The Vampire Diaries ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ review: Silas was here

I can’t apologize enough for the tardiness. February is a busy month for me; I think I’ve said this before. But I still wanted a space for us to discuss the latest episode of The Vampire Diaries, which was a great improvement over last week’s. In that sense, I’m much more forgiving of last week’s episode, as it was the first of a two-parter episode, but I’m not entirely convinced that this is the breakout episode everyone is making it out to be. On one hand, we have Katherine coming back and that’s just the best thing that’s happened to this show in a year. But on the other, I feel like a lot of the twists… we saw coming.

For one, yawn at Tyler running out of town for what now feels like the millionth time…and Klaus saying he’s showing people mercy. Second, we have all mentioned that it was a huge possibility that there was only one dose of the cure, here in the comments sections of these reviews. And lastly, as much as I want to care about Jeremy’s supposed real death, I didn’t. Did this happen to anyone else? I sort of chuckled about it for two reasons: (A) Maybe I’m desensitized after he has died a dozen times on the show now; (B) This being Vampire Diaries as of late, I’m expecting him to be resurrected somehow.

But if I think about Jeremy’s death and what it could mean for the show, I just hope that it allows Elena to become a more interesting character. Even in this episode, as a vampire, people were trying to protect her. Screw that. I want Elena to get her hands dirty and start doing stuff. And I want the people around her to stop coddling her like a little child. My favorite part in this episode — besides Katherine, obviously — was when Elena said that everyone is in danger again because of her. YES! I love that. It makes me incredibly happy how much more self-aware the series has become in the second half of this season. But more so, I’m hoping that Elena sort of actually absorbs what she said, and maybe at some point she’ll stop being like a baton that people pass around. Don’t get me wrong, she has done a few things in the series’ run. But most of those acts were self-harm. If you do this, I will kill myself and you won’t have any doppelgänger blood. Even in this episode, as much as it was selfless and true growing up moment for her, Elena is someone who puts other people’s lives ahead of hers… it’s just that her actions don’t exactly align with that. The Elena that killed a hunter, I want that back and it either has to have actual consequences or be a result of her “turning off her humanity.”

Because as the show has been hinting at for some time, Elena may not be all that different from Katherine.

So yes, maybe some of the logistics didn’t exactly make sense, but at this point…that’s just The Vampire Diaries. The last few minutes of the episode truly saved it, in that they made it kind of badass. Plus, you know, KATHERINE WAS BACK. We’ve missed you so much Katherine! Now… Why does Katherine want the Cure? And who will actually end up taking it? My guess is that she also just wants to make Klaus human again and get rid of him as a threat. But if I had to think about who on the show will actually take the Cure, it would be Damon. For one, it would remove that pesky sire bond storyline, but secondly, I feel as though they’ve been hinting at it too strongly. “I don’t want to be human! That would be awful! Etc!” The past few episode have also been trying to remind us that he’s selfless (even though he allowed Klaus to murder like a dozen people just a month ago, but whatever).

It just wouldn’t make sense to waste Elena’s potential. We know it’s not Klaus because he’s going to New Orleans, and so on. Who do you guys think will eventually take the Cure? And what did you think of the episode?