The Vampire Diaries season 5 penultimate episode “Promised Land,” aired last night and set us up for one jaw-dropping finale! Check out our recap and let us know what you thought.
Hitch a Ride
-Right where we left off, Damon is interrogating someone that’s been taken over by a passenger.
-Caroline walks in, and he’s the man who helped open her first savings account. Awww.
-Damon stabs the man with a fork, but he says nothing he does can stop Markos.
-Stefan and Elena are being drained of their blood when Markos comes by to feed Elena some blood to keep her going.
-Elena says he has enough, but he says that’ll only be when she can no longer speak and cuts her again.
-Someone comes by and lets Stefan go, and he comes to get Elena out of there.
-Stefan calls Damon, upset he didn’t track them while he and Elena were missing. Stefan explains they’re out hunting for animals to feed on because they have no energy.
-Bonnie shows up at the Salvatore mansion to be the voice of Enzo.
-Damon says that Liv is working on a spell to get Bonnie back completely from the other side before it dies, and he thinks Enzo should hitch a ride with her to the land of the living.
-Elena and Stefan don’t have enough energy to go vamp-whoosh so they’re walking along the street trying to hitch a ride.
-In an emotional conversation, Stefan tells Elena that if she wants to be with Damon then just be with him.
-Luke meets with Liv, and she tells him the coven is pissed that the dopplegangers are in the hands of the travelers. She says there’s only one move left: They have to kill Stefan and Elena.
Levels of Weird
-On their way back home, Stefan and Elena talk about how they miss Caroline and her positivity when a truck stops by and Elena manages to stop it by being all sexy.
-It was the woman who freed them from the travelers! Maria, Julian’s wife.
-Jeremy and Matt start moving the bodies of the travelers from the cave into Salvatore mansion, trying to get leverage over Markos and hoping he’d want them back.
-Maria tells Elena and Stefan that Markos is almost done with the spell that will allow the travelers to reside in Mystic Falls for good.
-Caroline asks Julian about why the travelers want Mystic Falls. He explains the travelers hate the witches and think they’re a perversion of pure magic.
-Markos goes to the cave only to find out Damon Salvatore has stolen all their bodies, and he left a clever note to inform him.
Ripple Effect
-In the land where everyone has everyone’s number, Markos calls Damon. And then arrives at his house.
-Caroline explains to Bonnie that maybe Tyler should die because then he’ll go to the other side and then come back with Enzo and Bonnie.
-However, Bonnie tells Caroline there’s no spell to “hitch a ride on” and everyone on the other side (including her) is going away. And Enzo was there to listen in.
-Markos points out that his people are not his weakness, and he doesn’t care if they go back to their original bodies.
-Markos says that Mystic Falls is a means to an end. When they undo spirit magic, it’ll ripple and all witch magic from the earth will go away, and so will the vampires.
-It looks like they’re too late, and the spell has already started to begin.
-Liv stops the truck Elena and Stefan are in, and they try to back up but Luke is on the other side and Liv manages to crush the front of it.
Magic Failure
-Bonnie is packing her stuff up when Enzo shows up and confronts her. He won’t accept that there isn’t a way back. Julian’s wife then shows up and passes on.
-Damon then works with Julian to get him a key so he can free himself and surprise Markos and bite him.
-Meanwhile, Liv and Luke try to kill Stefan/Elena but their magic is sputtering out and they can’t finish the job.
-And as the travelers start chanting, Stefan and Elena’s daylight rings stop working and they run to get in the shade.
Dropping Like Flies
-They go into Mystic Grill and Matt offers to help them run away.
-All of the travelers chanting are starting to bleed from their ears and nose when Elena starts drowning and Stefan feels the shot that killed him in 1864. They’re reverting back to their original human state.
-Julian attacks Markos but his fangs are gone, and Damon’s daylight ring stops working too.
-All of the travelers start dropping like flies now, and wake up in their original bodies.
-Julian and Damon start to leave, and try to outrun the spell.
Dead Doppleganger
-Damon made it to a street by the woods, where Jeremy meets up with him.
-Caroline starts packing to try to outrun the spell as well, when Bonnie says that she thinks she knows how to get everyone back from the other side but she needs to talk to Enzo.
-Jeremy takes Damon to meet with Stefan, Elena and Matt. Elena kisses Damon when he gets there.
-On the other side, Enzo is talking to Maria asking if she’s interested in doing the same spell that they did to bring Markos back but then she gets whipped up into “oblivion.”
-The group splits up and Elena goes with Damon while Stefan waits with Caroline for Bonnie.
-Julian shows up and asks Stefan where Maria is, and he informs him that she died earlier that day.
-They get into a fight, and Julian rips out Stefan’s heart.
-Stefan appears to Bonnie, but she says that she lost the way to get them all back.