‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 7, episode 8 review: Lily Salvatore makes her ‘choice’
Who expected “The Vampire Diaries” to make such a big move Thursday night in regards to the Lily Salvatore story? We’ve come to know the Heretics as a key component of this story, and yet we’ve now seen the entire family fracture.
When faced with a choice to either be with her sons or be with the family that she had created in some way alongside Julian, she chose door #3, which for her meant pushing the dagger into her own heart. She thought in turn that this would kill Julian, not knowing that the two were already not linked. Ultimately, Lily died a rather thankless death. She’s gone, Julian is still out there, and within the course of the hour Nora and Mary Louis went from celebrating an engagement to being devastated.
There was a certain coldness to the part of the story that involved goodbyes. Maybe a part of this was due to the way that Lily treated Damon and Stefan while she was alive; still, his comments to her out the door in “have a nice nap” were incredibly cruel, and they may spark the beginning of a huge sibling rivalry.
Three years later – As it turns out, Lily does still have a role in the series … at least temporarily as Damon realizes that he has some regret over the past. He thinks that he sees Lily in a particularly vulnerable moment, but it turns out to just be a hallucination. Still, this proves that some of Damon’s actions are going to continue to haunt him, just as we’ve already seen that despite Stefan’s best efforts to figure out a way to be there for Caroline, something happens that causes the two to grow apart within the past three years.
Overall, it’s pretty easy to consider this story a winner. How could you say anything else about it based on the emotion and the power we saw tonight? Episode grade: B+.
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