This week, the game is on to kill Klaus once and for all. This being only the mid-season finale, we already know whatever complex plan the Mystic Falls kids have cooked up is going to fail – Klaus is far too fun a villain not to survive until at least the end of the series. The interest lies in seeing exactly how it’s going to fail – so here’s your handy eight-step guide to failing to kill the villain.
Step 1: the Setup
Stefan calls Klaus (who’s in Portland, Oregon, making hybrids – apparently the Pacific Northwest is werewolf country in many fictional universes) and tells him that Michael is out of the picture, stabbed with one of the oak-infused daggers. Given that Stefan is compelled to tell Klaus the truth, Michael has conveniently offered himself to be actually stabbed (by Elena, as the vampires can’t), but he’s keeping the location of the stake that can kill Klaus secret, to make sure that they’ll actually wake him up. Klaus is suspicious, of course, and asks to speak to Rebekah, who backs up everything Stefan says.
Step 2: Make your preparations
Elena pulls the dagger out of Michael, and Rebekah, painting her toenails, watches him until he wakes up, then tells him not to bother with “fatherly rubbish.” Michael tells her that Klaus killed her mother – and she says she knows, but it’s Michael who she holds responsible for them becoming killers.
You destroyed our family – not him.
Upstairs, Elena and Damon are in his bathroom, preparing wolfsbane and vervain bombs, and Elena warns Damon that Rebekah isn’t reliable. Damon already knows, and has a secret backup plan, one that he won’t tell Elena in case Stefan finds out. Stefan is more focused on picking a tie for the Homecoming dance, but even he knows that the plan is screwed if Klaus asks him the right questions. He’s confident, though; given that his “weakness,” i.e. his humanity, isn’t an issue any more, he thinks if someone messes up, it won’t be him.
Caroline and Tyler, who are not in on the plan, are busy prepping for Homecoming. There is a glitter gun involved, but Tyler is bored (philistine) and wants to “go grab a bite… a real bite.” Apparently Rebekah knows some fangbangers (not his word, but True Blood’s is perfect) so they don’t even have to compel anyone! Caroline is not down with this plan for two reasons: she’s only just got Mrs. Lockwood back on side after that whole kidnapping thing, and she considers Rebekah an “evil blood slut.” (NB: must use this phrase often.) Tyler thinks this is a great moment to tell her that he’s set Matt up as Rebekah’s Homecoming date.
Step 3: Remove uncertainties.
Back at the Salvatore house, Rebekah is ready for the dance in that fetching red dress Elena picked out under duress last week, and she confides that it’s her first high school dance. There’s a lovely girly bonding moment when Rebekah tells Elena that no one in her family can be trusted, and Elena gives Rebekah her mother’s magical indesdructable necklace back…
but the moment is somewhat spoiled when Elena stabs Rebekah in the back with the same dagger they used on Michael. Damon approves:
It’s very… Katherine of you.
But Elena feels guilty, and thinks that Stefan is right, and that her feelings will make her the weakest link in the plan.
Step 4: Roll with the punches.
The school gym is flooded, so the party moves to Tyler’s house, where Caroline is first jealous and then mystified by how Tyler arranged the change in venue so quickly, and who all the people at the party are. No one told Matt of the change in venue, so he shows up to collect Rebekah, and gets Elena instead. And on stage at the Lockwood’s, Klaus appears. Showing up in style, as usual.
Klaus asks Stefan where Rebekah is, but of course he doesn’t know, and then wants Stefan to bring him Michael’s body, and the stake. Stefan agrees – in return for his freedom from compulsion once he does what Klaus wants.
Michael is back at the Salvatore house, discussing the stake and why he only drinks from vampires, when Stefan shows up to tell them what Klaus wants. Michael drinks from him, tosses him by the fire, and heads off to the party with Damon.
Step 5: Take care of loose ends.
Klaus finally lets Tyler in on the plan: half the people at the party are Klaus’s new hybrids, and just like Tyler, they will do whatever Klaus wants. Klaus tells Tyler to warn his friends, so Tyler goes straight to Caroline and demands she tell him what she knows. She knows nothing, but he doesn’t believe her, and he stabs her in the neck with vervain then asks Matt to get her out of the house.
Damon has just gotten into the house (by ripping out the heart of the hybrid bouncer) and is promptly attacked by Tyler. Bonnie breaks them apart, but not before Damon has knocked him out. That’s Caroline and Tyler out of the game.
Step 6: Make an entrance.
Michael arrives at the house, heralded by one of the hybrids, but he can’t enter the house, and the only person who could have invited him in is Tyler. Oops. Klaus, of couse, has accounted for this, and sends all the hybrids out to cut off Michael’s retreat. Michael isn’t fazed; he had already compelled the hybrids, and he has Elena (whose blood Klaus needs to make more hybrids), and he’s perfectly happy to kill her. He wonders why Klaus is so anxious to live forever, when he has no allies and no family left on his side.
Step 7: Use your head, aim for the heart.
Klaus calls Michael’s bluff, and Michael duly stabs Elena (who is actually Katherine, as anyone who’s kept an eye on Nina Dobrev’s hairstyles will have twigged before now). Damon, inside the house, has the stake and stabs Klaus, but he doesn’t get it quite right. Stefan fights him off and Klaus grabs the stake, rushes outside, and stabs Michael, who bursts into flames.
So much for the Big Bad Vampire Vampire Slayer! Klaus, as promised, removes his compulsion from Stefan.
Step 8: Always be one step ahead.
Back at the Salvatore’s house, Damon thinks that now they have no chance of ever getting Stefan back. Elena says that if they can’t, they can’t. She’s holding his head between her hands and it’s getting a little chemical… but just then Damon’s phone rings; it’s Katherine, calling from her car to say goodbye. But of course, when Katherine’s in the car you can be sure she’s never alone, and sure enough, Stefan is in the passenger seat. And we get an explanation as to why Stefan defended Klaus: Klaus has arranged it so that if he dies, Damon dies too. Katherine made him care for three reasons: to save Damon; because she actually likes the old Stefan; and also because there’s something she needs him to do…
…which is to remove all those coffins from Klaus’s special truck and hide them somewhere else. Klaus is pissed.
Also, it seems this week has seen the end of Caroline and Tyler. Tyler prefers being a hybrid controlled by Klaus to being a werewolf controlled by the moon, obligations to Klaus notwithstanding:
Klaus can’t be killed, I can’t be fixed.
Caroline can’t be OK with his loyalty to someone who is The Enemy. So, no more Tylorine! No chance of vampire-werewolf-vampire babies. Sadface.
Questions I’m left pondering:
- Can hybrids breed? Do their reproductive organs take after vampires or werewolves?
- How, after the billionth time Katherine has pretended to be Elena or vice versa, have Elena’s friends not come up with some kind of password to check if Elena is really Elena? Hair is really not that reliable.
- Who else is in those coffins, anyway? We know one is Elijah, and both Klaus and Elijah have referred to the coffins as “family” but last week’s flashbacks showed us the Original Family: Michael, Esther, Elijah, Niklaus, Rebekah, and Henrik, and three of those are dead, two are daggered, and one is Klaus. Are we talking third cousins twice removed, or something a little more interesting?
TVD is taking a break until January, so we’ll be back then with more super-fun romangst, revenge, and backstabbing vampires. Literally.
Images c/o vampirediariesweb.com and ladymanson.com