So… that was quite the disappointment, wasn’t it?
The CW hyped The Vampire Diaries Season 7 Episode 14 as a major crossover event, with Stefan finding his way to New Orleans in order to avoid Rayna Cruz.
And this aspect of the hour was not a let down.
It made sense for Stefan to take shelter in Klaus’ favorite bar because its magical powers made it impossible for a locator spell to track him down there.
And it was fun to see these old friends (enemies? Let’s just call them frenemies…) banter back and forth.
It was also jarring: remember when Klaus first arrived on the scene in Mystic Falls? And he was billed as the most fearsome for our heroes would ever encounter?
Who ever could have guessed he’d end up anchor The Originals as a protagonist?
Talk about a character who has come a long way.
After learning that Stefan was on the run from The Huntress, Klaus initially went off on his drinking buddy, questioning why he dared to bring such a dangerous problem to New Orleans.
But after he tossed Stefan out on the street, he ended up on the phone with Caroline and realized that she really did care about Stefan.
So if Klaus really did care about Caroline, as we all know he does, he’ll go lend the marked vampire a hand.
That’s how we concluded this episode of The Vampire Diaries Season 7, with Klaus telling Stefan they were going to see a witch who could help with his Rayna Cruz problem.
It was the rest of the episode that pretty much sucked.
Caroline accompanied Alaric to Dallas with his twins, clearly taken by the kids she birthed and clearly interested in staying with them.
We know this is what happens due to the flash forwards, of course, which removes a great deal of the drama ahead.
Yes, it was cool to see awhile back that Caroline is engaged to Alaric and that they are raising daughters together.
But that shock has now worn off and we’re left with a storyline whose ending we already know.
The worst storyline this week, however, centered on Enzo.
It turns out that he’s been working with some mysterious group called The Armory because the woman in charge promised him information about his family in exchange for his help capturing Rayna Cruz.
That’s it. That’s all Enzo needed to hear in order to turn his back on his friends.
By sheer coincidence, the woman then told Enzo that his father founded The Armory and that she’s actually related to him.
It was all felt very forced and very random, as if the writers knew they needed to find an arc for Enzo and just invented this out of thin air.
Finally, we’ll supposedly see the last of Damon on The Vampire Diaries Season 7 Episode 15 because Bonnie nearly died saving his life and he’s sick of putting the lives of those close to him in jeopardy.
But we clearly know Damon isn’t going anywhere.
We’ll tune in next week just to see what Damon is talking about when it comes to disappearing forever, but if The Armory is really about to become a central focus of The Vampire Diaries, we may be tuning out after that.