The good news is evident from the start: Kevin Williamson is back, and while Julie Plec has been endlessly creative in complicating the non-lives of our vampiric family, the teen and young adult angst that is his specialty is back in force from the start, when a doomed couple on a lonely road at night fall for one of Damon’s oldest vampire tricks. Damon and Enzo, because of their predicament, have been struggling to stay sane amidst an overload of fragmented body part horror (an old meat-processing facility they are filling up with corpses) and, true to their natures, they each have different strategies.
That gives them one thing in common with Bonnie, Caroline and Stefan, who’ve been going out of their minds to find their missing friends. Ric hasn’t been as worried, because he’s got two daughters to protect (and a hot nanny to make ex-Caroline sit-com level jealous, tell me she’s more than a whiny bridezilla this season show please) and (since whatever has taken Damon and Enzo also killed everyone in the Armory) he’s taken over the Armory, which conveniently enough is full of magical treasure items perfect for careful curation by our very own Indiana Jones (if he’s not a little too modest to say so himself, it is kind of the perfect job/identity for Alaric, for sure).
Caroline is deeply invested in the girls, too, even though she isn’t their mother she was their birth surrogate, and vampires have such heightened emotions she got all caught up in the fantasy that almost seemed true. She and Alaric have moved on, but isn’t that really something she should do from Stefan, too? Still not feeling the passion there, but I guess when Elena chose Damon and Bonnie chose Enzo these two were left with each other.
Caroline does get a brief bout of superheroine finesse, vamp-racing to the rescue of the nanny, who is almost killed by the poor basket case Bonnie used last season to find the Amory in the first place. Caroline is at her best using her dark powers for good, and pretty soon the nanny is healed from a nasty neck-slitting, and the crazy woman is tied up and tortured for the truth until she bites out her own tongue!
What’s the secret that can’t be told? Who’s the cursed creature of whom we’ve only seen wizened hands grab our vampire heroes in dark caves? It seems that she’s a siren, and however they fit into our zoo-opticon of magical creatures, she’s a hungry, naked terror. I’m going to assume it’s kind of like Glorianus in Buffy Season 5, the threat she couldn’t defeat because whatever Buffy was, Glory was times 10 of that. I’m going to be okay with that, because Season 5 was Buffy’s best, but we’ve been down the road of biggest bad ever before. Usually they peter out, or get their own shows. And female demons can be as compellingly selfish as Katherine, as petty and childish as Rebekah, as lonely as Nadya, as batshit crazy as Tessa, or as angry at her fate as Rayna, ad infinitum. Which type this is, and who’s equipped to fight her, it’s too early to tell.
The best part of the episode is the knowledge that both Damon and Enzo are fighting her mind control, slightly. Bonnie has no powers, but Enzo is sending her quite clever clues as to the nature of their foes (of course using the dead bodies of her victims to do it). Damon, meanwhile, has “flipped his switch,” which means he’s an emotionless rage monster, if that makes sense. He’s your worst nightmare, but he doesn’t care if it’s you or someone else he destroys.
Except, even he has a sacred grove in his head where he goes to find Elena for comfort. Hint hint, Nina Dobrev, we need you to at least stop by for a visit in this final, truncated season.