Warning: Major spoilers ahead!
“The Vampire Diaries” is back! After the emotionally filled episode three weeks ago that addressed Jeremy’s death and the consequences of his death, tonight’s episode was refreshing and moved the story forward.
The episode begins soon after Damon turned Elena’s humanity off. We find Elena lying in the middle of the road when a car drives up towards her. A woman emerges from the car, concerned for Elena as she lays motionless in the street. The woman goes to her trunk to get Elena a blanket. When she turns around Elena is standing behind her and attacks her. Damon suddenly emerges and pulls Elena off of the woman. After Damon scorns her, we learn that the water supply in Mystic Falls has been tainted with vervain, and Elena hasn’t had fresh blood in days because of this. She walks away from the car and complains that she is not having any fun.
The scene turns to Hailey, the werewolf who was helped Tyler break his sire bond to Klaus. She is walking around a truck stop when a vampire attacks her. Klaus arrives and bites this vampire, in turn poisoning the vampire with his werewolf bite. Klaus interrogates Hailey because he wants to know where Katherine is. Klaus explains to Hailey that because Katherine has the cure thanks to Hailey’s assistance, Katherine will keep sending vampires to kill Hailey since she is no longer needed in Katherine’s schemes. He tells Hailey she was foolish to help Katherine find the cure, and that the vampire that just attacked her was sent by Katherine. He explains that he will protect her from Katherine if she tells him everything she knows about Katherine.
It’s shower time at the Salvatore mansion as Elena showers and eavesdrops on Damon and Stefan planning what they should do about Elena since she has been restless and bored. They think it would be best for her to go back to school and get involved in extra-curricular activities again, and Caroline agrees. Elena walks naked into the room, shocking the guys and Caroline, and agrees to go back to school because she has nothing better to do. Clearly this new Elena has no boundaries and is having fun being emotionless! Using his sire bond, Damon tells Elena not to kill anyone.
At school, Elena asks Caroline if she can have her old place on the cheerleading squad. Catherine agrees, and they get ready to go to a competition. At the competition, Elena follows a girl from another school onto a bus and attacks her, nearly killing the girl. Caroline figures out that Elena fed on the cheerleader, and is upset with Elena’s recklessness. Elena is annoyed that Caroline is trying to control her, and during their competition routine Elena purposely doesn’t catch Caroline in one of their stunts. Caroline has to pretend to be injured (since she’s a vampire and a simple fall won’t hurt her), and Elena just stands there showing no emotion about the incident. Stefan shows up at the competition and figures out that because they turned off Elena’s humanity, the sire bond may not be working anymore and hence, she is no longer obeying Damon. Stefan injects Elena with vervain to knock her out and takes her home.
In the meantime, Damon is investigating where Katherine might be. He pays Klaus a visit and explains to Klaus that Katherine will likely use the cure to kill him. He tells Klaus that if he helps Damon find Katherine, Damon will give Klaus the cure. Damon wants to interrogate Hailey, but Klaus won’t allow him because Hailey is off limits. However, Klaus lets Damon know about the vampire he bit, and explains that this vampire probably knows where to find Katherine since she likely sent this vampire to kill Hailey. Damon goes looking for this vampire at a nearby town and finds Rebecca. She informs Damon that Shane is dead, and that she wants to find Katherine as well. They decide to work together and they go to a local hospital to find the vampire. Rebecca questions why a vampire would be at a hospital, and Damon explains when one bit with a werewolf and dying from the bite, you become very hungry and delusional. Damon and Rebecca look for signs of the vampire in the blood bank, and they find that the blood bank is empty. Stefan lets Damon know Sherriff Forbes told him that the Mystical Falls hospital is also missing its blood supply. In the evening, Damon sets a trap for the vampire by biting a woman and sending this woman to her car with blood trickling down her neck; he knows the poisoned vampire will be able to smell her. The vampire emerges from a tree and Damon attacks him. Before Damon can interrogate this vampire, he realizes the vampire is his former friend, Will. Damon doesn’t interrogate Will but rather kills him to put him out of his misery since he was slowly dying from the werewolf bite.
At the Salvatore Mansion, Elena wakes up with Stefan in the room. Stefan tries to have a heart to heart with her about the dangers of letting her inhibitions go away and how she could turn into a ripper like Stefan did. Elena doesn’t listen to Stefan and sends some texts messages on her phone. Stefan begins to hear noises downstairs so he leaves to see what is going on. It turns out Elena was texting people to come over to have a party at their place. She tells Stefan that if he will not let her go out and have fun, she will bring the fun to her.
While this is going on, Klaus has Hailey over at his house. He begins to question her about Katherine’s location. She explains Katherine found Hailey in New Orleans while Hailey was looking for information about her real parents. Katherine told Hailey she could help her find her parents in exchange for information about the cure, hence how Katherine showed up at the island when they woke up Silas. Klaus and Hailey engage in flirtatious banter, teasing one another about how they each have feelings for Caroline and Tyler respectively. Hailey tells Klaus she thinks Klaus didn’t kill Tyler and let him go free because, if Klaus killed Tyler, Klaus would never have a future with Caroline. She tells Klaus that Tyler has allies like Katherine does, and she may tell him Katherine’s allies if Klaus leaves Tyler alone. Despite their not coming to terms, the two of them move their flirtatious visit forward and sleep together. When they wake up the next morning, Klaus notices a marking on Hailey’s back, and tells her he has seen the marking before; it’s the symbol of an old, powerful werewolf clan that use to live in Louisiana.
At the party, Elena is drinking, dancing, and having a good time. Caroline shows up and notices how much fun Elena is having, and her and Stefan decide to let loose a little bit with Elena. Sherriff Forbes shows up and tells Elena she needs to stop the party. Elena throws the Sherriff against the wall and nearly kills her before Caroline stops her and yells at Elena for nearly killing her mom. Elena flees the house and Stefan realizes the main reason Elena threw this party was so she could cause a distraction and escape from the house. Caroline follows Elena into the woods, and the two vampires battle it out. Because she is an older vampire, Caroline thinks she is stronger, but Elena was trained by Alarick and is the better fighter. Elena almost stakes Caroline, but Stefan and Damon show up and stop her mere seconds before she can kill Caroline. They take Elena home and Stefan explains to Caroline that they cannot give up hope on Elena and need to keep trying to help her. Upstairs, Elena tells Damon she is tired of people telling her she needs to feel. She explains now that her humanity is gone, she is no longer the worrisome, weak teenager she was before. Now, she feels amazing and that she knows Damon likes her more the way she is without her humanity. Damon says nothing, but decides to let Elena have some fun and they leave to go to New York City.
The episode ends with Caroline receiving a text message from Matt asking her to come to the Lockwood mansion. Caroline arrives at the mansion, and Matt gives her a note from Tyler. The note says that Tyler left the deed of the mansion to Matt and that he isn’t returning to Mystic Falls. He tells Caroline he will always love her, but he wants to her move on with her life and stop hoping to see him again. Meanwhile, Stefan gets a call from Sherriff Forbes. She lets Stefan know there have been six blood bank thefts within 30 miles of Mystic Falls. Stefan calls Damon and they assume someone is stockpiling blood. Stefan thinks its Silas who has been stealing the blood. He believes Silas followed them back to Mystic Falls and needs to feed since he has been sleeping for 2000 years. Damon tells Stefan he is not going to worry about the missing blood at the moment; he and Elena are off to New York City to get away from Mystic Falls and have fun.
And that was our first episode recap of “The Vampire Diaries”! It will be exciting to see Damon and Elena outside of Mystic Falls and having a good time! It is pretty obvious that the writers are prepping us with the backstory for the new “Originals” spin-off because that Klaus and Hailey hook-up was a bit odd, which is unfortunate because Klaus deserves a better story than what he is getting right now. Nevertheless, we hope the Silas storyline moves forward and we see what Silas is capable of and how dangerous truly he is; we need a new villain in town now that Klaus is leaving! We look forward to recapping the show more as it winds down for the season! See you next week!