The Vampire Diaries season 6, episode 8, “Fade Into You,” aired last night and Thanksgiving has never been more weird.
Liar, Liar
The episode begins with a flashback to May 9, 1994 shows Kai murdering his family. Back in his prison version of 1994, Kai took Bonnie to Portland, Oregon, where he grew up. He forces Bonnie to have Thanksgiving dinner with him, and agrees that if she does that then he’ll let her go her own way since she got rid of her magic and is no use to him anymore (suspiciously).
After dinner Kai explains that the night he murdered her family Jo agreed to let them merge, but when it came down to it Jo had no magic since she relinquished it. Then their dad comes with the ascendant and uses the eclipse to send him to his prison.
As he tells Bonnie the story, he realizes that his sister hid her magic in the dagger she hid in the tree trunk (which is why they went to Portland). He sucks the magic out of it and tells Bonnie he has magic and the ascendant, which means he doesn’t need her anymore since he’s watched her do the spell twice now. All he needs is Bennet blood, so he stabs her.
When she wakes up from being totally screwed by Kai, she gets a page from him saying he lied and discovers that he took the car and left her in Portland.
Worst Thanksgiving Ever
Caroline is preparing for their Thanksgiving dinner while Elena practices trying to tell Liam she’s a vampire. At the dinner, everyone is there except Damon, Stefan and Alaric – including Jo, Luke and Liv. During dinner Luke starts showing off the video of he and Liv when they were kids, which actually gets Jo to realize that Luke and Liv are her siblings, the ones she protected from Kai in 1994.
Jo explains that Bonnie’s grandma helped her when she was growing up and helped her family put Kai away. She says the reason Kai killed everyone in their family was to make a point, and because he was really after Luke and Liv. In their coven, twins are in line to be leaders, and because Kai wanted to be the only leader (since he and Jo are also twins) he wanted to kill them, but Jo protected them.
Jo also explains that Kai was born with the inability to do magic, just focus it from someone else, which meant they couldn’t be their leader so Jo’s parents had more kids until another set of twins was born.
During dinner Caroline tries to get the attention of the drama but it backfires and Liv leaves. She asks why Luke and Liv are so upset, and it’s because that in their family tradition only one of the twins can be a leader, and when they turn 22 they have to merge their powers together. When that happens the stronger twin survives and gets all the magic, but the weakest one dies.
Tyler finds Liv and tells her they shouldn’t have to merge because their coven doesn’t control them, but she explains that their coven needs a leader.
In Portland, Stefan and Alaric call Elena and Jo (respectively) to update them and figure out how to break the cloaking spell. Meanwhile, Jo’s dad explains that he will never let Kai out because if he does he’ll try to merge with Jo and then the coven will be under his leadership. To stop this from happening, he tries to kill Jo through a spell.
As she’s being slowly killed, she tells Alaric and Stefan that they need to find magic to find the house and she tells them about a dagger hidden in a tree stump, which lets Stefan in and allows them to stop Jo’s dad from killing Damon.
Elena saves Jo with her blood right in front of Liam, who’s having trouble understanding what’s going on. So Elena compels him to forget about everything, even the fact they even dated, because her life is too complicated for him.
The next day Tyler takes Liv to his place to protect her from her coven (since there’s no magic in Mystic Falls they can’t do anything).
A Useless Trip
Damon, Stefan, and Alaric are off in Portland as well trying to track down the Gemini coven too. They get to where the coven is supposed to be but it’s just a field. But when Stefan throws Bonnie’s bear in a fit of rage it crosses a magical border and reveals Kai’s house.
In the house are a bunch of photos of Jo growing up and clippings of her work as a Doctor. Then Kai and Jo’s dad shows up and does a spell to make Stefan and Alaric unable to see Damon, the house or himself and he makes Damon pass out. Damon wakes up in their living room because Kai’s dad needs to know how he was trapped with Kai and how he got out, but Damon wants to know where the Ascendant is.
During the phone call earlier Jo explained that she has the ascendant so they went to Portland for nothing, but at least they have the dagger with her magic in it. Alaric says he doesn’t want to let Kai out and that the ascendant is off the table, but Damon compels him to get it.
After the whole situation Damon is at a bar when Elena visits and he explains what happened during the four months he spent with Bonnie. Elena explains she’s at a crossroads: Live her life the way she thinks she should, or risk it for the tiny glimmer of a feeling she has for Damon. She asks Damon for his help to bring Bonnie back so she can ask for advice.
