The Vampire Diaries “Into the Wild” 

This week the gang convenes on witch island to get to Silas and the cure while back home Klaus is tested and fails (or wins, you decide). No Liz, Matt, April, Hayley, or Rudy.

We start with a flashback to a year ago when Shane outruns a Native American and finds the well where Silas is buried. Then we pick up in the present with the Salvatores, Gilberts, Shane, Bonnie, and Rebekah returning to that island. They dock their boats on the beach and bitchiness ensues as Rebekah and Elena try to outsnit each other and nobody cares. Shane unspools a few horror stories for the crew of previous visitors found dead and Bonnie works on her spell by taking pictures of Jeremy’s tattoo.

Early into the evening, the fit hits the shan and:

• Jeremy is kidnapped (after earlier being saved from a booby trap).
• Damon and Elena finally have it out that he doesn’t want to be human with her no matter how much she asks.
• Damon ties up Shane and Shane returns the favor by taunting him about Elena and humanity, etc.
• Bonnie does a locator spell that tracks Jeremy and puts her right where Shane wants her.
• Stefan and Rebekah bond over potentially being human and having families and growing old (together?).
• Rebekah saves Elena when the opportunity presents itself.

Shane also unravels for Damon that there’s one massacre left to fulfill the witch’s deal to get to Silas, so the penny drops for Damon, and soon the rest of the gang, that they all really have been setup (minus Bonnie and Jeremy, who are necessary for now). Elena stops Damon from killing Shane and then stupidly sets him free and he buggers off with the headstone and then rendezvous with Jeremy and Bonnie.

We also find out that when Shane dropped himself into the well last year, he had a very real vision of his very dead wife (who also happened to be a witch) and that preview/promise of a permanent reunion (if he helped raise Silas) led him on his massacre bender and to manipulate Bonnie and Jeremy.

Back in town, we have one of those stressful-if-it-were-a-cliffhanger setups when Tyler decides to hang out at the Gilberts and figuratively bitchslap Klaus, who’s still trapped. This backfires badly when Caroline shows up and Klaus manages to stake her with a curtain rod and pull her into the living room (Bonnie really should’ve had that locked down on both sides—just saying), where he bites her and tosses her to the floor.

Then he and Tyler play “I’m sorry,” “No, you’re sorry” back and forth until Klaus refuses to help and Caroline asks Tyler to take her home. He does, and she gets worse and they have to face facts that Klaus is the only cure. Tyler asks Caroline if she trusts him and she says yes. He takes her back to the Gilberts and sets her on the floor in front of Klaus, essentially telling him “your ball” but instead saying out loud that if he won’t save her, then he can watch her die.

Then he leaves and Caroline and Klaus make guilt/pity eyes at each other until Caroline tests Klaus’s resolve when she tells him she sometimes wishes she could forgive him for all of his general awfulness and she doesn’t understand why he’s done what he’s done to her and to Tyler and his mother. She says she knows there’s humanity left in him. That really puzzles him and he asks her about it.

She calls him out and says she knows he’s in love with her, and if he can love, he can be human. That rattles him, but not enough, and then they wait each other out until she draws her last breath and he finally leaps up to feed her his blood. She revives and it’s all over her face that she really wasn’t sure that was going to work.

Finally, Damon has run off by himself into the woods, ostensibly to find Jeremy/Bonnie, leaving Elena with Rebekah, to whom she offers the white oak stake in a bid for a truce, and Stefan, who she takes another look at, given Damon’s decision not to take the cure (and tell her that being human is the worst). Eventually, he gets jumped and goes down and we end with him staked on the ground.

It’s been a while since I thought we needed a two-hour episode but this one was prime for it.

The stuff in the woods was a little too gimmicky for me but I get them taking advantage of an opportunity to do it. I laughed about vampires bringing gear and pitching tents and a campfire, and Elena having a thermos of water, but you can’t overthink those things. I just hope we get to Silas, or whatever the real MacGuffin is if this has all been a big fat ruse, soon.

Big ups to Candice Accola, Joseph Morgan, and Michael Trevino. Even though I didn’t believe for a minute Caroline was a goner, in the context of the show and who Tyler and Caroline and Klaus are and what Klaus has done to her and Tyler, it was a compelling setup. We’ll see where they puts all the loyalties and whatnot as the cure is or isn’t found. (There’s a spinoff to spin, after all.)

We’re back on Thursday at 8 pm/7c with the first of the last two February sweeps episodes,  and then a break until March 21st. If you missed this episode, or want to catch it again, visit cwtv.com.