Flipping her humanity switch has returned Caroline to the raving Mean Girl she was in season one, only now with eldritch powers. Didn’t she used to sing all the time back then, too? Whether anyone wanted to listen or not? Here she’s at the campus hangout, belting out Pat Benatar on an apparently endless loop, much to the annoyance of multitudes of students who apparently can’t leave or defend themselves. Stefan and Caroline are still playing lame one-upmanship games involving trying to literally scare humans to death, and it’s just kind of unfair that we have to go through this after all we’ve seen them achieve and improve and cope with before.
Is this really how you want your mom to know you dealt with her death, Caroline? Not that she didn’t see it coming (now we see what those prophetic cancer dreams were about), but she always hoped for better from you.
Things get really personal when Matt and Tyler stumble innocently onto the killing floor, and Caroline decides to screw with them rather than with a crew of strangers (it’s about time for some Whitmore student or other to be a secret vampire hunter on vervain and screw something up for the human side again, isn’t? I mean Caroline is on a bloody swath, so much so that Elena runs to the hospital to try and patch up the survivors).
This would be even more unpleasant if not for some interesting counter-forces at work. No, not Bonnie, who’s off gloating on getting her revenge on Kai somewhere we presume, but Damon and his bizarrely evolving relationship with his suddenly returned mother figure. She remains fascinated by technology, playing with Stefan’s laptop and cooking breakfast in the fancy Salvatore kitchen (her excessively ornate texts are kind of the best, in fact; Mama Salvatore could give Damaris Phillips a run for her Kentucky Derby).
We do eventually discover why Lily isn’t bothered by Elena’s closeness (all the unmarried banging which she has to be able to hear) to her son (and Elena has been nothing but respectful, as the best thing about her return to near normalcy is that her empathy is running high again): in the decades since she abandoned them as children in antebellum Virginia, Lily has forgotten that she ever loved them at all.
That’s pretty intense. So she didn’t come back to reunite with her estranged sons; she came back to free her fellow revenants (we learn why this is a really bad idea by the very excellent cliffhanger flashback) and get back to Ripping whenever and wherever she wants. This potentially throws a wrench in Damon’s plan to shock Stefan into becoming human again, but only until he realizes he can write the script for her, all she has to do is say the lines and that will still be enough to bring Stefan back.
We also get perhaps Enzo’s best flashback ever, as it turns out Lily was who turned him, helping him escape to America on a shiny white boat of blood-bags. These scenes are spooky and bizarre, and human Enzo is almost tolerable as he nearly succumbs to consumption. The look on his face when he accidentally greets Lily at the Salvatore doorway is priceless, and it makes him flee Mystic Falls and send Sarah back to school unscathed. Well, until she digs for some answers of her own, but that’s her own damn fault.
So, when Damon shows up at the bar with the stage set for the original mother and child reunion, it’s his lines she whispers to her son, thus actually Damon’s love that really saves Stefan, not the mother he remembers only as an angelic ghost. Damon also almost inadvertently saves Matt and Tyler, shooing them away and causing Caroline to head for the hills rather than end her spree. Who knew Damon would become the patriarch of this show rather than the spoiled dark prince?
The rest of the weight falls on Elena’s shoulders, as she realizes Jo is pregnant (which Elena can never be). Jo sees her pain, but also reminds her that Alaric was once a vampire, too, and is now an impending Daddy. As Matt refuses her blood (and tells her he hates vampires to her face, no offence!) and opts for conventional healing. As she reassures Damon he is all she needs (not knowing that he has the Cure again, given him by BFF Bonnie to do with as he will).
We get it, show. Elena (since Nina Dobrev has announced she’s leaving the show, like ASAP) is going to be human again, at last. That’s fine, she’s earned it.