After last week’s episode’s heart wrenching ending of The Vampire Diaries we are surprised by the dead Alaric suddenly not so dead and wrecking plenty of havoc. There is no switch between good and bad Alaric, he is all bad now. He kidnaps Caroline and violently tortures her. Alaric gets Elena to show up with no word from anyone. Meanwhile, Klaus is one doppelgänger short from splitting town. He begins knocking down Elena’s door to retrieve her and be on his way. Of course, he doesn’t quite get an open invitation for this and begins viciously attacking the house in desperate attempts to get Elena and leave the monstrous Alaric far behind.
Elena would do anything to save a friend, including putting herself in danger and leaving everyone else in the dark. Alaric is putting his mission in to place: to end all vampires. He’s getting joy from putting Elena in to her place, in his eyes she is nearly as bad as them since she condones what they are. At one time she wanted to be able to fight against vampires. Alaric uses this against her by forcing her to stake Caroline, to end her unnatural evil existence once and for all.
Their only hope for killing Alaric is to stop his heart. He was still created by the original witch, making him nearly immortal, extremely powerful, and precise. Alaric was born with a mission, he can’t even think in objective terms; he is a killing machine. The only way for them to stop his heart is with a lot of vampire muscle and some intense witch power. Bonnie can only pull this off if she stops a human heart. Jeremy’s is the heart she will have to stop. He has already cheated death. If he dies with his ring on they might have another Alaric on their hands.
Things don’t go quite according to plan. Alaric might be even more powerful and near impossible to put a stop to than they had anticipated. He realizes something about his bloodline. He is connected to another. Now when just about any one dies on the show at least one person, if not nearly everyone else, will die with them. It does make the stakes much higher.
The ending is going to piss off a lot of fans. I think most of us will still be holding out to see what happens in the season finale next week. The twist that took place in the episode kills so much the show had going for it in the past two seasons. It cuts off so much that pushes the plot forward and that so much more could be done with. The show doesn’t borrow too heavily from actual plot points of the books, but considering all that is done with this one component in the books, it is hard to wrap your mind around them cutting it short.
This is a show about vampires, the evil nature that is at their core. With Stefan and Damon this can come and go or sometimes be controlled. They both have darkness inside them; perhaps what truly identifies them. They need an outside force, raging against them who is not just evil, but complex; alluring, enticing, devious, dominating, blood lusting, power-inducing, predatory, immortal. The ending at the very least severely dims that if not takes it away completely.
It was a little too anti-climatic for this to really be the end, especially the somewhat awkward celebrating. It didn’t feel like a true celebration and I think Elena recognized this. If not, she realized shortly after with the effects the day had on her. She may have survived, but what she went through took a greater toll on her than she would have liked to admit. Alaric isn’t nearly done with the damage. Next week should be a thrilling, action-packed, and mind blowing finale. It better be.
