Elena Gilbert, who?!?
Okay, that may be an exaggeration. It may still take us awhile to fully adjust to life in Mystic Falls without Nina Dobrev’s beloved character.
But The Vampire Diaries Season 7 Episode 1 gave us plenty to focus on while Damon waits many decades to be reunited with his sleeping girlfriend.
The Heretics have very much arrived… and they mean sinister business.
Not Lily, though. Damon and Stefan’s mother spent most of the premiere trying to make peace, trying to teach her proteges how to simply fit in to this new world.
But that’s never an easy task for a vampire, especially not after Stefan, Matt and Caroline try to do away with the Heretics for good by blowing up their house.
This plan backfires, however, after the Heretics survive… and get really angry in response.
They kill numerous residents at a town square gathering (where Matt receives his police badge, hooray!), forcing Stefan to come up with a new plan in order to keep everyone safe.
He actually makes up a story about imminent (non-vampire-related) danger and goes about evacuating Mystic Falls. Stefan strikes a deal with Lily that basically puts the Heretics in charge (heck, they move in to the Salvatore mansion!), as long as they promise not to go after Stefan and his friends.
But then Damon arrives home from a drunk trip to Europe.
He went there to drink away his sadness over Elena, while Alaric joined him to do the same regarding Jo’s death. Oh, and Bonnie served as their chaperone.
After viewers learned that Alaric has stolen some kind of mystical item (one desired by Lily) and, behind Damon’s back, is somehow trying to bring Jo back to life… Damon and Bonnie returned to their sparse hometown.
Not a fan of Stefan and Lily’s peace accord, they teamed up to kill Malcolm, a Heretic especially close to Lily.
We can only imagine the ramifications this will have on The Vampire Diaries Season 7 Episode 2.
Elsewhere:
- Enzo chose a side… and he made the wrong choice. Toward the end of the hour, he knocked out Caroline with a syringe.
- We opened the episode with a flash forward to three years from now in Brooklyn. And we saw a panicked Stefan wake up a sleeping Damon from his coffin.
- For what reason? Well, we closed the episode with the brothers on the run from a woman equipped with some impressive weapons.
- We also see that Stefan now has a tattoo, the same tattoo a mute Heretic named Beau has, and that it’s coming alive in this woman’s presence. WTF?!?!?
Is the woman after them Lily? Why are the Salvatores in Brooklyn? What the heck is going on here?!?
Go watch The Vampire Diaries online to see if you can make sense of these flash forwards and then sound off: What do you think of the Heretics? Of what Alaric is trying to do?
Of The Vampire Diaries without Elena? Will you continue to tune in?