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The Vampire Diaries 

Season 3 episode 9 – “Homecoming”

Dear Diary, it’s the Homecoming dance tonight. I’m so excited; I hope nobody dies, because that would be a downer. Who am I kidding; it’s Mystic Falls, everybody is probably going to die, then come back again. At least they will all still be attractive.  

Now, before we start desiccating this episode, I’m going to be honest, I’m Australian, so any knowledge about these dance proceedings comes from a lifetime of watching American TV. What I assume usually happens at a Homecoming dance, is that it involves some sort of football game, dancing, dressing up, someone gets elected King and Queen, someone will be kidnapped, another person will kiss the wrong person, someone will die or give birth secretly, a natural disaster will strike, identities will be mistaken and a cheerleader will be rescued, saving the world. Am I close?

At this particular Homecoming dance, nothing good happens to our main characters. Except for Klaus that is, at least until the next day. The morning after the dance, never as much fun. 

We start with one of the many choppy flashbacks this episode. Stefan is trying to convince Klaus to return from the werewolf capital of the world, Portland (no sources will verify if this is true.) To do so, they use the loophole in Stefan’s psyche they discovered last episode that he is able to work past Klaus’s compulsion and trick him into coming back if he uses information that is actually true. Therefore Elena, the vampire hunting prodigy she is, stabs big bad Mikael through the heart with a white oaked dagger. Not the magical white oak dagger that Mikael happened, to hold onto for a thousand years, but the other kind that keeps Elijah and us from being together. This means that when Stefan tells Klaus, Mikael is dead and he can come home, he’s technically not lying. I don’t know about all these compulsion loopholes the last few episodes, it seems a little convenient to me, but I digress.  

Happy as a school boy that his step-father is dead, Klaus comes back to Mystic Falls to party at the Lockwood’s, where he moves the Homecoming dance. Ever the gracious host, Klaus not only provides a famous band, My Morning Jacket, but he also brings some party flavours, and by party flavours, I mean hybrids.

Back at the Salvatore Manor before the dance, Damon and Elena freak out over their plan, which is a fair, because their plans never work (see seasons 1-3.) In order to succeed they try to cut out as many variables as possible, meaning they don’t tell anyone and re-daggered, a newly onside, Rebekah. 

Poor Rebekah, she had a bad week. Her brother, who she has followed around for a thousand years, turns out to have been the one who killed her mother, and she now had to deal with her father, who she thought killed her mother and has hated for a thousand years. At least she had dreamy eyed Matt to take her to her first dance, oh wait. The scene with Elena and Rebekah was well-done. These are two girls who have been dealt a rotten hand and just want to be normal, something that is never going to happen. However, any chance that these two might have had of being friends is shot now. I have this feeling that Beks, knows how to hold a grudge.

On top of the aforementioned contingency plans, Delena have also had Mikael, the vampire-eating vampire, drain Stefan dry, so he cannot step in to help Klaus at the last minute, as well as a super special “secret” weapon. Well, it would be secret if the weapon decided to straighten her hair.  

The remaining and clueless members of Team Mystic Falls are in full party planning mode, while this is happening. Caroline is multi-tasking. She is having Tyler glitter-up the van from the 60’s dance, while at the same time trying to convince him that he is being corrupted by the evil blood slut, Rebekah and that handing Matt over to her as a date, is probably a bad idea.

We discover later on in the episode that Rebekah is so not the main problem when it comes to Tyler, it’s actually the other original sibling. Klaus is using Tyler to help move and plan, what he believes to be his father’s wake. Firstly Ty gets into a fight with Damon who is making his way in to kill Klaus. A fight that quickly gets broken up by Bonnie, who doesn’t know about the Klaus killing plan (I don’t know why she doesn’t, let’s just move on.) Tyler once he sees past the sire bound a bit realises how much trouble they are in and tries to get Caroline out of there. This involves vervaining one of the strongest members of their gang, against their will. Gee, I wonder why Caroline might be upset Ty. Have they actually broken up at the end of the episode, I don’t know. I hope not, they make a good couple and he needs someone as awesome as Caroline to stabilize him.

At the actual dance, Klaus is clueier than they give him credit for, and has rallied an army of hybrids around him. This leads to the best scene of the episode and possibly the world, Klaus face to face with his step-father. The man he wants so desperately to accept him but, that he also hates with an equal passion. The sadness, pain and anger on Klaus’s face as Mikael completely torn into him, is heartbreaking. Then he lets “Elena” die to spite his “father” and he becomes evil again.

NEW PLAN: The Mystic Falls crew kills Klaus and then Klaus’s human doppelganger, also played by Joseph Morgan comes to town and stays forever. Ok, ready, set, go.

We now come to the final act of ‘Kill Klaus: Volume two.” Mikael has just sacrificed “Elena” to prove that Klaus is weak, but wait she’s not dead, she’s Katherine. NO! When did that happen? It really is a clever move, but they made it out to be such a big deal, when they only sort of tried to hide. Plus we missed out on Elena introducing Matt to her double for the first time, and that would have been a fun moment to see. Katherine does throw vervain bombs at the hybrids that Mikael has compelled (because they are still part vampire) against them and shouts Ka-boom! So she is forgiven.

Damon then activates his super, sneaking, surprise attack powers and stakes Klaus with the one and only white oak ash. He misses the heart nonetheless and alerts Klaus to his presence. They are fighting when Stefan rushes in saving Klaus. While Stefan gets dirty looks, Klaus now given the opportunity and the weapon, stakes his “dad” right in the heart and HE BURSTS INTO FLAMES. Yep, that just happened. 

With no weapon and Klaus now gone, no one is happy at Stefan. A fact that causes an almost kiss between Elena and Damon. I try not to get involved in the shipper debate, but there is a time and a place and a reason, and that was not the right combination of the three.

For one thing Stefan and his eyebrows, had a really, really good reason for screwing them over. He just couldn’t tell them what it was. For those of you playing along at home, it seems Katherine while pretending to be Elena, was witness to Klaus threatening that if he died, his hybrid buddies would kill our Damon in retaliation. Not open to letting one half of her eternal love triangle die, in flashback we see Katherine revive Stefan and let him in on the problem, prompting him to go and save his big brother again.

This was a good twist, but the use of flashback I found, took you out of the moment and it lost some of the suspense. Throughout the episode, it was like it was moving too fast and missing certain scenes in order to get through all the twists and bends.

This however, leads us to a much, much better turn of events and something that is hopefully going to set off an incredible arc for the next few episodes. Stefan stole Klaus’s remaining coffins. STEFAN STOLE THE COFFINS. Let that sink in a minute. Even if that means we are one step further away from getting Elijah back, things are about to get crazy good in Mystic Falls. Let the revenge games begin.

The problem I think I had overall with ‘Homecoming’ was that, we accept and expect The Vampire Diaries to have crazy twists. They should trust that we should be able to follow them without having to spell everything out (the spell thing there was an accident, but it works.) It may seem like I didn’t enjoy this episode, but I really did.  Klaus is magnificent and this was ten times better than most of the stuff I watched this week. It’s just I know how good this show can be.

We did get to see Matt in a suit however and that is never a bad thing.

Sweet dreams diary,

Hanniebee xoxo