The Vampire Diaries “After School Special” 

She’s baaaaack. The Vampire Diaries returned from its winter hiatus Thursday night as Rebekah blew back into everyone’s lives with gale force after April unstaked her.  Now she’s harboring a serious mad on for Stefan’s betrayal and is determined to get her hands on the cure. She starts by gathering Stefan, Elena, Caroline, and Tyler at the school to compel them into a truth or dare charade that puts everything on the table about Damon and Elena and what Stefan already knows via Caroline. So, awkward. Also, creepy, because Rebekah uses a willing April to bait her little assembly.

Rebekah also ekes out that Shane is key to getting the map and the cure so she has Kol bring him in and he scares the crap out of them by telling them he only wants Silas, which elicits pretty much the same reaction out of Kol that name-dropping Klaus and Elijah used to get out of Rose and Katherine. Kol kills him, or tries to, but thankfully Shane had previously given Bonnie a magical totem that passes along his injuries to April (not so good for her) but Stefan swoops in and feeds her. Rebekah’s weird fixation on Elena and Stefan ends with her offering to compel away his memories of Elena the way Klaus robbed him of his memories of her. He says yes she laughs “no,” so he can know how she’s grieved for 900 years.

Part of Rebekah’s all hands assembly is also to bring in Tyler to compel him to change and then wait for him to tear up Elena, Stefan, and Caroline. He changes but either forces himself back to human or it times out and then Caroline finds him and holds him while he grieves his mother, whom they all know Klaus took out, but the party line is it was an accident. And Bonnie’s dad is the new interim mayor.

Over at Vampire Hunter Camp, Jeremy and Matt are rolling around on the ground. Go ahead, I’ll wait. So, they’re doing that and Jeremy proves he can whup Matt, but Damon, who’s been listening to Elena voicemails on repeat, says Jeremy’s still not vamp-ready, so he throws him around a little bit and then Klaus arrives to rain on their parade and threaten general bedlam if they don’t get cracking on the killing. Ever impatient, Klaus turns and send in a cute pizza delivery girl on a trial run and then turns an entire bar full of people and summons Jeremy (who arrives with Damon and Matt in tow) to take care of them.

In a really rather exquisite moment before the bar scene, Elena calls Damon and tells him she realized, thanks to Rebekah, that she loves him. She tells him twice, and as that registers on his face, he tells her he’s going to get her the cure, but it will mean doing things she won’t like. And then he tells her to get in her car and come to him.

Later, Rebekah is summoned by Stefan, who says he will help her. When Elena dropped the earlier bomb onn him while compelled that she is in love only with Damon now, that pretty much amped up his desire to get the cure to prove she was telling the truth (I think–the editing was a little weird). She avows that she loves Stefan, just not like that anymore. Stefan makes the point that hearing that kills him by walking away from her despite her pleas that they hug it out (well, talk it out).

Bonnie confronts Shane in a queasy scene and tells him no fair on baiting her with a toy that tapped into Expression and he tells her it’s not black magic and that no harm will come to her. He gets really close to her face to tell her all this and I get more uncomfortable. And April decides, after her near death, that she’s had enough of the shenanigans and she sits down with Bonnie’s Dad and Liz Forbes and tells them Shane killed the Council and it’s about time the town knows what is going on.

And that’s that, kids. Sadly, no Elijah!

So, we’re getting closer to a big bad of Silas showing up would be my guess. And we have two brothers who want a cure for different reasons. I still really want Bonnie to nut up. I’m intrigued by April manning up but I think she may also be close to going off the rails after everything she’s seen, and that might actually be interesting, too. We’re just getting started on the back half of the season. Get ready.

If you missed the episode, you can catch it on The CW’s website. The next all-new episdoe airs this Thursday night on the CW at 8/7c.