The Vampire Diaries season 7 episode 14 review: Moonlight On The Bayou

This review contains spoilers.

7.14 Moonlight On The Bayou

The Vampire Diaries and The Originals don’t have nearly enough crossovers. For two shows that contain as many characters with hundreds of years of history as they do, it’s disappointing that they so rarely collide.

Sometimes it’s more disappointing that the fans want it just so Klaus and Caroline will speak again, no matter how uninterested the showrunners appear to be in that particular ‘ship. There are tons of great things that could be tackled in a crossover episode (or 2-hour event, as this was) and, thankfully, Moonlight On The Bayou chose to focus on Stefan and Klaus’ long-standing relationship instead.

It’s restricted to this I’m sure because of scheduling concerns more than anything else but, for all the behind the scenes shenanigans that probably plague any mere thought of combining the two series, it works. Klaus and Stefan have an incredibly intense relationship that’s wonderfully entertaining whenever the writers remember it exists, and it’s just a thrill to see them interact again whatever the context.

But for all the pre-episode hype, the conversations between Stefan and Klaus in New Orleans are really just one small part of a pretty great episode.

Most notably it introduced The Armory, this season’s big bad (even if it is episode 14!), the shady organisation Enzo and Tyler have been working for and the people now responsible for Bonnie lying in a hospital bed.

More than anything, this is just yet another attempt to give Enzo something to do. He’s essentially been going through the same beats since he became a regular cast member too many seasons ago, but now we finally seem to be getting somewhere. He’s looking for family, a place to belong, and now The Armory are offering him the chance to find out who his real parents were.

The exact thing he said was that he wants Damon to look at him the way he looks at Bonnie, but we all knew that.

And it led to some great action, with Damon locked in a room with a soon-to-transition Tyler and Bonnie forced to chop off Enzo’s hand in order to get him out. That’s brutal, even for this show. It got reattached, but still. The fact that Tyler’s still around after the show pinky-sweared that he’d been written out still irks me, but at least he’s being used sparingly. That he’s working with The Armory, of course, doesn’t surprise me.

The ‘good’ ship Calaric (that’s what I’m calling it) has set sail, as the two of them take a road trip to their new home with the twins in tow. This whole thread is largely untouched by mystical hijinks, which is kind of nice, and just allows the two of them to bond and get used to co-parenting.

But there’s an unbearably sad version of this story that Vampire Diaries is never going to tell, with Caroline perfectly willing to drop her entire life and get engaged to a man who used to be her teacher just so she can take care of the children that were forced upon her in the first place. She’s their mother, even if they’re not biologically hers, but she never asked for this responsibility.

In the flashforwards Caroline reached New Orleans and went looking for Klaus, but was quickly told that he hadn’t been seen there for three years. So, as suspected, these flashforwards are going to have a serious impact on both shows, even if we don’t know how yet. Not only will Klaus not be there when these scenes occur, but he’ll presumably leave before the end of the season (I’m not caught up on The Originals, so forgive me for being unsure).

But the shippers did get their moment, as Klaus and Caroline shared a brief yet sweet phone call during which they discussed their respective surprise parenthood.

But the focus was on Stefan, and we’re left on a tease for what the pair are going to get up to on The Originals. The action in this episode was just some last-minute fun before the time jump, which is as good a reason as any for a crossover, and nicely reaffirmed that these two have each other’s backs. Aside from this, at least we now have an actual villain – one that appears to involve almost all the characters.

Read Caroline’s review of the previous episode, This Woman’s Work, here.