SGRoA: Vampire Diaries, S2 E20: The Last Day

Hey, y’all, I know I’ve been irregular with my recaps lately. I have to look for a job.

Yeah, yeah, everyone knows what the price of eggs is, I’m sure I’m not alone. But of course, job hunting is exhausting, and I just haven’t had much pep in my step, even for stuff I would love to be doing - like these recaps!

So they’ll probably continue to be irregular for a bit, but once I get a new routine figured out, y’all will be in it, don’t worry. Onward!

We start with a whole lotta lore dumping. Gotta get everyone who may not have seen an episode or two up to speed, but it’s also good for my pothead ass. I forget shit. Sue me.

It’s the perfect night to break the Sun and Moon curse, which has been placed only on Klaus. He will trigger his werewolf side, and become, as Elijah puts it, “a true hybrid”.

So then why, asks Damon, are they not just killing him today, before he breaks the curse? Elena reminds him that unless Klaus is weakened, it will kill Bonnie. “So I’ll write her a great eulogy!” says Damon, and I laughed, but I do think they should try not to kill anyone.

Elijah and Stefan then take us through the ritual. We already know the ingredients:

The moonstone, into which a witch will channel the full power of the full moon to release the spell bound inside the stone.

A werewolf and a vampire: Klaus will sacrifice one of each.

The Petrova Doppleganger: Klaus must drink her blood to the point of death.

And apparently that’s where Elijah comes in. He has a resuscitation elixir. And if that doesn’t work? sneers Damon. “Well, I’ll just be dead,” says Elena, and that’s her choice to make, Damon! Insisting that it isn’t, that she can’t make it, is infantilizing. And I know she’s all of 17 or whatever, but still. She’s not an infant!

Damon stalks off. Elena stays on task: does Klaus have everything? Does he have a werewolf? Elijah says that by tonight, he will, and we cut to Carol Lockwood calling Tyler, telling him she had an accident, and then being magically pushed down the stairs by what’s-his-name, Klaus’s witch lackey. They show her whole fall, not just like “down stairs”, but over the railing, face down on the entryway floor. It’s really shockingly violent for this show, I don’t like it.

Stefan and Damon fight about trusting Elijah and trusting Elena. Neither of which Damon is thrilled to do.

Ric shows up at Castel Salvatore, and Jenna pulls a crossbow on him. He proves he’s Ric and not Klaus, but he has a message: the sacrifice happens tonight.

Tyler of course comes back, because Carol’s really in the hospital. The relief on her face is immense and heartbreaking.

Matt continues to be an asshole and spy on Caro for her mom, who insists Caro is a monster with no humanity left in her. She says that Damon killed Vickie, which - sort of? Yes? But it was necessary? Matt insists Damon is the problem, not Caro, and Liz is all, Fine, I’ll take it from here. I kinda hate you right now, Liz.

Elena rehashes why she’s doing this to Damon, and tells him this is the best plan, and they fight about it. Again. I get it. Can we have some plot, please?

Oh, good, Damon forces Elena to drink his blood. I mean, it’s not fantastic on its own, it’s just, you know, PLOT. Anyway. She’ll end up a vampire if she dies, so she won’t die. I would have had my character think of it, and suggest it, and get her way, but this is boring Elena, so obviously she doesn’t want to be a vamp? only wants to be Stefan’s child? Whatever, end result is the same. Damon’s an asshole about it, Stefan walks in on them, the boys have to fight. Stefan gets staked.

Damon stalks downstairs, where Elijah tells him he’s rendered the elixir useless: it won’t work on vampires. Damon maintains it wouldn’t have worked anyway. Elijah points out that Elena will never forgive Damon - and that Damon, for all his bluster, can only make things worse, because he knows nothing.

Jenna and Ric have a nice moment reconnecting.

Lady Wolf shows up at the hospital, chiding Tyler that she told him not to come, they have to leave immediately. They exit the hospital, only to run into Caro. Jules! Jules tells Tyler he can say goodbye, but they only have a few minutes. Caro’s surprised he’s leaving again, and says she’s owed an explanation - which Tyler doesn’t give.

Also, he took too long, because Klaus’s witches show up, incapacitate them, and take them for the ritual.

At The Grill, Matt is calling Caro to see where she is, they were supposed to spend his break together. But also he has to talk to her (hopefully to come clean about her mother!), so call him back. Meanwhile, Damon’s posted up at the bar, angry drinking, as if he does any other kind. Ric joins him, and then Klaus shows up.

Klaus wants to remind Damon (and Stefan) not to do anything they’ll regret. Damon chuckles darkly, and asks Klaus to postpone. Klaus shows all his cards, telling Damon he has everything he needs, and will be going forward tonight. He leaves, and Damon proposes taking Tyler back. Ric says Damon will die in the attempt. Yes, says Damon, but it’ll buy Elena another month before the next full moon. “But you’ll be dead,” Ric repeats. “Right,” says Damon, “so are you in?” Of course he is.

Stefan takes Elena out to the woods to talk about how she feels about becoming a vampire. She says she doesn’t know; he says she does, and it’s okay to tell him. She doesn’t want to talk about it, and he says that’s okay, today’s about her! and then insists she climb to the top of the waterfall they’ve found.

First stop on the “Damon and Ric Hatch Their Own Plan” tour is letting Damon into Ric’s place, where Katharine is rooting through the fridge to find only condiments and an empty blood bag. Damon tells Ric to go keep an eye on Elena, keep her from offing herself; he’s got it from here. Ric just does. I honestly love watching him, all he does is knuckle under and then suffer for it. Satisfying, y’know? in a sort of sociopathic way.

Damon asks Katharine where Klaus is keeping the werewolf, and she refuses to help him. She also lets it slip that she’s not the vampire sacrifice anymore: Caroline is. So she’s in the clear. Damon fires back that Elena has vampire blood in her system, and if Katharine doesn’t help, she’ll be competing with Elena for Stefan forever.

But it works, because this was still not quite the twenty-teens, and the misogyny was real. Katharine says they’re being held at the raveyard tomb.

Back in the woods, Stefan describes vampirism like autism, and, uh, you will not be surprised to learn I definitely have some theories about it.

Klaus comes by Ric’s place to abuse Katharine, apparently. To prove she’s still under compulsion, but gross.

Damon goes out to the tomb, gets into a fight with that one witch-cum-lackey, but what’s this? Fuckin’ MATT, in the clutch, with a rifle! Straight-up assassinates the witch-lackey. Nice work, Matt! Coming around on Caro, are we? I’m glad of it.

But Damon doesn’t need a human to worry about, so he snatches the gun and knocks Matt out. He empties the gun and sees that Matt’s loaded for vampires.

In the tomb, Caro is bringing Tyler up to speed on Klaus, the curse, the whole ceremony shebang. Tyler says it’s a shame he’s been taking wolf lessons, if he’s just gonna die. Caro asks why he left in the first place, why he didn’t say a word to her. He thought she’d be better off, that she hated him. Never, she says.

Hey, your boyfriend’s outside with wooden bullets, says Damon, smashing through a wall to rescue them. Caro and Tyler are both confused, but Damon reminds them it’s tomorrow’s problem, let’s go. She won’t leave without Tyler being freed, and Damon tells him to get lost. Tyler just needs his family crypt, he can lock himself up. Caro says she’ll help.

Stefan and Elena reach the top of their hike. Obviously she’s sad about being a vampire. Honestly, fair, she is only 17, she shouldn’t have to change now. I shouldn’t be so mean, except the show really doesn’t let you remember she’s a child.

Damon, Caro, and Tyler exit the tomb, grab Matt, and hustle off to the other tomb before Tyler changes.

Elena and Stefan are being boring in their driveway when Klaus shows up to relieve my boredom. Stefan tries to prevent Elena going, but she reminds him that there’s no reason for him to get hurt. It’s all figured out, she has as much chance of dying now as she ever did, maybe slightly less! There’s a lot of kissing and I Love Yous and it’s very uncomfortable, and then Elena’s gone.

Damon stops to take a phone call and Tyler starts wolfing out. He tells Caro and Matt to go, and Damon gives them back the gun and tells them to get to the Lockwood tomb. It should keep Tyler out as well as it’ll keep him in, and Damon will be fine. Plot armor, right? And also he just would probably be fine, and can run away, yadda yadda.

MADDOX, that’s that weirdo’s name. Klaus asks Katharine where Maddox is and she says she doesn’t know, because duh. Klaus fires up a laptop to watch a live feed of - Elena? Because Katharine asks where Elena is, and he says, “Sent her off with [who I assume is the other witch-lackey]” but the video is someone writhing on the floor? What did they do to Elena? Why?

Here’s the deal: As we all know by now, people who are cruel even just for the fun of it ALWAYS have a justification. The reason may be stupid, it may not make sense once you actually think about it, but it definitely makes sense in their heads. Torturing Elena for the fun of it? Why? She came willingly, she’s needed full of drinkable blood for the ritual. Like, I have a little, non-torturous pain, and I’m sure my blood is awful, all full of stress hormones and fatigue. Torturing her makes no sense, from any vantage point, so why bother?

This doesn’t make Klaus look dangerous or bad-ass or anything. It makes him look incoherent. Even insane people are coherent in their own ways - the way they look at reality is skewed, but all their actions make sense in light of that skewed reality, right? This is not even what they’re doing with Klaus. They’re just making me confused and annoyed.

Anyway, the door bangs open, seemingly on its own accord, but it’s Damon scooting in to foil Klaus’s plan. Looks like he survived Tyler Lockwood just fine.

Oh, JULES. It’s Jules on the video, his backup werewolf. And Katharine would be the backup vampire in that case, right? And the second witch is the backup for Maddox. And now Damon has delivered himself, to be a backup to the backup! Good job!

And I stand by my previous point. While it turned out that that wasn’t Elena, making us think it was wasn’t some sort of feint or red-herring. It was bad writing. Better to have made it clear it was Jules, and then we as the audience get to experience the dramatic irony of knowing that Damon’s already fucked as he delivers his little speech. Hiding things for the sake of hiding them is bad writing.

Matt and Caro make it to the Lockwood tomb just in time, Tyler hot on their heels.

Holy shit! Klaus’s other witch is the missing Martin kid! Luka’s sister? She claims she wasn’t missing, she’s here voluntarily.

Klaus had Katherine call Jenna, turned Jenna into a vampire, and is now using Jenna as the vampire sacrifice? What? WHY.

This is legitimately the last fucking minute of this episode and I swear to god, if they keep up this nonsense -

So the Martin witch takes Elena to some place in the woods just as Jenna wakes up from being killed.

Oh, he couldn’t use Damon because of a werewolf bite. Oh, fuck. And obviously Katharine is going to save her own skin, that’s no surprise.

Well fuck. Damn. I guess I’m gonna have to wrap this season up sooner than later! Fuck a job, the vampires need me!