The Originals - S5E4 - Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Previously on The Originals, “Ne Me Quitte Pas”

You Can’t Teach An Old Vampire New Tricks

In the face of Elijah’s rejection, Klaus decides… to do the exact opposite of what Elijah would tell him to do. Since Hayley is still missing, Klaus takes a werewolf, a vampire, and a witch hostage to push the factions to find her and to put the fear of god in them. While these tactics have worked in the past, the threats only serve to shake the tenuous peace that has existed between the factions while the Mikealsons were gone. The gambit does serve to let Klaus (and Marcel) know that the vampires are behind Hayley’s disappearance, but because Klaus kills a witch and a werewolf during his reign of terror, he loses any hope of the witches and wolves supporting him. Basically, Klaus flushed out one enemy and made fifty more in the process.

Back at Mystic Falls School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Hope is trying to undo her own cloaking spell so she can find her mother. When Freya shows up, Hope thinks she has an ally but Freya is actually there to see if Vincent and Ivy’s predictions about Hope bringing on the apocalypse are true. And it’s looking more likely that she will. Hope is an unknown quantity. As a first born Mikaelson witch and the daughter of a vampire-werewolf hybrid, she’s more powerful than any other supernatural creature. That coupled with the fact that she’s a teenager with psycho-daddy issues, it’s a recipe for disaster. Unless there’s a Dumbledore around, Hope is going to need a lot of support getting her powers together.

The Good

• The flicker of regret and realization Klaus has when Vincent reads him for filth was glorious. Klaus cannot fall back on intimidation whenever he wants to get his way. And he would be smart to use Vincent as a surrogate Elijah until his brother comes to his senses.
• More on Vincent: He and Ivy could be a powerhouse. Their flirting and also the way she easily rallied the witches showed how evenly matched they are. I really want a happy ending for him.
• Lisina (Alexis Louder) as the new leader of the werewolves. She is a great addition to the cast and she rides a fine line between being loyal to Hayley as their alpha, but not backing down from the Mikaelsons.

The Hollow

• Greta, the new leader of the vampires, is so tired. Every single time there’s a truce between the vampires, the witches, and the wolves, there’s inevitably a vamp who stirs up trouble because they want more territory or power. It’s played and I don’t like her challenging Marcel.

While The Originals is ending, Legacies, a show about Hope and Mystic Falls Hogwarts, has already been announced for The CW 2018 fall lineup; so Hope probably won’t bring about the apocalypse, but hopefully she will unite these factions (all three of which she embodies) and stop their never-ending fight for dominance.

Although the focus of this final season might be reuniting the Mikaelsons and Hope controlling her powers, that will always be the bigger story. But the issue with that narrative is that it’s always the vampires instigating the problem. They want to control the wolves because a wolf bite is deadly and they want to control witches because witches give them the power to walk in the daylight. Even Ava’s pursuit of The Hollow was a response to the vampires taking over the French Quarter. The vampires have always been the issue and Marcel and Klaus can’t control them.