The Vampire Diaries season 4 episode 13 review: Into The Wild

This review contains spoilers.

4.13 Into The Wild

It’s another week of heartfelt conversations and twisty turny plots on The Vampire Diaries, as the hunt for the cure heats up and more information on Shane’s master-plan is revealed to the gang. Personally, I’m not entirely sure we needed any more information, since the explanations offered to us make even less sense than the ones we had assumed before. Isn’t it enough to see our favourite characters scramble about and bicker over a cure that may or may not exist? Do we really need a mad professor, his witchy pawn, and an immortal being thrown into the overflowing mix?

I got excited last week when, at the end of episode twelve, Jeremy’s map was already complete and Elena, Damon and Stefan were packing their bags for a little road trip to Nova Scotia. Alas, they take Atticus with them (wasn’t he in jail?), and he spends the trip droning on about his search for his lost family and Silas’ promise to bring them back should he help him. How stupid are these people? Staging several mass murders and raising an ultimate evil from his tomb is never the best way to regain loved ones! Don’t these people watch television? And why aren’t these characters questioning anything? Why aren’t they dragging Shane along bound and gagged?

His stories do reveal a little bit more about Silas, who comes off as a less mysterious and less subtle clone of Buffy’s The First. Manifesting as Shane’s wife to convince him he must manipulate others into group suicide and brainwash a powerful witch, the apparently ‘good man’ apparently didn’t take much convincing. The cure was buried with Silas is the hopes that he would take it and end his life after a couple of hundred years of captivity, but that was never going to happen, and it gives me hope that the cure at least exists. I’m almost certain that it’ll only be for one person, however, so the constant fights between our main cast are still pretty entertaining.

And they’re going in only one direction – Rebekah. Rebekah wants and deserves the cure more than anyone, and my guess is that her relationship with Stefan will help enormously as we approach decision time. Damon isn’t even sure he wants to find it, let alone take it himself, and his insecure heart would much prefer it if Elena stayed undead and compelled. If she’s human, won’t she just go back to Stefan? Well, I don’t think he’d take her, for one, but Damon really needs to have some faith in his relationship. She says she wants to grow old with him and, for a vampire, that’s a pretty huge deal.

Back in Mystic Falls, Caroline and Tyler are back from vacation (or wherever it is these characters go when they’re not on screen) and babysitting Klaus at the Gilbert house. If we weren’t getting enough love triangle action with the central trio, there’s plenty to be getting on with here, as Klaus demonstrates his complete lack of patience with such things. This is why we love Klaus – he’d rather kill Caroline to piss Tyler off than partake in any of the moon-eyed longing that passes everyone else’s time. She doesn’t die, of course, because a heartfelt (i.e. manipulative) speech convinces him to save her at the last second.

Basically, despite the new locations and camping gear, this episode didn’t achieve anything new at all. The characters are still discussing who wants to be with who, who deserves to be with who, and who’s being manipulated into being with who, at length. Tuning into The Vampire Diaries has sadly become the same as entering into a fan discussion about which ship is better than the other, and the mystery surrounding Silas and the cure has become so tedious and convoluted that it’s taking a back seat in most viewers’ minds. We’re only half-way through the season, and I really hope there’s a game-changing episode soon.

Read Caroline’s review of the previous episode, A View To A Kill, here.

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