The Mikkaelson family
has all been trapped in a magical fascilime of their house. It’s full of
memories because Klaus goes the extra mile with a super super super angsty
voice over
And it is the whole
family because Kol beams in (naked. Alas he doesn’t stay that way) and so does
Rebekkah. They’re quickly joined by Freya and Marcel so it’s a whole angsty
reunion
This could be one
hell of a reality show.
They know a witch is
messing with them and originally think it’s Vincent since he’s the only witch
who has been around their home long enough to be able to recreate it this way.
Except Marcel reveals it’s actually Hope who did this - and she dumped him in
there as well when he tried to stop her. Her plan is to put all her family into
comas and then pull out the magical darkness that keeps them separate
Flashback: remember
the last season with a weird Native American demon girl who was trying to
possess Hope for all the evil power. They solved this problem by splitting the
Darkness between the whole Mikkaelson family so they could all go their
separate ways.
Well last week Hope
was determined to make “Always and Forever” (family drama, always and forever”)
real again. Despite it being such a very very very bad idea. So she’s taking
all that darkness back, which is a really really really really, oh dear gods,
really bad idea. The whole of the last season was about stopping this bad idea.
Kol also realises
that Hope had help -because one of the rooms in the dream house didn’t actually
exist for the last 100 years so Hope couldn’t have seen it. He accuses Freya
because he remembers once taking her to that room (wait, wasn’t Freya a
prisoner of their evil aunt and the rest basically forgot she existed until
about 3 years ago?)
Anyway turns out
Freya is helping Hope because she promised and also because she doesn’t think
the whole “you lot need to stay apart” thing is ever actually going to happen.
Ever. Because they’re all just so completely co-dependent that they’re
absolutely incapable of staying apart even if they will literally kill every
first born in the city. And finally, since Hope has just lost her mother she
can’t possibly lose her dad as well with this enforced magical separation and
become an orphan and possibly super emotional and likely to burn the city down
because she’s just that powerful and the Mikkaelsons just don’t deal with grief
or, well, emotions, in a sane and mature fashion. Ever.
Freya also savagely
points out she knows what’s best for Hope, not Klaus, despite his angry demands
that his father-ness gives him the power, because he hasn’t been around due to
a) curse and b) that time Hope saw him murder people and he decided it was best
to freeze her out of his life because he’s just too much of depraved monster
angst angst cry angst murder angst cry murder.
Freya leaves him to
that and zaps out
So, back to the
mystical prison: there’s a door for them to leave but all of them have to find
a key to open it. Each of those keys is hidden somewhere significant to Hope
and the respective dad, uncle or aunt and will allow lots and lots and lots and
lots and oh my gods lots of angst from the most over-emotional family in the
world.
And along the way
various family members snipe at each other. Everyone kind of dumps on Elijah
for all the terrible stuff he’s done over the years: Kol because he killed
Davina, his child bride and yes that’s still creepy, Klaus because of Hayley,
Marcel because of all the things and generally it’s all dump on Elijah week.
Which is kind of right but also kind of unfair because they’re all terrible.
Kol also makes it
clear that this whole “Always and Forever” thing isn’t exactly his jam. Mainly
because he’s always been a kind of extra sibling they threw in without really
knowing what to do with him.
Further angst comes
when we poke Elijah’s desperate co-dependence with Klaus to the extent that
Amnesia Elijah even suggests he never loved Hayley but fixated on her because
it gave him an excuse to hang around and continue to obsess over his little
evil brother. And it’s not an entirely unlikely theory - even Rebekkah thinks
it might be true because Klaus didn’t split them up. As she is very very very
very well aware, Klaus has no truck with men looking at women he considers
“his”, and with Hayley being the mother of his child it’s frankly down right
weirdly out of character for Klaus NOT to try and drive a wedge between Elijah
and Hayley
This also has a huge
epic but woefully lacking in self-awareness rant from Klaus at how memory-loss
Elijah killed his supportive brother Elijah because Elijah was his constant,
the man who constantly tried to save him, constantly tried to make him better, tried
to make him WORTHY of being Hope’s father and Amensia Elijah took that from him
It’s actually kind of
impressive to see the emotion and pain from Klaus’s speech on how much Elijah
meant to him and how much he valued him: while at the same time screaming that
Elijah needs to run as fast and far away as he possibly can. Basically Klaus
shows both how much what Elijah did hurt him while also blatantly exposing WHY
ELIJAH HAD TO DO THIS!
We also get several
flashbacks of Klaus and Hayley thinking on Hope and how Klaus basically put her
on a big shiny pedestal of the redemption of his own family line which also
pretty much led to him abandoning Hope because his self-hatred is so epic that
he can’t possibly expose his daughter to his awfulness
Next angst! So Marcel
and Rebekkah dos-si-do back and forth for a some time before Rebekkah reveals,
again, that she really really wants to grow old and die for… reasons? She has
this really weird romanticism of what it means to grow old and die and I think
a lot could be explored about how she feels this way because she doesn’t
actually understand aging and death. As one of the, arguably, 6 most powerful
beings on the planet and having lived for roughly a thousand years and being
all but immortal barring a very very very few loopholes, the ideas death and
aging are pretty abstract concepts for her which allows her to romanticise
them.
Marcel challenges
this because rather than growing old and dying they get to witness centuries of
awesomeness as vampires. She sees this as a fundamental difference between them
- he chose vampirism while she is cursed by it. And she doesn’t want to be with
him because she loves him and fears her bitterness and sadness will infect him.
Because no-one angsts like a Mikkaelson. No-one. Ever. My gods these people
need therapy. Someone call Linda from Lucifer.
Yes, this is this
episode - while a Monsoon is squishing New Orleans and Hope is trying to summon
big demon awfulness into herself - we get the Mikkaelson siblings throwing
their best angst at each other
So eventually
everyone finds their keys in meaningful places: Kol’s is in a Shakespeare play
which basically gives Hope’s blessing for him to get the fuck away from every
relative because they’re all so out of it. Rebekkah’s key is in the letters she
and Marcel exchanged which I guess is a sort of nudge to auntie to get with
Marcel which she duly ignores. Klaus’s is in the letters Hope and Hayley sent
to him which he had returned unopened because Klays needs MOAR ANGST. And Elijah’s
is in a coffin full of snakes in the dungeon because Elijah is FUCKING DEAD TO
HER for Hayley’s death and she’s not even slightly subtle about expressing it
And because it’s dump
on Elijah week. He’s also getting increasingly emotional and kind of losing his
accent? I mean not in a
Kol-I’m-trying-to-be-English-but-the-Australian-keeps-peeking-through or even a
Klaus-I’m-not-actually-this-posh-in-real-life-because-no-Englishman-actually-talks-like-this
but there’s definitely some of his native accent coming through.
So they can escape
(but not before Hope finishes her shadow sucking spell) but into Elijah’s
tortured mind because Hope has added a proviso that Elijah doesn’t get to wake
up until he gets all his memories back and feels properly guilty about Hayley’s
death. Kol decides he is done with this shit. Marcel wakes up. Klaus is all
ready to abandon him to but Rebekkah slaps him with a big speech of hypocrisy
because the defining thing about the Originals is that they’re all so very very
very very terrible. Oh so terrible. Utterly terrible. I mean, really. But they
always forgive each other and bring their terribleness round again - and since
everyone’s forgiven Klaus for pretty much all the awful ever, so it’s Klaus’s
turn now.
So Klaus stays with
Elijah and helps him break down the door. They all wake up - and Elijah
promptly collapses in grief and angst because HAYLEY.
Klaus and he have a
silent moment with lots of emotion neither of them can give word to - but Klaus
gives him a vial of his blood to cure Antoinette and quasi permission to
basically run off with her and abandon them
Elijah heals
Antoinette - but her great fear is realised. Her 7 year relationship with him
cannot compete with 1,000 years of memory and an epic angsty love affair with
the dead Hayely. And, really, if you think any Original would embrace happiness
with a modern living lover as opposed to hanging on to someone/a concept that
makes them super sad and angsty then you have not been paying attention (no,
Davina and Kol don’t count. She died and was resurrected).
See also Rebekkah
leaving Marcel
Symbolically, Marcel
also dresses up in his super sharp suites and daylight ring showing him turning
his back to the Nazi vampire ideology AND returning to his suppressed “I’m here
to save Klaus because his redemption will redeem me and by focusing on his evil
I can avoid my own” that is the cornerstone of his existence
And Hope is asleep or
in a coma. It depends on whether Freya is downplaying things or Klaus is being
over-dramatic. He goes on to read all those return to sender letters so I’m
leaning in the “over-dramatic” direction.
