So, a conundrum. How
do you make your character the good guy when he’s Klaus Mikkaelson and inclined
to murder people for funsies? How do you end this, the final season of Originals
with Klaus as the hero?
Nazis
Nazis are the
ultimate bad guy, even Klaus can look good while covered in blood and entrails,
so long as they’re NAZI blood and entrails. Except the show also kind of wants
to have arguments and conflicting sides so suddenly you have previously
reasonable characters be sort of sympathetic to Nazis… and then because Klaus
always has to have the angst of inflicting his own misery we need to have a
tragic past inspiring the Nazis other than, y’know, being Nazis.
It’s all rickety to
say the least.
Ok, let’s go with
this. Klaus is now massacring Nazis and asking whether they have Hayley and
doing more massacring and he’s barely even bothering to ask questions it’s just
slaughter. Marcel’s kind of following Klaus around validating the Nazi
slaughter in case we needed it.
Anyway, Greta, influential vampire steps forwards to say “hey, I’m the Nazi and I have Hayley!”. She thought this was a good idea… somehow? She ends up being imprisoned and drained of blood and tortured so Klaus can get the vervain out of her system and then compel her. Why did she not expect this?
Her demands are they
use magic to bind Hope’s werewolfyness which was done to Klaus by Esther so she
can’t create Hybrids. Klaus is super against this because he loathes what was
done to him and he apparently suffered mightily because of this. It’s hard to
tell because staring moodily in apparent eternal artistic suffering is kind of
what Klaus does all the time. And Elijah. And Stefan. And Damon. Occasionally
Rebekah. Freya’s getting in there too
Ugh, this whole cast
needs like ALL the valium
Josh shows up to be
kind to Greta and encourage her to free Hayley, who is a good person, in
exchange for a level of compassion from Klaus which is just HILARIOUS. Of
course this where that whole Nazi thing gets in the way. Because if Greta were
just a normal vampire with, not unreasonable, concerns about hybrids and their
ability to kill them, especially after Poppy’s death then her fears are
reasonable and Josh comforting her, advocating for her and telling Marcel that
maybe he’d like to side with the vampires once in a great while doesn’t sound
bad. Except Nazis. Except Greta isn’t saying “hybrids are dangerous” but
“hybrids are polluting our pure blood line with their taint.” So suddenly we
have this reasonable nice guy - a gay latino man at that - being willing to go
to bat for race supremacists.
Yeaaah no.
But let’s have a big
flashback to how we got here. Way back in 1933 Germany Klaus was hanging around
with a guy called August who was all sort of bleak and mopey about Germany’s
malaise. He and Klaus talk art and generally disagree until Elijah shows up to
warn him that, hey, Mikael is on the way and this is back in the day when all
the Originals were running scared of their dad. Mikael has been attracted to
the area because a gazillion werewolves are being murdered. I’m not sure why
this attracts Mikael, but apparently it does.
August has been
killing werewolves en masse because of the whole racial purity thing and he’s
decided werewolves taint and, he’s a Nazi, logic doesn’t have to apply, we’re
just dragging real world bigotry and stamping the supernatural all over it.
In the past Klaus
wants to murder August but Elijah says he can’t do that as it will expose he’s
a hybrid and that will raise an army against him. Ok… except it didn’t? I mean
when Klaus was exposed as a hybrid in Vampire Diaries there was no
sudden uprising of people against Klaus. And why would people think this is why
Klaus kills August? Klaus doesn’t need reasons to kill people - he just kills
people. And what’s with Klaus’s sudden loyalty to werewolves? He is super upset
because people call werewolves mongrels which is like super super offensive to
him… but since when? We’ve seen Klaus for years now and he’s never given a shit
about werewolf insults. Or even keeping werewolves alive. This whole
characterisation has just come from nowhere
He also accuses
Elijah of not accepting him and not having his back for letting his mother bind
his werewolfyness and not being suitably psychotic whenever someone insults
werewolves. And Elijah is duly outraged because his entire life is devoted to
protecting and championing Klaus. Every damn waking moment. Even when he learns
that Klaus has daggered Rebekah.
Klaus decides to
murder August anyway and, because he likes to play games, her also decides to
murder everyone around him on sheer principle except for the one who picks up
the Nazi coin and asks for mercy. The person who picks it up is Greta -
August’s wife who Klaus completely fails to recognise, and her two children
(more on that later).
When Greta escapes,
mangling Josh in the process, Klaus reflects how a mistake this was: how by
publicly humiliating her and making her beg for mercy he gave her “shame” which
ensures eternal hatred. Which sounds all nice and personal which allows Klaus
to wallow in his angst and self-blame. Except, again, NAZIS. You can’t paint
Nazis as the poor misunderstood humiliated people having personal issues.
Marcel and Klaus also
have some ongoing issues with Marcel kind of agreeing with everything Klaus
wants and sort of apologising for going behind Klaus’s back while also being
sort of annoyed that Klaus still expects him to be subservient. While Klaus
acknowledges his temper means he’s kind of acting out and being an arsehole to
Marcel.
So, on to those
children: it turns out that August and Greta’s daughter was… Antoinette,
Elijah’s new love interest. And here was me thinking that Elijah was out of the
series. She reveals this to Elijah when she finds some photographer stalking
her, apparently the Nazis want her back. Elijah is super hella pissed that
she’s been lying to him, since they both knew each other in the past and the
whole nazi thing. She points out that she never actually supported her dad and
recounts the past when she told Elijah about her evil abusive Nazi father and
he helped her get out of the county using contacts he’d already set up. I think
the implication is Elijah had set up escape routes to get people out of Nazi
Germany and encouraged her to use one. This has them all patch it up but they
do decide to leave France together
While I think that,
on any other show, the coincidence of Elijah just happening to run into her is
a bit much....
Marcel did tell Freya
about Greta’s demand and she tells Hope - who is already showing off her super
strength and agility and talking casually about triggering her werewolf side
(Freya thinks Hayley wouldn’t want this because it’s super painful to
shapeshift. And no-one seems to care it will involve MURDERING SOMEONE.
Everyone on this series is awful). This adds extra angst when they hear the
demands because Hope thinks her mother doesn’t want her to be a werewolf
anyway. Add in that she doesn‘t want to be a freak because we all know how much
teenagers hate having super powers and she wants to go for the binding. Even if
it involves lots of blood and being branded with the moonstone which sounds
most unpleasant
Klaus steps in to
stop this because he’s not having Hope bidn a fundamental part of herself in
the same way he did even though he never seemed to care before. He runs off
with the moonstone so he kind of stop that being an option anyway. And with
Freya refusing to co-operate there’s no powerful witches in school to help
But don’t worry, new
love interest and guy who she has her first kiss with Roman helps her sneak out
of school. And Roman would be Greta’s other child. Yes Alaric and Caroline
allowed an 80-90 year old vampire Nazi to enroll in their school...
