“Black Hole Sun”
Okay, this episode was going to get my sympathy, because Stefan was still mourning Ivy’s death-by-Enzo, which was a lot of attention to pay to a lowly human for like two whole weeks! It also fit in with my idea of the deeper themes of love and loss of this season. But then she came back as a vampire, which is so “of course” I can’t even.
So instead this episode was a tale of brotherly bonding and betrayal, as Damon was really an a**hole in Real 1994 (killing his own distant nephew among others and his pregnant wife), annoyed at Stefan yet again trying to go straight and run a boarding house for (doomed) friends and family.
And Tripp has Enzo captured, not killed. And Alaric is more fucked up than Jeremy by loss, but is at least owning it (and doing the only thing he knows how to do, which is train vampire hunters even though he is now an uber-vampire). And Kai isn’t a witch, but some kind of anti-witch power-drain, because, again, of course. All fine, but I don’t love the flashbacks, or Damon being unrepentant.
“The World Has Turned and Left Me Here”
(Sorry, personal issues require playing catchup this week).
This, however, totally rocked from start to finish, because so much new information! Elena is getting serious about being a med student! Stefan is so weirded out by Damon’s death that he’s more annoyed by Elena’s attempt to erase their memory than he is able to see his opportunity (move on in, bro, or is she no longer the love of your life?). Caroline, when Ivy is dropped in her lap, is forced to deal with the fact that she and Ivy both love asshole brooding Stefan, poor girls.
But best of all, it’s Halloween, and this year that means bloody girls running through a corn maze, for funsies! This town! Obviously nothing can go wrong there, for sure!
Meanwhile, in Parallel 1994, Bonnie and Damon continue to bond, which is deeply adorable. She realizes he’s been making pancakes because he feels bad about what he did to his niece-in-law (who liked them). And we realize she is Sara’s mom, who somehow survived being C-sectioned at only 6 months and now is back in town for revenge, or just because Jeremy is so hot?
Bonnie rules that Damon is redeemable, unlike Kai, who killed his whole coven and doesn’t actually know how to use the McGuffin of dimensional travel. So Bonnie just kills him with a telekinetic pick-axe to the chest! Wow! Dead Again Bonnie is freaking hardcore.
Upshot, Damon gets back to the land of the living, Bonnie doesn’t (but now he owes her and he knows it), and the first person who finds him is Stefan, who is just devastated (in a good way). It’s a deep emotional moment for the two, and the actors are up to it.
Meanwhile, through a long chain of causality, Tyler accidentally plows through the corn maize in his truck, nearly killing several people, forcing Elena and Cute Brag and Dr. Mysterious and Alaric to all do different heroic things to save everyone, or else Tyler wolfs out again. Which Liv can’t allow (not wanting to deal with all the dog hair in her pad is my guess), so she goes all Giles on his last victim (who is also partly Ivy’s victim, so like he actually had three different life threatening accidents in succession, poor sap) and prevents the curse by sorta torpedoing their first date. Awkward!