Nothing really wrong with this episode, it’s just kind of perfunctory. The central point of it is Romeo and Juliet played by a vampire and a witch who are one step up from stock characters. Though he looks kind of like Henry Cavill’s Clark Kent/Superman, and she has a sort of a baby Traci Ross vibe. The fun comes in watching the devious Mikaelsons pull the strings on these puppets to get them where they need them to be. Do they even need names? Everything they do could play out silently from a completely The Zeppo perspective and we’d know just as much. Why are they trifling with Marcel like this when they could just rip his head off? Two much better reasons than Katie and Thierry: Elijah and Davina.
Actually, the major point of the episode for me is the masked ball everyone attends, which gives Rebekah a chance to shine as a blonde ice queen in shimmering black. When potential Klaus (and current Marcel) love interest Cammie (resplendent in silver and angel wings – really? — and in way over her head, and not just due to that nickname) calls her “kind of a bitch,” it’s with well-deserved admiration.
On other fronts, Hayley misses Elijah and welcomes some attention from a motherly witch, Klaus continues to infiltrate Marcel’s organization, and Davina doesn’t care what Klaus has been up to, she’s not returning Elijah back to his siblings.
Rebekah forces the witches to sacrifice one of their own, in order to run a distraction enabling them to locate Davina, except Klaus scuttles it for his own reasons from afar at the last minute; being, as always, the unreliable asshole. Rebekah’s surprisingly practical and resourceful without Elena and Matt around to distract her, and it all plays out in ways that bode well for future season developments. With plenty of de riguer neck-snaps and pitchfork run-throughs for flavor!
Camille is scared of Marcel and Rebekah, but still not wise to how much trouble Klaus can be. Elijah is not yet rescued. And something odd and maybe Latin is going on with Hayley’s demon spawn, which, yes, in this one instance, new sci-fi show, I will accept a demonic New Orleans phantom pregnancy. She (according to the witch) can even grow instantly to adulthood if you want to take the cliché to the limit. If the parent show is intent on doing good vampires buried in coffins underwater (a la Angel) this season, then this one can certainly get on with a lithe version of Jasmine for a while. Just don’t fire Phoebe Tonkin over it, okay show runners?