Previously on The Vampire Diaries, this happened:
Returned from the island, Elena picks up a photograph in a shattered frame of her and Jeremy in their younger days. She flashes back to the island and discovering Jeremy's lifeless body in Silas's chamber. She sees he is wearing his magic ring and weeps with relief, believing it will restore him to life.
In an antechamber Stefan catches Damon up, which pretty much amounts to "Katherine screwed us". He tells Damon that Elena's in waiting for Jeremy to revive and Damon moves to wait with her. Stefan reminds him that Jeremy was a Hunter. Realization dawns on Damon that this makes Jeremy supernatural, so the ring will no longer work. I don't remember if this bit of the mythology was ever established and I can't be arsed to look it up, so OK. Damon, believing Elena won't survive Jeremy's death, tells Stefan to get Elena home while he finds Bonnie.
In Mystic Falls the next morning Caroline tries to scrub away the marks where Kol burned. She's not wearing gloves so I hope she wasn't using vervain-laced tap water in the scrub bucket. Elena enters and Caroline rises to greet her, stopping short when she sees Stefan bearing Jeremy's body. Stefan lays Jeremy on his bed and Elena takes up a vigil by his side.
Damon searches the encampment and hears noises coming from the forest. "Unless you're a blonde, a Bennett witch or a Doppelganger, I suggest you steer clear." Hearing nothing more, he moves to check the shack. Finding nothing, he closes the door to find Rebekah beside him, demanding the cure. He tells her that Katherine has it, and that someone killed Jeremy. Damon heads off in search of Bonnie again but Becky wants to look for Katherine instead. Damon assures her that Kitty's long gone so finding Bonnie is the priority. Well, finding Bonnie and not getting killed by the risen Silas.
Speaking of Bonnie, she awakens in a clearing and reaches to check on her wound. Shane warns her not to touch it, since he can't guarantee the efficacy of his non-witchy remedies. She wonders how Shane was healed and he says Silas did it. So why not heal her too, Bonnie fails to ask. Instead she insists that she won't keep helping Shane, calling his desires "unnatural". Shane suggests her tune will change, seeing as how Jeremy's dead and Silas is his return ticket.
As Elena maintains her vigil, Caroline and Stefan discuss things in the kitchen. Stefan thinks Elena's in denial but he doesn't want to break through it because of her goddamn HEIGHTENED EMOTIONS. His plan is to have Damon, after returning with Bonnie, use the sire bond to convince Elena that losing her only remaining relative isn't so bad after all.
From the doorway Elena denies she's in denial. She knows Jeremy was supernatural, but with his Hunter's Mark having vanished when the tomb was opened, there's a small possibility that he stopped being supernatural and the ring will still work. She has to cling to that hope because "there's no way my brother's dead."
Caroline leaves a voice mail for Tyler, who you'll remember is on the run from Klaus. Stefan asks if she knows where he is and she says no. He reminds her that Katherine managed to stay hidden from Klaus for 500 years so it's possible Tyler will be able to stay hidden as well. Yeah, keep telling yourself that. He speculates that Katherine stole the cure to bargain with Klaus for her life. He can't believe that Elena won't have the chance to take the cure and will be a vampire forever, and without any family. She may not have relatives, Stefan, but she does have family.
Caroline, ever the organizer, decides to put together a to-do list. They need a funeral, or a cover story, or a funeral and a cover story, and she needs to tell her mom. Stefan suggests getting Matt and Caroline agrees to do that first and then tell her mom and then make a list or maybe a casserole. Before she can completely crack she catches a scent. Stefan tells her it's Jeremy, beginning to decompose. Brutal. Stefan wants her to get Doctor Fell.
Back on the island Becks and Damon are bickering in a way we're probably supposed to find cute but totally isn't when Damon whips Rebekah around to intercept an arrow. "Better you than me." She drops and Damon spots Vaughn the Hunter across the way readying another shot. Damon snatches it out of the air and zips away. Vaughn grabs his gear and beats a retreat but Damon intercepts him. They struggle and Damon knocks him out.
Bonnie's crying for Jeremy and Shane tries to comfort her with a mug of his (sigh) "spirit tea". She expresses it out of his hand and hilariously he looks at her like "you don't like my tea?" In her grief she starts to lose control, causing the campfire to blaze taller than she is. Shane dials her back even with his crazy eyes at full bore, reminding her about the whole back from the dead thing.
Meredith interrupts Elena's vigil and asks if she can examine Jeremy. Elena consents but tells her she won't find any vital signs. It's like when Alaric died, he'd just be dead until he wasn't. Elena worries that Jeremy is coming close to racking up enough deaths that they need to watch for signs of madness but as Stefan joins them Meredith cuts her off. "Elena, it looks like Jeremy died of extreme blood loss. His neck also appears to be broken. The lack of blood explains why there's no lividity but his muscles have tightened past the point of rigor mortis. If left unattended to soon he'll start to bloat. Within a few hours his skin will discolor…" Jesus.
Elena can't hear another word and slams Meredith against a wall, screaming at her that her science means nothing and demanding Bonnie. A voice calls her name and she looks over to see Matt in the doorway. He sees Jeremy's body on the bed and his face crumbles. Elena crosses to comfort him.
He takes her downstairs and makes her a cuppa, promising that he's not drugging her again.
She fills him in on Damon and Bonnie's status. He's amazed that Damon stayed behind for Bonnie because he hates her. Elena insists that Damon kind of loves her since you're only mean to the ones you love. Matt finds that every bit as messed up as I do and they declare it "Damon logic".
Damon explains to a trussed up Hunter that while at first he believed Vaughn was acting alone, he now believes that Vaughn and Katherine are working in concert. He scolds Becky for tardiness. "Sorry, I had to dig an arrow out of my spine." Vaughn taunts that they can't kill him lest they invoke the Hunter's Curse. Becky agrees. "But that doesn't mean we can't tear you apart, piece by piece, nerve by nerve, until the pain is so severe that your brain shuts it off to give you one tiny moment of blessed relief. And then we'll heal you and we'll do it again and again and again." Damon: "You're creepy." Rebekah: "Thank you."
The Hunter thinks so too and explains that Katherine found him while he was tracking vampires in Colorado (where Jeremy once hid out. Coincidence?) and offered to help him find Silas. She knew about the Mark and the cure from her inside source, Haley. Katherine found Haley in New Orleans (where the upcoming spin-off is set. Coincidence?). Satisfied that they know all Vaughn knows, Damon suggests tossing him in the well like baby Jessica. "If he starves to death it's not our fault." Then it's off to find Bonnie. Becky insists that Katherine and the cure should be their priority but Damon knows that getting Bonnie to Elena is job one.
Speaking of Bonnie, she and Shane are still hiking through the woods. Shane explains that when Silas became an immortal he stopped being a witch. "You can be a witch or a vampire but never both." Wait, so Silas is a vampire and not just immortal? The Originals aren't the originals? My brain hurts.
He continues that three massacres of twelve are needed to generate enough power for Bonnie to harness through Expression. Bonnie's aghast that Shane's had 36 people killed and he sounds a little insulted because he's only had 24 people killed, does she thinks he's crazy? She refuses to help him kill another dozen people but he plays the "they'll all come back to life" card again. Bonnie starts running but stumbles on something. She looks back to see Jeremy, bloody on the ground begging for her help. She tries mystic CPR but the illusion vanishes. She looks up at Shane and promises to do whatever it takes.
Meredith cranks the A/C to slow Jeremy's rate of decomposition. She and Stefan have a bonding moment about how they've both seen so much death and it never gets any easier. It's supposed to be touching but I care nothing for her character and all I can think is that if she really sees death every day she's a worse doctor than I thought.
Damon calls in the middle of it, still having not located Bonnie. Stefan asks him to come home, believing that the sire bond is the only thing that's can keep Elena together. Damon agrees but just then Bonnie steps into the clearing. They embrace (fan service!) and Bonnie tells him that she knows how to save Jeremy.
Matt takes Elena to the stoner pit at the high school, which if memory serves is where we first saw Jeremy. He points out where Jeremy painted Matt's sister Vicki's name on the wall. When Matt found the name after Vicki died and it made him smile. Then he points out where Jeremy painted "J + V" on another part of the wall. He says that after Vicki's body was found he felt like she wasn't really gone. In Mystic Falls, when someone is gone they might not be gone completely. He tells her it's all right to have hope because hope is all that keeps him going sometimes. Stefan calls to let Elena know Bonnie's on her way back and may have a solution.
Becky dumps Vaughn in the well and he warns her that she should use the cure to kill Silas. She says that killing Silas is his deal, not hers. He directs her to his pack and she extracts Silas's death mask, which Vaughn found in the crypt. He asks her how she can fight the devil when no one knows his face. She drops thew mask and departs and he shouts after her that they're all doomed.
Caroline leaves Tyler another voice mail, begging for a call. She wraps it up as Bonnie and Damon arrive. The girls head inside while the brothers pow-wow outside. As the episode intercuts between Bonnie and Shane on the island, Bonnie and company inside and the Salvatores outside the story emerges. The witch Qetsiyah left Silas with two choices: grow old and rot; or take the cure and die. But his only desire was to be reunited with his one true love. So Qetsiyah created The Other Side as a sort of Purgatory for supernatural beings. If he died he'd be there while his love would not. As a descendent of Qetsiyah Bonnie has the power to rend the veil between this side and The Other Side. With the barrier down every supernatural being that resides there will be free to return to life.
To do this she will need to complete the "Expression triangle" by making the third sacrifice. There is general disapproval inside and agreement outside that Bonnie is completely under Shane's control. While Bonnie, Caroline and Matt argue, something breaks behind Elena's eyes. They are interrupted by the phone. It's April Young. She's been trying to reach Jeremy but his cell keeps going straight to voice mail. Elena explains that Jeremy can't come to the phone right now. She starts to lie, then comes out and says, "I'm sorry. He's dead."
Elena returns to Jeremy's bedside and Damon follows her upstairs. She pulls the blanket back from Jeremy's face and the truth of his death finally hits her. It's an extended scene worthy of Sally Field's graveyard freakout in Steel Magnolias. At once scattered in every direction and focused like a laser, Elena has Damon bring Jeremy's body downstairs. She goes to the kitchen in search of lighter fluid. They need a cover story and she decides fire is best. She sprays lighter fluid everywhere. Gripped by a logic born of intense grief she can't see any other way but to burn the place to the ground with Jeremy in it. Caroline begs her to stop. "What else are we supposed to do with the body, Caroline? There's no room left in the Gilbert family plot."
She strikes a match. Stefan begs her to stop but she insists that there's nothing left for her here. "Every inch of this house is filled with memories of the people I loved who've died." She's completely overwhelmed and drops the match. Damon snatches it before it hits the fuel and pleads with her to calm down. She can't control her emotions and falls to her knees weeping; Damon glances at Stefan, who signals him to use the sire bond. Damon kneels beside her and tells her to turn off her humanity. Elena's face goes blank.
Caroline leaves another voice mail for Tyler to let him know that Jeremy is dead. she begs him to call her because she can't accept that "yesterday" was the last time she was ever going to see him or talk to him.
Matt drops Bonnie at home and drives off. Bonnie heads inside but Shane intercepts her. She tells him she has let everyone know what is needed but has a question. If she drops the veil to The Other Side the supernatural dead will return, but what about the mundanes who died at the Young ranch? He tells her they were a necessary sacrifice and have found peace. She buys it.
Becky wanders the night on the island, jumping at every sound. She finds a body and rolls it over. It's the real Shane, his leg broken. He gasps "Silas" and, I hope, dies the miserable death he so richly deserves.
Finally allowed a minute alone to deal with his own grief, Matt parks his truck and cries. I mean he ugly cries.
The newly humanity-challenged Elena takes a final look around her house, examining that same photograph again but this time feeling no attachment to it. On the porch, Stefan insists that they could have found another way to help her while Damon is equally insistent that there wasn't. He argues that humanity is useless with no one to care for and he, Damon, is not enough. Stefan struggles to tell Damon he loves him but can't get the words out. It's all right; Damon knows.
As the brothers re-enter the house, Elena strikes another match. She believes a fire is still the best cover story. Stefan reminds her that once the house burns, it's gone. What if she decides later he wants to come back? Elena: "I won't."
She drops the match and the trio leaves the Gilbert home one final time. The flames rise up, consuming the things of her former life, the photograph, random clothes, Jeremy's sketch pad, and Jeremy himself.
Man, what a depressing episode. Death is stock-in-trade for this series, but this one was hard. Jeremy went from being a shallow jerk in the early days to a maturing young man dealing with circumstances no one should have to. It's been great watching the character take this journey (and watching Steven R. McQueen get hotter and hotter over the last four years was a definite plus). Assuming this rending of the veil doesn't happen, I will miss the character and the actor.
But with the grief comes anger, specifically anger over the way Damon handled Elena. It could be interesting watching Elena played without humanity, Damon's robbing her of the choice to flip the switch was infuriating and symptomatic of the worst problem associated with Elena's turning, the sire-bond. The bond, ill-conceived and poorly explained from the start, has stolen away any semblance of Elena's agency. How much more interesting it would have been if there actually was a way to shatter the sire-bond, say for instance through intense grieving for a loved one, and Elena had broken it and still chosen to switch off her humanity. I'm hoping that it will turn out that by switching off her humanity Elena has also switched off the emotional component of the sire-bond and when down the road Damon tries to use it to flip her switch again she finally gets to decide for herself whether she does.
I have to give Nina Dobrev a huge hand for her work in this episode. Especially in her breakdown scene I don't think she's ever been better. Candice Accola also deserves special mention for her work, particularly for her "make a list and a casserole" scene. I remain firmly convinced that if this series were on a major network some of these actors would win awards hand over fist.
