bringing out the dead
TILL ER SOM ORKAR LÄSA
Though we’ve known since the beginning of this series that family is important in Mystic Falls, Bringing Out the Dead was an ode to family — in all its messed-up glory. For better or worse, these bonds tie together these characters, across the centuries, but the “family above all” credo raises the question: do you punish sins/crimes perpetrated by family against family or forgive the unforgivable? Whatever the final decision is, in the meantime, at least have a vampire-speed fist fight. Or two.
Family Reunion: How else to describe Elijah’s return than ‘delightful’? Everything about it — from the opening scene to his rendezvous with Damon to the Salvatores’ uncertainty of whether they could trust him to the final reveal — was pure Elijah goodness. He may have a new haircut, but he’s still our original Original. His plot is to exact revenge on his brother is not too far from Stefan’s: take away Klaus’s family. Despite treating them rather poorly, the thing Klaus cares most about is his family, and the threat of being left alone, abandoned by his siblings, for an eternity is a nightmare to Klaus, and Elijah knowingly tells him that to hunt them down would simply turn him into his hated father. As far as revenge plots go, it’s a good one. The Original siblings are all reunited again (save for the poor little dead ones, RIP) — but wait there’s more! There is a lot of explaining to do regarding Esther and the 1,000 years she was locked in a coffin (and presumably moved from one coffin to another, as her current holding cell was rather modern), but the upshot is: she’s alive again and she puts family above all. Instead of punishing Klaus, she forgives him for killing her. A family torn apart a thousand years ago is now giving it another shot. Cannot wait to see this — or to get to know Finn or Kol a little better. What is it about Kol that makes Klaus so reluctant to undagger him?
The Original Petrova: Thanks to a little walk down memory lane, we now know a little bit more about the originator of the Petrova line — Tatia. Unsurprisingly, both Elijah and Klaus were in love with her, and feuded over her. While I will certainly welcome a flashback to all that brother feuding, it was this detail that piqued my interest: it was Tatia’s blood that they consumed in wine before becoming vampires. Does that mean that Tatia had already been turned into a vampire by Esther, and it was her vampire blood in their system that allowed them to return to life? Or did things work differently the first time vampires were created? Is Tatia still alive? We clearly didn’t get the whole story, but it sounded like the battle over Tatia waged even after the boys had become vampires and that would explain the rather specific mention of Tatia having a child before this whole vampire business came about. It also speaks to the wackiness of Esther: she seems a little unassuming, but this is a powerful witch who has made some extremely questionable choices in her lifetime that put what she perceives as her children’s best interests above all else — like, for example, the balance of the natural world. What will she get up to now? If I were Elena, I’d watch my back around that lady.
And speaking of the lovely Elena, our heroine’s future happiness is once again the subject of some debate. At the endlessly entertaining dinner party, the pairs of brothers find their common ground: the allure of the Petrova. And like a good villain who speaks the truth, Klaus is exactly right about the danger the boys pose to her and the delusion they’re under that they are the one to protect her. The life Klaus sketches out for Elena (“Matt Donovan? Really?”) is probably closest to what Elena once pictured for herself. But, of course, Elena just held a funeral for that old self: whether or not she still wants a happy Mystic Falls family is not for a group of men to determine at an old-fashioned vampire sit-down, any more than it’s up to Caroline to make her father’s choice to live or die for him. As Elena says — in a moment that had a lot of people rolling their eyes at her hypocrisy — choice is all Bill Forbes has left. To defend Ms. Gilbert for a moment, she knew that taking away Jeremy’s will power was wrong, and she lives with having done the wrong thing to protect someone she couldn’t bear to see hurt (again). So when she says choice is all Caroline’s dad has, it’s not from a haughty moral high ground but from a place of regretting doing wrong against her family. (In my opinion.)
And farewell to Bill Forbes… I know this is a vampire show, so talking about realistic choices may seem slightly absurd, but what has made The Vampire Diaries work is how human and grounded the characters are. Their choices are flawed and human, and well, for me, Bill Forbes’ choice to end his life without a fight seems … unlikely. Do people really lay down and die at the prospect of turning into something they deem unnatural? Perhaps they do, it’s just so disappointing. Especially as it just leads to more heartbreak for Caroline. Is there no end to the trauma that Caroline will have to endure? Luckily for us, Candice Accola is more than up to the task. The quiet scene between Caroline and Elena on the porch was a highlight for me. Though her dad says that being human is all about the cycle of life, a parent dying before their child, I’d say that earlier moment speaks more to it: Elena and Matt and Caroline aren’t family but they are united through thick and thin, supporting each other through the worst despite any messy personal history. And it’s that same bond that we see between Alaric and Elena, made family through the strangest of circumstance, but now intrinsically linked. And if that link can be built from nothing, can it be healed once broken? That’s the question Bonnie’s wondering about as she pushes her mom to try. That blood-knot spell was more than a little symbolic, especially once the coffin’s contents were opened to reveal not the destroyer of Klaus, but his creator.
But as much as this episode was about family, that old chestnut — the love triangle — wasn’t forgotten. In a breakthrough moment for Stefan, who’s been denying he has feelings for so long, he actually says out loud what we all already know: he loves Elena. And Damon does too. Will these boys come to the same conclusion that Elijah and Klaus seemed to centuries ago — that the bond of brotherhood should trump the love they share for Elena? It’s so wonderfully complicated.
