The Vampire Diaries season 2 episode 3 review: Bad Moon Rising

2.3 Bad Moon Rising

This review contains spoilers if you haven’t yet seen the episode.

The latest episode of The Vampire Diaries started off with a team meeting between Alaric, Elena, Damon and Stefan. Alaric’s wife had a lot research on Mystic Falls, and the term Lycan-thrope is tossed around the room. Werewolves, ladies and gentlemen, have invaded Mystic Falls.

Meanwhile, Uncle Mason goes on a secret trip into the woods. Tyler, having grown suspicious about his behavior, decides to secretly follow him. Tyler’s trip leads him to a secret underground tomb full of holding cells, chains and clawed walls. It’s not tricky to work out what’s been there.

Caroline and Matt, meanwhile, are having trouble finding common ground, since she can’t be in direct sunlight. That, and the small fact that he has no idea vampires exist. Bonnie takes this into her own hands and spells a ring for Caroline so that she can walk around in the daylight.

Now that Caroline is out and about learning how to hunt bunnies instead of people, she is beginning to cope with being a vampire, though she is still struggling with being a vampire around people. A big example of this is when she loses control with Matt and ends up drinking his blood. As you do.

Alaric, Elena and Damon arrive at Isabelle’s old office and meet Vanessa Monroe, who surprisingly decides to shoot Elena with an arrow. Luckily, Damon is there to take the arrow in the back for her. As it turns out, she only did it because she thought that Elena was Katherine.

It is here that they discover that werewolves and vampires are immortal enemies, and that the bite of a werewolf is deadly to vampires. Damon also finds one of Katherine’s journals, which he gives to Elena as a peace offering. Sadly, Elena stands up to Damon and tells him that he has officially lost her friendship.

When the full moon strikes, we get to see the werewolf transform. Uncle Mason chains himself to a tree then collapses into his car. Stefan stumbles upon the car where we see that the chains didn’t hold, and Uncle Mason is free. Werewolf Mason attacks Caroline, Tyler sees this and is able to stop him from biting her, now the secret is officially out and Tyler knows.

And that was pretty much it, save for the fact that Caroline feels guilty for hurting Matt. So when she sees him talking to another girl, she intentionally acts jealous so that he will break up with her. Caroline wakes up the next morning, to find Katherine in her room informing her of all the fun they are going to have together.

Once again, a fair bit of narrative was squeezed into the episode. And the story this week was well planned. Last week, it was all about the action. And this week? We finally got some answers. Sure, we knew that Uncle Mason was a werewolf, but now our characters do too. We are also finally beginning to get to the bottom of the Katerine/Elena lookalike-conundrum. I can’t wait to see what secrets Katherine’s journal holds. Caroline also showed some maturity, though I’m sure that will all be undone now that Katherine wants to use her as a pawn.

Furthermore, I enjoyed the newcomer, Vanessa. I thought that she was a nice new addition and I hope to see more of her in the future. Alaric was also a welcome addition to this episode as well. It’s been a while since he was been at the forefront, and I especially liked that he got to kiss the girl in the end. I enjoy Matthew Davis (Alaric) as an actor, and I am glad to see his return to the action.

As always, Nine Dobrev (Elena), Paul Wesley (Stefan) and Ian Somerhalder (Damon) held their own, acting wise. The end scene with Dobrev and Somerhalder was nice, I genuinely felt bad for Damon and his loss of Elena. I know he’s had a lot of chances, but give the guy a break, he has a ton of baggage and his heart has been ripped out and stomped on by Katherine too many times to count. I just hope that Elena will see some redeeming quality before it’s too late.

All in all I think that this episode really showed us that The Vampire Diaries has hit its stride. Now it’s time for them to keep the flame alive, which they should be able to do, given that they have a talented cast, great writers and an interested audience. Not to mention the reappearance of Katherine, which I know has me begging next Thursday night to come a little bit faster! See you next week.

Read our review of episode 2, Brave New World, here.