a lot in pop culture at the moment; for example by WWE.
• It looks extremely awkward to get hot and steamy in a corset. There are so many buttons and laces that the mood must have suffered…
• Stefan teaches Lily to drive which makes for a good bit of mother-son time. It’s a little bit strange because normally it would be a mother teaching a son to drive.

Review by Georgina Tyson

Read our other reviews of The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries S07E02 “Never Let Me Go” Review

Airing in the UK on ITV2, Weds 11pm
Writer: Brian Young
Director: Chris Grismer

Essential plot points:

• It opens thee years from now in Austin, Texas with Caroline as some sort of producer for a television show. She misses a call from her fiancé who wants to take her to Mystic Falls before the wedding.
• In the present day a couple of teenagers trespass into Mystic Falls filming Blair Witch style. The Heretics catch them, Matt tries to save them but wakes up on the ground the next morning with a bandage on his arm.
• Alaric asks Bonnie whether she’s heard of the red stone, called the Phoenix Stone, which can bring people back from the dead. She asks whether it has any magical properties and has visions of violent deaths. She tells Alaric it’s evil and to destroy it with acid.
• Stefan finds out Lily has Caroline hostage. Damon asks Lily to trade Caroline for himself and discovers that Lily has signed the deed to the Salvatore house to Matt so they can’t enter or kill him to get the deed back.
• Caroline is tortured by Mary Louise and Nora. Another female Heretic, Valarie, says she can help Caroline and puts a spell on her to make her skin like vervain.
• Bonnie stops Matt’s heart with magic to break the threshold spell. His heart can stop for six minutes before anything bad happens to him but Bonnie assures him she’ll only stop it for ten seconds. However, when she tries to restart his heart the visions she had when holding the Phoenix Stone come back and she passes out. She wakes up just in time to restart Matt’s heart with barely a second to spare.
• Lily and her family bury Malcolm in the Salvatore family crypt and steal Elena’s coffin. Lily tells them use a cloaking spell and put her at the bottom of the waterfall so Damon won’t be able to find her. She uses this to blackmail Damon into going as far away possible.
• Meanwhile Stefan is trying to save Caroline but can’t touch her because of the vervain spell that Valarie put on her skin. This delays him and in the end they take too long and the threshold spell reactivates catapulting Stefan out of the house leaving Caroline behind.
• Matt tells Bonnie he wants to help fight the Heretics and Damon tells Stefan that while he is exiled from Mystic Falls he is going to find the sixth Heretic and capture him to trade for Caroline and Elena.
• Alaric contemplates destroying the Phoenix Stone with acid but ultimately can’t do it. He then goes to the hospital morgue and experiments by placing the stone on a random dead body of a male patient. He comes to life but dies again once Alaric removes the stone from his chest.
• Back at the Salvatore house Nora tells Caroline that Valarie isn’t trying to help her and is actually the most evil of them all. To prove this she gives Caroline Stefan’s journal and tells her to look at the entry from July 15th 1836. This entry tells of Stefan meeting Valarie at a fair and that she was the most wonderful girl.
• The final scene is back with Caroline three years in the future; her assistant tells her that a man called Stefan Salvatore is on the phone for her. Caroline tells him she doesn’t want to speak to him or hear his name ever again. Both her assistant and Caroline are suddenly hit with steaks from a mysterious source.

Good points:

• One of the most compelling scenes in the series so far was when Lily told Damon that when he was a child and he broke one of her vases he refused to own up to it even when beaten bloody with a strap by his father. When she took all his toy soldiers away, however, he cried and cried and admitted he was at fault. To this analogy Damon says that Elena is not a toy soldier and Lily retorts that Malcolm was not a vase. This was very cleverly written and gives an insight into Lily and Damon’s family relationship and shows that, although Damon is centuries old, he can still be manipulated by his mother!
• More flash forwards this episode and very intriguing they are too. Who is Caroline’s fiancé in three years time? Who is this mysterious vampire killer that is terrorising everyone? Why can’t Caroline go back to Mystic Falls? Is the show going to jump forward three years at some point to answer all these questions? Only time (and more episodes) will tell…

Bad points:

• Caroline being captured and tortured by the Heretic lesbian couple is one of the weaker things about this episode. There isn’t a whole lot of a sense of danger for Caroline. Lily and Enzo won’t let the Heretics kill Caroline so she’s stuck there until Stefan (very unhurriedly) tries to save her.
• Stefan is also quite a weak character at the moment. He isn’t driving much of the plot at the moment and there isn’t much conviction in the horror he feels at Caroline in the hands of the Heretics.
• Matt is quite uninteresting and is always complaining about being the hard-done-by human. He always has a snipey comment about how everything is Damon’s or Bonnie’s or Stefan’s fault and he never comes up with his own solution to the problems. His character has been the same for a couple of seasons now and he is getting boring as just the token human who is there if any of the main characters need him for a spell or plot device.

Random:

• Enzo turns out to be an excellent guitar player who makes a move on Lily(!?). This is a strange development which could be interesting or could be disastrous. It does seem like he’s moved on from having a crush on Caroline quite quickly though.
• While being tortured Caroline is being asked for fashion tips! This felt really out of place and just plain weird.

Review by Georgina Tyson

The Vampire Diaries S07E01 “Day One of Twenty-Two Thousand, Give or Take” Review

Airing in the UK on ITV2, Weds 11pm
Writer: Caroline Dries
Director: Pascal Verchooris

Essential plot points:

• Damon, Alaric and Bonnie start the episode in Amsterdam. Alaric is apparently drinking a lot after the murder of his bride Jo during their wedding. Damon is watching over Alaric and pining over Elena. Bonnie is watching over Damon to make sure he fulfils his promise to Elena that he wouldn’t give up on life while she slept.
• We are introduced to Lily’s family, the five Heretics (vampire-witch hybrids). Lily is trying to make them lay low for a while and ration their blood intake so they don’t attract too much attention and become hunted again.
• This doesn’t go to plan and two of the Heretics, a couple named Mary Louis and Nora, brutally murder two teenagers who ran over a third Heretic, Valarie, and left her for “dead”.
• This doesn’t go down well with Stefan, Matt and Caroline so they find out how to make a bomb from Alaric (via mobile, obviously) and they try to blow up the Heretics in their hideout house.
• The Heretics turn out to be a lot harder to kill and in revenge they attack Matt’s police academy training class’s graduation killing nearly everyone ; they are stopped by Lily before they can kill Stefan, Matt and Caroline.
• They decide that no one is safe so evacuate the entire town by coming up with a story about a gas leak. They make a deal with Lily that if anyone trespasses into the town then they are free game for the Heretics to feed on.
• Alaric was only pretending to be drunk and he slips away to beat up a fake psychic in Amsterdam who claims to be able to speak to Jo’s spirit. He shows the psychic a red stone ball, the same thing that Lily asks Enzo to find.
• Enzo refuses saying that he is not an errand boy. But his loyalty comes into question on both sides because he is trying to stay friends with Damon and Caroline while also being part of Lily’s family.

• Stefan and Caroline finally kiss (yay!).
• After hesitating before saving Bonnie from being hit by a truck in Amsterdam, Bonnie questions whether Damon wants her dead. Damon tells her he couldn’t live without her even though he would have Elena back if she died and called Bonnie his best friend (aww).
• Alaric goes to the hospital morgue and pays the mortician to keep Jo’s body on ice while he finds a way to bring her back from the dead (newsflash – Lazarus Pit no longer available).
• Damon and Bonnie decide to fight the Heretics on their own to save their town so they ambush the one called Malcolm and rip his heart out putting the pack Stefan made in jeopardy.
• The Heretics find the body and Lily vows to kill the person who did it.
• Enzo goes to Caroline’s house and it appears that he finally picks a side when he injects her with vervain.
• Jump forward three years and Stefan wakes Damon up from a coffin to ask him for help, just as they’re attacked by a mysterious woman in shadow.

REVIEW:

This is the first episode of the new Elena-less era of The Vampire Diaries and it was interesting to see what the cast and crew did with the gaping hole left by the show’s former main character. It’s not often that shows can continue, or at least continue as strongly, having lost the character around whom the show used to revolve. But with a load of other great characters – Bonnie, Damon, Stefan and Caroline – to draw upon the episode shows that The Vampire Diaries can remain as strong as ever.

All in all it was a strong first episode of the new season. The writers handled Elena’s absence well and have set up an exciting enmity between the heroes of Mystic Falls and the Heretics. Their mixture of vampire and witch make them formidable and seem unstoppable. It will be interesting to see how Caroline, Stefan, Damon, Bonnie and Matt cope and which of them survive the season.

Good points:

• The episode starts with Caroline writing in her diary everything that’s happening so that when Elena eventually wakes up she won’t feel like she’s missed out on anything. It feels like it’s taking The Vampire Diaries back to its roots a little bit and is reminiscent of the first season.
• Another nice touch was linking up the last shot of the previous season with this episode. That was the shot with Damon standing on top of the clock tower looking over what appeared to be a post-apocalyptic, deserted Mystic Falls. It was a confusing but exciting vision to be left with and left you eagerly wondering what disaster could leave Elena’s hometown in such a state. The disaster turned out to be Lily and her family, perhaps some of the most merciless villains in The Vampire Diaries so far.
• And of course Caroline and Stefan finally kiss! This was something fans waited for for most of last season. First of all it was Stefan hesitating because he never really even considered a relationship with Caroline, then it was Caroline hesitating after the death of her mother and she turned off her emotions and went into crazy mode! But finally they both see that life (or vampire life) is too short not to be with someone who makes you happy. Let’s see how long this relationship lasts…
• Speaking of relationships, Bonnie and Damon’s friendship is extremely enjoyable to watch. The cutting remarks and sort-of-serious-but-not-really suggestions of each other’s demise are interspersed with genuine care and concern for one another. Being trapped in the prison world with each other for so long left a lasting unbreakable connection between these two which is good because they are stuck together until Bonnie dies and Elena wakes up!

Bad points:

• With Lily’s family there were too many new characters introduced at once. One of them, a mute by the name of Malcolm, was so unmemorable you probably struggled to recall who this review was talking about when his name was mentioned earlier.
• It’s only the first episode so most of the Heretics haven’t shown a solid personality yet but they should have established Malcolm a little bit more before offing him.
• Alaric’s story is interesting but there are potentially worrying issues with it for anyone who’s an Alaric fan. He’s gone rogue and has taken it upon himself to eliminate fake psychics by beating them up. Although his motives come from a good place (he berates them for swindling bereaved people who are at their lowest point and just want to contact a love one) he clearly knows he is doing something wrong and out of character because he pretends to be drunk and sneaks away from Damon and Bonnie to hide it. Alaric has always been the good guy and he should stay that way.

Review by Georgina Tyson