The Vampire Diaries: “Heart of Darkness” 

And…we’re back!

And so are Esther and Kol and Klaus and Tyler and Jeremy. Oh my.

We kick off with a misdirect so Caroline can, with Matt’s collusion and approval, sneak off and hook up with Tyler (yay!) before she has to tell him that if they kill Klaus, he’ll die, too. He’s soon not altogether opposed to offing Klaus (aside from the whole he’ll die, too, thing) when he finds out Klaus has been putting the moves on Caroline, and he even snits off in a huff about it. (boo!) Positives: he’s (fairly sure that he’s) broken the sire bond, and he gets back into town without alerting Klaus.

Rebekah arrives home from dance planning at the school after Matt gives her a lift. They have a cute chat in his truck where he shoots down her notion that he has an agenda (since Caroline redirection doesn’t exactly count). And that’s all we have of Matt for the episode. Rebekah heads inside to find her mother in the parlor. She reacts appropriately, slamming mum into the wall until Esther softens her up with the news that a) she’s dying because Abby’s death weakened her and b) she’s been there for all her life events. Rebekah cries a bit about never having truly lived and then Esther collapses while holding Rebekah’s hands. This is important later. Klaus walks in and is rather unmoved.

Over at Casa Salvatore, Alaric is in the dungeon and Stefan lays a beating him on to awaken Antilaric (after an attempt to lull him into a drunken coma and a neck-snap from Klaus don’t do it). The trick works and Antilaric gleefully taunts Stefan a little bit before Stefan puts a countdown neck-break on him and he finally confesses that the stake is in the vamp-free zone in the Lockwood cave (which makes perfect sense in a sort of obvious way).

Over in the other leg of the triangle, Damon and Elena fly to Denver (yet drive back?) and fetch Jeremy, where they’re alarmed to find Kol is his new bestie. They loop him that they need him to summon Rose and hightail it out of the Mile High after Kol goes “hey, batter!” on Damon. They land at a motel and Rose comes as called (yay Lauren Cohan!), seen only by Jeremy, and says none of the originals sired her. She says it was Mary Porter and then off she goes to find out where Mary is. She also drops a reference to rooting for Elena and Damon and Jeremy freaks right the hell out to hear it. When he asks Elena about it, she deflects the question.

Later that evening, Jeremy and Elena are each in a bed and Damon swaggers half dressed out of his shower (wearing pants, at least). Elena watches him for a while as he puts his shirt on but doesn’t button it and works his way through a bottle of scotch. He’s sort of lost in thought and doesn’t really pick up on her staring for a while (or chooses not to engage).

When he does, she closes her eyes and then opens them again and he crosses the room to lie down next to her. She tries to talk to him about what he did for Rose at her death and he shuts her down that it wasn’t about her. When she pushes it, he essentially tells her he can’t be someone who’s expected to do the right thing.

When he tries to take her hand, it’s too much for her and she rushes out of the room. Florence Welch sings it as Damon follows her outside and she caves into kissing him. They get pretty heated with the smoochies and the groping out on the balcony when a definitely not amused Jeremy catches them.

Jeremy’s interruption was to tell them Rose found Mary. They get to Kansas and find her dead at Kol’s hand and then Kol smacks around both Damon and Elena. When Damon tries to comfort her, she shuns him and he calls her on it. She tells him Stefan asked her if she had feelings for Damon. He asks her if she does and she “I don’t know”s him. Instead of smarting off, he tells her he won’t make it easier for her by being the asshole in the room.

They head home and Rose pops up in the backseat with Jeremy to tell him that even though he can’t see it, Stefan is good for Elena, he’s safe, but Damon challenges her and she makes him better and they’ll either be awesome or tank.

Finally, at the end of the hour, Stefan again tries to break up with Klaus, gauntleting a “kill me or get on with your life” mandate while Rebekah leads Antilaric to the cave. Once he produces the stake and starts to pontificate on her EVILNESS, she reveals that she’s actually a body-jumping Esther and she wants him to help her. And SCENE!

So, I’m not spoiled on anything and don’t know exactly what’s coming although “doozy” and “Kleenex fest” have made it over the wall of silence. If we’re going to lose anybody (human) this season, my vote would be Bonnie so Kat Graham can move on to her awesome career. I could say the same about Matt but I they keep giving Zach Roerig more to do now, which means I’d hate to lose him, which probably means he’s the doomed one. BUT, we know on this show anyone can come back at anytime, so there’s that.

As for the actual events of this episode, I thought it moved really quickly and that’s always a plus. I was happy for Caroline to have a ten-minute, drama-free reunion with Tyler before he twigged out on her. Their dialogue made me wonder if she’d already been meeting him on the sly, so that wasn’t totally clear.

Interesting that Esther didn’t reference losing Finn.

I was super glad nothing happened between Damon and Elena in the room while Jeremy was two feet away in the next bed.

I’m fine on the Delena front because I think they need to finally fish or cut bait on that arc so she can reunite with Stefan or make a go with Damon. Or she may pull a Kelly Taylor.

I liked having Matt Davis and Paul Wesley onscreen together–that’s another pairing we haven’t had a lot of.

I feel like we’re spinning up to something and positioning all the pieces on the board. We’re nearing the top of the roller coaster, y’all.

Three left!