The Vampire Diaries 3x18 The Murder of One

I liked this episode a lot even if Iris specced almost everything that was going to happen before it happened. In fact, I can almost sort of see where the season might be going, LOL. Okay maybe not. But I was glad to see some mention of things I've been thinking about even if Saint Elena, Savior of the Cursed and Damned is getting to me.

When the Originals were first linked and Esther was like, kill one of them you kill all of them, I thought the eventual outcome of that would be to wipe out all vampires. So I was glad that was confirmed tonight, when an Original vampire is killed, so is his/her entire bloodline. Also yay Finn is dead.

When it first happened I was hoping Elena would be conflicted over whether or not to actually kill the vampires. She and her friends have suffered a lot at the hands of the vampires and that would have been some delicious angst. But...instead they set up a different conflict. They are clearly hoping Klaus is not their ancestor, but no matter what Klaus IS Tyler's sire. And...Klaus mentioned that he wants to take Elena with him wherever he goes, so I'm wondering if they are setting up a choice to be made between Elena's humanity and Tyler's life. I feel like I can guess the outcome to that one pretty well, but here are my reasons for thinking this might be the direction.

1) Elena's human life and the idea that the vampires can't protect her has been set up pretty well. She mourned the loss of her normal life at the same bridge where Stefan once saved her life (and he was ushered into her life), and she's been reconnecting with Matt.

2) Caroline's father was forced to make a choice and chose to die, Bonnie's mother chose to become a vampire, these choices have been given some narrative weight.

3) Saving Elena has come at a cost to her friends. Bonnie lost her mother this season and Elena was confronted with this reality. The supernatural ring she insisted Alaric keep brought out his dark side and he murdered Caroline's father. Now Tyler's life might be on the line and he is obviously important to Caroline.

I'm not really thrilled with this idea. I don't want Elena to become a vampire but I also don't want to keep watching people die all around the idea of saving her. I actually like Tyler. And I could be off in that I don't think Tyler is a big enough character to the show in some ways to warrant this choice. But Caroline is, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

But I don't think Elena's choice is the only one that will be important, I thought Bonnie's breakdown tonight was pretty effective. I would not be surprised if Bonnie tries to do what her mother did and leave it all behind. She is constantly being used by these people for their own means and forced to do really painful things. When she tried to help Stefan earlier this season he repaid her by not even caring when they turned her mother. It would be fascinating if Elena embraced the supernatural (something I've noticed on rewatch is how quickly she fell into using the vampires' supernatural abilities to her benefit with absolutely no problem) and Bonnie tried to denounce it.

Also can I just say I KNEW VAMPIRES COULD TRAVEL TO DENVER. The idea of wiping Jeremy clean of his memories and sending him to Denver always seemed really silly to me because it's not like the Originals are stupid and what they did instead was leave him completely vulnerable to attack because he didn't have the memories or knowledge to anticipate any attacks. So the fact that Kol was spying on him ready to hurt him if Bonnie didn't do Klaus's bidding was nice validation that Elena and co's plan was silly.

I also liked that part where Caroline admitted she liked her first kill. We are rarely treated to the dark side of Caroline, sometimes she doesn't even seem like a vampire so nice touch show.

Anyway here's hoping I'm totally wrong about everything and Elena stays human forever and Tyler lives!

Oh yeah the triangle, lol. I still think it's funny that the show gives it so much emotional weight when all this other stuff is going on, but I don't really care about it.