The Originals episode 7 review: Bloodletting

This review contains spoilers.

1.7 Bloodletting

Things have completely changed on The Originals over the past couple of weeks and now, with the arrival of Tyler in New Orleans and Klaus looking more and more like the bad guy (relatively, of course) of the story, it could really go anywhere. That’s a really good place for the show to be in its seventh week and, though I was sceptical about the writers bringing over Tyler and the hybrid storyline, so far it’s working better on The Originals than it ever did on The Vampire Diaries.

The truth is that Klaus has very few allies left, and the ones he does have are being blackmailed into helping. Tyler’s reintroduction served to remind us, and the characters on the show, exactly why this is and it’s a testament to the franchise that we’re now looking at such a large group of people and are still unable to pick out the heroes and villains. Tyler is causing trouble for our core group, yes, but he also has some very good reasons to hate Klaus. Whatever I felt about the love triangle on Vampire Diaries over the last couple of years, Tyler’s been through the mill and deserves his revenge moment.

We just wish that revenge didn’t involve hurting Hayley, who’s the one innocent left in a sea of monsters. She and Josh, actually, with the latter getting an entire subplot to himself this week. As the first gay character in this universe that I can recall, I’m glad the writers seem to be planning for him to be a significant player rather than killing him off quickly as expected. His scenes with Davina were really sweet to watch as they lamented the loss of their ‘normal’ adolescence, and I’m hoping Josh manages to survive the tussle between Klaus and Marcel. His compulsion has been removed by Davina, so he’s currently, tentatively, on team Marcel.

As fun as it was to see the Mikaelsons band together to protect Hayley for the first couple of weeks, this new emergence of old rivalries probably has more legs for a full season (for which it has been renewed!). Elijah and Hayley are now on one team, Tyler, Marcel and Rebekah are on another and Klaus is out on his own attempting to use Rebekah as a double agent. Given Marcel’s seemingly genuine feelings for her, however, he hasn’t got a chance in hell of persuading her – the only thing more important to Rebekah than family is her search for true love, and her being with Marcel will only add fuel to the fire.

But this episode was very much about Tyler who, having heard about Hayley’s pregnancy, has come to investigate the likelihood of more hybrids. If you don’t remember, Klaus’ ability to make a hybrid army died along with Elena but, with a new naturally conceived hybrid baby, he now theoretically has the ability to create new ones. Tyler proves this by injecting his friend with Hayley’s blood and watching him vamp out but, rather than being sired to Klaus, it seems their loyalty would lie with Hayley and/or her spawn. Could this be a useful tool for team Elijah? It would certainly help if they had a collection of hybrids protecting them – especially now that Tyler has told Marcel about the baby.

If you’ve ever read my Vampire Diaries reviews than you’ll know I’ve never been a fan of Tyler, but the use of him in this episode was really great. His showdown with Klaus went to some unexpectedly dark places and to have him become an undisputed villain was a nice change without feeling like a character rewrite. The father/son undertones of their relationship was always quite interesting, and to have Klaus refuse to kill him for fear of showing too much of an interest should push him over the edge. I’m not sure how long his arc is going to be but, after this, I sure hope he sticks around for a while.

We’re back in two weeks, when the newly separated Mikaelson siblings continue to scheme against each other with help from new friends. See you there!

Read Caroline’s review of the previous episode, Fruit Of The Poisoned Tree, here.

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