Elena’s fate is not left open this season. The cliffhanger is fairly mild, in fact. It’s kind of nice to have some closure and to know what it was all about all along, actually. Both this and its sister show have a thing about beautiful princesses (and sometimes ugly kings) sleeping for centuries in hidden coffins. Elena ends up in the Salvatore Crypt by the end of the episode, but she’s not dead.
She’s in a deep magic coma, one that preserves her youth and only persists while Bonnie Bennet lives. One last parting gift from Kai, who showed up in time to ruin Josette and Alaric’s wedding. Like, apocalyptically Dynasty in Moldavia ruin it; like that classic soap (you’ll get no Red Wedding references here, folks!), the bridal floor is strewn with bodies. Unlike that old soapy chestnut, we don’t have to wait all summer to know who lived and who died.
Who died: all the Gemini witches! And they were so promising earlier in the season, too! Kai has come up with a very effective way to never go back to prison worlds; he’ll kill his entire family by killing himself (here’s an idea, witch broods; don’t link everyone’s life force to one central figure per generation, maybe), only he won’t really die because he’s full of Lily Salvatore’s ripper vampire blood! So clever. And that’s our cliffhanger, because he also brought back her undead friends, who just might get up to some shenanigans next fall.
Two things Kai doesn’t count on: werewolves, and just how much Damon means the threats he makes.
Liv Gemini cheats death, slightly, by begging Tyler to kill her so he can trigger his curse and heal his wounds. Which he agrees to, because he’s Tyler, but it’s got a twisted sort of Romeo and Juliet vibe, as they lie there bleeding and near death while they work all this out, I won’t deny it. Ty calls Matt to warn him he’ll be feral for vampires soon, which of course means the first one he bites is Kai! This after a very brutal scene where Alaric tries to shoot Kai, and then himself, after stowing his dead wife and children in the trunk of his car. Poor Alaric, his love life is among the unluckiest ever.
This exchange does lead to the best text ever, though: “Tyler werewolf, Kai is a vampire!” The history teacher has a succinct way with words! He sends it to Damon, who offers no help over Kai’s susurrating wound when he shows up to learn about werewolf bites, but does threaten to start ripping off heads if Elena isn’t cured immediately.
Everybody ends up at the barn/abattoir carnage again, where Bonnie moves in for the kill on Kai, at the very moment he realizes he can magically absorb werewolf venom (and power UP from it) too! Poor Bonns! Damon shows up and seems to abandon her, but nope, he’s got a few years on Baby Vampire Kai, and he meant that beheading thing it turns out. He saves Bonnie and is willing to wait through the decades for Elena to rise again.
This episode’s carnage level is very high, which is weird, because we also get a totally sentimental series of psychic goodbyes from Elena to all her friends. How they all go riding in her mind we’ll have to call vampire illusion skills, but let’s run down what happens and where:
1) With Matt on Wickery Bridge, where her parents drowned and later on she drowned and she also even later tried to give herself to the sun.
2) With Jeremy on a loading dock, doing sisterly bonding/partying together
3) With Stefan on a hike around a lake where she told him she hated being a vampire (and similar to an earlier climb when she refused his offer to turn)
4) With Alaric, training to defend herself physically before becoming a vampire made that need moot
5) With Damon for one last dance on the road into town
6) With Tyler to encourage him to be a better wolf this time
7) But most importantly of all, with Bonnie and Caroline at a dorm-room sleepover, which maybe could have really happened if they weren’t all really who they were by this point.
It’s a greatest hits series of Elena character moments. Oh, Elena, you almost always tried to do what was right, and you weren’t the hopeless bully about it that Stefan could be. Who by the way is still beating the dead horse of a relationship with Caroline? It’s time to face it, dude: she’s just not that into you.