The Vampire Dairies 8.11 “You Made a Choice to be Good”

Arcadias has arrived, and he’s extremely unpleasant. He’s the driving force behind this uneven, unpredictable episode, which I suppose stands as the perfect distillation of this rocky (but fitfully entertaining) final season. He has entirely too much power, and he’s both crueler and less selfish than his incinerated sirens. He’s on a mission (even if it’s one we don’t quite understand), based in part on a righteous vengeance against the evil (or morally unsteady).

How can our defensive band of myopic vampires and friends work up a defense against him? His deal is not where their usual focus lies. When Caroline learns everyone is threatened at a public event to open a Founders’ time capsule (who thought that would be a good idea?), she gathers them at the grill ostensibly to protect them. But as neither she nor we can fight Arcadias (as Damon learns, he’s impervious to fire and heart-extraction), she really just gathers a heard for potential slaughter. And so Matt can whine at her about being a vampire (and refusing to drink her protective blood). Choose a side, Matt! There is a nice scene between she and Dorian, as he explains his personal inspirations for investigating the supernatural (he’s seen his sister’s ghost).

Bonnie and Enzo continue their lovefest, taking it on the road as she challenges him to get in his bucket list (which involves racecar driving and skydiving, another centuries-old little boy) before taking the cure and losing that helpful vampiric immortality. But things get weird when we find out it’s not an aimless road trip, but that they’re aiming for Bonnie’s secret hideaway in upstate New York (which she bought with money inherited from her dad). It’s a good place to stash the bell of doom, and also it’s where she’s moved Elena’s coffin!

Bonnie is acting for Bonnie, at last, while also helping everyone, as she has found the happiness she has long deserved (she has literally died for these people, recall, and lost almost all her family, though her mom might be somewhere sucking blood I think still). So of course, Stefan has to show up to screw it all up.

Yes, while newly emotional Damon is struggling to do good, Stefan is happy as can be to stay on the killing spree, and when Cade frees him from the Salvatore dungeon, he heads immediately for Bonnie’s hideaway (Cade is telepathic, basically just a very fancy witch). Where he plans to kill Elena once and for all (what a sore loser), and does kill Enzo (for no reason, just meanness) as he compels the realtor to sign Bonnie’s house over to herself and invite him in, thus losing the protection Bonnie should have been guaranteed. I call complete shenanigans on this, by the way, vampires cannot just steal houses with living legal owners.

The only spark of hope here is that Bonnie’s rageful despair seems to have turned her magic back on. May she use it to make them all pay, and that includes killing Stefan at this point. Well, she comes close, because she stabbed him with the vial of Cure blood she extracted from Sleeping Elena. And we all know how bad Stefan is at being human.