Posted by Crissy Calhoun | April 24, 2011, 11:50 (EST) | 120 Comments
Category: TV Series
Amazing. Klaus pulled the rug out from under us and instead of feeling cheated by the massive mythology fakeout, I’m giddy with excitement at the revelations. Vee has done an excellent run-down of the mythology and its implications — and to say there is a lively discussion in the comments on that post would be as understated as saying I kind of have a crush on Elijah. Be sure to read it and chime in with your thoughts.
As much as the episode sent us reeling with the information on the Original family, Klaus, the purpose of the fake curse, and the content of the real one, it was totally brilliant (in my opinion) because it made those revelations in the way that The Vampire Diaries does when at its best: by elegantly tying together multiple storylines exploring the same themes — in this case betrayal, love, and respect — to feed the mythology into the dramatic conflict rather than overshadow the characters at the heart of the show.
In Klaus, Elena is making up for past mistakes. The resurrected Elijah does not blindly trust her and she must carefully rebuild her reputation as a person of honor in order for their agreement to work. Her word means nothing until she proves its value. Elena and Elijah need each other; the only way to defeat Klaus is together, sharing his knowledge and her resources. Because Elijah has a way to prevent her from dying in the sacrifice (who knows if that’s a not-die-at-all thing or a resurrection thing), the new plan (as far as I understand it) is to let Klaus go through with the sacrifice of the doppelgänger. While Klaus is transitioning into werewolf form, he will be at his most vulnerable — as we saw with Tyler, the first transformation is long and horribly painful — and in that weakened state Bonnie will be able to kill him using some of her borrowed dead-witch power but she won’t die in the process. Klaus dies; Elena and Bonnie live. How the vampire and werewolf also needed in the ritual fit in, or how Elena and Elijah will prevent them from dying, is not yet explained (assuming the vampire and werewolf are even still required). The other missing piece from the plan so far is how to deal with the two powerful witches, Maddox and Greta, who Klaus has on his side; presumably they won’t just stand aside as Bonnie kills Klaus. (There’s also that third mystery guy who helped bring Klaus’s body into the apartment; guessing he’s a compelled human since he’s not around in the final scene when Klaus is put back in his body.)
As Stefan says to Damon when he realizes the potential in what Elena’s done by pulling the dagger out, the only person who could get Elijah to help them kill Klaus is Elena. As the doppelgänger she is a valuable commodity, but more than that Elena knows how to gain a person’s trust and understands what’s important to Elijah. The story of his family reveals not only a wealth of juicy information but tells her how the bond between he and his brother was broken. Not only will that help her in the coming days in the showdown with Klaus, but there’s another set of brothers at arms over a doppelganger. The story of Klaus and Elijah brings Damon and Stefan’s current battle into perspective.
Though by no means identical, the two sets of brothers are paralleled in many ways in the episode from the major details (divided over a doppelganger) to the minor (in back-to-back scenes, women under their compulsion bring Damon and Klaus their morning coffee). In the flashbacks, the stoic Elijah is revealed to be the brother with more heart than Klaus, who cares about the fate of a human and who still has the capacity to love. Though he tells Katerina he does not believe in love, he cares for her and he loves his brother enough to help him break the curse, despite his misgivings about a person dying for his brother’s gain. In the present day, Stefan is disturbed by Damon’s treatment of Andie like an object to be used as his will dictates, rather than a human being deserving of respect. Damon rejects the idea that Elena could figure out a way to handle the Klaus situation herself: he refuses to respect her choice and tries to physically restrain her from returning to Elijah. Damon’s anger with his brother grows as Stefan stands in his way, not letting him act the way that we see Klaus does. Klaus’s willfulness and disregard for anything but his own rules could be seen as a cautionary tale — who Damon could become in 900 years should he continue with his disregard for “collateral damage” and his belief that his plan is necessarily “better.”
The critical difference between Klaus and Damon is their motivation. Though Damon is currently more than a little unbalanced, he’s still driven by love — he wants to save Elena to prove himself to her. Klaus, on the other hand, has forsaken love “lifetimes ago,” calling it a “vampire’s greatest weakness.” And as much as that characterization has been proven true time and again on this show, it is also what makes a vampire’s eternity worth living. As a rosy-cheeked Katerina says to Elijah, “Life is too cruel. If we cease to believe in love, why would we want to live?”
Rejected by his brother for his perceived betrayal — Elijah was never actually disloyal to Klaus — Elijah has forsaken his love for Klaus (whether or not he’s still close with the rest of his family is a mystery), and the purpose in his life seems to be killing his brother before his brother kills him. He says to Elena that he won’t make the mistake of caring about a doppelganger again (but I, for one, am fervently hoping that he does). He feels betrayed by Katerina’s actions in 1492. Klaus also calls her actions a betrayal. But aren’t Klaus and Elijah the ones who betrayed Katerina? From what we know of the story, they befriended her under false pretences and then revealed their intention to kill her for Klaus’s personal gain. So she hightailed it out of there — she didn’t do anything wrong. Klaus is vengeful because she messed up their evil plan, and Elijah blaming Katerina for the state of his relationship with Klaus is as unfair as if Stefan were to blame Elena for Damon being angry with him. (Katerina taking advantage of Trevor’s affection for her to ensure her own survival, which ultimately resulted in his decapitation… that counts as betrayal, I’d wager.) Katerina never agreed to the terms of her enslavement, so she was never disloyal to Klaus or Elijah. She didn’t break the bonds of trust between them: they did.
The trust between Jenna and Elena was already broken coming into this episode — they hadn’t spoken since Jenna found out about Isobel — and after the existence of vampires has been kept from Jenna for so long, she finds out in perhaps the worst way possible. But I’m so glad she finally knows. Elena freely admits that she should have told her the truth and that this mistake is hers. I’m dying to see how Jenna will react once she gets over the shock of her sorta-boyfriend wielding a knife, Stefan vamping out, the fact that she’s the only one who didn’t know, and the sheer volume of supernatural secrets unloaded on her in one go. This moment has been a long time coming, and hat’s off to Sara Canning for portraying this crucial point in Jenna’s arc with such honesty and so many heartbreaking tears.
Part of what makes Elena’s decision to lie to Jenna a betrayal is the lack of respect it shows for Jenna’s right to know the truth and for her right to make her own decisions. It’s the same issue that Stefan tries to get his brother to recognize when Damon wants to overrule Elena’s choices. And, on a massive scale, it’s what is completely disturbing about Damon’s relationship with Andie. He’s taken away her fear and along with it her self-determination and willpower; she really is his plaything, less than a person to him. And he knows it. When Andie says she cares about him, Damon knows that if she were able to evaluate the situation with all of her faculties, she wouldn’t be hanging around his bedroom in her lingerie to comfort him. It’s not the kind of connection Damon wants or needs; remember back in Fool Me Once what he says to Elena about their trip to Georgia — he didn’t compel her because he wanted their connection to be real. Being with Andie is an empty distraction, not a replacement for true requited love. Damon brings Andie, the battered girlfriend, to Katherine, another prisoner, to see if Katherine’s “deserving” of freedom; it’s twisted that Andie who also needs vervain to prevent further compulsion and escape her captor doesn’t seem to want any. So while I think Damon’s relationship with Andie is a fascinating and dark turn for his character that complicates him and the dynamic between him, Stefan and Elena, let’s all be clear about something: what Damon’s doing to Andie ain’t right and in the real world it would be criminal.
Stefan condemns how his brother treats Andie, and in their final altercation he hits Damon with what really matters to him: Damon may love Elena, but by behaving the way he does, Damon is actually ruining any chance he has with her. She won’t respect a person who treats someone like Damon treats Andie and she doesn’t respect someone who doesn’t return that respect. Damon’s violent reaction is fueled not only by the fact that his brother has been pissing him off all day by not letting him do things his way but because when Stefan says Damon will never have Elena’s respect, he fears that it’s the truth. The episode ends with Damon in tears, blood dripping from his chin — will he come around like Stefan rather hopefully tells Elijah? Or is the possibility of failing to be the one to save Elena enough to send him even further off the deep end? Does Damon believe, as Katerina once did, that love is not real unless it is returned?
Did I leave anything out? Just that little issue of Klaus and his plan to create a hybrid race so much more powerful than any existing creature that it’s virtually (or actually?) indestructible. With only three episodes left in the season, it won’t be long until we learn which brother will emerge victorious and if any of our beloved characters will be lost in the wake of the battle.
Compelling Moment: Stefan and Damon at each other’s throats and Elena’s command to stop obeyed in an instant.
The Rules: A vampire inside a residence he hasn’t been invited into feels as though he’s suffocating; other side effects include disorientation, slamming into walls, and contortions. An Original can’t be killed any of the usual ways (by sunlight, fire, or a werewolf bite); the only ways to kill an Original are with the dagger and ash or by a powerful enough witch. Klaus, as a vampire-werewolf hybrid, cannot be killed by the dagger and ash — that weapon would harm the vampire part of him, but the werewolf part would heal — so the only way to kill Klaus is by a witch with enough power. In order to maintain the balance in nature, every creature must have a weakness; a truly immortal being cannot exist; witches are the “servants of nature” tasked with maintaining that balance.
Foggy Moments:
- Where is Uncle John?
- While planting fake artifacts about the curse across centuries and cultures is a genius way to get vampires and werewolves looking for the doppelgänger and moonstone, how could Klaus be assured that he would be informed when the necessities for the sacrifice were discovered? Particularly if a werewolf had them since Klaus is, presumably, on the vampire side of the age-old war, at least for now.
- How did Trevor know that Katerina was a doppelgänger? Did Klaus use his mad artistic skills to make a portrait of the Original Petrova?
- Now that we know what the real curse is, the rationale behind Klaus killing Katerina’s entire family makes less sense to me. When it was the Sun and Moon curse, killing off the Petrova line killed the possibility of another doppelgänger —meaning no one could break the curse, which didn’t put Klaus at any disadvantage. He got to exact vengeance on Katerina in a way we now know has personal resonance (since his birth father and his family were killed by his vengeful stepdad). But when it’s a curse that only affects him, does it make sense that Klaus would destroy the odds of there being another Petrova doppelganger? Didn’t he shoot himself in the foot? Or did he know about Katerina’s “secret shame”?
- As Vee raised in her mythology post, in the flashback to 1492, Klaus and company were still in England the day before the full moon but in order to do the sacrifice they had to be in the birthplace of the doppelgänger, Bulgaria. How did they plan on getting there in time?
- In the flashback, Elijah says to Klaus, the witches “believe” they found a way to save the doppelgänger — should we be concerned about that word choice or does Elijah have a surefire way of Elena surviving the sacrifice?
- How did Klaus’s body get into Alaric’s apartment without an invitation? When he emerges from his traveling case, he doesn’t seem to be suffocating the same way Elijah was. Is he about to start gasping? Or is he okay because as a vamp-were hybrid, even with one side dormant, the threshold rule doesn’t apply to him? Or is it because . . . Alaric is dead? (I don’t think he is. He better not be.)
Other thoughts & questions as we await the portentously titled episode The Last Day (EP220):
- Elijah asks Elena where she got the dagger. Where did the dagger originally come from? Katherine and Isobel were working together and provided it to John. But where did it come from before that? Did Katherine have it stashed away somewhere or did Klaus provide it to Isobel in an effort to have Elijah killed?
- It is kind of hilarious that while freaking out Jenna, AlariKlaus actually made her and Stefan lunch. Original multi-tasker.
- It was pretty rich of Damon to scold Katherine for double-crossing them with Isobel while he’s in the midst of going rogue and breaking away from the team himself.
- Who knows what the real curse is? Does Katherine? Did Trevor or Rose? Do Klaus’s witches or did the late Martin witches? My personal guess is that it’s a closely guarded secret that very few outside of the Original Family know.
- Rose said that Katerina was the first Petrova doppelgänger — was she? Now that we know Klaus has been trying to break the curse for 1,000 years (not the 600 of the Sun and Moon curse), is it possible that there was a doppelgänger in the 500 years before Kat?
- What is the rest of the Original family up to? Are they on Elijah’s side or Klaus’s or neither? Does the tension between Klaus and Elijah’s father still exist?
- Elijah is rather confident about how one can and cannot kill an Original. Has one of the family members already been killed? Is that how they knew to burn the tree?
- Klaus mentions to Katherine that he has the moonstone and the doppelgänger is standing by. He has Maddox and Greta to perform the magic. Who will be chosen as his werewolf and vampire also needed for the sacrifice?
- How did Klaus get to be the brother in charge? Is it because he’s a hybrid? Hated by Papa Original, you’d think his status would render him the Cinderella of the family, not the most powerful.
- Petrova dance party! Except for the threat of being paralyzed or killed by her, hanging out with Katherine would be a flipping helluva good time.
So much to discuss! What did you think of Klaus?
Crissy Calhoun is the author of Love You to Death: The Unofficial Companion to The Vampire Diaries and is writing a follow-up book that covers season 2 (due out in September 2011). When not obsessively re-watching CW shows, she works as managing editor at ECW Press in Toronto. She blogs on TVD, Gossip Girl, and other random things at crissycalhoun.com and tweets @crissycalhoun.
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