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
