The Vampire Diaries Season 7 Episode 1 Recap: There Goes the Neighborhood

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?

Cara Delevingne and St. Vincent: MARRIED?!

It’s been a big day for wild rumors about celebrity couples.

First we heard that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kelly Rohrbach are engaged.

Then we found out that Drake and Serena Williams are engaged.

But while both of those rumors are almost certainly BS, the reports circulating around the on, off, on-again, off-again-with-a-restraining-order couple of Cara Delevingne and St. Vincent might actually be legit.

In case you’re not familiar – no, Cara is not hooking up with some 15th-century medieval martyr. St. Vincent is the stage name of singer/songwriter Annie Clark. 

She and Cara have been having hip, trendy sex since for at least six months, and now the word around the runway is that the fashionable twosome may have secretly gotten married.

That’s Cara and Annie at Chanel’s spring fashion show in Paris yesterday (Yes, the fashion world is gearing up for spring while you’re still trying to get the mothball smell out of your flannels.), and witnesses say they were both rocking very large diamonds on their left ring fingers.

So are they engaged? Married? Just messing us with us?! 

Heck, it’s possible they just felt like rocking matching bling for no reason at all. But that’s boring. We prefer to think that they’re married and…in talks to adopt one of Brangelina’s kids. Sure, why not?

Drake and Serena Williams: ENGAGED?!

She may not have completed her calendar Grand Slam, but Serena Williams might have accomplished an even rarer feat – getting an A-list rapper to settle down in his prime!

Yes, if you believe the latest report from OK! magazine (which is generally a bad idea) Drake and Serena Williams are engaged.

The two have been friends with big-bootied benefits for years, but rumblings that they were becoming something more serious began in the last few months.

Serena was playing the best tennis of her career; Drizzy was there for every match; and photos of Drake and Serena making out in public seemed to be their way of saying that they’re officially a mixed doubles team, and they don’t care who knows it.

It’s even been reported that Serena issued Drake an ultimatum, informing the ladies man rapper that this would not be another “wham, bam, congrats on the Grand Slam” situation, and if he wanted to hit, he better be down to commit.

Never one to back away from a challenge, Drake (again, according to OK!) went all-in and informed Serena that the score is love-love and the ball is in her court. 

Sorry, we’re trying to say he proposed.

“She said yes but they want to keep it on the down-low for now,” says one source.

Yes, because if we know anything about Drake, it’s that he likes to keep his romantic feelings private.

We’re kidding. The man starts writing a mix tape verse on a napkin when he makes eye contact with a cute waitress.

Anyway, the chances of this “Drake and Serena getting married” rumor being true are about the same as the odds that Roberta Vinci would beat Williams in tournament play. But, hey – look how that turned out.

View Slideshow: 13 Famous Couples We Never Thought Would Last This Long

Malika Haqq: Arrested For DUI!

Malika Haqq, Khloe Kardashian’s bestie and sometime co-star on Keeping Up with the Kardashians and DASH Dolls, got popped for DUI this morning.

Haqq was arrested after she crashed her car on an L.A. freeway.

Law enforcement sources confirm to TMZ that they apprehended Malika on the 101 at around 3 a.m. It’s not clear if anyone was with her.

Malika reportedly showed “objective symptoms of intoxication.”

Deputies gave her a field sobriety test and she failed; Malika was presumed to be under the influence of alcohol and arrested her for DUI.  

Malika was reportedly at a birthday party earlier in the evening.

Fans may recall that last summer on Kourtney and Khloe Take the Hamptons, Haqq drunkenly tried to make out with and maul BFF Khloe.

Like, over-the-top so. We’re not talking your standard girls kissing on the lips for a half-second. Malika straight up wanted some. Awkward.

Also, like others in the Kardashian universe, she has become quasi-famous in her own right thanks to the new E! reality show DASH Dolls.

Yes, there’s a now a whole show about Kardashian STAFF.

If you watch DASH Dolls online, you can even see Malika nude, feuding with co-stars and getting in over her head with ridiculous antics.

Perhaps the DUI bust wasn’t all that astonishing …