The Vampire Diaries “Down the Rabbit Hole” 

We’re reminded fairly often that Mystic Falls is a brutal place to live, if you live at all. Well, after dragging things way, way, out, “Down the Rabbit Hole” was particularly brutal about dispatching, and attempting to dispatch, a few characters. Some we’ve had around since the jump. We also found out the cure’s been a cock tease. In a riff on Highlander—there is only one. And once that little nugget is out in the open, it’s every hunter and vampire for himself.

So, we pick up on the island with Damon held by Galen, a hunter who was tattoo-less til very recently. He’s there to kill Silas and he wants Damon to golden ticket him to the grave site. This involves a lot of banter and threats. Then we find out Galen has some deadly tools with which to play.

Klaus helps Caroline and Tyler decode the Aramaic on the sword, which they finally realized they could get from his house because he was confined to the Gilberts. There, the telltale one-dose drama is revealed and Klaus wastes no time in telling Rebekah. She responds by telling Stefan to gauge his reaction and then snapping his neck when confirms he’d give it to Elena. Elena sees this goes down and races to Stefan. They agree, yes, it’s not what they hoped for, but truth is that they need the cure first for Klaus or Klaus will kill them all, so off they go.

Meanwhile, Shane has led Bonnie and Jeremy into the well. Before he drops down behind them, they talk for a few minutes about getting each other out alive (clue #1). Once Bonnie starts casting the spell to draw power from the tattoo, and draw the tattoo from Jeremy, the cave starts to rumble. Silas’s tomb is revealed and Shane is hurt by falling rocks. They leave him and head into the tomb, where Bonnie starts seeing Grams and Jeremy has to set her straight that Grams isn’t a ghost or he’d see her, too. They get to Silas and realize they have to feed him to free the box holding the curse because he’s petrified. Pretty soon, that decision is made for them.

In town, Caroline and Tyler realize that one cure means Klaus will kill him, so Caroline begs Klaus to let him live. He calls her out on not wanting the cure and says they’re alike. She turns that back on him and says if that’s true, he owes the compassion to Tyler that she would show him. He seems to acquiesce that he will not kill him, and when she’s content, he reneges and says he’ll give Tyler a head start to get away from him but that is all. She goes back outside and weeps with Tyler and they promise (not really) to forget each other and have lives without each other “until they find way” to be together.

Galen and Damon reach the well, and Rebekah arrives, too, but Galen drops her, confines Damon, and dives down. Then Stefan arrives and sends Elena down ahead and frees Damon before he goes down behind her. Once below, Elena encounters someone before everything goes black. Elsewhere, Shane sees his wife again and apologizes that he failed and she tells him he did everything she asked.

Up top, Damon pries Galen’s mini stakes from Rebekah and she asks him why he’s there and he jokes he needed a siesta. Then they talk about the one cure and Damon says he’d have given it to Elena and Rebekah talks to him about what that would mean if a human Elena didn’t love him. His response is simple. “Life sucks. Wear a helmet.”

In the tomb, Jeremy and Bonnie are hemming and hawing about whether to revive Silas when Galen shows up and stabs Bonnie and then feeds his own blood to Silas before Jeremy and a newly-arrived Elena knock him down. Elena’s about to feed on Galen when Jeremy yells “hunter’s curse” and she stops. He races to Bonnie and asks Elena to help feed her, but she’s more worried about the cure, and then the penny drops that after a long, long absence, this is Katherine. Crap. That’s confirmed when Stefan finds a bleeding Elena in the tombs.

At the Gilberts, Klaus is released and he finds a wrecked Caroline sitting alone on the porch. She asks how he’s free and he tells her he guesses something terrible has happened to Bonnie. He tells her he won’t kill her and stands there waiting for that to turn on some kind of light in her but it doesn’t come. Poor Klaus can’t get it right.

Jeremy tries to fight Katherine and that’s immediately futile as she opens his wrist for Silas, and then his neck, and pushes him against Silas’s calcified mouth. Silas drinks and starts to move and he takes over from Katherine holding Jeremy’s head down as Katherine grabs the cure and bolts. When Silas has had enough, he snaps Jeremy’s neck and drops him and Jeremy falls lifeless still to the floor as Bonnie watches helplessly. And then we’re black.

I like Jeremy. I’ve always liked him. He’s stayed so much longer that I would have expected. And if they burned him down last night and he’s done, at least they gave him a big arc to go out on. Similar to the way we lost Alaric. I didn’t feel this one the way I felt Alaric, because I think I always felt like they were trying really hard to make Jeremy fit the story.

I haven’t read the books so I don’t know if Jeremy was in the books/as what/for how long. If they had to do something to pull Elena out of her love geometry quagmire, this would be it. If she was suddenly revenge-oriented, that would also give Caroline a project in Tyler’s absence.

I’m sorry to see Steven R. McQueen go, though, because I liked him, too. If I were a betting gal, I’d say the actor lent himself to the character’s unlikely longevity. If the CW is smart, we’ll see him again very soon. [Sidebar: if this is a fakeout, and Jeremy’s A-OK, all of the above will be said again later when appropriate.]

Losing Tyler is worse, to me, because every time they’ve swept Tyler in and out. they’ve left Caroline wreckage. I hope this wasn’t done to clear the path for Klaus, and again, spinoff-wise, I’d guess no. But if Tyler is well and truly gone, I want Caroline not to pine. Regarding Michael Trevino, the same goes as my statement above—if he is gone, I hope he’s scooped up in pilot season. He’s so, so good and  I want to watch him every week.

As y’all know, I avoid spoilers. I purposely don’t want to know stuff ahead of time because the info can be wrong and it can taint watching a show. I came up pre-Web, when I had to find stuff out in the TV Guide, so I’m old school that way. When spoilers were first readily available online, I started reading them, and then I got burned. With Buffy and X-Files, and the one that broke me of my desire to ever know anything early ever again—Everwood.

So I’m assuming here that Jeremy’s done and that Tyler’s gone for a goodly while. And that Bonnie may be done, too. I think I’d kind of prefer that than a Dark Willow arc for her. But I know nothing concrete about anybody. If that’s where they go, that’s where they go. They’re going to have to go somewhere now that they’re about to scuttle the big bads to a spinoff.

It seems odd to lose cast members when they’ll need them after the spinoff goes (which I’m assuming the CW has a pretty firm plan to go proceed with unless the pilot is just awful—unlikely). Maybe they’re going to go lean across the board with TVD. We’ll see.

We have one more new episode for sweeps and then a short break. There are eight episodes left this season, and in a surprise to no one, but still nice to hear early, the show was just renewed for a fifth season. If you missed the episode, or just want to punish yourself again, it’s available now on cwtv.com.