Last week’s premiere episode got us all back on track, but hopefully this week’s episode of The Vampire Diaries will provide more answers than questions.
Let’s go back a bit…
Flashback to four months ago, and Bonnie and Damon… never actually left Mystic Falls? After the big bright light disappeared, they weren’t anywhere they didn’t already recognize, except for the distinct lack of other people? Mystery still unsolved.
Operation: Forget Damon
Elena is busy trying to fit her entire love affair with Damon into a box. Each memory that the pictures and shirts of his trigger seems to motivate her more into convincing Alaric that mind control is the all-powerful answer to her broken heart. Jeremy wonders if she’s gonna erase Bonnie too, but Elena reminds him that it isn’t the sadness that she’s trying to run from, but the danger. She visits each friend in turn to tell them her plan, so they will go along with her Damon-less memories after Alaric takes the painful history away.
Caroline has been busying herself with breaking the spell over Mystic Falls, with which she has had little (meaning no) success. She’s perturbed to find out that nobody has been looking for a way to reach Damon and Bonnie. Alaric then breaks the news to her that there is one person still on the hunt… cut to Enzo making out with a chick in a closet. The happy co-ed tells Enzo that there is a coven in Oregon that can speak to their dead ancestors.
Compulsion Therapy
Alaric needs to find the moment that Elena truly fell in love with Damon, so that when he changes that one little fact, it will work like dominoes and alter every memory after it.
Checking in with Damon and Bonnie, everything is looking very… ’90s. May 10, 1994 to be exact. They seem to be the only ones living the ’90s at that moment though. Talk about weird.
Moving forward
Memory by memory, Alaric is trying to re-work Elena’s mind, but he is finding it quite the challenge to discover where exactly Elena first fell for Damon. He needs a drink. We just wish his drinking buddy were around to pour one for him.
Caroline hits the road with Enzo, and while he told her about the Gemini Coven, that isn’t their current destination. Stefan is whipping up quite the meal in his barbie dream home, only to be greeted by Enzo and Caroline in addition to Ivy. This has disaster written all over it.
Not just back in time, but stuck in time.
Damon and Bonnie are embracing the ’90s. Fashion, music, looking for a few things that have disappeared since they were last in 1994. They then discover that they are reliving the same day, May 10, 1994, over and over again. Their big clue? The eclipse.
The therapy continues
Moment by moment, Elena keeps trying to give him the memory lynchpin that will unravel the giant Damon sized hole in her heart, but none of the memories she gives him does the trick. Clearly Elena either doesn’t want to give up the memory she knows is the big one, or she has been in love with Damon Salvatore a lot longer than even she knew.
Alaric calls Caroline for a little guidance on when Elena actually fell in love with Damon, and she huffs that everybody knows that Elena fell for Damon while she was still with Stefan. The living Salvatore chooses that moment to appear behind her, having heard the entire conversation.
Stefan doesn’t care about when Elena fell in love with Damon. Caroline is more than a little confused as to why he suddenly doesn’t care about any of them. She finds out that he erased all of her voicemails without listening to them. He wanted a clean start, and that meant completely clean. He couldn’t go back to living his old life without Damon and Bonnie. Caroline calls him out on his behavior (with a term we choose not to repeat) and runs.
Elena stops fighting it
In a fit of surrender, Elena goes back to her dorm and unpacks the Damon box. She calls Luke to get more herbs, because if she can’t get rid of her memories, than she might as well go back to hallucinating him, right? Alaric walks in, and calls her out on not being honest with herself. Alaric tells her that he wants to hear all the Damon stuff that happened while she was still with Stefan. She is defensive about it, because she doesn’t want to admit that she cared about Damon while she was still with Stefan.
Elena gives Alaric the moment she fell for Damon. Her birthday. Damon walked in to give Elena back her necklace that Stefan gave her, and in that moment, she knew that Damon was being the most selfless he will ever be. While Elena retells the moment, Damon is discovering Elena’s necklace back in 1994. The moment Alaric takes away the lynchpin memory, Elena’s response to “Who is Damon Salvatore?” changes from “my boyfriend” to “Stefan’s brother. He was a monster. He died.” Congratulations Alaric, you did it. Damon and Elena’s epic love story is no longer a part of Elena’s past. As if we don’t have enough to be heartbroken about.
Caroline ran to her car and bursts into sobs. Elena calls, and Caroline realizes that Alaric was successful. Elena no longer remembers Damon as a former lover, and it’s no comfort to Caroline who is still nursing a bit of a broken heart. Enzo returns, finds her crying, and, more than a little pissed off for Caroline, sneaks back into Stefan’s house and snaps Ivy’s neck. Enzo promises to keep Stefan miserable until he stops trying to give up on his brother. Stefan attacks, Enzo snaps his neck, and then leaves.
Surprise! Tripp is Thomas Vincent Fell. He’s a founding family member, and while he plays stupid on the phone with Matt, he drives a van full of vampires over the town line and exposes them to sunlight, frying them on the spot.
Back in 1994, Bonnie and Damon are commiserating together, only to discover that the crossword clue that has been giving Bonnie trouble for more than 6 weeks, number 27 across, is filled in: Yellow Ledbetter. Somebody else is stuck in 1994. The only question now is, who?
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.