If anyone actually thought that saving Bonnie with a plan that involved Rayna was a good idea and that nothing would go wrong, well, you clearly have never watched The Vampire Diaries.
“Requiem for a Dream” sees Bonnie’s friends trying to appeal to her to not kill them, even with her brain rewired to “see vampire and kill vampire.” But in doing so, they give her the opportunity to mark them, and even when they do find a way to possibly save her, it just means a lot more trouble. But nothing can ever be easy for them.
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What better way to open the hour than with Bonnie waking up and brutally killing Enzo and Caroline? Fortunately, it doesn’t really happen, but the dream is one that could very well become a reality with Bonnie now in huntress mode.
Let’s Go Back to College … and Then High School
Instead of instantly becoming Rayna 2.0, Bonnie remains asleep because she knows what will happen when she wakes. Stefan, going off his own experience as the target of the huntress, suggests that they give her ammunition to fight the war going on in her head. As Damon puts it, they need to “convince her hunter brain that not all vampires are selfish, vicious monsters.” In other words, someone who is not him needs to talk to her.
Caroline, who refuses to leave while her best friend is in trouble, sends Alaric home to the kids and hopes that she can get through to Bonnie since she knew her before she was a vampire. So she joins Bonnie in her head, where she’s running from a classroom full of vampires (the fact that she’s actually sitting in a classroom is the first clue that this can’t be real; Alaric teaching about vampires is not because Whitmore College was just that strange) and hiding in their dorm room.
Caroline tries to convince her to resist the rewiring of her brain to “hunter brain,” but instead, Bonnie gets all creepy and wonders about her kids. Do they know she’s a vampire? Does she admire their necks? Caroline insists she’d never hurt them, but after Bonnie stakes her in her head, Caroline comes out of it marked. As much as Caroline may not want to do what Stefan did and run, he leaves her with little choice and injects her with vervain, taking her to a motel.
Enzo tries with Bonnie next, finding her in her cheerleader outfit dealing with the stoners-now-vampires hanging out behind the high school. Rather than try to remember life without vampires, he suggests, remember their life together, writing music, playing guitar. Hold onto that. But she’d rather have the memories of them together than a future where she destroys them, and so she has decided that she’ll die. She doesn’t want to turn into Rayna 2.0. When he refuses to just let her go, he too ends up coming out of it marked.
Damon’s Plan (Almost) Backfires
After that, it’s up to Damon, and considering their friendship has been the definition of rocky and “it’s complicated” lately, that’s not very promising. But rather than try to go about it like the others, Damon goes into Bonnie’s head and finds her on the Gilbert porch. In an attempt to reach her “bad side,” he “thanks” her for dying because he’ll get Elena back. It works a little too well because she wakes up, hell bent on killing him.
She can sense what he’s feeling, she reminds him as he hangs out in the woods and she gathers whatever weapons she can find, so she knows that part of him meant what he said. She knows that he only saved her because he thinks Elena will never forgive him if he didn’t. But that’s the difference between the two of them; if she kills him, she’ll never have to explain herself to Elena.
Meanwhile, Matt has nothing better to do as the Sheriff than take care of the “squatters” at the Salvatore house, but when he first gets there, Enzo suggests he table his feelings about vampires to help his friend. So Matt is still hanging around outside to remind her of the time she bought him his first football when he was nine years old to try to get through to her. She agrees to let him help her keep connected to her human side — after she kills Damon, the vampire who has ruined her life in more ways than she can count, has brought nothing but pain and suffering to their friends and will continue to do so if he’s alive and killed Matt’s sister because he was bored. Well, if ever there was a way to convince someone…
Bonnie tracks Damon down, calling him a “living, breathing reminder of everything [she] lost,” but he manages to lure her into his trap: her grave for Remembrance Day, a memorial to one of the many lives of Bonnie Bennett, as he calls it. She’s a survivor, he reminds her. She’ll get through this. If he does die, he wants it to be here, in honor of her. She died and they mourned her, but she came back, and every time she does, she comes back stronger. He envies her, he says. “I believe in you, and I love you the same way Elena loved you. If you kill me right now, it’s not your fault. I did this to us. But please, forgive me.” It’s a really touching speech and it’s (part of) what he needs to say to her, but if not for Matt intervening at the right time, Damon might be dead and Bonnie may not end up in the back of Matt’s car, to be brought somewhere away from the vampires. Or so Damon and Matt think.
Bonnie doesn’t stay unconscious as long as they think she will, and she attacks Matt, forcing him to stop the car. After she drags him into the back, she turns the car around.
So, if they’re going to stop Bonnie and save her, they have to do it fast. Fortunately, Enzo has a lead, having found the shaman who transferred the lives, but they have to go back into the Armory. The same Armory Bonnie sealed because of that evil that had been released from the vault. Let’s begin to count the number of ways this will go wrong.
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Hey, Hasn’t Stefan Been Here Before?
Meanwhile, Caroline gets firsthand experience of what Stefan went through three years ago when he had been marked and chose to run. In fact, by the time she wakes up in the motel, he’s already started planning their international trip. They’ll start in Hong Kong, he tells her, but she’s determined to not do what he did and run. (That doesn’t last long. She can’t risk her girls getting caught in the middle of this.)
But just because she’s in the same position doesn’t mean she’s just going to forgive Stefan. He still made the decision without her. He tells her that he went to Dallas and saw her with Alaric and the kids and she was happy, so he convinced himself he was doing right by her. He’s sorry, and she has every right to hate him for what he did to her three years ago, but he points out she’s doing the same thing now. “I love you, and the thought of you getting hurt is not an option I’m willing to entertain,” he says. But he did hurt her, more than anyone else ever has, and she did love him when he left.
Speaking of love, she noticeably does not say “I love you too” to the man she was planning to marry before all this came back into her life at the end of her goodbye call with Alaric and the girls. When Stefan asks her point blank if she loves Alaric, she admits, “I don’t know. Can you love someone and leave them behind when you need each other the most?” However she feels, the only decisions she’s interested in making at the moment are travel plans.
The Vampire Diaries season 7 airs Fridays at 8pm on the CW.
(Image courtesy of the CW)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
If it’s on TV — especially if it’s a procedural or superhero show — chances are Meredith watches it. She has a love for all things fiction, starting from a young age with ER and The X-Files on the small screen and the Nancy Drew books. Arrow kicked off the Arrowverse and her true passion for all things heroes. She’s enjoyed getting into the minds of serial killers since Criminal Minds, so it should be no surprise that her latest obsession is Prodigal Son.
