Warning! Contains Spoilers!
Silas is on the hunt for Katherine and there’s nothing he won’t do to find her.
The second episode of the CW drama, The Vampire Dairies, turned up the suspense volume to high.
In a nutshell: Damon experiences the consequences of his lies; Caroline and Elena play amateur sleuths at Whitmore College; Katherine’s escape from Mystic Falls is thwarted by Jeremy and Matt; Damon enlists the Sheriff to help to find Stefan; Silas compels Elena to kill Damon; Bonnie can’t cope with being dead; Nadia joins forces with Silas; Stefan finally escapes his underwater prison.
In the opening, Bonnie (Kat Graham) tells Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) how Silas (Paul Wesley) practiced his mind control over the towns people gathered for the Mystic Falls’ end of summer party and killed her father, the mayor. Bonnie is not coping well with being a ghost. She’s distraught that she can’t see her father on the other side because he’s not supernatural. (Hmm…there’s a special after life for supernatural folks?) She’s upset that she’s not being able to touch Jeremy (and the feeling is mutual). She says Silas is using his mind control on the towns people to find Katherine. And whatever Silas wants with Katherine, they can’t let Silas have it. (Stating the obvious here!)
Meanwhile, a limping Katherine (Nina Dobrev) dressed in only her bathrobe, coughing uncontrollably, stumbles out of the woods and flags down a motorist. Unfortunately, the woman, a towns person under Silas’ mind control, recognizes her as looking like Elena, and maces her. (That really sets her off!) Katherine knocks her out with a right hook, only to come face to face with a shotgun wielding Matt (Zach Roerig).
Stefan (Paul Wesley) is still trapped in the underwater safe and still hallucinating. In this one, he and Elena are sharing a romantic afternoon by the quarry. He tells her these are the moments that keep him from falling apart. Suddenly, Elena starts choking and coughing up loads of water. Cut back to Stefan in the underwater safe, doing the same.
At Whitmore College, Elena (Nina Dobrev) and Caroline (Candice Accola) read the autopsy report of their dead roommate, Megan, which indicates nothing about the vampire bites on her neck and her death is listed as a suicide. Curiously, it’s signed by a Dr. Wesley Maxfield (Rick Cosnett), who teaches an advanced microbiology class. They think he’s part of the cover-up. (Is performing autopsies his second job? And did Elena compel the hospital staff to turn over the death certificate?) They decide to sit in on his class to find out more, but get kicked out by him because they’re freshman. (Saw that coming). Jesse (Kendrick Sampson) just happens to be enrolled in that class. (Hmmm).
Back at the Mystic Falls, Damon (Ian Somerhalder) thinks he’s figured out where Stefan is. He tries to convince Sheriff Liz Forbes (Marguerite MacIntyre) to drag the quarry to find Stefan. He believes if Silas wanted to make sure he was gone, this is where he has put him. Sheriff Forbes says she is already promised not to tell about the mayor’s death until Damon figures this out and doesn’t have the resources to search for someone who may or may not be down there. But after Damon paints a picture of Stefan spending the summer drowning over and over, she relents and says she’ll have some deputies help search the water. (Short on resources and then she can find help?)
Damon receives a call from Jeremy that he and Matt have captured Katherine (and Matt is tying her up in their truck. On the bright side, they brought her some clothes). Damon instructs them to stay out of sight because Silas knows Jeremy was the last person to see be seen with her.
After being kicked out of class, Elena takes a stroll on campus while chatting to Damon on the phone about what happened. Silas walks up to her, pretending to be Stefan, and she hangs up on Damon who is pleading with her it’s not Stefan. Silas exposes Damon as a liar and fills her in on what is happening. Sort of. He uses her phone to try to contact Jeremy and find out where he is, suspecting Katherine is with him. He questions Elena and she gives up information about a camp site. In the meantime, he uses Elena’s anger about Damon lying to her, to compel her to get rid of Damon. (Sneaky! More on that later!)
Damon has come to campus to find Elena and finds Silas instead. Damon bursts in on Caroline in the dorm room fresh from the shower (great lines in that scene). He asks where Elena is and says Silas is on campus. Caroline thinks she’s at the campus bonfire.
Caroline tells him that Elena’s been having a bad feeling about Stefan. Damon and Stefan have a confrontation and Silas says he’s done something to Elena but won’t tell him what, as to not ruin the fun.
Meanwhile, Matt and Jeremy get Katherine to the campsite, after some she nearly escapes at a gas station, but Silas catches up with them. He “kills” Matt when he realizes that a Traveler is using Matt’s body to track him (Hint: Matt doesn’t respond to Silas’ mind control and his eyes turn black) and then goes after Jeremy, who has left Katherine back at the truck.
Matt wakes up on the other side and discovers he’s dead, but only temporarily. He meets Bonnie who tells him he can return to the living by finding his body, which is near-by. She also explains she’s dead and that’s okay with her. (Liar!). Matt says she has to let everyone know through Jeremy, that’s she dead.
Back in the land of the living, Silas and Jeremy are exchanging body slams until Silas punctures Jeremy with a broken tree branch (That would make anyone squeamish). Thinking victory is his, Silas picks up the axe Jeremy was using and goes to finish him off. But, he gets gunned down by a shotgun wielding Katherine. She shoots several rounds and down goes Silas for a nap (Originals don’t die, they just go night-night for a while). Matt returns to his body (and can’t remember what happened) and Katherine urges them to get going because Silas won’t be out for long. Jeremy sees Bonnie and she confesses to him that she’s not ready to be dead yet. (So is she figuring out how to come back?)
At the bonfire, Jesse finds Elena chugging down beer from one of the kegs. She unloads about Damon to him (the broken trust issue mainly) and they go off to collect firewood. Jesse tells Elena that Dr. Maxfield is rumored to be part of a secret society on campus that meet at Whitmore House a few times a week. Before he can tell her anything else, Damon and Caroline interrupt and Damon knocks out Jesse. Caroline and Jesse get some alone time together after Damon and Elena leave. Caroline nurses Jesse’s swollen face with an popsicle while they exchange broken relationship stories.
Damon and Elena are back at the dorm room where Elena comes on to him (great shirt ripping!). She ties him to a chair and then forces that special water down his throat, which gets him coughing up blood. (Uh-oh this isn’t heading a good direction!). Damon guesses this is what Silas was talking about, that he’s got into her head. Elena says she is to control Damon, weaken him, and (while breaking a stick in two to stake him with), kill him. Figuring out that it’s her anger that is the trigger setting her off, Damon he tells her to think of Stefan. This is what finally breaks Silas’ mind control.
In the meantime, Silas has woken up from the gunshots and wandered into a gas station to feed off the attendant. He is confronted by two people he recognizes as Travelers. They’re the ones who took over Matt’s body to track him. Nadia (Olga Fonda) (who shared a tryst with Matt in Europe during the summer) and her companion are Travelers who say they want to do away with Silas. However, Nadia kills her buddy and joins forces with Silas. “As you can see, I have my own agenda”, she tells him after he reads her mind.
At Whitmore, Elena packs up and heads back to Mystic Falls with Damon, to find Stefan. As she’s ready to leave, Dr. Wesley Maxfield approaches her and says he admired her brilliant father and invites her to stop by his office sometime to talk. She tells him when she has time, she will. She is seriously creeped out by him. (Hot and creepy, anyone?)
As the episode winds down, a bigger danger unfolds. Sheriff Forbes, Elena and Damon are standing with the safe that Stefan had been prisoner in. It had been found a mile away. As they open it, they don’t find Stefan; they find a bloodied stranger who’s been fed on. (The poor guy who found the safe and let Stefan out?) Damon remarks that Stefan will be very hungry after three months and wonders where he is. (With Stefan on the loose, is that putting everyone in Mystic Falls, in obvious danger?).
Questions abound from this episode. Will Stefan be having a feeding frenzy on the towns people? Is he even in Mystic Falls? Is the dead man in the safe the one who let Stefan out? Will Bonnie return somehow? Who are the Travelers and what does Nadia want with Silas? What happened to Matt, Jeremy, and Kathryn? Are they in for more adventures on their way back to Mystic Falls? Is the secret society for vampires or hunters?
What did you think of this week’s episode?
