The Originals 1.05 “Sinners and Saints”

There’s more to this witch thing than meets the eye. We’ve been treated to an overload of vampire flashbacks, and far fewer wolf worries, but while everybody’s been talking about the witches, nobody’s been talking to them.

And they’ve been more than a little secretive themselves, down to staging another (considering this is also how she first came to be rescued by Elijah) swampy kidnapping of Hayley and her demon-spawn embryo last week. That misfire resulted in a lot of deaths (mostly theirs) and was more than a little annoying and confusing for everyone involved.

So when Klaus issues a royal decree for Sophie to get herself to the plantation and explain, she does. Rather guiltily, she finally provides a few answers. And when she’s done, Klaus and Rebekah get Marcel drunk so he’ll spill some more. And, meanwhile, Elijah is getting a lot of the same information from Davina herself, who likes him enough to give him a drop of her blood to regain a healthy pallor after all the time in the coffin.

Elijah has that effect on women. And probably animals. And dudes. And bees. I’m 90% certain he can command bees.

Yes, it’s another episode full of exposition, but at least these flashbacks only go back a few years. I’m not going to bother delivering it with narration as they did, but just jump right to the facts. Davina is so powerful because she was meant to be a sacrifice to two important witch rituals, a Harvest and a Reaping, along with four other young women. The girls were all told their blood donation would be symbolic, but instead the coven-leader began slitting their throats. Big failure of communication there, wise women!

Davina was the last, until Marcel saved her and killed the seemingly evil witches. So she gained all their power, but now can’t control it.

Sophie was far from a loyal Wiccan at the time, but was instead a drunken party girl prone to play dates with Marcel!? So she got him to come break up the spell with his day walkers. But during the vamp vs. witch war, she noticed that power was actually transferring to Davina, and started to wonder if the promised resurrection might occur after all. Too late to save her sister’s daughter, or, ultimately, her sister, whom Marcel killed later. See, as a survivor (albeit from the 19th century), he has a little thing about child abuse.

Does that all sound boring? It mostly wasn’t, due to lots of intercutting to our three locales. It was especially fun to see Marcel, Rebekah and Klaus all try to delay each other at another of those biker bars so beloved by vamps, ostensibly to provide cover so Sophie could help them figure out the witch kidnapping (a rival faction led by Agnes, who has left the reservation) and/or so Marcel could move Davina to a safehouse other than the church (the altar boy massacre, by the way, was also the witches’ fault – definitely not a bunch of Glindas, this crew!).

Little did everyone know, Elijah was already in action, listening to Davina’s sob story attentively, repairing her ersatz boyfriend’s violin all the while (the one Klaus broke so pettily), refraining from drinking from her despite his hunger, and being not just honorable but suave as hell. As an avenue of difficult diplomacy, it was much more effective than Klaus’ crude threats the week before. They now have Davina right where they want her, and have realized that they were used as pawns in a witch/vampire war that is still unfolding.

Of course, the only thanks Elijah gets when he waltzes back into the mansion is a slap in the face from Hayley (who’s been missing him the most!), but I think she was just flirting. Who knows with wolves?