Last night’s Vampire
Diaries romp was the show’s 100th episode, and it felt sort of like a
party, with everybody coming back for cameos. But also like a summation of what
the show was about, and its three main ex-villains: Damon, Katherine and Klaus.
They all want to stop hating themselves, but we know that’s a bad idea.
Spoilers ahead…
There was remarkably little “plot” in last night’s
TVD, especially by this show’s standards. Mostly it was about Katherine
slowwwwwly dying — and the final “twist,” in which she takes over
Elena’s body, was telegraphed so early that I found myself screaming at the
television “TAKE OVER ELENA’S BODY ALREADY” after about half an hour.
But it was a chance to explore the guilt and horror that drives these three
villains, none of whom is a villain any more.
So let’s take the three baddies one by one.
Damon
Remember when Damon was the show’s main baddie? It was only
the first season, and it feels like a long time ago now. In any case, Damon has
done horrible terrible nasty things, and he tries to justify them in this
episode by blaming everything on Katherine, who can’t actually fight back. He
claims that she taught him to be a killer, and tricked him with her
“tomb” stunt so that he committed a ton of crimes trying to rescue
her.
It’s a very lopsided version of history in which Damon has
the willpower and self-respect of a sock monkey. It also depends heavily on
Katherine being an irredeemable monster, which is one reason why Damon is so
vehement in denying that she can be forgiven, and why he spends so much time
tormenting her with the worst possible version of her origin story in her dying
dreams.
Also, did you remember that Damon broke up with Elena in the
previous episode? I didn’t, because it’s clearly temporary and his reasons were
along the lines of “I’m bad, you deserve better,” because her brand
of mass murderer is better than his brand of mass murderer. Anyway, this time Stefan kind of goes to bat for
Damon — which is something new, I guess — and tells Elena that she shouldn’t
give up on Damon any more than she ever gave up on him. Damon, meanwhile,
realizes that he’s a dumbass.
I’m not honestly sure if Damon and Elena got back together
in this episode, but it’s moot since she’s now possessed.
Katherine
There are two narratives about Katherine being batted around
in this episode — either she’s a manipulative scoundrel, or she’s a
“survivor.” The episode suggests the key to her problems isn’t Klaus,
or the massacre of her family, but rather the fact that her newborn baby was
snatched out of her arms when she was a teenager. (And that baby is now her
vampire Traveler daughter Nadya.)
Is it Katherine’s fault that Klaus massacred her family
after she ran away rather than be sacrificed in Klaus’ ritual? Only if you
blame everyone who doesn’t choose to die meekly on this show — it was Klaus’
choice to massacre Katherine’s family, not Katherine’s. Damon makes a big point
of rubbing Katherine’s nose in the bloody murder of her family, and later
Stefan makes a big point of erasing the blood and corpses in her dream, as if a
bit of Lysol will fix everything.
The real problem with Katherine, honestly, isn’t that she’s
kind of evil — everybody on this show is — it’s that her only motivation has always
been “survival,” which is nebulous.
Still, the moment where Katherine tells Nadya to go live her
life and stop living for her mother is kind of awesome — and it might actually
have been kind of nice if Katherine had just allowed herself to die, having
grown as a person or something.
It’s not clear whether Katherine is at all sincere about her
readiness to die and let Nadya go on with her life, or if they’ve already
hatched the plan to steal Elena’s body and she’s just play-acting. The episode seems
to suggest that Katherine is ready to die until Stefan and Elena convince her
she’s not completely beyond forgiveness, and release her from some of her
guilt. And then, realizing that she’s not totally a terrible person after all,
she feels free to steal Elena’s body and keep going.
Klaus
And finally, Klaus puts in an appearance fresh from The
Originals — but much like Captain Jack reappearing on Doctor Who after being
on Torchwood, he’s kind of a different character. Instead of ranting about
power and becoming king of the Crescent
City and his hybrid baby
and witches, he’s back to being charmingly obsessed with Caroline. Which, who
can blame him?
Klaus, too, takes a step towards acceptance, by getting Caroline
to admit that a part of herself is kind of evil too, and that part is drawn to
Klaus. He promises to leave and never return if she just admits that she kind
of digs Klaus and evil is hot. She admits it, and then — partly because Caroline
feels left out when everybody else is having ill-advised sex — she and Klaus
boink.
That’s the final take-away message of this episode. Evil
people, like these three former baddies, shouldn’t stop hating themselves. Both
because letting go of their self-hatred frees them up to go and do more evil stuff,
unencumbered by guilt. And because self-loathing is sexay.
GIF via Just TVD Things
