The Vampire Diaries season 7, episode 10 aired this week and I just have one question: What the heck was that?!

With the return of The Vampire Diaries, so return the bazillion questions I have about the mythology, the shipping, and the arcs of my favorite characters. Last night’s episode focused purely on Damon Salvatore, and while I do legitimately have a ton of questions they can all fall under one umbrella: What the hell did I just watch?

The last we saw of Damon he was trapped inside of the Phoenix stone. Actually, both brothers were trapped inside of the stone. However, for some reason it seems that Damon was the one that was actually stuck as this week’s episode revealed that Stefan was only trapped for a hot second and instead his brother was the one being eternally tortured.

This leads me to the two major parts about the episode that make me increasingly curious about what the rest of the season has to offer.

‘Groundhog day’

This episode of The Vampire Diaries was like a very terrible supernatural version of that movie Groundhog Day, where Damon is forced to relive the same day over and over only to realize that no matter what he does he will come to the same conclusion he always does: The family he’s forced to get the deserters from always dies, and he’s always stuck mourning for his mother.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the story telling technique here, but it’s that it’s so overdone and confusing that if it’s not done right we’re left disappointed and annoyed. Sure, you can argue that if they did the repetition less then the impact at the end when Damon is crying for his mother would not be nearly as powerful, and on its own you’re right.

But when you add my next point on to it, the Groundhog Day technique became increasingly confusing.

Real or not real?

The episode mostly centered around Damon trying to figure out how to not kill the family harboring the confederate deserters, but when it wasn’t about that it was showcasing just how horrible his prison was. Damon kept waking up, hoping that his personal Hell was over and that he was finally free from the stone. And every time he woke up the episode made it look to us that he did, which was just utterly confusing.

Maybe it might be my own personal distaste for plots that involve characters “waking up,” and maybe it may have been the overuse of the Groundhog Day technique, but I found myself so confused at the end of this episode because I legitimately couldn’t tell what happened — ask my co-workers, I had to bug them to help me figure out what was going on.

What was real? What wasn’t? Apparently the scene in the middle of the episode where Stefan, Caroline and Bonnie are trying to get Damon out of the stone was the only real scene that happened in present day — unless the end is also real.

When it gets to the point where you’re playing Katniss’ game of real or not real to determine what we should actually focus on, I feel like the episode lost all hope.

Perhaps I’m being too cynical and analytical, and this episode was just a fun way to get us more Civil War era Damon, and hey I’m not complaining — there’s something alarmingly sexy about the way Damon spoke so formally — but when it starts getting to the point where I can’t tell what’s real anymore, I feel like it can’t be just me.

Either way, this was just the beginning of the second half of the season and I’m sure there’s going to be way more episodes that will work out better than this one did. After all, we still have to figure out if everyone is actually dead.

What do you think? Were you able to tell what was real and what wasn’t this week on The Vampire Diaries? Let me know in the comments!