Sloan's psychic probing uncovers a memory
-- seems like there's a delay on the doppelganger frequency by about
four months, huh? -- where a girl named Hazel asks Tom out to dinner as a
thank you for saving her friend's life earlier that day. He agrees to
meet her at her house, and Stefan relays the address Hazel tells Tom to
Caroline and Enzo. They arrive at the house, notice a ton of mail piled
up, and force the door open. They see Hazel -- a witch! -- kneeling on
the floor in some kind of a spell/trance, and Enzo breaks off the
doorknob and throws it straight at her head, killing her.
Caroline's
pissed off that he would just murder someone, but he's got a point:
They can now enter the house since the owner is dead, and they're one
step closer to accomplishing the goal they promised they would achieve.
Anyone else get the feeling that while Caroline might not have the
wherewithal to go through with killing Tom, Enzo would be more than
happy to take up the charge? Tom's odds are going down, and fast.
Back in Mystic Falls, Elena wakes up in Damon's bed after
their night of break up sex.
In the grand old tradition of the walk of shame, she tries sneaking out
of the room without waking up Damon, but hey ... he's a vampire. That's
kind of impossible. Plus, it turns out he's been awake for three hours
and was just enjoying lounging naked in bed with Elena. She tells him
that the last night was a mistake, and Damon being Damon, he suggest
that they keep "making mistakes." Employing some serious will power that
not many women would have in that situation, Elena declines. "Your
loss. I make one hell of a naked breakfast," Damon tells her, standing
naked in all his glory as she runs out of the room.
Elena then
heads to the high school for Jeremy's parent-teacher conference, and
while she waits in line she calls up Bonnie for a little girl talk.
Bonnie's chilling in their dorm and sees Luke, and tells Elena that she
wants to get to know Katherine's BFF to find out what he knows and if
they can trust him. Plus, she thinks he's a suitable guy for Elena to
date now that she's "broken up" with Damon. But as we all know, Elena
tells Bonnie that Damon is more Luke's type. "That'd be cute too," she
quips. Yes, yes it would, Bonnie.
But the mood of their fun phone
call gets ruined when Elena tells Bonnie that Jeremy didn't sleep at
the Salvatore house last night. Since he wasn't with Bonnie, where was
he? Everyone's thinking it: He's cheating again. That seems especially
likely when Damon, Matt and Tyler see Jeremy meeting Liv for a bottle of
gin at the Mystic Grill that morning. What are they up to?
It's
not what everyone thinks, though. No hanky-panky going on here. Liv does
a silence spell to ward off Tyler's hybrid eavesdropping, and then
warns Jeremy that all the witches are talking about how the Travelers
are heading to Mystic Falls for something to do with Elena. In Liv's own
words, the world literally revolves around her for something. LOL.
Welcome to "TVD," right?
When Elena tries to check in as Jeremy's
guardian, she's in for a rude awakening, since she's not listed as his
primary contact. That would be ... Damon. Cue: Damon walking up,
plopping himself down right next to Elena, ready for a day of
fake-co-parenting with his now-ex.
Awwwwwkward.
The day is
made even worse by a super judgey counselor, who can tell that things
aren't exactly what you'd call "stable" in the Gilbert/Salvatore
household. She tells Elena and Damon that Jeremy is skipping school,
failing classes, starting fights (duh), and even has been caught
cheating twice in math. He needs a more stable home situation, which is
kind of hard when your sister's a vampire, you're living in the mansion
of her two ex-boyfriends who are brothers and also vampires, and you're a
supernaturally gifted vampire hunter with a half-alive, half-dead
girlfriend who acts as the anchor to The Other Side. Oh, and you're
constantly fighting to save everyone's lives, because this is Mystic
Falls. Yikes.
Back at the Whitmore dorm, Bonnie tries to play
things cool with Luke to find out what his deal is. But his whole cover
is blown wide open when Hazel's ghost shows up to pass through Bonnie,
and gives her a message to tell Luke of all people: She failed to
conceal the doppelganger and the Travelers are coming. Hazel passes
through Bonnie, and Luke's got some major explaining to do. He tells
Bonnie that he and Liv are twins and witches, and they're basically
trying to stop the Travelers from doing something. He texts Liv -- still
at the Mystic Grill with Jeremy -- about what Hazel said, and she tells
Jeremy she's moving on to Plan B. Having Jeremy protect Elena was Plan
A, so what does Plan B entail?
Back at the school, Elena tells
Damon that the judgey counselor was right: Their situation isn't stable.
She tries to end things again, but he pushes her up against a locker
and gives the single most sexy speech in the history of "TVD." Like,
seriously, whoa. HOT. We're not even going to write down any of it here
because it's way too sexy to be repeated. BRB, fanning ourselves. We
don't even judge Elena for daydreaming during the chemistry teacher's
speech about the students because yeah, Damon's chemistry is way more
interesting. When she leaves the classroom to get some air (in the wood
shop of all places?), Liv randomly shows up and attacks her with her
full-on witch power.
Liv tells Elena that she'll make the
Travelers too powerful now that Luke "failed to keep her safe" (by
keeping Tom hidden), and almost stakes Elena with a piece of wood, but
Damon knocks Liv out. He tortures her, and she reveals what we already
know: If there is only one Elena doppelganger and one Stefan
doppelganger alive in the world, the Travelers will come to Mystic Falls
to use Elena for ... something, and the witches can't let that happen.
But Damon says that he can't let Liv kill Elena, and almost kills her,
but Jeremy runs in and stops him.
Back in Atlanta, as they're
walking through the now-dead Hazel's house to see what she was up to,
Caroline figures out that four months ago, Tom was hidden as soon as
Silas died, meaning the witches knew that Tom was the only doppelganger
left standing in the way of what the Travelers want. Caroline and Enzo
find Tom under sedation in the basement, and she wakes him up, knocks
Enzo out, and tells Tom that she's going to save him. Uh oh ...
Predictably,
Caroline doesn't go through with killing Tom. Instead, she takes him
out for a hearty brunch and compels him to tell her his life story. She
wants to see what kind of person he is, and she says Tom is one of the
nicest people she's ever met in her life. She can't kill him now. She
compels him to get on a train, leave town, meet a pretty girl and settle
down for a nice, long, happy life. But before he can ride off into the
sunset, Enzo finds them and kills him. Turns out, Enzo also cut a
deal with the Travelers, since they told him they know where his
Augustine love Maggie is. If he kills Tom, they'll tell him where to
find her. So Tom was doomed from the start. Enzo tells Caroline that for
the sake of her friendship with Stefan, she can take credit for killing
Tom to save Stefan, and they part ways.
Back at the high school,
Jeremy yells at Damon and Elena for trying to kill Liv, and they try to
tell him that they know what's best for him, like doing better in
school. But Jeremy rightfully explains that he's doing poorly in school
because he can't care about classes and homework when he's constantly
fighting to save everyone's lives. He says he can make his own
decisions, and they need to trust him. He promises that he can get Liv
and Luke to save Elena, not kill her, and Elena realizes that she needs
to trust him like he's always trusted her.
Jeremy get Luke and
Liv to team up with him to thwart whatever the Travelers are planning,
and they agree to work together because they know that Jeremy's hunter
skills are a huge asset. He also enlists Matt and Tyler too, and they
all form some kind of a dream team that we never knew we wanted and yet
all of a sudden cannot live without. Instantly on board with this. Also,
Jeremy moves out of the Salvatore mansion and into Matt and Tyler's
house, and seriously, we are ON BOARD WITH THIS. Can we go live with
these three? A human, a hunter, and a hybrid, all with bartending
experience? This is going to be one big rager like 27/7.
After
Jeremy leaves the mansion, Damon and Elena finally have that adult
conversation they've been avoiding for a long time. They keep doing bad
things to each other and for each other and with each other, because
they don't work together. Even though they clearly love each other and
want each other, they can't be with each other. Quick, say "each other"
five more times fast! All jokes aside, Elena tells Damon that she has to
leave for her dorm on her own, since she knows if Damon drives her
they'll just end up back in bed together. She says he has to let her go
for real, and in a surprisingly mature move, he does. He kisses her on
the forehead and leaves. This is it ... the real, official end of
Delena.Caroline makes her way back to the
Travelers camp, and tells Stefan that Tom is dead, but confesses that
she couldn't go through with it. Enzo made the actual final move. She
apologizes, knowing that she just admitted she couldn't kill even to
save his life, but Stefan reminds her that she could have, but she chose
not to, and that's because she's a good person. He also knew all along
she wouldn't do it, because that's how good of friends they are. They
share one of the sweetest friend snuggles in the history of ever, and is
it wrong to want to slide on in between them to join in on the platonic
and in no way romantic friend snuggle? Because that looks mighty comfy, just sayin'.
Their
Steroline snuggle sesh is ruined, though, when the Travelers make their
move. Sloan has all the Travelers drink the mixture of Stefan and
Elena's blood, and then lights them all on fire while they chant and scream horribly, suffering slow and agonizing deaths by being burnt alive.
Caroline and Stefan watch on in horror, and then vamp-speed away. All
the Travelers then materialize next to Bonnie to pass through her all at
once, and she passes out from the sudden onslaught of pain. Her shadow
then pulls itself away from her unconscious body, forming a figure that
gets up and walks away. Meet Markos, the leader of the Travelers.
Where
did he come from? Was he on The Other Side, and the Travelers mass
sacrifice gave him the power he needed to come back? Or was he on The
Dark Side, and that's why he needed the group suicide to come back? Or
was he somewhere else entirely? And what are his plans? If Elena and
Stefan's blood was used to call him forth, what else does he need with
them? So many questions!
What did you think of "Rescue Me?" How
adorable was Tom, and how sad was it to see him die so suddenly and so
soon after meeting him? How sweet was the Steroline cuddle sesh? How
freaking epic will the Jeremy/Tyler/Matt trio be? Let us know in the
comments!
"The Vampire Diaries" airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
