Charmed: Season 1, Episode 10: Keep Calm and Harry On

Harry is in Tartarus, the prison where the demons lock up their own worst. A place where you are tortured over and over with your worst memories so you can feel guilty and…

...wait, what? This is a prison for demons that tortures said demons by making them feel guilty? Despite Alistair McEvilName making it clear that demons don’t feel? I mean, showing demons all the bad stuff they did should be more of a greatest hits reel than actual torture? This makes no sense, Charmed.

So Harry is being tortured with memories of when he was alive before he became a Whitelighter which included such terribad awful deeds as bank robbery. What’s interesting is I did see a fan theory that the Whitelighters were actually bad people used to do penance in the afterlife by serving - which is somewhat backed up by his memories here

And also by the Charmed Ones turning to Charity and the elders and having them say “yeah, fuck it”. Partly it’s because they don’t know how but it’s also clear, despite Charity’s personal opinions, Whitelighters just don’t register very highly on their priority meter.

Of course the Charmed Ones aren’t having this and have a tantrum but Charity is determined they stay on topic - Mel to investigate the Sarcana and Macy to discover why Parker’s evil demon dad wants to run her lab in the first place.

While Maggie is in her room grieving heavily over Parker, a boy she’s known for a few days, being a demon and it just HURST SO MUCH. Mel offers comfort by comparing Maggie’s short term crush to her long term relationship with Niko - who, it has to be noted, Mel mourned approximately a tenth as intensely and for far less time. So, yeah… look Charmed I  get that your writers had no clue what they were doing when they started this season and tried to force in a clumsy retcon within like 4 episodes to remove Niko so Mel could hook up with the dark and dangerous Sarcana lady, but the way this has been handled is not just incompetent but also carries some really bad impressions. The same-sex relationship, which should have been longer term, more intense and more important than either Macy/Galvin or Maggie/Parker (both relationships are very very new) instead comes off as massively more dismissive than either.

So Maggie, the Empath, is in a full funk so decides to use magic so she doesn’t feel anything and my eyes are rolling so hard I have friction burns. I’m going to do my best to ignore Maggie and her drama

Macy now has to deal with Galvin who knows all about magic and, since they have no Whitelighter they can’t do the whole memory erase thing. But it’s fine because Galvin is totally cool with the whole witch thing and finds Macy’s magic fun and fascinating. Which I kind of like - I like the idea of people being intrigued and interested and even seeing the coolness factor of magic rather than, as is the usual trope, freaking out and hiding under the bed. What I’m less thrilled by is him putting this down to his grandmother being a Yoruba worshipper - because Yoruba is an actual religion and it seems more than a little exoticising; especially by linking magic directly to the predominantly Black people’s religion rather than putting it alongside.

She recruits him into investigating the company they work for, providing support, quick cover for why they’re there and generally being a great partner in crime and getting super close. So Macy drops the bombshell that she’s a virgin and Galvin is completely speechless and stunned about this way more than he was about her being a witch and my these people take virginity SUPER SERIOUSLY?! This causes a brief blip and them having to have a talk and Macy explaining that just because she’s a virgin now doesn’t mean she wants to be a virgin forever (which… ok? Do people need this explaining?) and Galvin somehow NOT seeing that line as a not-remotely-subtle-come-on hint.

They do discover that the evil company has been up to shenanigans trying to turn human DNA demon - though i don’t think this is nefarious so much as an attempt to heal Parker. They also find the company has run all the Charmed One’s DNA - and the results are weird. While Macy is the half-sister, the results point to Macy and Maggie being full sibling while Mel is the one with a different father

DUMDUMDUM have we ruled out someone mislabelling bottles? Have we considered that? No? Ok, we’re not going there? Ok. Back to the DUMDUMDUM!

Z Nation: Season 5, Episode 13: End of Everything

It is the season finale of Z Nation and, sadly, the utter finale of Z Nation though I have a lot of thoughts on that to digest in the Requiem

Sun Mei died last episode and her brains have been passed on to Red to keep safe. Which she does. All episode. Bye Red, do you want a cushion for that plot box?

George is having one of her moments of struggle and doubt, struggle over what everyone has had to endure for Altura, if what it will achieve will be worth it or even be possible. If they are good enough for Altura and if she can keep going. This is an excellent emotional moment and perfect for George because she’s just endured torture. That should leave a mark - that should leave psychological marks. That should take some time to recover from it. And of course Warren gives her an excellent pep talk

Which… I get because Warren is a leader but at the same time Warren being George’s crutch has happened for far too long.

The bad guys continues being evil with Estes being all paranoid and Pandora using lots of sexiness to fight back. Including in front of Sun Mei’s corpse. Classy.

He has gathered all his militia and all his volunteers to send them to the staging ground identified by George… Pandora is so very very sure that she broke George

She is wrong… there isn’t an army of Talkers there. There’s 10k, Doc, Addie and Murphy all having awesome little character moments earlier. But now there’s Doc with a loud speaker making gun noises drawing them all in. And then 10k looking on, from a distance. Now, what can one sniper, even one as ridiculously good as 10k do against an army?

Weeellll, this is the apocalypse. And the show has belatedly remembered the real enemy out there isn’t Talkers or humans - it’s zombies. And how one human dead turns into a biting infectious zombie and how one sniper taking out 4 or 5 men in a tightly packed group can pretty much kill them all

I would think that this would cause 10k, Doc or George a little consternation? I mean they just caused a not-small massacre: that was Altura’s entire militia and a number of volunteers. That’s got to be a significant percentage of the population killed.

Estes and Pandora have a freak out over their entire army being destroyed when Addie and Murphy arrive with a lot of conscious Talkers… all here and ready to vote. With sympathisers at every gate to to let in more Talkers. See it’s election day and Estes expected all of the Talkers not to be there so the paranoid living humans could then vote for security and his Supreme Leaderness. Except the problem with no real alternative and, at the same time, threat of bombing means most the humans have stayed at home. Curse those low turn outs, scourge of democracies and dictators who are doing dictatorship wrong.

Now with lots of Talkers flooding in they can all cast ballots (because Estes has still left peace justice democracy and a constitution on the ballot?) and the living who were willing to see their loved ones kicked out decided to… just let the Talkers in now? Apparently?

Anyway, this is happening

Meanwhile Estes and Pandora run away chased by the good guys and Cooper is here! Yes, Warren’s sort of love interest from the beginning of the series. He’s here to remind Warren that he loves her and… put a pin in that Cooper, currently saving the world, ‘kay

But for reasons Murphy is going to stay and glare at him so Warren and George can go on to their big confrontation on their own. This involves confronting Estes and he doing the proper supervillain thing and explaining his big bad plan

So he has to kill the Talkers because they eat Lithium to stay “alive” and eventually they will run out (Sun Mei’s quote aside) and eventually they’ll have to kill them all. Which would sort of have a plan except we’ve already seen that zombie brains can feed Talkers, there’s a load of zombies and it take relatively tiny amounts of brains to keep them human. And hey if you have to kill them all you could wait until they’re mindless monsters rather than… well… jump the gun? Also I seriously doubt his estimate of how much lithium there is in the country because… yeah, there’s a lot more than what they’ve found. It’s not that rare.

Perhaps recognising that “kill them now so we don’t have to MAYBE kill them later” is a dubious motivation the writers have a second motivation for him- the planet. See to keep Altura working and being eco-friendly, they need solar power and batteries to work when the sun is down and these batteries need to made from Lithium so we can’t possibly feed them to Talkers - we have to annihilate all the Talkers so we can run a green economy! Yes to granola! No to fragile loved ones!

Um…

Ok, look, I greatly praise Estes desire to make a better, greener future. But the population of the world is pretty much less than a million people at this point? At least as far as we can tell. And they’re not using a whole lot of industry here… global warming is not a pressing issue any more… burn some damn coal. Or set up a wind turbine! The wind still blows at night! We’ve seen the dam already for that matter! This is not a reasonable motivation.

So he explains all this and Warren is recording it and Citizen Z is broadcasting this live to everyone who collectively gasp “ZOMG HE’S EVIL!!!! All of our prejudices are now invalid, let us not murder the Talkers we were rounding up and massacring a few days ago!” Because this is how prejudice works.

Anyway, he is FOILED! And more he’s just said Talkers are like totally totally icky and Pandora heard him! And this sinister characters has just learned that the guy who hates all Talkers hates, her, a Talker. She decides to blow up all the things, as one does.

This has Warren working with Estes to try and not blow everything up while George and Pandora have Blatant Character Moments in case anyone was asleep through all the previous character building. So, simplified: Pandora is evil and hates hates hates herself because she’s a Talker and is ugly underneath that mask and thinks it’s terribad awful. In case you missed that the woman who always wore a mask and denied being a Talker, hates being a Talker. While George refuses to kill her and tries (and fails) to save her… because she’s George and she cares

Except, y’know, about the entire armed forces of Altura who are dead who no-one seems to care about.

Legacies: Season 1, Episode 7: Death Keeps Knocking on My Door

Ok, this show angers me. It actively angers me. Not the teen drama not the classic CW obsession with a main character Hope and her specialness. No, what annoys me so much are the so-called teachers in this school who are utterly terrible (also there’s like only three of them? Three for all these students?) and this episode is pushing me over the edge

So, this is Remembrance day at the school where everyone writes letters to dead loved ones and can they maybe address the fact that most of student body has a herd of dead people to write letters to. Is one school councillor sufficient?

Also someone may want to maybe cancel this whole ceremony focused on death thing when you have an actual necromancer in the basement. Maybe? Because he does what is entirely predictable and summons a dead person to hit people in the feels. In this case, he summons Cassie, Raphael’s dead girlfriend

Hey, remember how Jo buried Josie alive because she was controlled by the necromancer? Well a good thing everyone’s learned from this and carefully guards Cassie and are also prepared for more murderous zombies running about

Oh, they’re just going to let Cassie walk around and not have any preparations for more zombies? Ok, that totally won’t come back to bite anyone at all.

So Raphael is obviously super emotional about this but Hope leaves him because she’s busy with her own things. That leaves Raphael to beg Alaric to do something about making her permanent but Alaric has SOME capacity for learning and points out she could be evil or used for evil. I mean he doesn’t take any precautions against her, but he recognises the evil. Soooo…

Cassie does talk to Raphael about her death - she blames him. But as they talk she also forgives him: she isn’t trying to punish him or make him feel bad but trying to get him to see the truth. She died in a car accident which happened because he got jealous, got angry and drove recklessly. And while he tries to put his rage down to being a werewolf and he’s better now she points out he just had a rage moment. He has a lot of growing to do and he needs to acknowledge that.

He turns to Alaric for this. Good luck with that

While I roll my eyes because we have a Black teenaged girl rather convolutedly like an after school special about how Raphael needs to be a better person. She takes less than 10 seconds to deal with actually being dead. Doesn’t she have any actual personhood or is she just a narrative tool?

Over to Hope, she has decided that since Alaric is completely useless at Necromancer questioning (mainly involves threats of violence to a being that cannot feel pain which is… not useful) she’s going to use woo-woo to do it for him

And yes Alaric is going to pout about this. But can you blame Hope? This is how Alaric works - using the magical gifts of his students to do anything. This is how Alaric operates!

So she recruits MG so he can do that vampire mind reading stuff which this world setting remembers like once every 20 episodes and MG agrees despite it being against his better judgement. Because that’s also how MG works - a servant to the other cast members who need his shiny vampire powers

There follows much diving into the Necromancer’s subconscious, Hope mocking him rather well for his over dramatic posturing, the Necromancer poking Hope’s worries a lot, in particular where her dead daddy is right now. While she pokes him for being completely forgotten because that’s what happens to all the creatures of Malivore. They piece a lot together: Malivore is a place of utter annihilation. By sentencing a creature to malivore - which happened to the Necromancer with someone killing him with the knife, you doom that being to the void and everyone forgets they ever existed. They’re gone and no-one remembers they were ever there.

Z Nation, Season 5, Episode 10 State of Mine

Time for some more shenanigans. And yes, of course we have shenanigans

We have a bunch of Talkers at a scrap yard digging up things under the watchful eye of humans in haz mat suits and guns treating the Talkers as disposable animals. Until one of those Talkers bites a battery, there’s a puff of white smoke and he comes to his senses. Rallying and feeding more batteries to his fellow Talkers he leads a rebellion

There’s a big dramatic speech about freedom which kind of falls flat. It sounds like an epic anti-slavery rant from an oppressed group who has spent years under the boot of their oppressors - but Talkers haven’t even existed for years. And these words coming from a Black man is just… yeah… we see what you’re doing there Z Nation and think this is an issue.

The man then charges into the mine and is beheaded. There’s something scary down there

This is when Warren, George, 10k and Doc arrive looking for the secret ingredient in Biscuits (yes I know about the daft spelling, no I’m not spelling it that way.) They see the mining and enslaved Talkers and George realises Altura is behind it. They also see the “Hazardous materials” signs but Warren points out that, hey, it’s the apocalypse.

They split up with George pretending to be a Talker, Doc and 10k stalking around and Warren getting stuck in the tunnels

With many shenanigans, they realise that the Altura troops are gathering Lithium, crating it up to take to Altura. They find a semi-coherent Talker who explains lithium takes the edge off and grants clarity but it doesn’t last wrong. They realise this is the secret ingredient for Biscuits - and that Altura is trying to control that because if Estes controls the biscuits they control the Talkers. They can’t have that

There’s more shenanigans with Doc and 10k sneaking around watching the lithium being packed and playing with a crane. Because why wouldn’t you play with a crane? And managing to pass themselves off as Altura operatives by stealing haz mat suits. They all find evidence of people dying in horribly violent and ominous fashion.

While Warren explores the tunnels and discovers the scary force that is mincing people: a giant cyborg Talker. With a buzz saw as a hand. Oh and metal plates that stop him being head-shot and mercied.

Of course we do.

They focus on lithium and arrange various shenanigans to steal the rest of the Lithium and get the rest of talkers to Limbo. Easy enough

Shenanigans ensue, This involves a fight that doesn’t exactly go there way, the convenient appearance of slashy cyborg Talker and the gang all gathered around this giant invulnerable Talker smacking it until they wear it’s battery down. To which Warren reaches out to it as a person so it decides to commit suicide

Z Nation, Season 5, Episode 9: Water Keepers

Today Z Nation is taking our merry band of misfits to a Native American tribe

It’s at this point my sense of cringe rises and I look for a way I can pass the episode to Renee and otherwise try to do anything I can to avoid the embarrassing awfulness that has a good chance of following.

I bit the bullet and… it wasn’t that bad? Exactly. Compared to my expectations

So 10k and Doc are captured and we’re introduced to a random captured Talker rambling incoherently about saboteurs. They’re rescued by George and Warren and then there’s arrows and Native American warriors in full war paint. And I’m duly wary that we’re going to go full woo-woo

But while several warriors do wear war paint, this is more something they’ve integrated into their culture as a separate tribe and people but not to become a full on stereotype: these 21st century Navajo (the language referenced) haven’t suddenly stripped back to some Hollywood impressed of what pre-colonisation Navajo.

All of this said from the point of view of a reviewer who is super not informed enough about Native Americans in general or Navajo specifically to say this is good or bad - just that it is much less awful than I anticipated. Because I expected worse

We also have several characters from the much much worse Grand Canyon episode, Kuruk and Ayalla. Ayalla spends lots of time with 10k, getting him a new antler hand with a little bit of woo-woo but mainly Ayalla mocking him for his adorable naivety and how easily she can confuse and trick him by referring to silly woo-woo which he takes seriously despite being ridiculous. It’s a nice send up of Native American stereotypes. And, yes, 10k is just impossibly adorable.

The rest of the gang meets Kuruk and she and Doc kind of circle around some very not there chemistry can we not. But Kuruk lays out the conflict - they are constantly being attacked by zombies and Talker saboteurs are attacking the dam cutting off power and water.

There’s another conflict with Kuruk wanting to leave to save her people while Eddie, her dad, insisting that they should stay with their ancestors (spiritual, Talker and Zombie) and their own homeland. Largely to draw upon lots and lots of references to Native Americans being driven from their lands which is grossly unsubtle but, at the same time, does it need to be? We don’t need to subtly weave in why these Native Americans may be invested in holding onto this land for big historical reasons - there’s no problem with it being overt. There’s a similar ongoing conflict between whether to trust Newmerica because, again, many many many betrayed treaties. When George tries to invoke the agreement between Newmerica and the Native Americans, Kuruk is quick to snap that no way is she to use the word “treaty”. Again, it’s not subtle and equally, subtlety isn’t required.

This links into survival again, though, because Eddie doesn’t just want to stay on their land but thinks they need to work with Newmerica because there’s simply not enough of them to go it alone. Which may be true - but this kind of feels like a lot of handwaving. Like, at the end of the episode Kuruk is totally in to George’s vision and supporting Newmerica which kind of feels like all that unsubtle but necessary references have all been resolved - rather than Kuruk being more “look we need this, we’ll work with you but we’re also totally watching you” which i think would both keep them on side while still preserving these messages of reasonable distrust of agreements and warily guarding their territory.

The Last Ship: Season 5, Episode 9: Courage

Caged Wolf (Tarot Witches #1) by S.M. Reine

Ofelia is hiding. After her horrendous past she has fled as far as she can and now lives in Lobo Norte, the almost unknown hamlet in Mexico near the US border

There’s not much there - but bikers come for drugs, for the local prostitutes and for the cage. The cage matches are massively popular and the lifeblood of this small town

But when a different gang comes to town, werewolves with their own agenda, the cage matches become much more important and much more dangerous. But despite Gloria’s insistence on keeping her head down, Ofelia is drawn out - both the promise of money and the unnatural attraction she has for one of the bikers. But drawing attention to herself is the last thing a hiding woman should do

As I mentioned in a previous review, I am on a mission when it comes to thisauthor’s world. I will read them, in something resembling a reasonable order.

And when I picked up this book, the first in the Tarot Witches series, I have to say I had some regrets. And part of that is simply because erotically charged Paranormal Romance isn’t my thing per se and I’d likely have skipped past it if I weren’t on the mission.

The sex comes hard and fast in this book (literally and figuratively) in a way that I find more irritating than titillating. Woman sees man and he hasn’t even opened his mouth to speak and already everything is hot and wet and moist and throbbing and pumping and zomg this is the hottest guy there has ever been ever and she can barely think. And this may work for a 14 year old ingénue raised by nuns seeing a man for the very first time. But she’s a sexually experienced, sexually adventurous stripper and former sex worker in her mid to late 20s and it just feels tired.

And it’s not just burning lust, we’re rapidly shoved forwards to Connor (or “Trouble”) being jealous of Ofelia, calling her his, giving her orders, being protective of her, willing to face down his pack for her, being drawn to her on a full moon, risking his life for her. And she, with less highhanded possessive dominance and jealousy, doing the same to him – deciding he’s hers, planning to run away with him, willing to fight a werewolf for him, ignoring his nearly biting her, getting all hot and bothered when he tells her what to do or seems angry when she disobeys.

I have no idea why these two characters like each other, let alone are madly-in-love-willing-to-run-away-together level attached. I don’t even know why by the end of the book, I think they’re literally willing to die for each other and they’re still complete strangers. It makes the whole romance painfully boring because there is no romance there. They find each other hot to the point of not being able to keep away from each other and that’s it. There’s no other connection, nothing, no reason for them to be this attached and no reason for me to care about their relationship one iota – or Trouble for that matter who is just a blank sexy slate with an impossibly big cock (of course).

Ofelia I have a little more time for – and when you clear Trouble OUT of her story, we have something interesting. In fact, her story was even getting really good before he and his unnecessariness pulled her out of things. Her discovering a Tarot card with dire meaning was interesting. Having a paranormal romance or an urban fantasy with a sexually active and charged main character was interesting and fun, complete with her lack of hang ups and, despite being badly scarred, with a strong body image. That last one is pretty unique. She has a tragic past and though it motivates her to hide and drives her to anger and vengeance, it’s integrated into the character as a defining and essential moment rather than an all consuming element of all she is. Her relationship with Gloria, who runs Lobo Norte’s bar, was excellent, all gruff and loving

Legacies: Season 1, Episode 4: Hope is Not the Goal

We have another scene where it’s apparent Kaleb is still feeding on humans and this is a problem

Another problem is that two students from the town, Sasha and Dana, have both gone missing and Sheriff Matt is around trying to decide whether the school is full of evil monsters he needs to kill everyone OR it’s an important secret he needs to hide form the world.

When they find blood and, later, Dana with an apparent vampire bite, Matt gets super suspicious. While Alaric decides it’s important to send students from the magic school to the mundane human school to gather clues and possibly personal items for locator spells etc

Again, this underscores how Alaric can’t actually solve problems himself and is constantly recruiting his students to handle school business. Lizzie is the first to volunteer because she wants to be a hero

Which sounds ridiculous and Lizzie being super melodramatic - but it’s actually because she’s trying to get her dad to pay a little attention to her. MG, Kaleb and Landon also join. The vampires because compulsion is shiny and they’re walking tools and if you’re going to make people walking tools do you really have to make them the Black men? And Landon because he went to the school once.

To the school of school scenes of schoolness with Hope becoming super popular and MG failing at compulsion because Lizzie is wearing shorts. Really, MG? It’s the 21st century, a woman in shorts should not make you lose your supernatural powers.

They eventually find Dana, apparently alive. Which is weird because Matt and Alaric just found her dead. They see the big bite marks on her neck so assume she’s a vampire in mid transition. Seeing the big bite marks on her neck and apparently dead, Alaric and Matt should have considered this as a possibility as well. Apparently not because they didn’t guard the body or anything

So the gang wonders what to do. No-one thinks to call Alaric because ha, why bother? Some people are suspicious of Kaleb because he fed on her but he denies killing or turning her. Hope magics Dana asleep while they decide and explain vampireness to Landon - they debate whether or not to give human blood and allow her to change but MG trumps to letting Dana decide because he’s a super nice guy and respectful of women as we’ve seen before and this would be so much better if I didn’t think his respect of women wasn’t supposed to be linked to his general weakness, inability to asset himself and, oh, having actual nightmares about serial killers. Nightmares.

This debate is foiled by Dana spewing out her guts and all her internal organs. Turns out they’ve all been liquified. Everyone blames Landon for angst reasons and he storms off to face old high school bully Connor is actually a Connor suit of flesh - inside is a giant scary spider. The others have already identified the spider monster because MG reads comics and… no sense. This makes no sense.

Speaking of - this means Dana was bitten in the neck by a giant spider, causing enough damage that Matt and Alaric, finding her body, decided she was dead (I’m going to assume someone checked a pulse and they didn’t just look at her laid there and said “yup, looks pretty dead” and moved on). She then recovered, insides liquidating, and wandered gods know how many miles to the human high school (which I’m going to guess isn’t close to the magic school because if it is that’s a mistake), without feeling any pain as her insides liquidate until she starts vomiting up a stream of liquid - presumably her kidneys. This… makes no sense. No sense at all. NOTHING MAKES SENSE

So they go hunting the spider - Alaric calls to ask Lizzie what’s going on but she ignores him because he’s human and pointless - really why is he here?

The Walking Dead: Season 9, Episode 5: What Comes After

Doctor Who, Season 11, Episode 5: The Tsuranga Conundrum

Legacies, Season 1, Episode 2: Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn

Landon lied to Hope so now she knows all men are terrible ever and she will never trust again and everything is terrible and…

Ye gods, she’s certainly a Mikkaelson, isn’t she? Spare me from the melodrama.

She’s been lectured by school councillor Emma about using dark magic and how bad it is. She does cover for Josie but then yells about how she had to do it because it’s alllll her fault that Landon took the knife and she has to do everything she has to find him and it’s all on her

Oh. My. Gods. We have a protagonist as melodramatic as an Original and as self absorbed as Elena. Gods preserve us all.

She also wants to go out there to take down Landon with her best dark magic revenge spells. Why she even has access to dark magic revenge spells I don’t know.

Lizzie and Josie are also having drama because Josie helped Hope with dark magic and didn’t tell Lizzie - which annoys Lizzie and doesn’t help with her general insecurity that no-one cares about her or values her with both her father and sister seeming to be more focused on Hope. Lizzie’s issues are not helped by Alaric skipping out on the school football game which Lizzie’s part of in order to go Landon hunting.

Penny is still a caricature of awful. And they’re pissed at MG for being in her presence.

So on that Landon hunt - Alaric decides to take Hope and Rafael.

…

..

.

Alaric… this is a problem. Is this a problem with having a human run the school because he relies on his students to actually help him do stuff. I mean, it’d help if they dropped in one super powered co-teacher (Caroline, wherefore art thou Caroline?) or had an Original or powerful witch on speed dial for major issues. Instead he decides to take two of his students on a road trip to hunt down a threat to the school. One of which is on a rage filled black magic revenge kick and the other is brand new to the supernatural and convinced that Landon could do not wrong

This is not good decision making.

Hope insists that Landon is the worst thing ever while Rafael insists he could do no wrong ever. This is a fun road trip.

They arrive at the site of the bus incineration and find an oddly mute woman in a rather dated dress looking all scorched and traumatised. Alaric decides she needs to go to a hospital so he’s going to go with her while Rafael and Hope go looking for Landon alone.

…

..

.

I say, again, Alaric is not making good decisions here. So the traditions of The Originals and The Vampire Diaries continue

They find Landon and, of course, go in with Hope magic blazing despite assuring Rafael he’d have time to talk to his friend (Rafael swears Landon is made of angel’s tears and saintliness) to demand why he stole the knife and slaughtered a bus full of innocent people and lied to her about being compelled.

He admits to stealing the knife - but he doesn’t know why. He admits to lying (because, hey, the alternative was being locked in a basement cage). But he totally didn’t burn everyone. That was another passenger - a fire breathing woman who demanded the knife.

Which would be dubious except Alaric has his phone and watch stolen by the woman he’s escorting to the hospital who then breaths fire.

He runs to them and reveals Landon was telling the truth - oh except he lied about losing the knife because he still has it.

Alaric originally decides that she’s a rare pyromancer witch - but looking at the shiny things she’s stealing they realise hoards riches + breathes fire = dragon. Alaric protests dragons don’t exist and the rest of the cast hit him with a script and a note of the genre he’s actually part of. Of course it exists. It always exists.

Hope uses woo-woo to enchant the knife with dragonfire (because massive woo-woo always helps) so Rafael can stab the dragon and they can call it a win. Victory