S02.E05: Red Door

[Artsda]

 

 

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES' NINA DOBREV APPEARS IN FLASHBACKS AS TATIA, THE ORIGINAL DOPPELGANGER - In order to show Elijah (Daniel Gillies) that her plan is what's best for him, Esther forces him to relive a time long ago when he loved a young woman named Tatia (guest star Nina Dobrev). With the help of Marcel (Charles Michael Davis), Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) is determined to find Elijah, who has gone missing, but is torn when she discovers that Klaus (Joseph Morgan) is also in trouble. Elsewhere, Cami (Leah Pipes) finds herself in a dangerous situation when Mikael (guest star Sebastian Roche) takes her hostage as a way to lure Klaus to him, and Davina (Danielle Campbell) makes an upsetting discovery about Kaleb's (guest star Daniel Sharman) true identity. Lastly, a violent confrontation ensues when Klaus comes face-to-face with Mikael.  

 

I loved this episode. Especially seeing the flashbacks with Tatia and Elijah. 

 

Also everyone uniting against Mikael and Klaus figuring out Kol was his brother in a minute or less. Klaus was snarky and great this episode. Hayley saying that Elijah's missing and Klaus saying he's busy, but if he finds Elijah he could use a hand. LOL

 

 

[bluebonnet]

It's a good thing I like all the other characters on this show.  They make this Esther/Mikael plot bearable.  These two are like comic book villains.  Ffs, Esther has the ability to force 'salvation' on Elijah but she chooses to torture him instead.  So ridiculous.  

 

I hope there's a character shift with Klaus.  It would be great if he decided to earn the people standing beside him rather than have them there just because they want to survive or want their friends to survive.  

[rue721]

I'm not sure about the episode as a whole because a lot of it felt like filler to me, there was no real plot movement, but at the same time a lot of the scenes were great individually. These are the same writers who did Le Grand Guignol last season (I thought that episode was really well-written, so I look forward to their episodes) -- and based on that episode and this one, I really love how they write Mikael and wish they could write all the episodes featuring him. He's always so genuinely cruel and frightening in their scripts. That "you erase [abominations]" speech from last season still is the most chilling I think he's ever been imo, but I think how he went off on Cami in this episode is now first runner up.

 

Anyway, I enjoyed Elijah's walk down memory lane much more than I'd expected. I was worried that the focus would be some boring TVD-esque brothers-and-character-played-by-Nina-Dobrev triangle, so that their focus instead on Elijah "comforting" his brother that nothing had changed after Klaus had ripped apart six (or eight?) villagers with his teeth as a wolf (!) and then also trying to convince Tatia that all was well when she came upon the dismembered bodies only to end up murdering her (!!!) was a happy surprise! I especially loved how Haley's rescue of Elijah turned out to only be a fantasy that Esther was "letting" him have in order to break him down more. So incredibly creepy. And even though I'm not big on Elijah and Haley as a couple, I did think it was sweet that he was imagining her of all people rescuing him. For whatever reason, Haley just never seems at all tough to me, regardless that at this point she's supposedly the second strongest being on the planet (I guess?) and has gotten through this appallingly difficult life and is horrible enough to have set up all her hybrid friends for slaughter at Klaus's hands just so she could get what turned out to be worthless intel on her family, etc etc etc, so it kind of cracked me up that that's who Elijah would imagine saving him -- but in a good way, I liked that scene.

 

This was also probably the first time I genuinely liked Kol! He usually seems so arbitrarily reckless than I can't get into him as a character, but this time his actions were purposeful and and he actually seemed to have comprehensible motivations, so I enjoyed him much more. I also liked that he was so explicit about how he feels about the rest of his family, because I've always found that confusing. It seems like he goes his own way and doesn't care about them much, but at the same time, he always seems really happy to hang out with them when they're around? I never really got it. At the least, doesn't he feel awkward that aside from Finn (who nobody likes, apparently) he's basically the odd one out? His POV has always been hard for me to understand. Well anyway, Davina was also pretty badass. I don't know what Marcel* was thinking, giving her an order when she was that het up. He should have distracted her with a job/busywork. Oh well. I wonder what her plans are for the stake? On a shallow note, she also looked amazing. Thinking about it, everyone really brought the pretty this episode, though the girls more than the guys imo.

 

Surprisingly not into the Klaus/Mikael fight this time around, though. Even though Mikael compelling all those ravers was fun, it's not actually interesting to see Klaus fight a bunch of regular old humans (who he could have just compelled to stop or to go after Mikael themselves, couldn't he? why even fight them?), and Esther's mind-whammy on Elijah blew Mikael's attempt at "psychological warfare" out of the water at that point in the episode anyway. Mikael also basically wasted all his scary on Cami, imo, so once Klaus was around, it seemed like the climax to his SL was already over. I also thought it was kind of weirdly...Idk, cartoon-y? too "Avengers"? to have everyone come fight him together like they're some superhero squad. Even Davina came and randomly stood in the warehouse looking at Mikael like everyone else (though I guess she was there to surreptitiously get the stake?). It just seemed overdone to me. As was Mikeal's weird thing of "you think having people matters?!" or whatever. WUT. I don't get you Mikael, why would you allude to what a strong team they are? Isn't your job to foment *dissension* among the ranks? At least say something to fan the flames of Klaus's usual paranoia, that doesn't exactly take much imagination.

 

The actual Mikael/Klaus fistfight had too much melodramatic grunting, it really took me out of it. That whole confrontation wasn't terrible or anything, I just think the storyline needed an extra twist or didn't have quite enough plot to sustain the amount of suspense they were trying to sustain or give the climax/fight enough impact. It didn't quite hang together, imo. I don't even know why Mikael decided to hide out in the warehouse with Cami and just wait for Klaus anyway? I mean, why not just confront him or ambush him wherever, instead of waiting for a long time in this random building? Seems strange. Also, I didn't like the resolution to the fight -- Mikael just stood there quipping, and then ran out the door? And everyone just kind of shrugged it off, like "I guess we'll see him again soon enough"? Seems kind of apathetic of them, doesn't give the story much momentum.

 

The thing I usually like about Klaus is that he's so ridiculously balls to the wall about everything, so I was disappointed by how low-energy his whole SL was tonight and that once Mikael was gone he just stood there touching Cami's wound (ewwww sorry), and Cami started blathering AGAIN about how shitty Mikael is. Everyone knows Mikael is shitty, Cami, it's been a major theme. Do you even watch this show? I feel like Klaus has been abusing the Xanax or something, too, he's so blah lately, and I hope his source dries up ASAP because I want to see him go berserk, that's part of what's fun about having Mikael around in the first place. If Klaus is going to blandly walk through the woods taking phone calls from Marcel or whatever, just hiking slowly to the warehouse with no apparent plan in mind except to yell at Mikael and then sort of tackle him, weaponless, then this storyline is going to be so much more of a dud than it should be. Maybe they're trying to whitewash him so that we'll be rooting for him over Mikael more? I don't really think it's possible to whitewash Klaus, though, he even was murdering random human partygoers in this episode just now! During the maybe-whitewashing! Plus, Mikael actually is probably the "better" out of the two of them, since he feeds on vampires usually and apparently doesn't kill anyone or make new vampires (and *didn't* kill anyone in this episode, unlike Klaus). (If Mikael were really up for screwing with Klaus, imo he would have just made Cami into a vampire and then Klaus wouldn't be able to kill Mikael without killing Cami. But Mikael tends to be overconfident so maybe he thinks he's above things like that). I feel it's stupid to try and have a morality contest between two villains, though. They're both bad, it doesn't matter, all they need to make a fight between them interesting is to each be at the top of their game (which imo means that Klaus needs to be as crafty as possible and Mikael needs to be as ruthless and self-righteous as possible). I'm not rooting for either of them to die regardless. If Mikael were made a regular, I would actually love that. Probably the only person more obnoxious than Mikael is Klaus and they're constantly fighting, so I think that he would be a great addition to the show!

 

Anyway, not trying to nitpick, there was tons I liked. For example, I was happy to hear Mikael get PO'ed about Klaus murdering Esther! I actually wonder how he even knows that? Was he there for it? I'm sure he wasn't reading any cave walls to get the story, and nobody was going to tell him flat out, were they?

 

*Marcel was once again wasted in this episode. Imo he's the most interesting character out of the whole cast, I don't understand why he never gets an SL, he's always on the sidelines of someone else's?

Edited November 4, 2014 by rue721

[missbonnie]

Of all the episodes to date this is the only one I actually hated. I realize that Elijah is not a saint, but if his bitch of a mother manages to accomplish what she sets out to do to him I may be done. Not definitely, but it would be close. The only part I loved was Michael realizing that he'd better beat feet or he was toast, literally.

[justmehere]

I liked the episode overall. Loved Elijah's flashbacks (wish everyone would pronounce his name Eli-jah rather than Eli-zha; I just like the sound better). Loved Klaus figuring out Kol. Didn't believe that Klaus would hand the white-oak stake to Cami because I don't think he'd let it out of his possession, and certainly not to a human. I wish they'd incinerate the thing, but I guess there has to be some way to kill an Original.

 

I'm over Mikael, except that I want to see what happens when he and Esther come face-to-face. Speaking of -- she is so awful. They caught me with Elijah's dream -- talk about cruel.

 

I guess Elijah really did kill Tatia. I was sure Esther was creating false memories for him, but the conversation with Finn at the end disproved that. Yet at the end, even Finn seemed to look at Esther like she was off the rails.

 

The preview looked intriguing, and I admit, I am curious to see how this changes Elijah... as long as he doesn't align with Esther.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Once again we saw the difference between Elijah and Klaus. Elijah usually drops whatever he's doing and runs whenever Klaus calls, no matter how inconvenient it is. Klaus, on the other hand, always thinks that whatever he is doing is more important than anything else. Even when Hayley tells Klaus that Elijah is missing, he refuses to help her find him. I mean, I get that Klaus had cause for concern this time since Mikael had the white oak stake (which could kill him) and the knife of pain (which he definitely doesn't like experiencing), but it felt like he was more focused on finding Cami and saying tough shit for Elijah. It pains me so much to see Elijah and Rebekah constantly helping Klaus, defending Klaus, and coming to his rescue while he rarely reciprocates.

 

I did find it hilarious to watch Klaus on the phone with Hayley while he casually killed the remnants of hillbilly Halloween. Nope, don't even need two hands to do this! But here's what I don't get. We have seen Klaus and Elijah take down huge numbers of vampires singlehandedly. Mikael is even stronger (due to the fact that he thinks pain is for the weak and refuses to let it slow him down), so why did he back down when faced with such a small group of opponents (Marcel, Hayley, Klaus, etc)?

 

I'm not down with Esther's psychoanalysis of Elijah's OCD and love of suits. Can't a guy just rock suits because he knows he looks good?

 

I think Kol loves his family but hates the drama and that's why he sometimes seems like a loose cannon because he doesn't always toe the family line.]. His love of having a good time seems like an escape from dealing with the craziness of his family. Because he is less bound by the sense of obligation that Elijah and Rebekah have with Klaus, he seems less loyal but I think it actually makes him more sane. He was painted as a bad guy on TVD but in reality, his goal was to keep Silas from being awakened. And when you consider that the only reason that Elena & co were willing to risk that was so that one of them could receive the cure, Kol ends up once again being the reasonable one. One vampire gets to become human but at the cost of unleashing Silas on the world - yeah, the cons for everyone on the planet seem to outweight the pros of Elena getting to become human. And before Kol found out that Silas was involved with the cure, he was the one helping Rebekah try to find it because he can be a nice older brother when he feels like it.

 

Right now he is mostly obeying Esther because, as he told Davina, there's a price to pay if he doesn't. He has been following her orders but I think he is definitely willing to switch sides if he thinks it's possible for someone to defeat Esther. He doesn't blindly believe that his family is always doing the right thing, which I really like. I think he was telling the truth when he said that he likes Davina. I don't think that means he is in looooooove with her or anything, just that he doesn't want to have to kill her just to satisfy his mother's wishes. As he said, Esther is mad as a hatter and Mikael is a lunatic. Then look at the rest of his family - Finn is a total kiss ass momma's boy, Klaus is an insecure unkillable megalomaniac, Elijah is obsessed with trying to save Klaus, and Rebekah is resigned to Klaus's emotional abuse. No wonder Kol wants to get away from them.

 

wish everyone would pronounce his name Eli-jah rather than Eli-zha; I just like the sound better

I actually prefer the second way, but it's baffling to me that his family pronounces it two different ways. I understand it more from strangers, but usually family members (especially siblings) learn how to pronounce a name from their parents and then they all use it.

[driedfruit]

This episode was a winner for me. I loved it way more than the last two. Lots of drama, lots of tension. And the backstory was great. I love what the show is doing with Mikael and Klaus. It's totally believable that Klaus turned everyone against Mikael based on lies, since he lied to his siblings about killing Esther for 1000years. I hope Mikael becomes a regular and weans the boys (Kol, Finn, Elijah...) back from Klaus. Also, I'm more excited than ever for Mikael and Esther meeting at last. 

 

I would like Davina a lot more if she wasn't so darn conceded. On a show with super villains, she needs to take a dozen seats. Her whole I'm not scared of Klaus makes me hope he ends up killing her. Because, girl, if you had any sense you should be scared. Oh wait, I forgot, Kol's right, Cami has a leash on Klaus. So Davina is right not to fear him, blech. There is a lot I love about this show, but it's female cast and romances aren't one of them. Sadly all the good ones are gone (Rebekah, Celeste, Gen, Sofie...).

 

Mikael is even stronger (due to the fact that he thinks pain is for the weak and refuses to let it slow him down), so why did he back down when faced with such a small group of opponents (Marcel, Hayley, Klaus, etc)?

It's already been established that werewolf bites and Papa T's blade weaken Originals for an extended period and the wounds take considerable time to heal. Mikael's strength was sapped already by all the wolf bites he sustained thanks to 2.02, hence the cuts on his face not yet having healed. He was basically at minimal strength. Which is probably why Klaus was so urgent to get to him last episode, and even more urgent this episode.

 

I think Kol loves his family but hates the drama and that's why he sometimes seems like a loose cannon because he doesn't always toe the family line.]. His love of having a good time seems like an escape from dealing with the craziness of his family. Because he is less bound by the sense of obligation that Elijah and Rebekah have with Klaus, he seems less loyal but I think it actually makes him more sane.

 

I agree about Kol. 

 

I thought it was interesting that Klaus was so effected by his death. I wish that gets brought up at one point. He didn't particularly seem like he wanted Kol dead which was good continuity. 

[Kaboom 2.0]

Ya know, I actually lol'd when Kol/Kaleb dismissed Finn's call, promptly got a nosebleed, immediately picked up the call, bitched to Finn about the nosebleed, and Finn replying "I don't like voicemail." As much as I want NB back in the role of Kol I really like the actors portraying the back-from-the-dead Mikaelsons, they are made of win for me. I still think that Kol is the most rational member of that family (especially his actions over on TVD) and has the most twinkle in his eye when it comes to having fun.

 

I love, Love, LOVED that Mikael told Cami she is the enabler of the weak, about damn time someone actually said it, I wouldn't have minded him snapping her neck for it since it seems he loathes her chosen field of study, LOL. Klaus pisses me off yet again by not bothering to care that the one sibling that he can depend on the most has gone missing. A part of me knows that he would not just let Mikael waltz off in his still weakened state but especially not with Mikael having Cami as hostage, Papa Tunde's knife AND the white oak stake, but still. The one good thing about Mikael disappearing into the wind like that was that he will be back.

 

Still loving Marcel although I did miss Josh, maybe he and Aiden were getting to know each other some more? ;-) I know that Marcel and Davina have been through a lot but I still love how protective he is of her and especially at the end of this ep when she and Kol were talking (and eventually ditched everyone). I'm wondering if Kol will actually assist Davina in severing Klaus' vampiric descendants or not, he doesn't care about Marcel and Josh but she definitely does.

 

Now we come to Elijah and his mother. I am LIVING for the actress; don't throw tomatoes at me but when The Wire was airing on HBO I never watched it because we didn't have HBO, I think I read somewhere here that she was on The Wire, if so I cannot wait to watch the series since it seems the actors there were top notch. Esther may be, to quote Kol, mad as a hatter but I am loving how this actress is portraying her. I liked the flashbacks to Elijah and Tatia, that they set up Esther's psychological warfare on her own son using both the past and present. I eyerolled Hayley being the one to rescue Elijah but figured eh, he likes/liked her, makes sense he would dream that.

 

I'm sure there's more but at this point I'm still giggling over Kol and Finn's phone call. :-D

[driedfruit]

Ya know, I actually lol'd when Kol/Kaleb dismissed Finn's call, promptly got a nosebleed, immediately picked up the call, bitched to Finn about the nosebleed, and Finn replying "I don't like voicemail." As much as I want NB back in the role of Kol I really like the actors portraying the back-from-the-dead Mikaelsons, they are made of win for me. I still think that Kol is the most rational member of that family (especially his actions over on TVD) and has the most twinkle in his eye when it comes to having fun.

Their snarking has been some of my favorite scenes in the past episodes. They've got some really natural sibling chemistry in there. 

 

Finn is barely around, and yet he's become one of my favorites. 

Edited November 4, 2014 by driedfruit

[Lady Calypso]

This episode was actually really good in terms of character progression. Maybe not so much in plot progression, but we got more on Kol, Elijah and even Cami/Mikael. 

 

The Elijah flashbacks with Tatia were actually well done. I always wondered about Tatia's role, since they made it out to be super important and then never explored it, so I always thought she had been killed for the spell. Well, apparently not and it makes actual sense as to why that Tatia was never explored. I enjoy the fact that they focused far less on the triangle, had Tatia choose Elijah right off the bat and went right into 'Elijah killed Tatia'. I do hope that this experience with Esther breaking him down changes Elijah somehow. I'd love to see a different side to him, perhaps one that may be more unhinged, less noble. I don't want him to become worse than Klaus, of course (he's already dangerous enough as it is with his calm demeanour when killing people and I like that about him) but I would like to see a change in him, to actually show some danger about Esther.

 

The Kol/Finn snarking really is top notch. I'm finally liking Finn as a character and it's all thanks to Yusuf Gatewood. 

 

I like Marcel, even if he's being put to the backburner a little bit this season, and I'm surprisingly liking his scenes with Hayley. I like when this show mixes up 'partners', so to speak, and lets others interact with people they probably wouldn't usually interact with. Even if I'm not fond with Klaus, I do like how everyone teamed up to save him. I love how Mikael did, in fact, get the chance to kill Klaus and almost succeeded. Klaus, of course, is still a jerk for not caring about the whereabouts of his brother but I am curious to his reaction for next episode. I did like the Mikael/Klaus fight, and I like how Mikael told Cami that she was an enabler. In a way, she really is. It's almost like Elena with both brothers, who dismisses their bad actions and constantly tell them how good they are, how they do have hearts deep down and will choose the right thing always. Like, no. They're not victims here. They may start out as victims, but they have all made their own choices to get where they are. Elijah is no saint either, he's made awful decisions, and we're even learning that he's been hiding behind a red door, so to speak, from his bad actions. Klaus is definitely no exception either. Mikael may be a jackass and the worst father ever, but Klaus seems to take it from him. 

 

Davina's certainly different this season, more grown up. Obviously, given with everything that happened last season, and I love how she's still on the 'Kill Klaus' train. I mean, if Mikael could have only been patient and let her unlink Klaus from his sires, we could have a dead Klaus by now. As much as I like Joseph Morgan, Klaus has very little redeemable qualities at the moment. I see that she's still willing to work with Kol, but I do hope the two don't end up together. I'd like Kol to actually act his age, thank you very much. 

[La Tortuga]

Did I miss something, or did The Originals just totally retcon the origin story that we first heard in The Vampire Diaries?

[rue721]

I like Marcel, even if he's being put to the backburner a little bit this season, and I'm surprisingly liking his scenes with Hayley. I like when this show mixes up 'partners', so to speak, and lets others interact with people they probably wouldn't usually interact with.

 

Definitely, Hayley is at her best when she's with Marcel, imo. The problem for me is that a *lot* of the characters are at their best when they're with Marcel. Haley, Elijah, Klaus, and Cami all shine when they're with him. I even like the flashbacks with Kid!Marcel better than the usual flashbacks (but I also like the actor who plays Kid!Marcel, he just oozes "good kid" vibes so it's fun watching him hanging out with a bunch of vampires, lol). Yet despite all that, *plus* having the most interesting and under-explored backstory among the mains, imo, Marcel is always playing...not even second-fiddle, more like fourth-fiddle. I think it's such a waste. I wish they would let him just carry his own storyline and tie it back to the other characters and the city more organically.

 

Klaus, of course, is still a jerk for not caring about the whereabouts of his brother but I am curious to his reaction for next episode.

 

Even though Klaus was aggravating per usual on the phone, I actually don't have a problem with him deciding to track down Mikael instead of going to Elijah ASAP. Elijah's immortal, so there's only so much that can happen to him (barring that he breaks, but one day seems very fast for Elijah to break). Klaus has always been nonchalant about his siblings' survival, which is off-putting, but I guess makes logical sense given that they are pretty much indestructible.

 

Klaus also seems to at least somewhat buy into Mikael's idea that suffering is good for a person, seeing as Klaus is always trying to teach people lessons basically by tormenting them and causing them pain (mostly Rebekah, I cannot get over his treatment of her, but Eljiah and pretty much everyone else, too. That seemed like a big part of why he was chasing down Rebekah and stabbing Elijah in Farewell to Storyville, and even why he did other horrible things like murder Davina's friend Tim). So I basically expect Klaus to not care much about his siblings' (or anyone's, really) suffering, since he seems like he usually figures it's for the best.

 

What I liked about all that was how Davina started freaking out about Mikael being loose and obsessing over murdering Klaus, and Kol basically being like, "pffffffft this has been going on for a thousand years, don't even worry about it." LOL. So, in the sense that Mikael is *always* trying to come after Klaus I can see how it would seem like less of an emergency than Elijah's disappearance, but since Mikael and the white oak stake are really the only *lethal* threats, I think stopping him should probably take priority anyway.

 

Even if I'm not fond with Klaus, I do like how everyone teamed up to save him.

 

In light of Esther letting Elijah "dream" in order to make his memories seem even darker to him in comparison, I'm actually wondering about some things w/r/t Klaus's current SL. Klaus was painting in his victims' blood as recently as the premiere, he's *the worst,* so the sweet, gentle turns that his story has taken lately have got me suspicious. I don't think that any of it is "just a dream," but I wonder if he's getting played or set up (by Esther and Finn) somehow. Back on TVD, Esther defanged him by telling him she forgave him for killing her, and way back in the flashbacks, Esther apparently defanged him by giving him that necklace as a sign of her "protection" and love, so I think it would make sense that the tack that Esther would take with him now would also be to lull him into a false sense of protection/love/forgiveness.

 

I also bring this up w/r/t the team-up to defeat Mikael because...it seems like everything's been "coming up Klaus" for a while, doesn't it? Ever since that family dinner:

 

-- Elijah's been super supportive and bff with him. Right after the dinner, Elijah even said straight out that Klaus has always protected the family, which is obviously untrue and the exact opposite to what Mikael (imo more believably albeit incredibly harshly) claims/accuses Klaus of.

 

-- Cami has completely fallen for him and is apparently 100% on his side. That's been the case ever since that "therapy" session with Finn when she mentioned him after Finn drew her out for a bit, iIrc. I wonder if Finn actually put some sort of spell on her, and that's why she suddenly is so gooey about Klaus?

 

-- Everyone came to rescue him from Mikael. That reminded me of Elijah's rescued-from-Esther-by-Hayley fantasy. That rescue-by-the-Supernatural-Squad also seemed unusual to me because Klaus's big fear has always pretty explicitly been that he'll be cast out/alone, so I would think that having basically everyone he knows come to his defense like that would have got to be a dream come true, lol.

 

-- He scared Mikael and got him to run away for the first time ever, which also seems like it would be a dream come true for him. That also made me think of the flashback during the family dinner to when Klaus "challenged" Mikael to earn his respect, especially since when Klaus and Mikael were fighting this time, Klaus literally said, "not as weak as you remember?" as though they were just having a contest, they weren't actually fighting for their lives. I also got that "just a contest" vibe when Klaus basically just told Mikael that the fight was over and they all let Mikael leave the warehouse.

 

The reason I bring that up is also that it's starting to seem to me like Klaus isn't necessarily looking to actually kill Mikael, even though he says he is. After the first fight, he claimed that he didn't kill Mikael because of Cami's advice, but then he didn't kill him the second time, either, he just let him leave. Maybe it was because they were all supposed to be weak at that point or maybe it was just what the writers could come up with or something, but it seemed strange to me how calm Klaus was to have Mikael just walk out of there pretty much unscathed and to parts unknown, basically to come back and attack him at any time. Also, when Klaus started talking about how either he or Mikael were going to be ash by the end of the day and then just went into the warehouse with no weapons and no plan and limited himself to pretty much playing defense, and for a grand total of maybe a minute before getting the dagger in his chest at that, it seemed like he was basically on a suicide mission -- which isn't like him at *all,* he always puts his own safety first. I thought similarly in the previous episode when he decided he was going to go and attack Mikael all alone using just the mystical knife. I mean, obviously he was going to have to do something proactive, but it seems like he's way too eager to confront Mikael and is being really reckless about it. I thought it was arrogance before, but after Mikael actually did manage to get the white oak stake into his heart this time and it's become clear that Mikael is a real match for Klaus (and likely to beat him), I don't really understand what's going on in Klaus's head that he's always trying to run up to Mikael and start stuff now. I feel like maybe he really likes fighting Mikael but doesn't actually want to kill Mikael. Wayyyyy back on TVD, there was this rant that Klaus went on about how he gave everyone's lives meaning by being the scapegoat, which I thought was ridiculous, but I guess that Mikael could give his life meaning the same way, and that could be a reason he doesn't want to be rid of him forever. Or maybe something much less abstract, lol.

[MissL]

I don't think so La Tortuga.  What do you think changed?

[immortalfrieza]

-- He scared Mikael and got him to run away for the first time ever, which also seems like it would be a dream come true for him. That also made me think of the flashback during the family dinner to when Klaus "challenged" Mikael to earn his respect, especially since when Klaus and Mikael were fighting this time, Klaus literally said, "not as weak as you remember?" as though they were just having a contest, they weren't actually fighting for their lives. I also got that "just a contest" vibe when Klaus basically just told Mikael that the fight was over and they all let Mikael leave the warehouse.

 

The reason I bring that up is also that it's starting to seem to me like Klaus isn't necessarily looking to actually kill Mikael, even though he says he is. After the first fight, he claimed that he didn't kill Mikael because of Cami's advice, but then he didn't kill him the second time, either, he just let him leave. Maybe it was because they were all supposed to be weak at that point or maybe it was just what the writers could come up with or something, but it seemed strange to me how calm Klaus was to have Mikael just walk out of there pretty much unscathed and to parts unknown, basically to come back and attack him at any time. Also, when Klaus started talking about how either he or Mikael were going to be ash by the end of the day and then just went into the warehouse with no weapons and no plan and limited himself to pretty much playing defense, and for a grand total of maybe a minute before getting the dagger in his chest at that, it seemed like he was basically on a suicide mission -- which isn't like him at *all,* he always puts his own safety first. I thought similarly in the previous episode when he decided he was going to go and attack Mikael all alone using just the mystical knife. I mean, obviously he was going to have to do something proactive, but it seems like he's way too eager to confront Mikael and is being really reckless about it. I thought it was arrogance before, but after Mikael actually did manage to get the white oak stake into his heart this time and it's become clear that Mikael is a real match for Klaus (and likely to beat him), I don't really understand what's going on in Klaus's head that he's always trying to run up to Mikael and start stuff now. I feel like maybe he really likes fighting Mikael but doesn't actually want to kill Mikael. Wayyyyy back on TVD, there was this rant that Klaus went on about how he gave everyone's lives meaning by being the scapegoat, which I thought was ridiculous, but I guess that Mikael could give his life meaning the same way, and that could be a reason he doesn't want to be rid of him forever. Or maybe something much less abstract, lol.

Yes, I've always viewed Mikael's "hunt" of Klaus and his reaction to be that this is more like a game to them than anything else. Hell, this episode is probably the only time I can think of that Mikael has both had Klaus dead to rights and actually took advantage of the opportunity to kill him, and would have succeeded in that if it weren't for Davina and Kol. Mostly Mikael seems to just menacingly wave his white oak stake at Klaus, make some big talk, play around with him, and then let him get away, like at the opera house instead of just staking him outright while his back is turned like he would if he truly cared about killing him.

Edited November 5, 2014 by immortalfrieza

[ladyrott]

Was anyone else a bit creeped out by the fact that Elijah was evidently in love with Tatia about 600 years before he was involved with Katherine (I remember hating that plot on TVD because they seemed an unlikely match and now I hate it even more).  I have always had the same problem with Damon/Elena regarding Damon's obsession with Katherine for a couple of hundred years and then his twu wuv for Elena.  These people seriously DO need therapy. 

[Carrie Ann]

I always assumed one or both of them was with Tatia. In fact, didn't we know that? Or it was strongly implied?

 

And it should be noted, once again: Nina Dobrev is the luckiest actress on TV today. She gets to make out with every hot guy in the TVD/TO universe.

[Aeryn13]

 

Was anyone else a bit creeped out by the fact that Elijah was evidently in love with Tatia about 600 years before he was involved with Katherine

 

He also had a soft spot for Elena, not quite romantic but not entirely platonic either. And while Stefan was compelled to not fear Katherine, he did actually love the person he believed her to be before he loved Elena.

 

Only Silas with Amara and Klaus with Tatia (not that it was particularly shown in this ep but they did say he loved her back in TVD) seemed to make a clear distinction between the doppelganger they loved and all the other people who looked like her.

 

I`m more creeped out by Elijah out-Stefaning Stefan. Who, while creating a Mr.Hyde-like personality he refered to in the third person when relating his dark deeds, at least had the strength to actually remember them as real events. Does Elijah`s mind write over reality whenever he does something against his code? We`ve seen him be ruthless. Just as much as his siblings, more than Rebekah probably. I guess that doesn`t count because he never seemed particularly bothered with it.  

 

And seriously, everyone else lets that fly? I buy noone else knowing about Tatia but if the room behind the "red door" is full to the brim, there needs to be more in it. Stuff Elijah simply pretended out of existance. Klaus and Rebekah can throw passive-aggressive tantrums with the best of them, they never knew of any of these events to call him on it? They never refered to something Elijah would not remember or remember differently? O-kay.

 

This whole family needs extensive therapy. A thousand Camis wouldn`t surfice. Mikael is a total bully who would have probably doted on Klaus like noone else if Esther hadn`t made him wear the necklace of wimpitude. Then natural werewolf aggression and asshattery would have surfaced. Ironically in that case Mikael would have probably questioned the paternity of every other child BUT Klaus. 

 

I found it hilarious how he raged against Klaus for turning the family against him, though. A) you beat on a little kid throughout their childhood enough that it at least turned Elijah and Rebekah against you already, that was your supreme asshattery, not Klaus so no wonder they stood with their brother and not you and b) you hunted them all across the known world, that should do nicely in turning them against you. That`s a Klaus level of martyr complex and blame shifting. Ironic that he didn`t father him because they are most alike.     

 

Esther is batshit insane. She acknowledges that she ruined her children and kinda wants to help them (in a twisted way) but instead of dealing with who they are, she wants to shove them behind the biggest reddest door that ever was. Because, sure, body-hopping cancels out the past. It`s not like you`d be the same person who killed and maimed for a thousand years, just in another, more vulnerable body with different supernatural strength.

 

That thought is as crazy as when they made Stefan say he wanted the cure for vampirism to be rid of the guilt. Which would work if the cure was "bring back every single person the vampire hurt and killed". Esther lives by that same mindset. Elijah won`t have killed Tatia any less if he doesn`t look like Daniel Gillies anymore.

 

I will give Finn that the body-hopping gave him a personality so it did something. The other sibs do have them already, though. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

One of my problems with Esther's master plan 2.0 (put her vampire children into the bodies of witches and let them die a natural death when they're old) is that she is stealing the bodies and lives of the witches whose bodies they inhabit. Isn't that unnatural and against the laws of nature and taking human life and all the other stuff she rails on about when she is explaining why her children are now abominations?

[Aeryn13]

Of course, it is. But witches do this all day, every day. They created just about every bad thing ever, constantly mess with the natural order and still claim to be servants of nature. Being the true bad guys of this fictional universe while being huge hypocrites to boot is very consistent. 

 

And the answer to everything is always: more magic. A spell for immortality,results in nature kicking back with the doppelgangers - whoopdeedoo, lets use that to make more convoluted spells. The entire Other Side as a grudge spell. A spell for vampirism (again) and the answer is? Another uber-convoluted spell to create five magical hunters. Like a merry go-round. 

[rue721]

Esther's plan to guilt trip her kids to death cracks me up, especially because it's so simple yet apparently effective. She basically just gave Elijah a time out and told him that he could come out when he was ready to behave (i.e., go along with her plan). I actually don't think that she's that bad, she's just controlling in this relentlessly entitled way (like her kids are just extensions of herself, to do with what she will). Pretty believably maternal, imo!

 

This "become witches!" idea is obviously harebrained and I don't even think that's necessarily what she means to do, I think it's just what she's using to try and get her kids to give up these vampire/Originals bodies she hates. I suspect that she's got some idea brewing about getting more powerful consecrated witch bones buried so that there's even more ancestral power to channel, or something like that. You can bet your bottom dollar that Esther's plan is going to involve Esther being in charge and shoring up whatever power she can/undermining her kids, she's obviously a control freak.

 

ETA:

 

Yes, I've always viewed Mikael's "hunt" of Klaus and his reaction to be that this is more like a game to them than anything else.

 

Taking this to the Klaus thread.

Edited November 5, 2014 by rue721

[immortalfrieza]

I`m more creeped out by Elijah out-Stefaning Stefan. Who, while creating a Mr.Hyde-like personality he refered to in the third person when relating his dark deeds, at least had the strength to actually remember them as real events. Does Elijah`s mind write over reality whenever he does something against his code? We`ve seen him be ruthless. Just as much as his siblings, more than Rebekah probably. I guess that doesn`t count because he never seemed particularly bothered with it.  

 

And seriously, everyone else lets that fly? I buy no one else knowing about Tatia but if the room behind the "red door" is full to the brim, there needs to be more in it. Stuff Elijah simply pretended out of existence. Klaus and Rebekah can throw passive-aggressive tantrums with the best of them, they never knew of any of these events to call him on it? They never referred to something Elijah would not remember or remember differently? O-kay.

Yes. I just hope that if Esther is being honest (which until we see proof other than her word and her induced visions I'll take it with just as much of a grain of salt as Elijah is) this doesn't lead to a "Dark Elijah" storyline at some point. One of the reasons I like the character so much is that Elijah is the only one of his family that is genuinely noble, honest, and trustworthy and not a cartoonishly evil unapologetic psychopath like the rest of his family so suddenly having Elijah devolve into the greatest psychopath of them all or turn out to have always been that way just doesn't sit well with me.

 

Besides, having characters do a complete 180 in personality just to create conflict for a while is something in fiction I've never really liked.

This whole family needs extensive therapy. A thousand Camis wouldn't suffice. Mikael is a total bully who would have probably doted on Klaus like noone else if Esther hadn`t made him wear the necklace of wimpitude. Then natural werewolf aggression and asshattery would have surfaced. Ironically in that case Mikael would have probably questioned the paternity of every other child BUT Klaus.

I found it hilarious how he raged against Klaus for turning the family against him, though. A) you beat on a little kid throughout their childhood enough that it at least turned Elijah and Rebekah against you already, that was your supreme asshattery, not Klaus so no wonder they stood with their brother and not you and b) you hunted them all across the known world, that should do nicely in turning them against you. That`s a Klaus level of martyr complex and blame shifting. Ironic that he didn't father him because they are most alike.

Again, yes, very ironic. It's almost sickening just how much Mikael and Esther too are to blame for EVERYTHING their children do especially their defiance of them and how much they are refusing to accept the blame for it. Esther hides behind her magic to reverse everything instead of living with her choices and trying to make the best out of what she's created and Mikael is refusing to recognize just how his torment of Klaus has warped him instead of benefited him and turned his entire family against him. Neither is willing to take responsibility for their actions in any way, but even Klaus himself shows a sense of responsibility and a moral center at times, even if it's really easy to push him into rash actions. Hell, at least Klaus will keep his word, Mikael has shown he won't even do that much this episode.

One of my problems with Esther's master plan 2.0 (put her vampire children into the bodies of witches and let them die a natural death when they're old) is that she is stealing the bodies and lives of the witches whose bodies they inhabit. Isn't that unnatural and against the laws of nature and taking human life and all the other stuff she rails on about when she is explaining why her children are now abominations?

One thing that's been consistent about witches on both shows except maybe Bonnie is that as much as they claim to protect the natural order and especially human life they don't actually give a damn about either and just use their powers to screw with both as much as they want. Hypocrite pretty much defines the witch so no surprise that Esther is no exception. What's worse is Esther is torturing her children in order to get them to "willingly" accept this entire thing. It's not choosing something of their own free will to torment somebody until they give in, it's the exact opposite. Even if she did succeed which we all know she won't, her children would no doubt just use their magic to turn themselves back into immortal vampires the very second they were out from under her thumb.

Edited November 5, 2014 by immortalfrieza

[mac123x]

I was pretty sure Esther was gaslighting Elijah.

 

I actually liked Cami for once.  I think it's her "oh fuck this" attitude, even when she's being hauled around by people with vastly superior strength and no respect for human life.  I guess all her fear was burned out of her last season. 

[driedfruit]

Elijah is the only one of his family that is genuinely noble, honest, and trustworthy

I'm sure Elijah likes to think he's those things. In reality he's not at all honest, trustworthy, or noble. He's even more psychotic than Klaus for following in his shadow and supporting him in terrorizing their siblings and pretty much everyone else.

 

I actually don't think that she's that bad, she's just controlling in this relentlessly entitled way (like her kids are just extensions of herself, to do with what she will). Pretty believably maternal, imo!

This is the most accurate description of Esther. Klaus is exactly the same way, so it's no wonder he killed her. Mikael has his issues, but he's not exactly controlling in the same way.

 

Esther is batshit insane. She acknowledges that she ruined her children and kinda wants to help them (in a twisted way) but instead of dealing with who they are, she wants to shove them behind the biggest reddest door that ever was. Because, sure, body-hopping cancels out the past. It`s not like you`d be the same person who killed and maimed for a thousand years, just in another, more vulnerable body with different supernatural strength.

No, but they can strive for redemption. It's impossible for vamps because they feed on blood, and unless they go to another planet without mammals, they're always most likely just gonna revert back to killing. But I agree with rue, Esther's endgame can't be about her children living human lives, but rather to get a leash on them. It's still justified in her prespective since they don't deserve agency after all they've done. I actually wonder if she's gonna make a supernatural jail for them like Kai on TVD. Not that I'd mind, once they get all the killing out of their system, they could actually move forward...a few inches forward.

Edited November 6, 2014 by driedfruit

[rue721]

Was anyone else a bit creeped out by the fact that Elijah was evidently in love with Tatia about 600 years before he was involved with Katherine

 

I thought that Elijah and Tatia didn't really have a chance to fall in love, because the vampire stuff got in the way first? It seemed like they had their first kiss, but then the shit hit the fan very soon after. I also got the sense that it was Tatia who had the crush on Elijah, though obviously Elijah was interested because she was considered a great catch (definitely by Esther anyway, jeez, she apparently is STILL irritated that Elijah dropped the ball on that one). Maybe they had more of a relationship than that, though -- I couldn't really tell, it seemed pretty vague.

 

Also, Katherine came into Elijah's orbit because she was the doppleganger, but I thought they fell for each other separately from the other doppleganger antics, because they (banally, I guess) just really liked each other. They were even together again just a season or two ago. (I wish that Nina Dobrev could come over to TO and Katherine and Elijah could be on the show as a couple. I love those characters together, it weirdly seems like a fantastic match imo. Also, I love Katherine in general, she's always been my fav).

 

I was pretty sure Esther was gaslighting Elijah.

 

Does it even matter whether the magical oubliette that Esther claims to have placed in Elijah's mind actually exists or not? Regardless, it's true that he has murdered people and done horrible things, so to force Elijah to sit and stew for a while over how grotesque that is seems like it's basically fair game, to me. Tbh what was really creeping me out in Elijah's cell was that little doll.

 

I just hope that if Esther is being honest (which until we see proof other than her word and her induced visions I'll take it with just as much of a grain of salt as Elijah is) this doesn't lead to a "Dark Elijah" storyline at some point.

 

Esther's plan seems to be to make Elijah feel so guilty over all the horrible things he's done that he seeks redemption by being reborn as a witch -- so she's counting on Elijah having a very strong conscious and sense of morality. I don't think that we're going in the direction of a "Dark Elijah" storyline. If anything, I think he's more likely to go to far in the direction of becoming too morally rigid and demanding as a result of this, a la Original!Alaric. Plus, Esther seems like she's REALLY into self-righteous rage in the men in her life, so I would think she'd be likely to fan the flames of that anyway, even if it weren't directly convenient to her. I think that encouraging/guilting Elijah into having higher moral standards will also likely be a wedge between him and his remaining Original!Siblings, since he already has had problems not being disgusted by how brutal they can be.

 

Esther's endgame can't be about her children living human lives, but rather to get a leash on them. It's still justified in her prespective since they don't deserve agency after all they've done.

 

I don't think that Esther even has any concept of her kids having agency or free will, let alone wants them to have anything like that. I really do think that she thinks of them as extensions of herself. Seems to me that Esther sees herself as the center of the family in the same way that she's the center of the Ancestral Witches' power. This lady is not good with boundaries, lol.

 

I think that she's not trying to murder her kids outright because she learned her lesson that that's not practicable (it'll be much easier once they just start complying, I guess she's figuring), and she also doesn't seem to like family disharmony. I will say for her that she doesn't seem to try to pit the kids against each other, they do that on their own. Anyway, it's still sticking in my mind that Esther wanted Hope to be *born* because she wanted Hope's inherited witch power be added to the rest of the ancestral witches' when she was interred. She didn't want to "waste" that power by having Hope die while still in Haley's womb. So I'm thinking that the thing of putting her kids specifically in witches' bodies must be some sort of power grab. Otherwise, I would think she'd prefer to put them in humans' (and obviously that's possible to do, because Klaus was wondering around doing that for ages on TVD).

[Timetoread]

I think Kol loves his family but hates the drama and that's why he sometimes seems like a loose cannon because he doesn't always toe the family line. ... And before Kol found out that Silas was involved with the cure, he was the one helping Rebekah try to find it because he can be a nice older brother when he feels like it. ... Then look at the rest of his family - Finn is a total kiss ass momma's boy, Klaus is an insecure unkillable megalomaniac, Elijah is obsessed with trying to save Klaus, and Rebekah is resigned to Klaus's emotional abuse.

 

I agree with this assessment of Kol.  Being smack dab in the middle seemed to protect him from the insanity that surrounds that family.

 

Yet at the end, even Finn seemed to look at Esther like she was off the rails.

.

I caught that too and I am hoping that sibling love is going to trump mama's boy instinct in the end.  He seemed to bristle watching his brother be tortured like that.  No sane mother would do that to her child - no matter how much she thinks he deserves it. 

 

Klaus has always been nonchalant about his siblings' survival, which is off-putting, but I guess makes logical sense given that they are pretty much indestructible.

 

I don't think Klaus is nonchalant about his siblings, I think that Klaus is generically self-centered and narcissistic and thus very rarely makes time to tend to his siblings in a caring way, but I think he loves them.  Klaus was very upset when Kol was killed on TVD.  Keep in mind that Elijah is his older brother so there is a part of him (a human part) that believes that nothing is stronger than his big brother.  Said big bro is an original vampire who can hold his own with just about anything.  He was trying to save Cami who is basically helpless amongst this crowd.  Add to it that he was busy seeking out the only thing on this planet that actually could kill his big brother.  So I get his lack of urgency.  However I do believe that if Hayley called and said that she found Elijah strung up in unbreakable chains and holding on by a thread, Klaus would have been there.

 

I feel like maybe he really likes fighting Mikael but doesn't actually want to kill Mikael.

 

I don't think he wants to kill Mikael because Mikael is the only father he ever knew.  His real desire is for Mikael to accept him.  I think if Mikael (not that he would) would say words along these lines that Klaus would forgive everything.  Strange as that may sound.

 

I really like the complexity of the portrayal of the family because underneath it all, that is what we are seeing - family dynamics play out through a supernatural medium.  Even Marcel, is part of the family.  Hayley is too now and it is making her more interesting.  I think eventually even Davina will be because she is Marcel's kid.  I think this is part of the reason I enjoy this show so much.

 

One of the reasons I like the character so much is that Elijah is the only one of his family that is genuinely noble, honest, and trustworthy and not a cartoonishly evil unapologetic psychopath like the rest of his family so suddenly having Elijah devolve into the greatest psychopath of them all or turn out to have always been that way just doesn't sit well with me.

 

It sits GREAT with me!  Elijah is a monster like the rest and Davina is the only one to call him out on that fact, so far.  I could entertain a few episodes of Elijah taking off the mask to see how he looks in the mirror, and I think Daniel has the acting chops to make him probably one of the scariest characters ever on this show.  I just hope that if they do this, we see a different, darker monster rather than a redux of Bad Angel or Bad Stefan, though.

[bluebonnet]

The reason I hate Esther's plot so much is because it's so ridiculous.  She's torturing her children in order to save them.  Redemption from torture makes no sense.  It's coerced.  Then the idea of putting her children in other bodies is so absurd because of the inherent violation.  Of course if these other bodies agree to it, that's something entirely different.  But we have yet to see a possession be consensual.  

 

Esther's entire MO revolves around mind fucking her children in the hopes to lure them to an early death.  She has the power and ability to just kill them outright.  Even if she didn't (which is bullshit because we know she does) she spent a thousand years on the other side where witches apparently talked all the time.  One thousand years is plenty of time to come up with a safe and humane workable solution to end her her children's unnatural lives.  

 

I said this before but I'm so glad that the characters themselves are fun and entertaining or else this storyline would kill it for me.  I like watching Esther even when she makes zero sense.  

[rue721]

The reason I hate Esther's plot so much is because it's so ridiculous.  She's torturing her children in order to save them.  Redemption from torture makes no sense.  It's coerced.  Then the idea of putting her children in other bodies is so absurd because of the inherent violation.

 

I don't understand why Esther pressuring/coercing her children to dump their Original vampire bodies would be something she'd avoid or that contradicts anything else in her plan? It seems like she has a problem with the monster Original bodies that her children are in now, that those bodies/vampires are a curse she let loose on the world, so she's trying to get rid of those Original bodies. To do that, last time she just planned to do the obvious/direct thing and kill her kids outright, but that turned into a big mess with all her children freaking out and foiling her plans, etc. So this time she's apparently planning to get "her kids" out of the monstrous Original bodies they're in now (and into witches') and *then* dispose of the Original bodies once they're "empty." She's planning to get rid of the Original bodies regardless of whether her kids agree to body-jump, it seems to me, it's just that she figures that the kids will be more willing to dump their Original bodies if they've got other bodies to jump into (instead of just dying outright right then), so she threw in the possibility of living out a "natural" human lifespan in the body of a witch to sweeten the pot so that it'll be easier to make a deal with each of them and not descend into out-and-out fighting. But ultimately imo the choice she's offering is that the kids can either hitch a ride in some witch (she's being "generous" to give them that choice) or to just die, either way Esther is planning that there are going to be no more Originals bodies (and maybe no more vampires in general?) on this earth. I don't think that anyone's redemption in a "cleansed of sin" sense is even at issue?

 

Where "redemption" maybe does come in, imo, is in Elijah's head in particular, because that's something that he would care about. I think she's trying to show him how low being in this monstrous body has brought him, by reminding him/showing him all the horrible things he did (or could have done, whatever) once he was cursed with it. I think her idea that he'll eventually feel so much shame he'll ask her if he can dump this monstrous Original body and be placed in a different one. It seems very extreme to call that torture, though? The other deals she's offered always have the witch body jump in them, but *how* she pitches the body jump is different for everyone, it's not always about morality. For Hayley the deal was that if she dumped her hybrid body she could get into a body that could give her more children. For Klaus, I'm not sure yet, though Esther said flat out after the dinner that a plan was already in motion for him, so I guess *something* is going on with him (my money's on a honey trap, but I'm not sure who the "honey" is -- right now it looks like Cami, but I wonder about Mikael having a "change of heart" (via magic) and that being the final push for Klaus. But anyway).

 

I'm also not understanding what Esther's even doing that's so bad, though? Ridding the earth of vampires/Originals is maybe bad, but it's pretty understandable, I mean, it's not totally off the wall that she thinks of vampires as monsters. Also, obviously we're not going to have a show with zero more vampires on it, but I think the fun part of the storyline, or the point of it, is to learn more about the characters by seeing what would tempt each of them to leave their pretty much indestructible, immortal bodies behind. I don't think it's about whether they actually leave those bodies (obviously they won't, unless the show does a complete recasting. Which personally, I don't want! I think the cast is killing it right now, tbh, I would like this cast to stay on forever), it's more about what each of their temptations/blind spots mean about them as characters.

 

That said, I'm not the HUGEST fan of this SL because it reminds me of the Cure storyline on TVD, which I kind of hated. But meh I personally think Esther is interesting/fun and this show has much better character development than TVD, so I'm hopeful. I'm also genuinely curious to see what temptations (or threats) get under each character's skin and how they deal with it. My favorite part of the show is the family relationships, so I think it's pretty interesting to find out what Esther thinks will tempt (or threaten) each of her children (and Mikael at some point, I assume?) to the point that they're willing to make a deal with her, and how their actual reactions differ (or not) from her expectations.

Edited November 6, 2014 by rue721

[Carrie Ann]

That said, I'm not the HUGEST fan of this SL because it reminds me of the Cure storyline on TVD, which I kind of hated. But meh I personally think Esther is interesting/fun and this show has much better character development than TVD, so I'm hopeful. I'm also genuinely curious to see what temptations (or threats) get under each character's skin and how they deal with it. My favorite part of the show is the family relationships, so I think it's pretty interesting to find out what Esther thinks will tempt (or threaten) each of her children (and Mikael at some point, I assume?) to the point that they're willing to make a deal with her, and how their actual reactions differ (or not) from her expectations.

 

I agree with your post, but yeah, I think maybe I'm not that thrilled about this storyline because I feel like we've sort of done it twice already on TVD. We've done the Esther tries to fix/eliminate her children story, and we've done the Cure story. I get that they need to explore those themes in their own way on this show too, but I'm ready for it to take a twist that will really make it different from those stories. I am, at least, grateful that we're doing this with Sonja Sohn in the role, because so far, she's been excellent.

[Smug47]

I have a question. The witches who came back (Genevieve and Papa Tunde and such) used the deaths of the Harvest Girls to resurrect, right?They had to die for the Harvest Girls to come back, I get that. When Esther and Finn and Kol resurrected, did they take the bodies of already dead witches? I remember Esther being in the pixie chick before she body jumped, was that chick a Harvest Girl or just some random witch? 

The point of this is, I'm wondering if Esther's plan is to stick her kids into some powerful already dead witches so they can resurrect and be powerful but mortal (I think?). This would get rid of the consent issue I guess. Does that sound plausible?

 

ETA: this could also mean that Esther sticks them in some sort of limbo afterlife like the Other Side before they can be put into the resurrected bodies, which could be an interesting storyline. 

Edited November 6, 2014 by Smug47

[Carrie Ann]

Esther's first body this season was Cassie's, and yeah, she was one of the Harvest Girls. Don't know about Finn and Kol.

[driedfruit]

I really like the complexity of the portrayal of the family because underneath it all, that is what we are seeing - family dynamics play out through a supernatural medium.  Even Marcel, is part of the family.  Hayley is too now and it is making her more interesting.  I think eventually even Davina will be because she is Marcel's kid.  I think this is part of the reason I enjoy this show so much.

I couldn't agree more. And this is what sets the show appart from all the other supernatural stuff on tv which are based on romance and friendships. The always and forever of family is so much more entertaining.

 

The reason I hate Esther's plot so much is because it's so ridiculous.  She's torturing her children in order to save them.  Redemption from torture makes no sense.  It's coerced. 

I didn't mean she's actually trying to redeem them. That's just an incentive she’s dangling for Elijah (and maybe Klaus too) after she sets what’s left of their human conscious on fire. For Rebekah she'll dangle promises of a family.

 

I am, at least, grateful that we're doing this with Sonja Sohn in the role, because so far, she's been excellent.

I like Sonja, but hate her as Esther. Her campy portrayal takes Esther far from the ruthless Machiavellian (which her sons inherited) that intrigued me on TVD and straight to nutsville.

 

Esther's first body this season was Cassie's, and yeah, she was one of the Harvest Girls. Don't know about Finn and Kol.

Well, two of those harvest girls died along with Gen. Maybe when harvest girls die so soon after resurrection their power can be harnessed to bring back two more witches. Or she used the 'improbable event' like Davina, and hijacked the bodies of two living witches.

 

Edited November 7, 2014 by driedfruit

[bluebonnet]

I don't understand why Esther pressuring/coercing her children to dump their Original vampire bodies would be something she'd avoid or that contradicts anything else in her plan? It seems like she has a problem with the monster Original bodies that her children are in now, that those bodies/vampires are a curse she let loose on the world, so she's trying to get rid of those Original bodies. To do that, last time she just planned to do the obvious/direct thing and kill her kids outright, but that turned into a big mess with all her children freaking out and foiling her plans, etc. So this time she's apparently planning to get "her kids" out of the monstrous Original bodies they're in now (and into witches') and *then* dispose of the Original bodies once they're "empty." She's planning to get rid of the Original bodies regardless of whether her kids agree to body-jump, it seems to me, it's just that she figures that the kids will be more willing to dump their Original bodies if they've got other bodies to jump into (instead of just dying outright right then), so she threw in the possibility of living out a "natural" human lifespan in the body of a witch to sweeten the pot so that it'll be easier to make a deal with each of them and not descend into out-and-out fighting. But ultimately imo the choice she's offering is that the kids can either hitch a ride in some witch (she's being "generous" to give them that choice) or to just die, either way Esther is planning that there are going to be no more Originals bodies (and maybe no more vampires in general?) on this earth. I don't think that anyone's redemption in a "cleansed of sin" sense is even at issue?

This is what I have a problem with.  If she has the means to kill her kids, what's the point of torturing them and putting them in different bodies?  They are still who they are.  They still have 1000 years experience that is superior to any other being on earth.  They will still be superior to other beings due to being witches.  They will still be seeking what they seek now as vampires.  Power, love, money, etc.  They will still lack a healthy respect for the sanctity of life when it comes to others.  Furthermore, Esther isn't offering them a choice at all, just as she's never given them a choice.  Right now, she's using torture to make them agree with her.  Torture and choice are not compatible in any way.  There's nothing even remotely generous about this.  She has numerous ways she can humanely kill her children or remove their vampire bodies.  There will still be a lack of consent but at least she's not torturing them into a fraudulent consent.  There are all manner of cures we've seen.  Plus she's a witch and can incapacitate her kids at will in order to stab them with the white oak stake which she can also find with ease.  

 

Everyone's mileage will vary, of course, but this is why I find Esther plot so boring.  She has no depth.  It's always been about her her her with a smidgeon of killing her kids on the side and it's always done in the most violating way possible.  But the catch is the writers can't legitimately consider the actual options Esther has because it would end the show.  

 

Full disclosure, I have questioned myself on whether or not my extreme dislike for Esther has some sexist undertones as I don't feel the same way about Mikael, at least not to that extent.  It very well could be that I simply can't stand that a mother is so evil to her children.  It's sexist, I know, but there it is.  

[rue721]

This is what I have a problem with.  If she has the means to kill her kids, what's the point of torturing them and putting them in different bodies?  They are still who they are.

 

Her problem doesn't seem to be with who her kids are, it's with the literal bodies that they're in, and specifically with the curse of vampirism (and immortality) that she has blighted the world with through her initial spell on them. The first time around, she was going to sacrifice her kids as *collateral damage* in order to get rid of the monster Original/immortal bodies (and their vampire descendents) that she needed to destroy. She would have gone through with that, but her kids (and their friends, lol) were too strong and foiled her, so this time around, she's not going to make the same mistake and get into a head-to-head in a fight with them, she's going to try and strike deals with them instead.

 

Afaik, the basic deal is that if a kid agrees to abandon his Original body, she'll put him in a witch so that he'll get to live out a life in a natural body (as in, one created by nature rather than by her curse) and get all the perks from that (being able to have kids, not needing to suck other people's blood to survive, etc), and Esther will be able to get rid of the (abandoned) Original body. I'm sure that there's some kind of catch, but I don't think she's planning to actually renege on any of those parts of the deal.

 

Seems to me that she's just playing hardball to get those deals made, and given the world they're in, not even really tough hardball at that. All she's done to Hayley is to literally tell her that if Haley lets Esther put her in a witch's body and get rid of the hybrid body she's in, that Hayley will have a chance to have more kids (also, I think Esther has to deal with Hayley separately from other non-Original vampires because Hayley's in Hope's sire line, not any of the other Originals'). With Elijah, she's just reminded him that once he became a vampire, he started betraying himself to appease his body's (bloodthirsty) needs. Regardless of what happened with Tatia specifically, that's the truth anyway. I suspect that she's currently weakening/softening up Klaus by making him feel protected somehow. She's manipulating them, but of course she is, why wouldn't she be?

 

I don't think that repentance or consent or anything as intangible as that is at play.

 

I get that they need to explore those themes in their own way on this show too, but I'm ready for it to take a twist that will really make it different from those stories. I am, at least, grateful that we're doing this with Sonja Sohn in the role, because so far, she's been excellent.

 

Completely agree about Sonja Sohn, she's been perfect. When Cassie was supposed to be possessed by Esther, the scenes were just interminable, and frankly really hard to understand because she was so wooden. SS is a *huge* improvement and makes the role/SL legitimately fun imo. I was so happy to see SS just when she showed up as Lenore -- when Esther possessed her, I was delighted.

 

When Esther and Finn and Kol resurrected, did they take the bodies of already dead witches?

 

Esther came back as Cassie, the casket girl, but Lenore seemed to be just a live witch in the Quarter before Esther possessed her. She was working in that corner store like a regular (witch) person, anyway. Finn seemed to come back as Anthony at the same time, so I think that Anthony is also probably a dead witch? Since, out of the four casket girls who were sacrificed, Esther hitched a ride on Cassie but Cassie is still alive now, and Davina is still alive, too, there are two other empty slots that I guess resurrected dead witches can fill, I would *guess* that Anthony (Finn's host) and Kaleb (Kol's host) are also resurrected dead witches?

 

I don't know how Esther's planning to do the body swap for Mikael, Rebekah, Hayley, Elijah, and Klaus, seeing as all the resurrected dead witch spots are full now. But maybe she can just body jump them instead of actually resurrecting them, if they're not killed before she tries to put them into witches' bodies?

[driedfruit]

Having just watched TVD, Esther should just drive her kids to Mystic Falls along with a couple of MDs. Maybe if they patch up the sword wounds quickly enough they can survive de-vamping like Alaric did. 

[Carrie Ann]

Okay, I watched all of these episodes in quick succession, then read all these threads, and I'm not sure I followed all the details. So one more question, and I'm sorry if this has been covered and I missed it: If all the Original kids were to go along with Esther's plan, that would still kill their entire succession line of vampires, right? Their bodies would die, right? So even if Elijah (for example) could be convinced that he should become a human/witch because he doesn't want to be a monster anymore, would he really believe that all of the vampires in his line should die for that reason?

[RachelKM]

Okay, I watched all of these episodes in quick succession, then read all these threads, and I'm not sure I followed all the details. So one more question, and I'm sorry if this has been covered and I missed it: If all the Original kids were to go along with Esther's plan, that would still kill their entire succession line of vampires, right? Their bodies would die, right? So even if Elijah (for example) could be convinced that he should become a human/witch because he doesn't want to be a monster anymore, would he really believe that all of the vampires in his line should die for that reason?

I'm now picturing Ester getting her way and 3/4 of the characters on TVD just falling down dead. 

[rue721]

So even if Elijah (for example) could be convinced that he should become a human/witch because he doesn't want to be a monster anymore, would he really believe that all of the vampires in his line should die for that reason?

 

Maybe if he really believed that vampires are a curse on the world, like Esther apparently does, then he would? I think Esther's immediate goal for Elijah is to make him yet another vampire vampire-hunter to use as her "enforcer," in the same vein as she did Mikael and Alaric, so I think that convincing him that all vampires/vampirism should be wiped out is probably high on her to-do list of things to convince him of. But I just think that she's going try to make him a vampire vampire-hunter because she always makes herself a vampire vampire-hunter whenever she feels like she's got a lot on her plate.

 

Wouldn't it be funny if Finn was looking at Esther askance while she was letting Elijah "dream" because he was PO'ed that she'd turned their father into a vampire vampire hunter but then skipped right to grooming her second-born to become the next one -- shouldn't that be Finn to be next in line to take up the vampire vampire-hunter mantel, since he's the eldest? LOL. I just remember Finn flipping out at that family dinner about how Elijah probably let him stay in the coffin for 900 years because Elijah was trying to usurp his role as the eldest. That also makes me wonder what Finn even thinks it means to be the eldest (in terms of duties), though. He sure doesn't seem to be looking out for any of his younger siblings or taking responsibility for the family at all?

 

Anyway, I was also just thinking, is Hope in Klaus's sire line? Hope must be a vampire in some weird way, because then Hayley became a vampire from carrying her -- I guess Hope is sort of a vampire because she has Klaus's blood "in" her? So if Klaus died, then would Hope die? And if Hope is Hayley's sire, then wouldn't Hayley die, too? I've been figuring that Hayley is sired to Hope, which is sort of meaningless, since she loves her anyway, but is Hope sired to Klaus? (what a nightmare if she is).

[Smug47]

So much about Hope is confusing as hell. I assumed she'd be mostly werewolf, since Hayley is full and Klaus is half and vampires are dead and can't procreate. But then Hope made Hayley a hybrid and she's got all that special blood that I hope Klaus will never try to use. I would think that yes, Klaus is Hope's sire in many senses of the word and if he dies she should die as well, but she's such an anomaly that I wouldn't be surprised if they set up a whole new list of rules for her. Like, is Hope human at all? Does she have a werewolf side that will come out with a murder? Does she drink blood? Will she age super quickly?

If I were Esther, I would say to hell with New Orleans, find and kill Rebekah and then raise Hope and poison her against The Original family. That would be a fun storyline, if Klaus' daughter came to believe his mother's awful ranting and tried to demolish every piece of family she had. 

[GirlWednesday]

This season keeps the action going. I haven't been bored once. But I am super confused by the flash backed timeline. Can someone help me get this sorted out?

Growing up, Esther charmed klaus to be weak so he wouldn't go rage monster and kill someone and trigger the wolf curse. Still human, Klaus intrigued by wolves turning on the moon, sneaked away At night to watch them turn with brother henrik. Bro henrik died. Esther freaked and borrowed some of Tatia's blood and white oak tree to turn Rebecca, kol, Mikel, Elijah, klaus and Silas into vampires. Klaus killed and turned into a hybrid. Then Esther borrowed more blood from a dead tatia to bind klaus' wolf self? I thought doppelgängers had to be alive for spells to work.

Also - is the only reason white oak stake work on klaus is because of the silver thing in it? I thought I remember a tvd episode where klaus was staked and he burned and jumped bodies. Was that before becoming a hybrid?

[RachelKM]

I think that is the correct time line.  I don't recall that we have been told that the doppelgängers had to be alive to be useful.  The issue with Katherine was that she was a vampire which wholly changed her magical nature. 

 

As for the white oak stake, the silver is from an immortality ring (I think the one Alaric had).  Ester used it to keep the stake intact after each kill.  The first stake we saw used when Finn was killed burned up with Finn.  The immortality ring silver (and it's imbued magic) keeps the stake from doing so.

 

The part I'm confused about is when Mikel and his hatred of Klaus. It seems that he always disliked him, but was unaware that he was not his son until the wolf curse was triggered post-vamping.  So did Mikel hate him solely due to Klaus seeming weak due to Esther's weakening spell?

[bluebonnet]

Her problem doesn't seem to be with who her kids are, it's with the literal bodies that they're in, and specifically with the curse of vampirism (and immortality) that she has blighted the world with through her initial spell on them. The first time around, she was going to sacrifice her kids as *collateral damage* in order to get rid of the monster Original/immortal bodies (and their vampire descendents) that she needed to destroy. She would have gone through with that, but her kids (and their friends, lol) were too strong and foiled her, so this time around, she's not going to make the same mistake and get into a head-to-head in a fight with them, she's going to try and strike deals with them instead.

 

Their bodies aren't empty vessels.  Changing bodies does not change who they fundamentally are.  They'll no longer need blood to survive but they are still 1000 year old creatures who are dicks.  Just look at Finn and Kol.  They aren't better just because they no longer occupy vampire bodies.  It's just a dumb plan in general.  I think it's made even worse since removing the vampirism or vampire bodies has been shown to be ridiculously easy.  Klaus body jumped all over the place when we first met him, and we've had body jumpers play large parts of the plot in TO and TVD.  Witches can bring people back from the dead and lock werewolves in wolf bodies and create daylight/moonlight rings and control the will of others but somehow a super powerful witch can't deal with her monstrous children.  This is the same witch who had 1000 years to ask Quetsiya all about the immortality cure and apparently didn't.  But most hilariously, original vampires can apparently be stripped of their vampirism and effectively cured quite easily over on TVD all with a little spell from some low budget magicians.  

 

Esther doesn't need to go head to head with her children.  She doesn't need to torture them.  She's significantly more powerful than they will ever be because they can't practice magic.  

 

Now, if the goal had been to go back to the beginning, a complete do over so that she could allow them to learn from their mistakes and teach them how to control the blood lust and also work to make vampirism more publicly acceptable...then yeah, I'd like the plot a bit more because at least she'd be doing something more than twirling the mustache.  

[rue721]

They aren't better just because they no longer occupy vampire bodies.

 

This is where I think we have a fundamental difference of opinion w/r/t Esther's goal. I think she couldn't care less about making her kids themselves "better," she just cares about getting rid of vampires, since vampirism/immortality is a curse she inflicted on the world and she feels a duty to erase. So she's going to destroy the Originals' bodies, which will also kill all vampires (unless Davina succeeds with her delinking spell). If Esther's plan succeeds, the Originals' bodies *will* be empty vessels at that point, since her kids will be in witches' bodies by then. I think the only reason she's trying to convince her kids to body jump instead of just destroying those bodies/vampirism while her kids are still inhabiting those bodies is because destroying empty bodies would be easier on her -- last time she didn't give them that choice and they successfully stood against her, so she's learned from that mistake. I think that's a practical/strategic decision, not a moral stance.

 

I'm not sure where you're getting the sense that she has a desire to do anything with her kids' souls or has some desire for them to be better as people? I think the state of their souls is irrelevant to her, and she's basically indifferent to whether/how they're (im)moral. Her problem with vampirism itself seems to be that it's revolting her because it's inherently unnatural (since she created it, not nature).

 

Now, if the goal had been to go back to the beginning, a complete do over so that she could allow them to learn from their mistakes and teach them how to control the blood lust and also work to make vampirism more publicly acceptable

 

I don't understand this. Afaik, it's not *their* mistakes she's worried about, it's *her* mistake of creating vampires that she wants to fix.

 

The part I'm confused about is when Mikel and his hatred of Klaus. It seems that he always disliked him, but was unaware that he was not his son until the wolf curse was triggered post-vamping.  So did Mikel hate him solely due to Klaus seeming weak due to Esther's weakening spell?

 

I don't think it was the weakening spell. Apparently, Mikael was already scaring him before the spell, and compared to his siblings, Klaus never seemed physically weak even afterward. The one time he and Elijah were play-fighting in that flashback, he won (and Mikael got angry about *that,* too, which imo he wouldn't have if the problem had been that he despised weakness in general rather than that he despised Klaus specifically). I think it's delusional of Klaus to believe that if he'd been able to successfully stand up to Mikael, that Mikael would have respected or loved him or even stopped coming after him. After Klaus killed him, Mikael still managed to come back from the dead and immediately started up again with his same old tricks. If successfully *killing* Mikael didn't change Mikael's mind about how much he despised Klaus, I don't think that Klaus wearing or not wearing the necklace was ever the deciding factor in Mikael's feelings about or behavior toward him. Tbh I thought it was sad that, when he realized what the necklace was, Klaus immediately started trying to use the necklace to explain why Mikael hated him. It's not as though if Klaus had actually been weak, that would have justified or explained Mikael's behavior. Though I do think that Klaus has this idea that any sign of weakness has to be ruthlessly blotted out. Which is sad, too, imo, and *horrible* for everyone around him! Like god forbid Rebekah ever be "weak" enough to fall in love, of course he had to "protect" her by ruining all chance of that.

 

Anyway, I think that either Mikael just likes hurting/scaring Klaus for the thrill, or Mikael's been under some sort of spell to make him a single-minded, Klaus-directed smart bomb. I actually think that a spell is pretty likely, considering that when he's not around Klaus or talking about Klaus, Mikael is a pretty regular, sometimes even paternal, person -- albeit still a total hardass and overly theatrical (but I guess that's just him). And considering that he apparently was "overjoyed" when Klaus was born because he thought he "had the eyes of a warrior" (*snort*).

 

Like, is Hope human at all? Does she have a werewolf side that will come out with a murder? Does she drink blood? Will she age super quickly?

 

Dude I have no idea. Hope is so confusing. I would have thought she'd be a normal baby with an untriggered werewolf curse, but she's apparently werewolf/vampire/witch/baby all at once, even though a bunch of those things seem incompatible? I also have to wonder if other hybrids can procreate. Sophie said that Klaus could because he was "made a vampire, but born a werewolf" (that's from memory, though, I'm not sure about the exact line). Isn't that true of all hybrids? Also, humans can procreate as well as werewolves can, so shouldn't all vampires ("made a vampire, but born a [human]" lol) be able to procreate by that logic? And I guess this means that Klaus (and maybe Hayley?) could likely have more children, since nothing has changed for him, physically, and she's just a hybrid like he is now? (I don't want them to, that would be terrible. Can you imagine if the show went the route of having them both trying to make tons of babies! Horrible). Whatever, mystical pregnancy, fine fine fine, I don't need everything spelled out because obviously it won't make sense. I just would like to know what the sire lines are and a basic rundown of Hope's current powers for basic plot comprehensibility at the present moment, though.

 

I thought I remember a tvd episode where klaus was staked and he burned and jumped bodies. Was that before becoming a hybrid?

 

I'm not sure about the timeline (it looks right to me? Though it is confusing. Also, Esther is a bullshitter, so I doubt that she's been playing it completely straight w/r/t the timeline anyway. I'm also unsure about the binding spell and Esther's death. Why did Elijah refer to the binding spell as "crippling" Klaus? I actually think it would have been a good thing, since he didn't have control over turning at that point -- it looked like after he killed and triggered the curse, he just had to go through turning in the same painful way as a regular werewolf and then slaughtered people without even knowing what he was doing while wolfed out? I'm not sure how not having him turn on the full moon would have been "crippling"? Also, Klaus didn't look like he would have been up to ripping his mother's beating heart from her chest very soon after Elijah's flashback to trying to compel Tatia and killing her. That's kind of my #1 question right now:  what actually happened at Esther's death? I'm pretty sure that Klaus did it because everyone (including him) say he did, but it just seems fishy that it was as straightforward as it seems considering everything else we know?). Anyway! I do remember the staking you're talking about.

 

What happened, iIrc, was that after Klaus had already broken the binding spell and become a hybrid, the TVD gang came up with a way to desiccate a vampire by slowing/stopping his heart. So they did that to Klaus, and put body was in a coffin. Then they staked the body, and it kind of half burned up, but meanwhile, Klaus had jumped into Tyler's body and wasn't actually dead (I guess Tyler agreed to that because he was in Klaus's sire line? I'm not sure). So then Klaus took the half burnt up body to be fixed back up and said he'd jump out of Tyler's body when his own/old body was ready again. I don't really remember who he was asking to fix up the body and transfer him from Tyler to it -- I guess Bonnie? Though that doesn't seem like it makes sense. Well, anyway.

 

Then Esther borrowed more blood from a dead tatia to bind klaus' wolf self? I thought doppelgängers had to be alive for spells to work.

 

I think the doppleganger can be dead (because back on TVD, Klaus planned to bleed out Elena and kill her, but use the bags of her blood to keep making hybrids), but the doppleganger blood has to be "human" to work, as in, it can't be vampire blood. So I think that blood from Human!Tatia's dead body would have been fine, it's still human/doppleganger blood.

 

ETA:

 

Re the staking when Klaus's body got burned (on TVD) -- it was bothering me that I couldn't remember, so I ff'ed through the episode on Netflix (second-to-last of S3). Apparently, Alaric was a vampire vampire hunter at that point (not long after Esther was killed the first time), so the gang decided to use the same desiccation spell that Abbie (Bonnie's mom) had used on Mikael, on Alaric. That failed (Alaric just beat them all off), but then Klaus took Elena to his house to bleed her out and kill Alaric that way (since Alaric's life was linked to Elena's at that point) and take as much of her blood to make more hybrids as he could. So the gang attacked Klaus and desiccated him instead, and rescued Elena. Elijah asked for Klaus's body back (to keep the family together), which everyone was apparently alright with, but then when Rebekah and Stefan tried to sneak the body out of this public storage place where they'd stashed it, they got attacked by Alaric. During that fight, Alaric opened up Klaus's coffin and staked him, but then closed the coffin lid while the body was still burning (inadvertently keeping it up from burning completely to ash, I guess). Rebekah was sure that Klaus was dead, so she told Elijah that, and went to (indirectly) kill Elena in order to kill Alaric. Meanwhile, Klaus had made a deal with Bonnie and Tyler (offscreen) to jump into Tyler's body -- I guess because if Klaus really died, then Tyler and Abbie would have died. So she *is* the one that Klaus then asked to repair his body and put him back into it. Phew! Probably way more information than you needed to know, lol. I just was irritated because I only could half remember it.

Edited November 10, 2014 by rue721

[bluebonnet]

This is where I think we have a fundamental difference of opinion w/r/t Esther's goal. 

I don't think we actually have a difference of opinion.  We are simply arguing two separate points.  My only point has been that I dislike the Esther plot and I dislike it because I find this brand of villainy to be boring. The writers often paint themselves into a corner with their witch plots.  The witches are significantly more powerful than the other supernaturals.  Save for secret weapons (like Davina) or well orchestrated attacks (like Marcel surprising Monique with the magical throwing weapon), most witches should never be in a position of having to manipulate and torture.  Unless they are ridiculous mustache twirling evil Marvel level villains.  Plus, by drawing it out this way she sets herself up to fail because her kids now have more time to orchestrate a surprise counter attack, which is just so contrived.  

 

That's my only point.  I think her plan is dumb because it's a brand of contrived villainy that I don't enjoy.  

[rue721]

I don't think we actually have a difference of opinion.  We are simply arguing two separate points.

 

Fair enough. I just don't get why she seems so OTT evil to you, though? Not saying you're wrong -- I literally don't see it and am confused about what you (and others, probably) are seeing?

 

I'm not even really seeing her as a villain (maybe an "intimate antagonist" though) because I figure she's their mother, they need a strategy for how to reach somewhat of a detente (long-term as possible) with her, not how to beat her. I think it was in this episode (though maybe the one before?) that Klaus said that there's no point in killing her because they'll still have to deal with her if she's dead. Even if they were to actually somehow erase her completely, she's still going to be living on in them (like Mikael was when he was dead, too) and they'll have to deal with her that way. I don't think "beating her" or "winning" is actually on the table here, at least for them, more like finding some reasonably sustainable equilibrium. Or at least that's how I've been viewing it anyway -- I haven't been thinking that anyone is gearing up for a showdown w/r/t Esther, they're (including Esther) just trying to find a way for their family to work even though they...uh have some ongoing disputes to work out and some strong personalities, lol.

 

Maybe the Mikaelsons aren't as codependent as that though. Heh.

Edited November 12, 2014 by rue721

[bluebonnet]

Fair enough. I just don't get why she seems so OTT evil to you, though? Not saying you're wrong -- I literally don't see it and am confused about what you (and others, probably) are seeing?

 

I'm not even really seeing her as a villain (maybe an "intimate antagonist" though) because I figure she's their mother, 

I'm not sure how I would feel if her actions were solely directed towards her kids.  It likely would be better.  It's like with Mikael.  He's a dick in general and he murders like the best of him, but he remains focused almost exclusively on Klaus.  Not to say his treatment of Klaus is good or anything, but it's a restrained sort of villainy.   With Esther, everyone is fair game, no matter gender, age, or relationship to the supernatural.  She'll manipulate, torture, main, murder anyone no matter their gender, age or relationship to the supernatural.  She just doesn't care.  She'll set up a group of children to get involved in her game just so she can cackle when she captures Elijah, which she could have done quite easily with a snap of her fingers.  

 

This is why I have such a problem with Esther.  There's no limit with what she'll do and who she'll hurt to get there.  She calls her children monsters but she's the ultimate monster without even the benefit of having an enjoyable personality that makes her entertaining to watch.  The tone of the show also influences how a villain is perceived by me.  This sort of OTT evil villain wouldn't be so bad with a lighter tone.  For example, these villains tend to work well in comic shows and movies.  

[rue721]

I'm not sure how I would feel if her actions were solely directed towards her kids.  It likely would be better.  It's like with Mikael.  He's a dick in general and he murders like the best of him, but he remains focused almost exclusively on Klaus.  Not to say his treatment of Klaus is good or anything, but it's a restrained sort of villainy.   With Esther, everyone is fair game, no matter gender, age, or relationship to the supernatural.

 

Really interesting. Thanks for explaining your take, I was getting nervous about how so many people were finding Esther evil and insane, when to me she just seems like a pretty ordinary controlling mother, albeit with superpowers and living in basically a horror/fairy tale. But if it's an issue of the breadth of the damage she causes, especially in contrast to Mikael, I get that.

 

I think that Esther is amoral, and Mikael is immoral. Personally (and obvs YMMV), Mikael bothers me much more because it's like he feeds off of pain. I feel that his restraint and asceticism is mostly so that he can feed off the constant minor pain he's causing himself by denying himself. That he's targeting one person to scapegoat and dehumanize and prey upon for eternity as some kind of release valve for himself is...not just parasitic, it's horrifying imo. He does seem like a demon to me. In contrast, I feel like for Esther, the pain she causes is just a means to an end and she doesn't really give a shit one way or the other, collateral damage is all meaningless to her, it's like she's just sort of a force of nature that you hopefully won't get caught in the way of, though plenty of people do.*

 

On a more meta level, I wonder if Esther is being set up to fill a similar role on this show as Klaus played on TVD, which would likely mean that she's currently in the I'M A SCARY MONSTER!!!1! phase that Klaus was also in the last stages of his introduction onto that show. They even sort of got introduced the same way otherwise, through hints and messengers given over a long period and then a big build up to the face-to-face meeting with the main cast, and even in terms of all the body-jumping early on.** Though that's just my take, and obviously it could be completely off-base.

 

I'd be happy if they swapped Esther for Klaus in terms of being the intimate antagonist on the show anyway, because I don't think it works to have a lead trying to also act in that role long-term. In order to keep a lead functioning both as a lead and as the primary intimate antagonist within the cast, eventually his characterization either becomes really light-switch-y or the character can't grow at all, imo (some examples might be, Damon on TVD, and Lex Luthor on Smallville). I think that Klaus was swapped in on TVD to take that burden off Damon, and I'd be fine with Esther being swapped in on TO to take that burden off Klaus.

 

*Just logistically, I don't think that she's got the kind of power that it would take to just do whatever she wants despite any of her children's attempts to stop her -- everything she's done so far is actually really low key, pretty much just minor illusions and assault, and bringing people back with her from the Other Side as it collapsed anyway. She doesn't even seem as powerful to me as Davina does, possibly even Kol or Anthony imo. She seems to me like she's fronting by talking a big game and nipping any insubordination in the bud. I think all she's got, really, are smoke and mirrors. How could she not pick up on some pretty major magic going on under her nose, like that Mikael had been brought from the Other Side or that Hope is alive? Or damn, she couldn't even pick up when Kol was lying to her face, which I wouldn't even think would take magic (in contrast, Davina got the truth out of him *inadvertently* just by touching him). Plus, even when Esther went head to head with her kids in her own body and channeling all the Bennett witches, she was killed in like a day, and I definitely don't think she's stronger now than she was then, so her odds of being able to accomplish anywhere near as much now as she did then are low. But regardless, that's just logistical fuss.

 

**I originally added this thought to my previous post but now that I'm writing another post altogether, so...well anyway, just in case you saw it up there before, YES it is the same thing.

Edited November 12, 2014 by rue721

[driedfruit]

She doesn't even seem as powerful to me as Davina does, possibly even Kol or Anthony imo. 

Is Davina very powerful? She's not channeling all the power of the harvest, so she's a normal witch now. I'd be very annoyed if they write her as a special snowflake who outmatches a canon 1000year old super powerful witch like Esther. Though I suppose Esther's current body might have limitations placed upon it, the way Kol's seems to.  

Edited November 12, 2014 by driedfruit

[rue721]

Is Davina very powerful? She's not channeling all the power of the harvest, so she's a normal witch now. I'd be very annoyed if they write her as a special snowflake who outmatches a canon 1000year old super powerful witch like Esther. Though I suppose Esther's current body might have limitations placed upon it, the way Kol's seems to.

 

That's my point, Davina isn't outlandishly powerful, she's a normal witch, although a fairly "talented" one afaik. Davina's still doing much bigger stuff than Esther is doing, though. Davina wasn't in the Other Side herself when she tore Mikael out of it, she linked him to that bracelet and kept him completely under her control for something like 5 months nonstop while he was at full power, she's working on a delinking spell to essentially end sire lines, etc. Esther usually just hides out on her own in the cemetery doing location spells and whatever. Anthony and sometimes Kol are the ones getting their hands dirty for her, she doesn't do a lot of her work herself. I'll try not to go into things she does in the next episode in this thread, but up until this episode, she basically sticks with the visual illusions (like the zillion birds flying out behind her in the corner store), minor physical control (like throwing dust at Elijah and Klaus to keep them out of arm's reach, or kind of low-level violence like giving people nosebleeds or snapping necks), and talking a HUGE game. IIrc, we haven't seen her do anything but relatively petty magic, plus she's trying to create an army to protect her (through alliances and more big talk, not magic, and it was of *children* which is a desperate tactic if I've ever seen one) and slowly and blindly collect some literal, physical weapons. Honestly, right now it's looking to me like she's mostly just fronting.