Anyway, let’s talk about what happened this week. Katherine and Bonnie made a deal, so the two teamed up this week to drop the veil, contact Quetsiyah, find out how to kill Silas, and [hopefully] ask her how to make Katherine truly immortal. Being Mystic Falls, only one of those things actually worked out: the veil between the ghost world and the human world dropped – but only within Mystic Falls.

Essentially, this meant that every ghost who happened to be hanging around Mystic Falls was now as visible and solid as a living person. That list of people included Alaric, Jeremy, Lexi, Grams, and… Kol? Yeah, he was apparently following Elena around in ghostly form. Needless to say, he was out for blood – namely Gilbert blood. He stops by the Grill – where Matt and Rebekah are holding down the fort, which is deserted as Bonnie’s magic made the power go out. They don’t know where Elena is, so he soon ditches them to look for her on his own.

Meanwhile, Elena is still focusing all her energy on putting an end to Katherine Pierce [hahahaha], so she spends a lot of this episode trying to get people to tell her where she can find everyone’s favorite Petrova. When she can’t get the information she needs from any of them, she takes off to find her on her own – which she actually manages to do quite successfully.

Unfortunately for Elena, Bonnie is linked to Katherine, so anything that happens to one happens to the other. Obviously, this means that if Elena kills Katherine, she’ll also kill Bonnie. Stefan gets to her just in time to stop her from staking Katherine [though I'm not entirely sure why Katherine was just standing there basically waiting for Elena to kill her]. Elena accuses Stefan of still being in love with Katherine [LOL - notice how much laughter this Elena/Katherine situation inspires in me?], and in the interim, Katherine escapes.

Stefan and Elena talk, with Stefan making some really excellent points about being a vampire meaning she’s just going to have to get used to losing people she cares about [that whole "live forever" thing and all]. Elena isn’t ready to hear it yet, so she punches Stefan in the face, takes off to visit Jeremy’s grave, at which point Kol finally catches up to her.

He’s about two seconds away from killing her when Jeremy shows up and distracts Kol. Stefan ends up taking Kol down, and then takes Kol’s body and leaves the Gilbert siblings to have their moment so they can say a real goodbye. Meanwhile, Bonnie and Damon manage to take down Silas [sort of]. Grams gave Bonnie a pep talk, convincing her that she can use her Expression magic to dessicate him again.

That done, she sets about bringing Jeremy back to life. Grams tries to convince her that the Expression magic won’t be powerful enough to bring Jeremy back, but Bonnie is determined to try anyway… but Grams was right – the magic ended up killing her instead. However, since she hadn’t gotten around to putting the veil back up, she’s still around… for now.

As for the spell that killed her, it isn’t clear as to whether or not Jeremy’s back, but Bonnie’s spell did manage to raise SOME of the dead… there are currently a whole lot of previously dead members of The Five hunterhood running around Mystic Falls now. Bex’s old boyfriend from the time before electricity is back, as is Connor Jordan, and even Galen Vaughn – the Scottish hunter from the island. [But I don't really understand that one... did I miss the episode where he died?]

Anyway, the point is they’re all back, and the veil is still down [does this mean that Alaric, Jeremy, and Lexi are gonna get to stay? And what does this mean for Bonnie?] I can’t imagine permanent ghosthood within the triangle in Mystic Falls is all that enticing – but who knows… maybe it looks a lot better when your alternative is the other side where no one can see or interact with you. Guess we’ll see next week – don’t miss the season finale! Our kids are graduating!

Yeah, okay, this episode was pretty badass. So, basically, Bonnie’s promised Silas she’ll drop the veil and kill him, Sheriff Forbes has escaped death – for now, and Elena’s humanity has returned and she’s now determined to off Katherine. Regardless of everything else that happened this week, Matt Donovan wins all the awards ever. Team Human was all up in this episode showing the world that he’s literally the best ever.

Let’s start off with the woes of our beloved human: Matt Donovan, arguably the only one in that town who still goes to class regularly, is failing school and worried he won’t graduate. What few friends he has left in town – which right now basically means Caroline… and Rebekah, oddly enough – offer to help him study to bring his grades up. Rebekah, in a move sure to win over most everyone who watches the show, even goes so far as to offer to compel Matt passing grades and a ticket to graduation – plus a college scholarship even – but dear Matty, ever the good human, declines her offer.

Still, both Matt and the viewers appreciated the sentiment, plus all this school and graduation talk gave everyone some distraction from the torture going on in the Salvatore dungeon. Stefan and Damon were busy putting their plan into motion – the one that involves torturing Elena into feeling emotions again. So, basically, everyone takes turns trying pretty much everything they can think of to force Elena to flip her switch and turn her humanity back on.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much good because – as Elena so helpfully points out – neither Salvatore brother will ever do anything that could cause her any real harm. We know it, they know it, Elena knows it, and once Stefan and Damon acknowledge that, things get moving along much faster. They decide to call in Katherine [because that's always a good idea and everyone always wins when she gets involved] and Katherine, being unable to pass up a chance to torture Elena, agrees to come help out.

However, Elena sort of wins the round as it takes her all of 60 seconds to piss off her doppelganger. Katherine questions her about what Elena may have said to Elijah that made him dump her – but Elena just insults Katherine a few too many times. Annoyed and tired of seeing everyone worship at Elena‘s feet [aren't we all!], Katherine walks away – leaving Elena‘s cage unlocked so she can escape and get out of their lives.

Anyway, while everyone else is busy revolving their lives around Evil!Elena, Bonnie is off getting shit done. She tracks down and sets up a meeting with Katherine to try and get Silas’ tombstone. Katherine apparently took it off the island where they first woke Silas. Bonnie offers Katherine a deal in exchange for the tombstone.

Essentially, if Katherine will give her the tombstone – which is filled with Quetsiyah‘s blood, and so will help her do the spell to drop the veil – Bonnie promises Katherine that she’ll talk to Quetsiyah and figure out how Quetsiyah made Silas immune to destruction, and then make Katherine the same way. Obviously, Katherine agrees to this deal – though I’m sure it’s not going to go as planned.

Points for effort though – it’s good to see sane Bonnie back. In other news, the title of this episode is “She’s Come Undone” – and I think it’s safe to say we were all assuming it was referring to Elena. However, having seen the episode, it would seem Caroline is the one who truly came “undone” this week. Silas sure worked a number on her, doing his usual tricks in an attempt to force her to find Bonnie – who’d gone M.I.A. on her mission to find a way to thwart Silas.

First, Silas shows up as Klaus, and that’s an entire issue in and of itself. Silas!Klaus tries to convince Caroline to run away to New Orleans with him, and then we have to watch this whole ordeal in which Caroline tells him that she’s afraid to run away with him, and it is implied that the reason is because she’s afraid of her feelings for him or whatever.

I’m sorry, I’m calling bullshit. All I saw watching that moment – even after we learned it was Silas impersonating Klaus – was blatant fan service for the Klaroline shippers. I get that Klaus is leaving for his own show, but that doesn’t mean that Klaroline has to be forced together before he leaves – especially when doing so means you have to majorly change Caroline‘s character.

Anyway, that’s not really important in the scheme of the episode. The point is, he tricks her, but she eventually realizes it’s Silas, and the mental torture then commences in full force. He appears to her as Matt, then again as Klaus, telling her he’ll kill Sheriff Forbes if she doesn’t find Bonnie immediately.

Care races home, but has a hard time trusting whether she’s talking to her mom there or to Silas. She accepts that it’s her mom, but then Bonnie shows up and Bonnie realizes that Silas is in the house – impersonating the sheriff. Caroline then runs in the other room to find her mom unconscious and/or dead. She feeds her her blood and it’s a little touch and go for a few minutes, but fortunately her mom comes to – and is now maybe in transition?

Bonnie, having witnessed the whole thing, assures Silas that she has no intention on going back on her promise to drop the veil and kill him off. He then makes some sort of strange remark about her having made him a promise, which means that she will be held accountable for her actions if she does anything other than what he says. Obviously, this means things aren’t going to end well for Bonnie Bennett.

Meanwhile, Katherine had let Elena escape, so Damon, Stefan, and Matt race off to find her. Matt gets to her first, and tries to talk to her, but she’s so hungry she just feeds from him – almost killing him before Stefan and Damon show up to stop her. Damon then tells Elena he’ll kill Matt – Elena says she doesn’t care, but then Damon actually DOES kill him and Elena positively panics.

At that moment, her emotions come back – as she’s so shocked and hurt over the idea that Matt Donovan has just died. However, it turns out that Matt was wearing one of the Gilbert rings [totally forgot all about those things - it's been so long since they've been mentioned]. Anyway, he was definitely dead – but he’d be coming back to life. Damon then informs Elena that she’s feeling relief – which is an emotion – and that her switch has flipped back. [Duh.]

Elena freaks out, remembering all the harm no-humanity her had caused, but Stefan and Damon work together to calm her down. Stefan talks to her, telling her to find an emotion to ground her and focus on it, which she does. We find out later that the emotion she chose to focus her energy on is her hatred of Katherine.

She’s decided she has to kill Katherine for all the trouble she has caused over the years. Stefan and Damon try to talk her out of focusing on anger, but there’s no reasoning with her – and really, they shouldn’t be so surprised. Both Salvatores selected anger when their emotions came back – Stefan last season when he focused on his vendetta against Klaus, and Damon in the 1920′s when he focused on duping Lexi.

Damon and Stefan try a brutal new approach to provoke Elena into turning her humanity back on, and Caroline is frustrated when her attempt to intervene backfires. When Elena figures out a way to call the Salvatore brothers’ bluff, they call for backup from a surprising source. Matt gives Rebekah some unsolicited advice on her life choices, and she tries to help him in return. Caroline has a confusing and dangerous encounter with Klaus, and Katherine is suspicious when Bonnie makes her an offer that she promises will benefit them both.

This week’s prom episode was pretty much everything that prom is supposed to be – with a little blood and pain thrown in, of course. [It's Mystic Falls, after all.] Still, between the death threats and torturing, there was friend bonding, dancing, lots of nostalgia… and tears. Let’s discuss:

First of all, Jeremy’s back! No, not really… but Steven McQueen was. Silas took the form of Jeremy Gilbert to try and manipulate Bonnie into doing the spell to drop the veil to the other side. Kat Graham was on her A-game this week, making viewers cry within the first 10 seconds of coming on screen. We finally [just now, for whatever reason] got to see Bonnie‘s reaction to finding out about Jeremy’s death, from like, five episodes ago.

It was heartbreaking, and just made us all miss Baby Gilbert that much more. We quickly realized it was a dream, to which Bonnie woke up from to find her living room on fire. It looks like Bonnie‘s still having trouble controlling her magic. [However, I'm not entirely convinced that it's not Silas doing all these crazy things to make Bonnie think that her magic is out of control when it's really not.]

Bonnie (Kat Graham) spends much of the episode with Jeremy, not realizing that she’s actually been hanging out with Silas until Jeremy (Steven McQueen) makes a comment about Bonnie being able to bring him back by dropping the veil. Once she realizes Jeremy is actually Silas in disguise, she runs to the Salvatores for help.

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The Salvatore brothers were pretty busy this week themselves, having come up with a new plan to handle Humanity-Free Elena. Since Elena doesn’t want the cure and has threatened them to try and make them stop looking, they’ve decided that they’re just going to have to make her want to turn her emotions back on. They take a page from Lexi’s “Switch-Flipped Handbook,” thinking that by bombarding her with memories of the past, she may just start to feel again.

Elena, meanwhile, is busy scheming with Bex – who’s apparently also her new roomie, since everyone else can’t stand her anymore. The two go out dress shopping, but Elena decides she’s not up for shopping, and so just steals Caroline‘s prom dress instead. [Though, I don't really understand why an emotionless vampire would care enough to steal her former BFF's clothes. Or is "spite" not considered an emotion?]

Anyway, when she finds out, Caroline runs to Klaus (Joseph Morgan) to get him to rustle up a dress of “royal caliber” – and Klaus certainly delivers on that front. I don’t know that anyone could argue that Caroline wouldn’t have won Best Dressed at prom. She, Bonnie, and Matt Donovan all go to prom together as friends, which was super sweet and adorable. Bonnie and Matt got to have a chat about Bonnie’s struggle with her magic, and though there really isn’t too much Matt can do to help, he’s a good listener.

Damon and Stefan both take Elena – because Elena obviously is in desperate need of supervision lately – though Elena (Nina Dobrev) isn’t too thrilled to be seen with either of them these days. Putting their plan into motion, Damon tries to remind her that she used to love him, but it backfires as Elena informs him that all those feelings she felt towards Damon were just from the sire bond. Obviously we’re not sure whether or not she was lying.

Regardless, Damon’s move was a bust, so Stefan (Paul Wesley) takes matters into his own hands, pulling her out onto the dance floor. [Things must be getting desperate if we've got Stefan willingly dancing in public.] We’re sure glad he did because, I’m telling you, I think in that moment, everyone was a Stelena shipper. It was an amazing scene, with a great song choice [that was "Stay" by Rhianna, by the way], that had viewers – and Stefan – breathless. It’s hard to say, but I’d wager that even emotionless Elena was a little moved by the moment, but she quickly ran off, leaving Stefan and his nostalgia on the dance floor.

Caroline (Candice Accola) isn’t much in the mood for Prom, so after a cute dance with her new BFF Stefan, during which time they talk about love and moving on – particularly about how Stefan isn’t moving on from Elena like he so badly wants, Caroline decides to skip out on the rest of the dance and head over to the Lockwood Mansion [or should we be calling it the Donovan Mansion now?] to start setting up for the post-prom party. [Let's hope someone more financially stable than Matt Donovan is funding this post-prom party. Poor guy's got enough problems and bills these days.]

Once she gets there, she is surprised by Tyler Lockwood, who came back to town just so that he can give her the prom night of her dreams. He brings her flowers and dances with her, but Tyler (Michael Trevino) can’t stay long – because Klaus, obviously. Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite leave soon enough. Klaus shows up just as Tyler is leaving, but out of respect for Caroline, gives Tyler the chance to run away from him. [Good on you, Klaus!]

Back at prom, Bonnie Bennett and Matt Donovan (Zach Roerig) are crowned prom royalty. It sort of makes sense for Matt – I’m sure he’s probably a regular attendee at school, plus he’s on the football team, so people probably know him pretty well. Bonnie, on the other hand, not so much – or was that just me? I think she probably attends school… about as often as the rest of the supernatural beings in Mystic Falls do. But maybe her notoriety has gone up since her dad became mayor. Anyway, they won, so go them!

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Elijah, ever the logical Original sibling, is also around this week – acting as mediator for Klaus and Rebekah. The two are fighting over who should get to have the cure. Klaus obviously wants it so that he can get Silas off his back, while poor Bex just wants it so she can be human. Elijah decides that, if she can spend an entire day pretending to be human and still want the cure afterwards, he will give it to her. Rebekah (Claire Holt) accepts the challenge, and Elena agrees to help her out with the plan, as once Bex takes it, the cure will be gone and she won’t have to worry about the Salvatores trying to give it to her anymore.

Of course, there are complications. Elena tries to kill Bonnie so that she can’t drop the veil and bring back the very people that would try and force Elena to turn her humanity back on. Bonnie fights back and manages to escape, but April (Grace Phipps) is unfortunate enough to then stumble upon an angry Elena, who knocks April unconscious and drinks from her – leaving her to die as Matt watches.

Rebekah walks by at that very moment and Matt pleads with her to use her blood to save April [though I think we can ALL agree that we were wishing and hoping that Bex would refuse and just let April die]. The adorable and sweet Matt manages to convince Bex that being human means helping people whenever you can – even if it means using her vampire blood and thus failing to act as a true human would – so she saves her.

Klaus sees her do this and calls her out on her non-human actions. He tells her to tell Elijah what she did, then makes a weird statement about how he won’t have to argue with her about it anymore – which makes Rebekah suspicious. She calls Elijah (Daniel Gillies) and tells him not to let the cure out of his sight, but it’s just seconds too late, as he’d just been tricked by Silas posing as Rebekah into giving away the cure.

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Silas also tricked Damon and Stefan this week. When Bonnie told Stefan and Damon about Silas’ tricks, the brothers split up to go looking for him. Stefan approaches Damon – who’s busy checking out some old Stelena pictures – and basically tells him that his one-night-stand with Elena isn’t enough to bring Elena’s emotions back and that Stelena was better than Delena, basically. He then stabs Damon – and gives himself away as actually being Silas, not Stefan.

He tells Damon that he did the same thing to Stefan over on the other side of the school, and warns him away from Bonnie. [I'm not really sure what's going on there as neither Stefan nor Damon were even contemplating harming Bonnie. Why didn't Silas go find and stab Elena?] Whatever the reason, Damon recovers, tracks down Stefan, then stumbles upon Bonnie basically torturing Elena to death.

Elena thought she could sneak up on Bonnie and have a second try at killing her, but Bonnie’s magic takes over and starts making Elena bleed out. Bonnie also exhibited some cool magic-healing powers, healing her own neck wound Elena inflicted upon her seconds before. Elena rolls around on the ground pleading with Bonnie to make her stop, but it’s not until after Stefan and Damon show up that they manage to get Bonnie to back off.

Bonnie takes off and confronts Silas, who also finally shows his face to her, and also maybe manages to convince her to do the spell for him, if for no other reason than so that he’ll die and leave her alone. Damon and Stefan are left to deal with Elena. Since their plan to make her turn her humanity back on didn’t work, they opt for Plan B – which was to vervain Elena and lock her away until they can figure out a new plan.

After watching Elena’s reaction to Bonnie’s torture, they realize that Elena was showing an emotion: fear. So, their new plan is to basically try and make her so scared that all the rest of her emotions come back. Sounds like a reasonably good plan [although I'm pretty sure Lexi also tried that with Ripper Stefan, and it didn't have any effect - but maybe it'll work on Elena]. However, we probably won’t be seeing that plan put into action next week, since it’s [finally] the week the new Originals pilot is set to air.

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So, basically, Silas really did a number on the Mystic Falls crew this week. He kept appearing as Jeremy to Bonnie so that he could manipulate her, he duped both Stefan and Damon into thinking he was each other, and he convinced Elijah that he was Rebekah – which is how he ended up getting the cure from him.

Now Silas has the cure, Elena‘s locked up in the Salvatore’s makeshift vampire prison, Bonnie sort of just agreed to drop the veil, Tyler‘s back on the run…. Oh! And Klaus is headed to New Orleans! Katherine wrote him a letter, warning him about a witch that’s planning something devious against Klaus, so Klaus is headed off to investigate [i.e.: setting the scene for The Originals pilot].

Well, between a gullible Elijah and a lovesick Katherine, I think we can all agree that the two beloved characters’ returns were not quite what we expected. Fortunately, there was some other action going on to distract us from these two strangely out-of-character characters.

Last week left off with Rebekah and humanity-free Elena riding off in Damon’s car, on a mission to track down Katherine Pierce, our favorite doppelganger. After running out of gas, the two ditch the car and steal a new one. Sheriff Forbes manages to track the car down somewhere between NYC and Katherine’s last known location: a small town in Pennsylvania. Damon and Stefan go fetch the car and take some time to brother-bond, finally reaching an agreement on Elena‘s new status: the bitch is crazy.

Elena and Rebekah (Claire Holt) essentially accidentally stumble across Katherine’s hiding place, after Elena stops for a quick bite to eat only to have her human meal call her Katherine. They soon come to the realization that Katherine has basically compelled the entire town into liking her – and forgetting all about her unless she is talking to them directly. Typical Katherine.

Anyway, they decide to try the post office to see if they can get an address, though their plans change when the mailman informs them that he’d just seen Katherine minutes ago – so they know she is probably still close by. They split up to find her – but Katherine ends up finding Elena first. Fortunately for Elena, Rebekah shows up just in time to slam Katherine into the ground. [Slamming people into the ground is Bex's thing these days, I guess.]

Properly cowed, Katherine (Nina Dobrev) quietly goes with Bex and Elena to the town restaurant, where they proceed to question Katherine about the cure’s location. She won’t tell them where it is, but they get their hands on her cell phone, which has a meeting on the calendar with someone named “em” at 2pm. Assuming it has something to do with the cure, Elena decides to impersonate Katherine [for once] and go to the meeting herself.

Once Bex manages to threaten Katherine enough to get her to hand over her jewelry, shoes, and jacket to Elena, she stays back with Katherine while Elena goes to meet up with “em“. The surprise is on Elena, though, when she shows up at the meeting place to discover that “em” actually refers to Eljiah Mikaelson. Apparently he and Katherine are in a relationship, of sorts? Anyway, Elena kisses Elijah to maintain her cover, but Elijah (Daniel Gillies) realizes she’s Elena when he notices her daylight ring – since Katherine’s daylight jewelry these days is a bracelet.

He tries to contact Katherine, but when he calls her phone, Stefan (Paul Wesley) is the one who answers – as he and Damon finally caught up to the girls and tracked Bex and Katherine down at the local diner, with Sheriff Forbes’ help. Realizing that Bex and the Salvatores have Katherine, Elijah decides to hold Elena (Nina Dobrev) hostage until he knows for certain that Katherine is safe.

So, Elijah and Elena end up spending the day together, and Elijah soon realizes that Elena has her humanity shut off. When he asks her why, she tells him about Jeremy‘s death – and Katherine‘s part in it, which Elijah had been unaware of. He was convinced that Katherine was trying to become a better person, and it’s obvious that her hand in his death disappointed him.

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Damon, Rebekah, and Katherine leave the diner and go to Katherine’s place to fetch the cure. Once there, Damon sniffs out the cure’s location: a fishless fish tank filled with vervain water. Noticing a treasure chest at the bottom of the tank, he realizes the cure is probably hidden inside it. Katherine tries to distract him by dunking his head in the vervain water so that she can grab the cure and run, but Bex stops her before she can get out the door.

Deciding to just save her own skin, Katherine tosses the cure – which Bex obvious chases after – to distract them so she could escape. Damon, still healing from his  vervain bath, watches as Rebekah takes the cure and passes out. Stefan shows up about that time – and accuses Damon of intentionally not stopping her from taking it [which is obviously true].

Anyway, when Rebekah regains consciousness, Damon tries to kill her, at which point they learn that the “cure” Rebekah took was fake – she was still a vampire. Realizing that Katherine must have tricked them, Rebekah goes to find Eljiah and beg him to give her the cure.

Meanwhile, Katherine ran off to meet up with Elijah. She snaps Elena‘s neck and tries to get Elijah to leave with her, but he is still angry about Katherine’s hand in Jeremy’s death. Elijah basically tells Katherine that it’s over between them and that she’ll never change. He leaves her, though Katherine begs him to stay and not give up on him.

Katherine then goes to fetch the actual cure from one of the town’s residents. She then takes the cure over to Eljiah and gives it to him to prove to him how much she’s changed. She tells him that she loves him and wants to be a better person, gives him the cure, then leaves.

He goes to get in his car to find Rebekah waiting there for him, probably having heard the entire conversation. Rebekah asks Elijah for the cure so that she can be human, but Eljiah doesn’t want to give it to her because he doesn’t want her to die. It’s a really sweet moment between the two siblings actually.

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While all that was going on in Pennsylvania, Klaus was dealing with a Silas-related problem back in Mystic Falls. As we saw last week, Silas showed up and threatened Klaus – telling him to find the cure and hand it over – or else. To make his point, he stabbed Klaus in the back with the White Oak stake, and appeared to have broken the stake off in Klaus’ back.

This week, Klaus (Joseph Morgan) spent the majority of the episode suffering, still having the tip of the stake in his back. Caroline shows up and Klaus tries to convince her to help him – only to learn that Silas put his “appearance-changing” skills to use and was impersonating Caroline. Silas/fake Caroline leaves, and the real Caroline finally shows up to find out why Klaus had been texting her all morning [interrupting her Prom Committee meetings!] asking for her help.

Klaus is naturally a bit suspicious of Caroline and it takes a while before he is convinced Caroline is really Caroline. At first, Caroline tries to help Klaus by digging the tip of the stake out of his back, but she decides to hold off helping him until he agrees to leave Tyler alone so that Tyler can come back to Mystic Falls. The two then spend the majority of the episode arguing, and wind up screaming at each other before it’s all over with.

About that time, Klaus stops feeling pain from the stake, and they realize that Silas actually had been making him feel pain – no part of the stake was actually still inside his back. Caroline is understandably creeped out by Silas at this point, because she realizes that there is really nothing they can do about him if he is able to even manipulate someone as old and strong as Klaus. Klaus thanks Caroline for distracting him from the pain long enough for him to recognize that it was fake, and in exchange sort of tells Caroline that Tyler can come back.. I think?

Anyway, Caroline (Candice Accola) leaves and Klaus gets a phone call from Rebekah. Rebekah catches him up on everything that has been happening in Pennsylvania – including the fact that she ran into Elijah. [Speaking of, just how adorable was that look of pure joy on Klaus' face when he realized his brother was on the phone?] Klaus asks them both to return to Mystic Falls, so the two siblings hop in a car and take off.

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Still in Pennsylvania, Elena calls the Salvatore brothers up and asks them to meet her at the town diner. Stefan and Damon first have a brother-bonding heart-to-heart moment where Stefan tells Damon that once Elena is fixed, he’s skipping town and getting a life of his own far away from her. [You go, Stef! And if you want to go to NOLA with the Original family, you would definitely be welcome there!]

They head off to meet Elena at the diner, where they find her sitting in a booth waiting for them. She tells them to stop trying to “help” her, stop trying to get the cure for her, and give up on getting her to turn her humanity back on – or there will be “consequences”. When Stefan tells her that he’s not giving up on her, she shows them exactly what consequences she means by killing the waitress. She tells them that if they continue to try and cure her, she’s going to continue to kill people. Yikes.

Damon and Elena are now in New York City – supposedly so that Elena can relax and have a little “no humanity” fun in a city that won’t notice her taking a bite out of every vein in sight. Damon takes her down memory lane to a time – the 1970′s to be exact – when he had his humanity shut off and had his own fun in the same city.

Essentially the entire flashback part of the episode revolves around Damon having his humanity shut off. He tears up NYC, helping Will, the vampire he killed last week, who was the owner of a dive bar and manufacturer of fake IDs that the vampire world used to live in the real world undetected. Lexi (Arielle Kebbel) shows up to help make him turn his humanity back on, but Damon is having none of it.

Still, he pretends to go along with her plan for six months, at which point Damon then tricks Lexi into thinking his humanity is turned back on and that he’s in love with her. The two sleep together, and Damon (Ian Somerhalder) ends up locking her up on the roof of the club in the sunlight – which meant she was stuck for the day since she didn’t have a daylight ring – so that he could escape her.

Though I don’t quite get the logic behind it, Damon supposedly killed Lexi because Lexi reminded him of how terrible a person he was when he had his humanity switched off. He tells Elena that he’s worried she’ll do something she can’t take back that will kill her once she eventually does turn her own humanity back on. Somehow, all that ties into why killing Lexi was a way to assuage his guilt over all the bad things he did. [Yeah, I don't know either.]

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Regardless of our understanding, that’s that with the flashback. In the present, Damon and Elena (Nina Dobrev) split up soon after getting to the city so Elena can go get her hair cut, at which point Damon calls up Stefan to let him know of the plans. The real reason he took Elena to NYC was so that he can keep an eye on her while he also follows a lead towards tracking down Katherine – and thus the cure.

Damon’s plan is to visit Will‘s place and find Katherine‘s current location based on the most recent IDs Will made for her. Stefan warns Damon to be wary of Elena, as without her humanity she is very resourceful and not to be trusted, but Damon brushes off his advice and assures Stefan he can handle anything Elena can throw at him.

We’ll see soon enough which brother had the right idea on that one… [a little hint? It wasn't Damon.] Meanwhile, Stefan (Paul Wesley) has his own mission – to find Silas, who has been stealing all the blood from neighboring hospitals. Stefan soon realizes that Silas is actually pretending to be Shane – which makes sense as Shane was the one who originally brainwashed Bonnie.

Silas has Bonnie’s dad Mayor Hopkins (Rick Worthy) convinced that he is actually Shane and that he is going to help Bonnie stop using Expression magic. Bonnie (Kat Graham) is semi-mistrustful of Silas, but he pretty much just manipulates her into doing as he wants by reminding her of all the dead people she’ll be able to bring back, such as Jeremy Gilbert.

As the other two massacres have already occurred, there is only one left before the Expression Triangle will be complete. So, Silas (David Alpay) informs Bonnie that the last sacrifice requires the death of 12 witches. Bonnie, being the brainwashed magic-addict she’s become, then convinces her dad that they need to call in some witches, supposedly to help her get rid of the expression magic. [Though really it's just so she can kill them all.]

[One thing I'm still not clear on is whether Silas actually does look like Shane or if he can literally change his appearance at will. Obviously, as Bex ran into a very dead Shane back on the island, Silas isn't possessing him. If he can change his appearance to look like whomever he wants - that's a little scary - and complete nonsense, if we're being completely honest here, because what would be the logical explanation for why that is even possible?]

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Anyway, on the other side of town [or maybe it's the same side - I don't know], Stefan teams up with Caroline and Klaus to figure out how to stop Silas from using Bonnie to complete the Expression Triangle. But first, they have to do some research to figure out exactly who the last step invovles sacrificing. The answer turns out to be witches. Caroline (Candice Accola) found a book about the Expression Triangle, which also ended up telling them how to find the location of where the witches will have to be sacrificed – though because of geometry or whatever, there are actually two possible locations.

Caroline and Klaus (Joseph Morgan) go look at one location while Stefan goes to check out the other because the writers have to take these last opportunities to push Caroline and Klaus together any way they possibly can before he leaves for the spinoff. Anyway, Caroline and Klaus have a chat about good people falling for bad people, Caroline tells Klaus that she doesn’t think he’s worth saving anymore because he’s just too terrible.

About that time, they reach the spot where the witches should be gathered, but the place is empty, so they head off to where Stefan was supposed to be going, assuming the actual location was on the other end. They get there and find Stefan unable to approach the witches. He’d gotten there a few minutes before and revealed Silas and Bonnie‘s plan to the witch doing the ritual – who then decided that Bonnie (Kat Graham) has to die.

Stefan tried to fight her on it, but she used the witchy juju to give him one of those witch migraines and he had to leave the area. When Klaus and Caroline show up and realize what’s going on, Klaus refuses to help Bonnie because by helping her he’d be playing right into Silas’ plans – and Klaus definitely would rather Bonnie die than have Silas get what he wants.

Caroline refuses to stand by and watch her BFF die, so she runs up and stabs the witch holding Bonnie down just as the witch was about to kill Bonnie. Of course, since the other 11 witches are linked to the one witch, they all die. Thus, the Expression Triangle is complete – courtesy of Caroline, who just killed 12 people in another obvious attempt to put Caroline closer to Klaus’ level.

Bonnie comes to just in time to announce the completion of the Triangle, and Stefan takes her home while Caroline and Klaus get down to business taking care of all the dead bodies lying around the woods. It takes them the entire night, but by morning they’ve gotten them all buried, and it finally hits Caroline that she’s murdered 12 people. Klaus, still hurt from Caroline‘s comment the previous evening about how terrible he is, sees his chance for payback and takes it, telling her that she can go cry on someone else’s shoulder.

Caroline then runs off crying, and just as Klaus is about to do the same [minus the crying, obviously], Silas shows up and thanks Klaus for all of his help completing the Expression Triangle. Klaus does his best to assure Silas that helping him was the last thing he was intending to do.

Silas tries to get Klaus to tell him who has the cure, but when Klaus tells Silas he has nothing to fear from him and thus won’t do whatever Silas wants him to do, Silas pulls out the indestructible White-Oak Stake, which he’d somehow taken from Rebekah. Silas decides to leave part of the stake with Klaus – or, rather, inside Klaus – so he stabs Klaus with it and breaks off the tip, leaving it lodged in Klaus‘ back as a “warning” or hint as to what will become of Klaus if he doesn’t get the cure for Silas.

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Back at Bonnie‘s, she finally wakes up and Stefan realizes that she doesn’t remember anything over the last few days. The last thing she remembers is watching Jeremy try and get the cure – so Stefan then has to break the news to her about his death all over again. [Poor Bonnie, I mean, the hits just keep coming for the poor girl this season.] Though, the good news seems to be that Bonnie is finally free of all the expression magic.

Presumably after a while comforting Bonnie, Stefan heads back home. Damon then gives him a call and informs him that Elena – with Rebekah‘s help, as she showed up soon after Damon and Elena arrived in NYC – has given him the slip. Damon had tracked down the information on Katherine’s last few locations, but it turns out that Elena and Bex (Claire Holt) were aware of what he was doing the entire time. When Elena tries and fails to use sex to get the information from Damon, Rebekah shows up and just snaps Damon’s neck.

The Rebekah and Elena dream team take the information on Katherine, hop in Damon’s car, and ride off into next week’s episode – leaving Damon high and dry on the top of the same club he abandoned Lexi at all those years ago. You can’t say you didn’t have that coming, Damon. Next time maybe you’ll take your brother’s advice a little more seriously.

Well, after last episode’s switch-flip, the Salvatores think that maybe if Elena has some fun, she’ll decide to turn her humanity back on. [I don't really see how that could work - but, sure, let's go with it.] Anyway, since Mayor Hopkins still has the town’s water supply laced with vervain, Damon takes Elena out to the edge of town or to some other town, maybe, to feed.

Elena gets some unsuspecting girl to stop her car for her – since she was pulling a Damon, lying in the middle of the road talking about feelings. Speaking of Damon, he ends up having to stop her from killing the girl, at which point Elena basically calls him boring and struts off back home. [Well, back to the Salvatores' home, anyway - since she burned hers to the ground with Jeremy inside it and all.]

The next day, Caroline, Damon, and Stefan get together and decide that Elena should keep going to school – and Elena agrees to go since she doesn’t have any better ideas. Damon uses his sire bond to convince her to not kill or drink from anyone while at school. The two leave, and Damon decides to seek out Klaus – hoping he’ll help him get the cure back from Katherine so they can cure Elena – while Stefan stays behind to keep an eye on Elena.

About this time, Sheriff Forbes (Margeurite MacIntyre) contacts Stefan to ask him if he knows anything about the town’s blood supply disappearing. He has no idea, but promises to help find out who stole it. Initially, Stefan suspects Elena, but when he goes to confront her about it, she assures him that she would never take the blood because she’s all about drinking straight from humans these days.

At school, Caroline gets Elena her old spot back on the cheerleading squad, but Elena (Nina Dobrev) just uses that as a way to get her hands on some humans that won’t be full of vervain. Though Damon had told her not to feed on anyone, she does it anyway, which is how Stefan realizes that the sire bond is no longer valid. With her emotions shut off, she no longer cares if Damon is “happy” with her decisions or not.

Caroline (Candice Accola) and Elena get into an argument just before their team competes in the cheerleading competition. Elena storms off while Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Caroline come to the realization that they have no idea how to handle this new Elena. Mid-competition, Elena stands back and allows the girls on the team to drop Caroline to the ground. Tired of Elena’s crazy, Stefan corners her and doses her with vervain to knock her out.

He takes Elena back to the Salvatore house, and tries to get her to see reason. Elena basically tells Stefan to back off and try turning his emotions off as well [do it, Stefan, PLEASE! I'm all about bringing back the Ripper for a while] so that he will care less about what she does with her life. During this whole conversation, she was also doing a little party planning – inviting everyone to the Salvatores’.

Caroline shows up to help Stefan, but there’s not much they can do since everyone in town is on vervain and therefore unable to be compelled to leave. Caroline sees Elena having fun and, in need of a little fun herself, convinces Stefan to just enjoy the party for once. The two head out to the dance floor.

[I love their friendship. Stefan and Caroline are so adorable... as friends. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I hope they do not take that to the next level with those two - it is nice seeing two people on this show having a friendship that doesn't have to evolve into a romantic relationship.]

Elena gets a bit jealous, though she definitely denies it, seeing Stefan and Caroline bonding. When Sheriff Forbes walks in a few seconds later and tries to shut the party down, Elena vamps out on her. Luckily, Caroline manages to stop her before she takes a bite out of Liz, but in the ensuing confusion, Elena skips out on her two babysitters.

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Also: this week, Hayley is back – and on the run from some vampires out to kill her. Apparently Katherine doesn’t want her alive anymore now that her usefullness has ended. Klaus finds Hayley at a truck stop – she’d asked him there offering to help him in exchange for his protection. He arrives just in time to give an attacking vampire a werewolf bite before sending him off to die.

Hayley and Klaus head back to his place for dinner and… some – sort of – bonding time. The two talk and reach an agreement where Klaus promises to help protect Hayley if Hayley will help him find Katherine. Since Hayley was helping Katherine for a while, she has some contact with the group of people helping keep Katherine’s location a secret from Klaus (Joseph Morgan) – and, if you can remember all the way back to season 2, Klaus is still all about finding Katherine and getting revenge.

I tell you what, the guy can certainly hold a grudge. Anyway, ultimately, the two decide to just help each other get some… with each other. Let’s be honest here – that Klayley sex scene was definitely one of the weirder hook-ups we’ve seen on The Vampire Diaries. I guess the two bonded over their mutual betrayals of the people they claim to be in love with: Tyler and Caroline.

[I'm personally hoping we never have to see that again, but suspecting that we will if for no other reason than the fact that they're trying to tie Hayley into the Originals spin-off somehow - and I guess what better way than to have her hook up with one of them. I love Phoebe Tonkin, but I am just not a fan of her character in this show. Maybe I'll learn to like her more on The Originals.]

So, the next day, Hayley is up getting dressed, probs trying to do the usual sex-then-run move the characters on the show are so fond of, when Klaus spies a birthmark on her back. Apparently it’s significant as the only other people he knows who have had that birthmark were from a werewolf bloodline down in Lousiana – I suppose the New Orleans area, to be exact. With that, we have Hayley‘s full tie-in to the spin-off.

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Before all that went down, Damon went to Klaus to get his help with locating Hayley – promising him that he will use the cure on Elena instead of Klaus. Klaus refuses to tell Damon where Hayley is hiding [in his bedroom, haha], but does set him on the trail of the vampire he’d bitten saving Hayley the previous evening.

Damon tracks the dying vampire back to the truck stop – where he runs into Rebekah (Claire Holt), who is also looking for the cure. The vampire is no longer there, but the two team up to track him down. Damon and Rebekah hit up the local hospital searching for the missing vampire. Damon thinks the vampire might have gone to the hospital to rob the blood bank, but they find that hospital’s blood supply gone as well. With that, they realize they’ll have to try a new tactic to corner the sick vampire – so Damon heads out to the parking lot and bites a nurse before sending her off to play bait.

The vampire attacks, Damon confronts him, but quickly realizes he’s a vampire he knows personally named Will. Though Rebekah has a vial of Klaus’ blood they were supposed to use to cure Will so they could question him, Damon doesn’t give them the chance as he kills Will as soon as he realizes he knows him. [Obviously, this unknown vampire is going to be the catalyst for next week's flashback episode.]

Rebekah gets pissed that Damon killed the vampire before she could question him about Katherine. She accuses Damon of killing Will just so that Rebekah would not be able to get the cure [I have to agree with you there, Bex], but Damon flips the tables on her and tries to convince her that she would be miserable as a human because she would go from being a badass Original vampire to being nothing – a boring human.

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Back at the Salvatores’ place, Stefan notified Damon that Elena had run off, so Damon comes back to help find her. Caroline finds her first, and the two end up getting in a brawl. Somehow, Elena ends up beating Caroline [trying to give the writers the benefit of the doubt here and say maybe it's because Elena was out to kill, whereas that thought would never cross Caroline's mind].

Anyway, Elena is literally about to stake Caroline through the heart when Stefan and Damon show up just in time to pull her off of Caroline. Stefan tells Damon to get Elena out of there until she can chill out while he takes care of Caroline. Caroline and Stefan talk about the situation and agree to keep trying to help Elena, even though she’s currently being a raging bitch, because Elena never gave up on Stefan when he went crazy.

Caroline then leaves to meet up with Matt Donovan over at the Lockwood mansion. Once there, Matt gives her a letter from Tyler – which informs Caroline that Tyler signed the mansion’s deed over to Matt. Matt Donovan owns a mansion, ya’ll! [Nearly homeless to mansion in five minutes - our boy  needs to watch some old Fresh Prince episodes to get an idea of what to do with his life now.]

Of course, this new home for Matt really just means that Tyler really has no intentions of coming back. This news hits Caroline hard, but fortunately Matt Donovan is there to comfort her. [P.S. was that a grin on Matt Donovan's face - he just got the mansion, is his next step to get the girl... again? Then again, maybe that was just the moment it hit Matt that he now OWNS A MANSION.]

8In other news, Stefan does some investigating and discovers that the nearby towns have all had their blood supplies stolen as well. Stefan makes the connection between it and Silas – the formerly dessicated vampire who would be desperate enough for blood after going without it for so many years. He’s obviously keeping pretty close to the Mystic Falls group – or, well, Bonnie really. [We haven't forgotten about you and your schemes... Silas/Shane - Shilas?]

Stefan calls Damon to run this new theory by him only to find that Damon has taken Elena and is on his way out of town. Damon is taking Elena to New York City, where he can check out some information on Will while distracting Elena and showing her some fun outside Mystic Falls.

Sharie managed to sum up this week’s episode in three words: death, lies, and bullshit. Really, the recap could stop there, because that’s basically all any of us got out of it, but I guess we can go into more detail. Apparently Jeremy really is gone for good, but what kind of person thinks lighting their house on fire with lighter fluid and bourbon is the only good “cover story” for his death? A terrible one, that’s who. Regardless, what’s done is done – now let’s talk about how Elena got to that point.

In trying to pick up where last week left off, it seems the writers made a mistake right out the gate. Remember that final scene – the one where Bonnie had just watched Jeremy die right in front of her, as she slowly bleeds out herself? Well, this week they claim that Bonnie had taken off to find Jeremy, making her lost somewhere on the island while Jeremy (Steven McQueen) still lies dead in the cave. Also: Katherine, Silas, and the cure are nowhere in sight, not that anyone was surprised about that.

Anyway, the obvious reasoning for the “missing witch” plot diversion is that Bonnie won’t be able to use her powers to bring Jeremy back. In the meantime, Elena is focused on the idea that Jeremy’s ring might be enough to save him – going with the theory that, since the Hunter tattoo had disappeared, he was no longer a supernatural being. While Stefan (Paul Wesley) helps Elena get Jeremy‘s body back to Mystic Falls, Damon decides to stay on the island and look for Bonnie.

Back in Mystic Falls, Caroline (Candice Accola) is busy scrubbing floors in the Gilbert house when Stefan walks in with Jeremy in his arms – but Elena has no time for anything but focusing on her brother. Determined to not leave his side, she opts to hover over his body – though it’s starting to decompose already. When Caroline and Stefan start to smell him, they call in Dr. Meredith Fell (Torrey DeVitto) to come help take care of Jeremy’s body.

Later, Elena walks in as Meredith is about to inspect him, and agrees to let Dr. Fell checks Jeremy over. Meredith tries to tell Elena that he is definitely dead – that it’s not like the other times when he and Alaric have died with their rings on. Not yet ready to accept it, Elena vamps out on her. Stefan pulls Elena off of Meredith [LOL for a minute at Paul having to save his wife from Elena's vampire crutches], and Elena is soon distracted when Matt Donovan (Zach Roerig) walks in and gets upset at the sight of Jeremy’s body.

Matt then takes Elena out of the house for a bit – to the Stoner Pit at the high school, of all places. He shows Elena some graffiti Jeremy did for Vicki way back in the day – his main point being that it was okay that Elena had hope that Jeremy wasn’t gone because hope can be all you have sometimes. [Reminding us of Jeremy's early days on the show - and his "rebel" phase?  Well played, writers. As if we weren't already traumatized enough, let's add a little nostalgia into the mix.]

While all this was going on back in Mystic Falls, Bex and Damon were still on the remote island. Rebekah called Damon out on his choice of staying behind to find Bonnie when his sired signifcant other needed him back home. [Who wasn't thinking that was an odd choice? Good on Bex for acknowledging that.] Anyway, Damon said that his real reason for hunting down Bonnie was because he knew Elena would need her best friend back home when the grief hit… or maybe even because he knew Elena would want Bonnie there to try and revive Jeremy.

Their argument is interrupted when Damon uses Bex (Claire Holt) as a shield from a flying arrow. He leaves her to pull the arrow out of her own back while he chases down the shooter – Galen Vaughn, the other Hunter. [Yay! He survived!] When Damon and Rebekah threaten to torture information out of him about how he came to be on the island, Galen tells them that he was in cahoots with Katherine – who learned everything about the entire situation through Tyler’s old frienemy Hayley.

Now that the mystery of how Katherine got there is cleared up, Damon’s all about leaving Galen (Charlie Bewley) to rot on the island – but as Bex sees Galen as her ticket to finding out where Katherine took the cure, the two part ways. Damon, still trying to find Bonnie, gets a phone call from Stefan – who advises him to give up the search for Bonnie and get home because Elena’s about to lose it.

Just as Damon hangs up the phone, Bonnie (Kat Graham) appears out of the woods with an amazing story to tell about where she really disappeared to – and with who. On their way back to meet with the gang, Bonnie explains it all to Damon. Once they get to the Gilbert house, Bonnie heads inside to tell Elena, Caroline, and Matt about the new plan while Damon informs Stefan that Shane has got Bonnie brainwashed.

Well, we already all know Shane is a lying, manipulative dirtbag, so what we learn about his plan is not so much a surprise. Shane, after calming Bonnie down as she almost lost control when she learned about Jeremy’s death, tricked Bonnie into thinking she could help Jeremy and bring him back to life. Apparently, the reason Shane (David Alpay) had been orchestrating the massacres was to complete an “Expression Triangle” that would totally destroy the separation between the living and those on “The Other Side”.

Shane told Bonnie that Qetsiyah created The Other Side to prevent Silas from ever meeting up with his one true love. The Other Side is home to every supernatural being that has ever died. So, if the “Expression Triangle” is complete, every supernatural creature that has ever died will be brought back to life [yeah, sort of like a large-scale Ghost World, right?]. Anyway, Bonnie is all over that idea, having been convinced that it will all be fantastic and wonderful. [She's obviously been brainwashed to forget about what happened last time.]

The only setback is that there is still one more massacre of 12 people that needs to occur for the triangle to be complete. The gang argues, but doesn’t manage to convince Bonnie about how bad a plan that is. In the end, Matt takes Bonnie home, where she meets up with Shane so he can throw more lies at her. Meanwhile, Matt Donovan doesn’t even make it home without having to pull over for a good man-cry over losing his bro-BFF. [One of the worst scenes ever - you're soulless if you didn't just fall apart and want to hug Matty forever after watching that.]

Back at the Gilbert house, Elena finally comes to the realization that Jeremy really is dead for good. She demands that Damon (Ian Somerhalder) bring Jeremy’s body downstairs, and then sets about creating the “perfect cover story” by dousing the house in lighter fluid and bourbon – intending to burn her entire house down with Jeremy inside it.

Finally having enough, Elena has a major break-down – basically amounting to the fact that she wants to burn the house down because she wants to forget all the memories of all it’s former residents who have died. [That part is understandable. Crazy, but understandable.] Stefan, Caroline, and Damon have no idea what to do to help her, but they do their best to convince her that she may eventually regret burning the house down.

In the end, Stefan asks Damon do use the sire bond to try and take away Elena‘s pain – which Damon interprets as him meaning to make her turn off her humanity. Elena does so [in an actually pretty impressive performance on Nina Dobrev's part], but Stefan doesn’t really think that was the best way to go about helping Elena.

The two brothers take their disagreement outside, where they finally make up after their long fight over Elena. Damon tells Stefan that getting Elena to flip her humanity switch is the best option since she has no one to care about anymore – no one important enough to counteract the grief, anyway. [Side note: I don't care how much you try and convince me, I'm still not buying that Elena feels grief to any higher a degree than some of the rest of the characters.]

Anyway, this is sort of a major game changer in Mystic Falls – which was the entire point of killing off Jeremy, to turn Elena the innocent little vampire into someone who doesn’t care about hurting people. [Jeremy absolutely did not deserve to go out that way - but I guess we could all take that as a lesson about death not being justified sometimes.]

So, the brothers go back inside to find Elena still wanting to torch her house. Now, however, her decision makes more sense since she really probably couldn’t care less about her house or her brother anymore. I have a feeling there will be repercussions when Elena regains her humanity and finds out they let her set her house on fire – but I guess we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

As for the “best cover story” idea – they’re all completely insane to think that was the best way to cover up Jeremy‘s death. Any fire investigator with half a brain would be able to tell that the house was intentionally destroyed. I can’t even handle the level of stupid in that particular plan. Again, this ridiculousness is all to further the plot of making sure we all understand Elena‘s firmly on the dark side now…. [FYI: WE GET IT!]

Meanwhile, back on the remote island, Rebekah was just getting warmed up torturing Galen when he revealed the key problem with Silas: he can take any form he wishes. With that development, Bex realizes that he can literally be anyone in the world, so she has enough sense to be scared enough to take off. While running through the woods to try and get away, she stumbles upon a body.

She turns the body over to see none other than Shady Shane himself. [The sight of him lying there, broken leg and all, literally gave me chills. That was actually a pretty awesome twist.] Thinking he’s dead – and not realizing that “Shane” is supposedly back in Mystic Falls with Bonnie – Rebekah starts to walk away, only to have him grab onto her ankle and say one word: “Silas”.

Okay, I know that Tyler skipped town, Jeremy died, and Bonnie‘s fate is sort of uncertain, but this week’s episode was kind of …eh. Until the last few minutes – right around the time Katherine made an appearance – the episode fell kind of flat. Maybe this show has just made me cynical, but I don’t really believe that Jeremy’s going to stay dead or that Tyler’s gone for good. After all, we all know the Originals are taking off for New Orleans here shortly, and no one really wants to watch a show just revolving around Elena and which Salvatore she’s picking this week. [Or maybe you do, I don't know.]

Anyway, let’s back up a bit and talk about what happened on this episode that could have actually passed for a season finale. Last week we saw Shane (David Alpay) make off with Bonnie, Jeremy, and some random witch to keep them both in check. Klaus saved Caroline from dying at the last minute and some unknown Hunter knocked Damon unconscious.

This week, Stefan, Rebekah, and Elena have teamed up to try and find Silas’ resting place. To do that, they have to decode the pictures of Jeremy’s tattoo that Bonnie conveniently took before being led off into the wild. [Though it wasn't clear exactly how the gang got her phone, unless she just didn't have it on her when she left.]

They e-mail the pictures to Caroline and ask her to find the sword Klaus has hidden and use it to decode the tattoo. [Again, not sure how they're charging their phones or getting service out there in the wild - I sometimes have a hard time getting a signal inside my house in the middle of town... but I suppose let's just go with it.] Klaus, unable to stop her, watches as Caroline leaves to go tear apart his house in search of the sword.

For whatever reason, when Tyler and Caroline find the sword and print up the pictures, they take it all back to the Gilbert house to work on decoding it. Klaus (Joseph Morgan) ends up being a big help in decoding it because he speaks Aramaic, a dead language Qetsiyah used to code everything. [Don't even get me started on the hotness of Klaus speaking Aramaic with an English accent. Can that become his everyday language on the show? I'm all for reading English subtitles.]

They decode the map and learn that there’s only enough of the cure for one person to take it. Naturally, Klaus manages to stir up trouble from Bonnie’s prison by telling Bex that great news. [The cure revelation wasn't really much of a surprise - I'm not sure why none of them considered that possibility before.] Though Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Elena didn’t hear that conversation, Bex eventually tells Stefan what Klaus told her. She admits that she’d consider giving the cure to Stefan, but knowing that he’d just give it to Elena – in spite of everything she’s done to him this season – Bex (Claire Holt) just snaps his neck and takes off for the cure on her own.

Elena helps revive Stefan and accepts her fate when Stefan reveals what Rebekah told him. [I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking her change of heart is the sire bond at work again - remember when Damon told her last week that he didn't want her to take the cure? Now she's suddenly okay with not being cured. Naturally.] Anyway, Stefan and Elena (Nina Dobrev) decide that, since there’s only one dose, they’ll have to give it to Klaus so that Klaus can’t kill them when he’s released.

Meanwhile, Professor Shane pays off the mercenary witch with Silas’ headstone – it turns out that was the only reason he wanted it, as it’s apparently valuable to witches. Anyway, now on their own, Shane, Bonnie, and Jeremy continue on to the entrance to Silas’ tomb. Once there, Bonnie (Kat Graham) is able to open the tomb – and she doesn’t even lose control doing it! Unfortunately for Shane, he breaks his leg about this time, and so he’s out of the running for the rest of the episode.

Bonnie and Jeremy (Steven McQueen) continue on and make it all the way to Silas himself – only to discover that in order to get the cure, they have to wake Silas by feeding him blood. They also learn that the “ghosts” everyone is supposedly able to see when in the area are actually just hallucinations created by Silas – so everything Shane did for his wife was completely faked.

As for Damon, Galen Vaughn – the other Hunter that showed up at the end of last week – keeps Damon (Ian Somerhalder) captive, intending to use Damon as a bargaining tool to convince Bonnie to open Silas’ tomb for him. As Damon helpfully points out, Bonnie is going to open it regardless, so Vaughn didn’t really need to keep him captive, but Damon being tortured is always a good time so can’t say we complained too much [though I suppose some viewers would disagree with that].

Once Damon and Vaughn make it to the cave where Silas is hidden, they find the entrance already open – so Vaughn (Charlie Bewley) decides to just kill Damon right then. Fortunately for Damon, Bex shows up at that moment and distracts Vaughn – who takes her out temporarily by using some of his fancy Hunter weapons, leaving her out of the Race for the Cure. Elena and Stefan then show up, but Stefan stays behind to help Damon while Elena chases after Vaughn to get the cure for Klaus.

Klaus, between moments of helpfulness, also passed the time taunting Tyler (Michael Trevino) and promising death upon his release. When Caroline reveals that she wouldn’t take the cure even if she could take it, Klaus tells her it’s because the two of them are just alike. [Don't worry, Caroline, we all can agree we like you better as a vampire.] Caroline tries to use that to her advantage and begs Klaus to show compassion for Tyler and not kill him. Klaus agrees to show him compassion… by giving him a head start running from him.

Tyler and Caroline (Candice Accola) have to say goodbye again so that Tyler can skip town and go on the run from Klaus. When Bonnie’s spell fails – due to her being almost dead over in Silas’ burial place – Klaus escapes a bit early, tells Caroline that every nice thing he’s done lately has been to please her, and then takes off into the night, presumably to chase after Tyler.

Back in Silas’ resting place, Vaughn stabs Bonnie and tries to convince Jeremy to help him kill Silas. Vaughn informs Jeremy that the entire purpose in creating the Hunters is so that they can cure Silas and kill him. The two fight it out until “Elena” arrives and knocks Vaughn unconscious.

However, when Jeremy tries to get Elena to heal Bonnie, we learn that Elena is actually Katherine – having shown up just in time to force-feed Silas Jeremy’s blood and steal the cure herself. So, the bitch is back, and that was a nice surprise. As for the not-so-nice surprise? Silas feeds from Jeremy and then snaps his neck, killing him while Bonnie watches.

Hats off to the Vampire Barbies this week – both Caroline and Rebekah pretty much made “Into the Wild” bearable. Stefan sure knows how to pick his BFFs… and friends with benefits. Last week, we left off with Kol’s death causing Jeremy’s mark to finish growing, which means that the gang could now head off to find the cure.

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Tyler and Caroline, noticeably absent the last couple episodes, re-appear with a bang this week. Since Bonnie left Klaus – trapped with a crispy Kol in the Gilbert house [which is kind of a cold move, to be honest] – while the gang takes off for the wild Canadian islands, Tyler decides it would be a good time to pay his momma-killin’ hybrid sire a visit. Mostly Tyler has decided that he’s going to watch over Klaus and taunt him until the group returns with the cure – at which point he intends to force-feed it to Klaus so that he can kill him.

The two pass a few threats back and forth before Caroline (Candice Accola) shows up to try and get Tyler to leave. However, Caroline loses her cool and ends up in an argument with Klaus, yelling at him that she will never forgive him for killing Carol Lockwood or Aunt Jenna. Finally having enough of the attitude, Klaus lashes out at Caroline, stabbing her with a lamp post and dragging her into his box before taking a bite out of her neck.

Realizing that Caroline will die now that she’s been bitten by a hybrid, Tyler promises Klaus that he’ll be Klaus‘ “Little Bitch” again if he’ll heal Caroline. Klaus refuses as he feels that his revenge against Tyler (Michael Trevino) is worth Caroline’s death. Caroline asks Tyler to take her away so that she doesn’t have to look at Klaus anymore. Once away, Caroline accepts that she’s going to die, but Tyler comes up with a plan to return to the Gilbert house and leave Caroline alone with Klaus – likely hoping his guilt and love for Caroline will make him heal her.

Once Tyler leaves the two alone, Caroline delivers a fantastically moving speech about how, since Klaus (Joseph Morgan) is able to love, he is still saveable. [Though I'm pretty sure Hitler was in love at some point, but that doesn't make him saveable.] Still, it was a nice speech anyway, and Klaus ended up healing her of his Hybrid bite, so… well played, Caroline!

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Some major character developments also take place this week while everyone’s wandering the island. Rebekah, understandably still pissed off that Elena and Jeremy killed her brother, is full of sass and fed up with Elena. Stefan wisely opts to stay out of it, for the most part, as Elena and Rebekah exchange snide comments and insults. Elena has to re-think her position when Rebekah saves her life mid-argument, and Stefan re-thinks Rebekah’s supposed “evil” status when she points out that Elena‘s actions make her no better than Bex. [Possibly the best "you go girl!" moment of the episode.]

In addition, Stefan informs Rebekah that he is no longer intending to take the cure for Elena – if he takes it at all, it’ll be because he wants it for himself. Rebekah plans to take it because she absolutely hates being a vampire. Shane confesses that his wife Caitlin died from the Expression magic he taught Bonnie to wield. Naturally, Bonnie is shocked, and Damon is furious that Shane has ensured his survival by banking on Bonnie needing him to keep her from spiraling out of control.

Damon, for his part, finally breaks down – after some encouragement from Shane, who was pretty obvious in his attempts to get Damon to leave the island for some reason. Damon tells Elena that he absolutely does not want the cure and does not want Elena to take the cure. [It will be interesting to see how far this sire bond stretches if the cure turns out to actually exist. Now that Elena knows Damon doesn't want her to take it - wouldn't she lose interest in it?] Anyway, after this revelation, Damon storms off.

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As for the Race for the Cure, it turns out that the cure is supposedly hidden on an island off Nova Scotia, which was considered a “remote location” back in the day. Unfortunately, once we got to the island, we were left with a whole lot of Professor Shane backstory – in the form of flashbacks, of course – to trudge through. Since he’s certainly no one’s favorite character on The Vampire Diaries, the flashback scenes weren’t as enjoyable as we normally find them to be [like, for instance, when we get to see some Elijah action or 1920's Stefan, both always a good time].

[I have realized that I pretty much stop paying attention whenever Shane speaks, so I had to go back and re-watch his flashbacks a few times to get what he was talking about.] Anyway, we learn through the flashbacks that Shane (David Alpay) was on the island a year previously after hearing rumors about people being able to see and talk with their dead loved ones. Using his blood, Shane managed to conjure up his dead wife Caitlin (Camille Guaty). Through her, he learned that Silas and the cure were buried under the magic well on the island. [My guess is that she turns out to be just as shady as her husband.]

Caitlin told him all the steps he would need to complete in order for Silas to be raised – at which point Silas would then also raise anyone who died helping release him. As we’ve figured out, this involved several massacres, and though Shane was reluctant to cause so much death, Caitlin convinced him by telling him that all he had to do was find people to do the killing for him. Pastor Young and Hayley were both convinced to help by Shane promising that they’d see their dead loved ones again.

Between character developments and flashbacks, another witch Massak (John Gabriel Rodriguez) shows up and kidnaps Jeremy – who was alone in the tent trying to get some sleep. When morning comes and they realize they’ve lost Jeremy, the gang splits up into two factions: Bonnie, Shane, and Damon stay at camp while Stefan, Elena, and Rebekah take off to search the island to try and find Jeremy the old-fashioned way.

At camp, Bonnie tries to find Jeremy by using a locator spell. Damon takes matters into his own hands as he ties Shane up and tries to torture the cure’s location out of him. He also tries to assure Shane that he doesn’t care about Bonnie [hopefully this is supposed to be a way to show Damon becoming self-destructive again, because I know the writers don't expect us to believe that after all the times he's helped try and keep Bonnie alive]. Regardless, just as Damon is about to kill Shane, Elena shows up and stops him. [Elena is the worst decision-maker on the planet, by the way.]

There is also a mysterious, hatchet-throwing character that is out to protect Jeremy [some sort of Hunter solidarity, I'm sure], and by the end of the episode we learn that it’s probably Galen Vaughn (Charlie Bewley), another Hunter. He makes his magical appearance when he finds Damon and snaps his neck. [Don't even ask me why this Hunter didn't just kill Damon right off - hopefully they'll have some logical reason for it next week].

While everyone has their backs turned, it’s no surprise that Shady Shane takes advantage by making off with Bonnie, Silas’ headstone, and eventually also meets up with the witch who stole Jeremy. Once the rest of the gang finds out about Shane’s unsurprising betrayal, Elena – in a show of trust after Rebekah’s brutal honesty finally penetrates her brain – willingly hands the White Oak Stake over to Bex. So, Bex has the White Oak Stake, some unknown hunter has Damon, and Shady Shane has everyone else. The events have led to an uneasy alliance between Rebekah, Elena, and Stefan, and we’ll have to wait and see how this all plays out….