Not that there aren’t many grievous problems with this episode (which will be outlined below), but I can’t hate. It’s a Bonnie spotlight, something Kat Graham has deserved for seasons, and whenever she’s on screen the story is just fine. Her interactions with Damon and Enzo keep Ian and Michael on their toes, elevating even their scenes without her. I dunno if everyone else is shipping a Damon/Enzo reunion (or at least for Enzo to get over Damon’s very old betrayal), but their mutual anguish over Bonnie’s condition brings them together this week, to the betterment of both butthurt vampires.
She’s stuck in the cabin with crazy times Rayna, which is no picnic even without the blight eating away at her skin so hideously, so she makes a few very bad decisions. Like injecting herself with Rayna’s blood to keep her magic from coming back (thus keeping her off the Armory’s mystic radar), but that plan backfires because to save her Damon instantly gives her up to the Armory. Damon is always the act first, figure it out later kind of guy. Great in a crisis, plenty annoying for everything else.
Which would still be okay if we didn’t also have the Matt/Damon story to endure. First, we get a truly sweet and sexy look at his proposal to the sadly underused Penny (who accepts in her pajamas before he even asks, adorably), but then he forces Stefan to undo his compulsion to make him forget how she died. Stefan, in solid old school helpful father figure mode, warns him it won’t help, but finally does and … Matt shot her accidentally in the dark? What? Why would he make such a rookie mistake, after apparently years and months of driving all vamps out of Mystic Falls? It’s super-lame, I almost wish Stefan had killed her for some at least potentially more interesting reason.
Speaking of motivation-less anticlimaxes, when everyone gets to the Armory and Bonnie opens the door that should never be opened, of course, the idea that the director’s missing sister is still alive after four years is shown to be beyond stupid. As to what lurks in the basement, all we see is first Bonnie and then the beyond stupid director urging everyone to run, as if everyone couldn’t have been told that in the frigging first place!
Bonnie gets out first, and then her plan becomes clear. She lays a containment spell down on the whole complex, keeping the boogeyman and all the agents (who just killed all of Rayna’s escaped vamps to seal the deal) locked inside forever. You do not mess with a Bennett containment spell, people. Of course, whatever it is now has all those mystical armaments at its disposal, but Bonnie is pretty badass in getting her well-deserved vengeance. Before she faints, because she’s still sick.
It turns out all that smoke and mirrors was just actually smoke and mirrors because the real bait and switch was Rayna’s. By giving her last life to Bonnie (to whom she’s confessed she never understood the attraction of immortality, her loneliness only having grown as everyone she once knew is long dead), she also passed on her vampire killing zeal! But Bonnie’s in love with one of those, oh noes!