The Vampire Diaries - S7E8 - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me

Previously on The Vampire Diaries, ‘Mommie Dearest’

Stefan and Damon’s new plan to kill Julian seems simple enough: get a bit of Julian’s blood, use it to unlink him and Lily, and then kill the bastard. The tricky part will be getting the heretics on their side so that one of them will do the unlinking spell. To gain their sympathies, Valerie has agreed to tell her family what Julian did to her way back when. Um, couldn’t Valerie just do the unlinking spell herself? Whatever.

Meanwhile, Julian and the heretics are planning their 1000^th party since arriving in Mystic Falls. This time it’s to celebrate Mary-Louise and Nora’s 133^rd anniversary. Julian’s gift to the ladies is filling the party with hundreds of compelled humans – I guess this explains those folks being fattened for slaughter at The Grill and the high school – who can be food, friends, or whatever they want them to be. This is so depressing: they have to compel people to like them and hang out with them just to have another party! Lily is against the idea of feeding on all these humans, but she wants to be cool-mom so she allows it, for now.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”#4a7097″ class=”” size=””]“Ok, this vervain stings like a bitch and your family drama makes the prospect of hell look like Disneyland.” – Damon[/pullquote]

Mary-Louise is planning a proposal and decides to get Julian’s advice. Somehow he knew all about this because when Mary-Louise shows him the ring she bought, he one-ups her with a ring from a dead French Princess. It looks like the costume jewelry you can buy at Forever 21. Which, no shade, cause I’ve been known to buy a couple cheap accessories from there, but let’s not pretend this ring was anything more than that.

Not about to be outdone by Julian, Lily gives Nora the strangest gift of all: a book of poems. There’s nothing wrong with poetry, but this book happens to contain a poem that Nora read over and over and over again in the prison world. Why the hell would she want a copy of the only book she’s been reading for a hundred years? Like, hey, here’s a reminder of all that time we spent wasting away!

Images: The CW

Speaking of old times, Julian has the DJ play a song for Lily from their past. An opera tune with Beau’s vocals. Beau is officially the most interesting character from the heretics. I wish he had more to work with than just facial expressions, even though he’s really good at them. Then again, if the writers gave him more of a storyline, they’d probably just fuck it up.

Julian is using the power of nostalgia to trick Lily into bringing out her inner ripper. He believes her pacifist nature is the one thing standing in the way of them being a true family again. Lily does give in for a moment, just in time for Damon to see her take a bite out of one of their guests. He looks disgusted and doesn’t care for her excuse that she was just playing along to convince Julian everything is okay. While Damon doesn’t have any right to be angry with his mother for feeding on a human, his attitude in this episode is the only one making any damn sense. Why should he give any fucks about this woman after all she’s done?

Turns out, Nora loves Forever 21, and obviously Mary-Louise, so the proposal goes really well. The two lovebirds share a moment of bliss until Valerie shows up. She gathers her siblings and Lily together, and tells them her story. At the same time, Stefan and Damon are keeping Julian occupied. The brothers take him down easily, get the necessary blood, and tie him to a chair. Now all they need is to complete the unlinking spell, which shouldn’t be difficult since the heretics were quick to trust Valerie. Well, except for Mary-Louise who only reluctantly joined in thanks to Nora. Ultimately though, she was unsure of who to believe because she ends up knocking out Damon and Valerie, and freeing Julian. When Nora discovers this, she rips off the engagement ring and leaves Mary-Louise on her own.

Julian wants Lily to decide once and for all whose family she belongs to: the Salvatore’s or the Heretic’s? He has both Valerie and Damon tied up and forces Lily to choose which one of them to kill. It’s looking as though Lily is about to kill Valerie, then as if she might kill Damon, but in the end she chooses to kill herself. It’s a brilliantly selfless plan and one that should have taken Julian out as well, except that he had Mary-Louise unlink them moments before. So, unfortunately, Julian is still with us and Lily’s death was pointless. But also, it’s really hard to care about Lily, so whatever.

While everyone is having their sappy final moments with Lily, Damon is in the corner swigging bourbon. He’s considering what to say to her, and I’m glad he took his time because the results are perfect. “You made your bed, have a nice nap.” Thank you, Damon.

Stefan is a dweeb

Before Stefan made it to the anniversary party, Caroline stopped by the Lockwood mansion to tell him the pregnancy news. He didn’t take it well. He didn’t take it badly, either. In fact, he barely even took it. Stefan basically brushed her off because the whole Julian killing thing was way more important to him. What happened to these two? When Caroline came to the door they didn’t act like a couple at all, it felt like Stefan didn’t even want her to come in the door. They’re chemistry is evaporating quickly. It’s nice that Stefan apologized and committed to staying by her side, but he never once asked how she feels about all this and that’s kind of fucked up. On top of that, he delivers this apology and then says I love you for the first time, ON THE PHONE! I kept yelling at my TV, “don’t be a punk, Stefan, tell her in person!” And then I laughed hysterically when he didn’t cause, what a dweeb.

Three years from now

Damon is all chained up at the TV news station, which we learn is in Dallas, as his mother emerges from the shadows. She attempts to rescue him but then pauses, there’s not much she can truly do since he’s been poisoned with werewolf venom. With what little time he may have left, he apologizes, presumably for not being nicer when she died. The venom must really be messing with his brain because that woman is definitely not Lily. Whoever it is though, gives him a swift kick to the face.

Final Thoughts & Questions

• You’ll notice I didn’t cover the part where Enzo and Lily kiss. That’s because it was ridiculous and made no sense, at all.
• I also left out all the stuff with Enzo and Matt. It wasn’t ridiculous; it just didn’t deserve its own section. I feel like there’s a connection between the people Matt hooked up with to take Enzo down and whoever is wreaking havoc in the future. The darts Damon was shot with in the previous episode and the ones Enzo was shot with in this one, looked very similar. Either way, I’m happy to see Matt being given something fun to do.
• Have the heretics forgotten they have magic abilities? When Valerie is tied up she doesn’t even try to get herself out of it. Then, when Lily is dying, Nora asks Stefan what to do. You’re the one with magic, dummy, why don’t you use it? I just would have appreciated seeing an attempt at some spells, even if they proved futile.
• The less Bonnie an episode has, the less exciting it is. This episode had none, so…