The Vampire Diaries season 5 episode 7 review: Death And The Maiden

This review contains spoilers.

5.7 Death And The Maiden

It’s only taken a season and a half(ish), but it seems we’re finally done with the Silas/Amara/Katsia storyline! Well, we’re done with the physical presence of those characters anyway, but I don’t believe for a second that the Vampire Diaries writers are going to discard their carefully cultivated doppelgängers storyline quite that easily – that’s just not their style. Was Katsia’s final appearance a one off ghostly encounter, or can we expect to see her and Silas as ghosts appearing to a now-corporeal Bonnie?

I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we get to any suicides at all, we pick up with Silas as he waits for a bus, and there’s nothing about Silas waiting for a bus that isn’t hilarious. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – witches really are the most useless supernatural beings on this show. I’d rather be a vampire or a werewolf any day, at least they can run fast. In any case, that pre-credits teaser was awesome and, if that’s Silas’ last brilliant moment as our series villain, then that’s be absolutely fine with me. The confused and slightly frightened looks on those strangers’ faces was a brilliant illustration of how the audience have felt for a while.

Back in Mystic Falls, Elena has decided she should try starting afresh with Stefan because he hasn’t been paying enough attention to her lately but, since he now remembers how she dumped him for his brother and failed to rescue him from his watery prison all summer, that’s not really on the cards. Yes, Katsia’s little spell last week has indeed brought back Stefan’s memories, and he’s not best pleased with his friends. You can’t really blame him for being a bit peeved but, with his crashing memories rendering him a little bit unhinged, he’s going to need  their help. Maybe that hope for the Caroline/Stefan romance isn’t dead quite yet? 

As said by Damon when asking Katsia for her help, we’ve got doppelgängers coming out of our ears in this episode. It turns out that Amara’s job as the anchor to the other side means that she exists in both worlds at the same time – able to talk to the dead and the living. Jeremy decides that they should transfer the anchor from Amara to Bonnie, allowing her to corporeal again without actually coming back to life. To do this Katsia says she needs the power of the Dobrev doppelgängers (of course she does), and the gang round up Elena, Amara and Katherine for the spell. The only problem is that Stefan is on a major revenge kick and Amara’s quite keen to die. So keen she resorts to biting through her own wrists.

Can we get the facts straight around our growing population of cured vampires? It’s clear that, if the cure is drained out of them by another vampire, then they don’t die, but stabbing themselves will kill them? Why? Anywho, Amara and Silas do succeed in getting themselves killed – one by Stefan’s hand and the other suicide – and Katherine is our only cured immortal still kicking around. As far as I can see, this marks the end of the cure storyline, and I couldn’t be happier. The pass the cure-laced blood parcel game was just getting silly. Katsia also commits suicide (there’s a heck of a lot of self-harm in this episode) after helping Bonnie but before saving Katherine from her rapid ageing process. Good riddance.

The situation with Bonnie isn’t a whole lot preferable to how it was before, because now we have to muster some sympathy when she starts screaming in pain at every dead supernatural creature who passes through her. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that Jeremy will finally get his leg over but, since he’s probably going to move over to Arrow after his casting as Nightwing, that doesn’t even seem like a good enough reason to care. I just don’t think the show is suddenly going to give her extra screen time or non-witchy storylines now that she’s a corporeal ghost – especially with Matt going missing despite promise of his own adventure. The show just doesn’t have time to deal with this many characters, and Bonnie is always the one who ends up missing out.

Next week Damon goes on a fact finding mission with Dr Maxfield, Matt’s finally back in the picture and Katherine helps Stefan deal with his maddening memories. See you there!

Read Caroline’s review of the previous episode, Handle With Care, here.

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