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The big theme this week was that love will fuck you up. Everybody loves somebody else, it’s like a Matchbox 20 song is happening on the show.
We see Stefan staggering, starving, toward a bar. He goes inside and tries to eat the bartender, but we immediately realize he hasn’t turned back into the Ripper because he stops himself and lets her go. He goes back outside, but he doesn’t have his daylight ring so he starts to go crispy.
Elena wakes up from the dream, miserable, and tells Damon that they have to find Stefan because she knows it was real and he’s in trouble. Damon doesn’t love the idea of Elena and Stefan having some kind of psychic link, and loves it even less when Katherine appears in the doorway claiming she had the same dream and she knows where they have to go.
Stefan wakes up in a cabin, with a woman he’s never seen before.
Apparently when Bonnie lowered the veil (DAMN IT, BONNIE) Qetsiyah decided to make herself flesh again and became a real person. She found Stefan, convinced some poor guy to drag the quarry and get him out, and then started living in the dead guy’s cabin after Stefan made a meal of him.
She has an interesting story about Silas, and how he wasn’t always a blood-thirsty maniac. He was a simple man once, a man in love, a Traveler.
Stefan wants to know why, if she and Silas were so in love, they don’t just run away together and leave everyone the hell alone. Qetsiyah tells him she loved Silas, but he loved someone else. She didn’t realize it, and Silas manipulated her into creating an immortality spell so they could be together forever. They were supposed to drink it at their wedding, but on that night everything started dying. Qetsiyah realized Silas had already taken the immortality for himself. She was NOT a happy woman.
She hunted him down and found him with her handmaiden, Imara, a woman who looked exactly like Elena and Katherine. Qetsiyah explains to Stefan that when they took the immortality elixir, nature struck a balance by creating their doppelganger shadow-selves. Stefan is another version of Silas, Elena is another version of Imara.
Qetsiyah was definitely feeling betrayed, and punished them by creating the cure, forcing Imara to take it, and ripping out her heart. (Yikes.) She saved enough for Silas, but he refused to take it because just then he wanted to murder her. She locked him in the tomb, hoping he would eventually take the cure and die, at which time he would join her in the supernatural limbo instead of finding peace on the other side with Imara.
Unfortunately, Silas was more stubborn than she anticipated. He spent a couple thousand years drinking bits of blood, growing more and more powerful and dangerous. (At this point I think Qetsiyah is the real danger.) His mind control abilities are a problem for her, and she tells Stefan he needs to help her take Silas out.
Damon, Elena, and Katherine are on a road trip to find the bar and rescue Stefan. Katherine talks about how interesting it is that both she and Elena had the same dream about Stefan, and how they must both care for him more than Elena wants to admit. Damon looks extra grouchy.
They find the bar, and Damon persuades the bartender with the bite marks to tell them about Stefan. She pours him a shot which turns out to be heavy on vervane and Nadia comes around the corner with a gun.
Katherine chooses that moment to show up inside, revived after her nap, and immediately tries to say that Elena is Katherine and she isn’t, but everyone knows Katherine Pierce is a compulsive liar and Nadia isn’t buying it. Elena attacks Nadia and screams at Katherine to run for it. Katherine and Nadia both get away. Elena tells Damon to go save Stefan and she’ll save Katherine. They part ways.
In the woods, Elena finds Katherine and says they need to get going. Katherine is feeling chatty and wants to know why Elena didn’t kill her after forcing the cure down her throat. Elena tells that while they both care for Stefan, they are nothing alike and she values her humanity. She wants Katherine to find some, too, and Katherine is touched by her concern. Nadia snaps Elena’s neck and kidnaps Katherine.
Damon finds Stefan in the cabin and tries to free him, but he’s all tied up with vines and shit and they are REALLY strong. Qetsiyah comes back and tells him not to bother, Stefan won’t be going anywhere until her spell is finished.
She asks about Katherine and Damon realizes that she planted the dreams to get them all where she wanted them. Stefan pipes up, surprised that Katherine would take the cure. Damon tells him they have a lot to catch up on.
Stefan resigns himself to being the main component in Qetsiyah’s spell and tells her to get it over with. She puts her fingers in some dark gunk and holds Stefan’s head and chants in another language.
Nadia delivers Katherine to Silas on the roadside, but before he can use mind control to force Nadia to shoot herself, Qetsiyah’s spell works and Silas falls to the ground writhing in pain. Nadia and Katherine escape.
After Stefan is unconscious, Qetsiyah also tells Damon all about the doppelganger shadow-selves, and how they’re destined to find each other and fall in love over and over, throughout the centuries. She tells him that the two of them are merely the conflict in the story, there to keep things interesting. Damon looks especially murderous. He worries about Stefan not waking up and Qetsiyah says he will, eventually, she just burned through his consciousness. Because THAT doesn’t sound at all worrisome.
Damon grabs her by the throat after she suggests he leave Stefan and pretend he never found him, because that will be his only chance at happiness with Elena. Qetsiyah uses magic to throw him across the room.
Elena runs into the cabin and drops to her knees in front of Stefan, holding his head and trying to wake him. Damon watches, distressed.
By the way, Nadia stuck Gregor inside of Matt before she killed him. Gregor was originally pissed, but seemed to agree to the validity of her plan and they made out for a bit while he was inside of Matt. She said something about making the change permanent (lucky for her, because Matt is way sexier than her boyfriend in his own body). Hours later Matt woke up without a clue what he’d been up to. Ominous, isn’t it?
Silas calls Nadia pretending to be not at all phased by the loss of his mind control abilities. Katherine swipes the phone, having had enough of this bullshit, and demands to know what he wants with her. He tells her the cure still exists, it’s running through her veins. She looks very worried about her well-being.
Back at the Salvatore place, Stefan sleeps on the couch while Elena replaces his daylight ring. Damon is quieter than usual, and Elena calls him on it. He tells her they’re doomed, according to Qetsiyah and the universe, because doppelgangers fall for doppelgangers and that’s all there is to it. Elena tries to reassure him and he tells her he doesn’t need it. He’s not going to let some prehistoric witch, and CERTAINLY not the universe, tell him who to love. He tells Elena she’s his life, and she looks moved, and they go to kiss.
Stefan wakes up (something I find intriguing: earlier, when Silas and Qetsiyah almost kissed, Silas turned away to look at Imara) and Elena stops and turns to look at him, her whole face lighting up.
She tells Stefan they missed him, and he looks perplexed while telling them he has no idea who either of them is.
Amnesia, really? I mean, I get Qetsiyah burning through his consciousness wiped it out, and it makes sense, but amnesia is just annoying. I think it’s awesome they brought Qetsiyah into the mix to stir up trouble, though, and can’t wait for next week!
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