‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 8, episode 6 review: Damon, meet dagger; no more June wedding?

Tonight, “The Vampire Diaries” started off its latest episode of season 7 entitled “Detoured On Some Random Backwoods Path to Hell” with a pretty key revelation on the part of Alaric: Seline is not exactly who she claimed to be. Alaric made it clear that her threats were not going to matter to him, and as a result of that, he would be willing to kill her without hesitation the moment that he sees her.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing terrifying Alaric! He’s a new man, one who has no problem causing a trial of blood all over Virginia, let alone Mystic Falls.

Hey look, good news! – Bonnie and Enzo spent a morning in bed!

Bad news – That’s all we got for good news, as they had some rather-violent interruptions that cut their bedtime rather short. Meanwhile, Caroline had to break the news to Stefan that she needed to put their relationship on more or less the back burner, largely so that the focus could be instead on her making sure her children were safe following Seline’s kidnapping.

If we were to go back to Good News again, you can thank Stefan for this given the work that he did in order to ensure that he could save Enzo from Sybil’s unique brand of torture, otherwise known as destroying him from within his own mind. Enzo was grateful, but this was far from the end of the struggle this time.

One Siren’s plan – What we learned through a not-so-casual conversation over a meal was that the real goal for Selina was to present Caroline and Alaric’s children to Cade in hopes that they would be off the hook, and as a result of that, could kick back and start to move forward to the next phase of their lives — which could involve Seline trying to atone for everything that happened on the island back in the day. (With all of the talk of the island, it’s almost like these two are the female, evil versions of Oliver Queen.)

As Seline got closer and closer to using the children in order to summon Cade, Stefan attempted to come to the rescue, desperate to make things right. He wanted to protect Caroline and keep her from wanting to push him away, and he knew that trying to help was an optimal way to do just that. It’s too bad that his attempt to stop the ritual was met with a face-to-face encounter courtesy of Damon. The two squared off, but what they didn’t realize along the way was that Sybil may have had a different plan.

Rather than allowing Caroline’s children to be sold over to Cade in some sort of terrible negotiation, Stefan stepped in and agreed almost immediately to the idea of being a servant of the devil alongside his brother. It was him making one of the biggest sacrifices to date for the sake of someone else. Maybe this was his definition of atonement.

Caroline’s pain – In the middle of the battle to get his children back, he said some particularly terrible things to Caroline about the children being his and Jo’s, and not hers. She didn’t have the same claim to them that he did because they weren’t biologically hers. It was a pretty horrible thing to say, and he recognized that after the fact. Caroline did admit, however, that he was right when he claimed that she is often nothing other than a source of darkness.

The bleeding (metaphorically) continued for Caroline as Stefan eventually came and told her what he did in order to ensure that the children were safe. He now only has 24 hours of freedom before surrendering himself to Cade for an eternity of misery. Is that June wedding getting bumped up all the way to December?

Betrayal – Hey, the Sirens aren’t exactly on the same page here. Sybil effectively cut Seline out of her deal with Cade, which means that she could be left floundering and wondering what to do. Sybil has a larger plan, meanwhile, but one she’s not revealing as of yet. She is still set to be immortal, though, so not too much has changed there.

---

As we neared the end of the episode, we were starting to get a feeling of sweeping depression overwhelmed us. That was made worse when Alaric and Matt showed up to murder Damon for all that he did … and they appeared to be successful? Is that the end of the road for a certain Mr. Salvatore? Don’t count on it. It’s probably just going to make him angry; there’s no way Cade’s going to allow one of his new playthings to go.

Even still, this was an exceptionally crazy end to an exceptionally crazy hour of television. Grade: B+.

Interested in some other news regarding “The Vampire Diaries”? Then be sure to visit the link here! We’ll have a preview for next week’s new episode a.k.a. the winter finale coming up shortly.