The Vampire Diaries is never shy on drama, and last night’s episode was no different. Check out our recap and watch the promo for next week’s episode.
‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 6, episode 12 recap
The episode begins with Caroline huddled up at her mother’s bedside. She awakes with a start to something we definitely can’t hear with our normal human ears. She walks down the hall and is greeted by Colin, the patient she gave her vampire blood to in order to cure his cancer (who she also compelled to forget everything, by the way) falling against the door. She lets him in, calls Stefan, and after the briefest investigation in history, we learn that Colin is a vampire. (Who didn’t see that one coming?)
Skip to Elena getting ready for school, complete with new daylight ring courtesy of Jo, and Kai’s unconscious form laying on a table in the dining room. Damon soon arrives and witty and adorable banter results in them planning to hit the town on a date that evening. Not a date they’ve ever been on before, however, as Elena has declared that “unfair since she can’t remember.”
Jo and Elena are at the medical center when Stefan arrives with Colin ‘the cancer vamp,’ nickname courtesy of Damon. Jo gets his records sent over, and we learn that Colin’s cancer was sped up by Caroline’s vampire blood, making him a vampire (not) living with cancer. The tumors have progressed overnight to stage 10, which doesn’t even exist.
Caroline and Sheriff Forbes enter in time to hear the horrible diagnosis, and Sheriff lets everyone know that Caroline fed her vampire blood last night. Things are not looking good for our sole-remaining, non-supernatural parent.
Elena reams Stefan out a bit for not insisting that Caroline do a little more research before deciding that vampire blood was the magical cure for all her cancer woes. Of course Caroline walks up just in time to hear Stefan tell Elena that he didn’t want to crush the hope that gleamed from Caroline’s eyes when she thought she had a cure for her mom. It’s nice to have caring Stefan back.
Jo believes that a complete blood transfusion might be the only way to slow whatever damage Caroline’s blood may have done, and Damon is waiting to hear if it helped. Stefan goes to find Caroline, and they hear disturbing noises from Colin’s room. He has stabbed himself multiple times with the IV stand and has discovered that he can’t die. Colin begs them to kill him and claims that he can hear his tumors growing.
Before Stefan and Caroline can do anything to help or hurt him, Damon rips his heart through his back, ending the poor guy’s agonistic pleading. Damon tells Caroline that the transfusion didn’t work, and Caroline sums it all up for us: She effectively killed her mom.
Caroline goes MIA after that, and Elena and Sheriff Forbes have a touching moment where Elena breaks the bad news about the transfusion not helping before promising to find Caroline and bring her back.
We then see Stefan arrive to the flower shop that Caroline has whisked off to in order to choose the flower arrangements for her mother’s memorial service. She begs Stefan to not make her try to feel better, and she wants to stick to doing what she can do best, plan and control things. Stefan talks her into not wasting the time she has left, and they return to the medical center.
While Luke and Liv are trying to convince their father to give Jo the time she needs to overpower Kai in the merge, Tyler has shown up to Elena’s apartment to… take Kai? Not sure, but Damon stops him and comes up with his own plan. He knocks Tyler out with a little morphine, without which Kai will soon awake. Damon tells Papa Parker to have Liv and Luke do the merge ceremony now (apparently there’s some Mercury-related celestial event to channel).
Damon wants to use Kai, who awoke powerless, to suck all the magical energy out of Sheriff Forbes. Jo arrives mid-magic-suck and is, understandably, horrified by the scene. Kai’s price for his services is that he and Jo do the merging ceremony that night, so, once finished, he snaps Damon’s neck and drags Jo off to start the proceedings.
After a little trickery, Liv and Luke are forced into the merging ceremony by their father, and mid-spell, Tyler comes out of nowhere and punches their father repeatedly. Luke runs off after asking Liv to trust him, and insisting that he will be back.
Kai and Jo begin the ritual as well, and, just like the blonde twins, are interrupted, but this time Luke is doing the interrupting. He wants to try and merge with Kai. Since they are born of the same parents, same bloodline, and are the same age thanks to Kai’s imprisonment, Luke wants to give it a try in order to save Liv. He forces Kai to give it a shot. They perform the spell, and after some wicked wind, both fall limply backward and the spell ends.
While all the witch-craziness is going on, Sheriff Forbes has crashed with heart failure, and no matter what Elena and the doctors try, she seems to have passed. Caroline enters and begins bawling her eyes out. Moments later, Liz re-awakens with a fairly strong heartbeat.
Elena has a quick freak out in which she can’t believe that Sheriff Forbes almost died in her arms and that freak out ends with a sweetly honest kiss (and a couple more) with Damon.
Caroline and Liz have a moment, in which we learn that Liz put the house in Caroline’s name. She sends her daughter out on a coffee run and takes a moment with Stefan to ask him to look after Caroline once she’s gone. He agrees (at which point, holding back tears is completely futile).
Jo is clutching Luke and begging him to wake up. His eyes blink open, but his stare is oddly blank. They quickly know that he lost, which means Kai is now twice as powerful, and the rightful leader of the Gemini coven. Kai awakens to solidify that fact, and then disappears.
