Sunday, March 6, 2016

Vampire Diaries, Season 7, Episode 15: I Would For You



Rayna remains the big bad and we decide to have a moment of nudity for no apparent reason. Anyway she’s rampaging around looking for Stefan, capturing and questioning other vampires to find him and generally being obsessed

Which makes no sense. Rayna’s motivation, as has been made clear on more than one occasion and even repeated in this episode, is to rid the world of all vampires. All vampires. Stefan just happens to be the one vampire who got away… so why the obsession with him? Why go to a town that is literally crawling with vampires (like New Orleans and Mystic Falls, two places she has been and knows is full of vampires) and focus obsessively on ONE vampire? This makes no sense. It’s not even like Julian who she had a personal vendetta against. There’s no reason at all why Rayna would be so obsessed with Stefan. I call shenanigans on this motivation!

Anyway, Matt double crosses her and Damon arrives to kill her and capture her so he can take her away to a little pit and experiment on ways to actually kill her and make it stick

Cut to Bonnie who, along with Enzo (who she doesn’t trust but is happy to make many jokes about the hand she cut off) and Alex at the Armoury who is now trying to make nice and insist that all the naughty behaviour from Enzo was totally unsanctioned and the Armoury would never ever stoop so low.

Yeah, Bonnie isn’t buying it. To try and convince her, Alex gives her a guided tour of their Rayna exhibit including the desiccated shamans who died as a plot device so she could have her awesome resurrection powers. Turns out one of the preserved bodies desiccates every time she dies – she only has 8 rebirths.

And for the second time I’m calling shenanigans and “makes no sense”. Damon just killed Rayna. Last episode on The Originals Rayna just fought a whole room full of Stricks and apparently didn’t die once? She was casually killed with an arm flick by Klaus – AND has apparently had contact with the Originals before since Klaus knows about her. Don’t tell me that she has managed to only die 6 times in her long history, given we’ve seen her die about 4 times already! Shenanigans! Shenanigans have been called.

Anyway, Bonnie tells this to Damon who happily kills Raina again with a shotgun bringing her down to her last life – alas, we have another hitch. Turns out that when she dies for the last time, everyone she’s marked (Stefan) also dies. Personally I’d go ahead and kill her but obviously the show’s not going to have Damon do that. Alas.


Instead she ends up drugged and recaptured by the Armoury for however long they can hold on to her. Bonnie leaves – which annoys Alex because she also wants to add the last Bennett witch to her collection: which is duly ominous.

Still Rayna is temporarily out of the picture so Damon reports to Stefan. But Stefan is in full pout mode, not only can he and Valerie not find the herbs to keep him hidden, but Caroline doesn’t want to come travelling with him. She’s determined to stay with the babies and looking more and more domestic – leaving Stefan feeling more pouty. She wants him to live with her but he’s worried about the vampire killing Rayna getting free from the Armoury (again) and killing the babies because that’s apparently something he needs to worry about? Personally, I think he’s just addicted to martyrdom

It’s that same martyrdom he throws at Damon when Damon announces his plan to get himself a coffin next to Elena’s and desiccate until she wakes up and he can greet her with “I’m so utterly co-dependent I literally spent several decades in a coffin next to you waiting for you to wake up” which is apparently romantic and touching rather than REALLY REALLY CREEPY.

Stefan and Damon promptly have a matyr fight where each throws their Manpain at each other over this decision. Each wants to be the most self-sacrificing of them all and there’s lots of guilt which neither side has a right to inflict but in the end Damon insists

A far more touching and meaningful goodbye is Bonnie – who calls Damon her best friend and fiercely tells him that his decision will hurt her. Not that he’s abandoning her or not “how very dare you” or not “look what I did for you!” (which she has more right to than Stefan), but simply “you will see my genuine emotional reaction to your choice, not the one you would like me to have.”

Personally I think Bonnie is better off free of all of them, but hey we know she’s never going to see that.

Oh and Matt’s new hunter friend Penny confronts him about the whole helping Damon thing which leaves Matt in an awkward place of trying to explain good vampires to Penny when there’s no such thing and all his vampire friends are vampires who aren’t murdering RIGHT THIS MOMENT but probably will tomorrow. With this awkward conversation, Matt decides to confront Stefan and demand he get out of town or he’ll use his gathered video evidence to expose vampires

To which, for reasons unknown, Stefan doesn’t compel Matt into giving up the evidence and then kill him. WILL SOMEONE PLEASE KILL MATT?!


This brings us to the future (where Matt is, alas, still alive) and a recap of all those little clips that we’ve been seeing. Rayna is free, Stefan’s mark starts bleeding and he decides to resurrect Damon as a result. Rayna uses Caroline and Damon to lure Stefan out to his death and they finally confront each other for a deal: rather than kill Stefan, Rayna wants to transfer the mark from Stefan to Damon. Who deserves it more anyway. Oh and it’s Damon’s idea for +10 martyr points

AGAIN SHENANIGANS! Why doesn’t Rayna just KILL THEM BOTH which she’s quite capable of? Why does she care WHICH vampire she kills? For a woman who wants to kill all vampires she seems to be awfully picky about which ones she actually stabs


That’s just a few too many Shenanigans there.