SGRoA: Vampire Diaries, S2 E11: By the Light of the Moon

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!!! It is currently - 22 days till Catemas, when we all celebrate the reason for the season: ME. Yes, you could call me conceited or self-centered, call me an adult baby with a birthday complex - call me whatever you’d like, but in 22 days, you can call me 47. Make sure to peep my socials for a Trekmas countdown for all 24 days - I’m writingwinters on everything, but I don’t use Facebook or Twitter anymore. Let’s get started!

Tyler is watching Mason’s video of his transformation. He tries calling Mason and leaves a message on a home answering machine? He states that Mason’s voicemailbox is full, so he’s trying this number, and mentions the video. A woman looks on, seemingly unsurprised by the mention of the video or curious about why it would cause Tyler to “freak out”, as he says on tape.

Bonnie and Elena bring us up to speed on everything that’s happened with the moonstone and how destroying it will make Klaus angry. As you know, Snowflakes, it’s easiest to put exposition right in your dialogue!

Bonn and Jeremy test Elena, by having Jeremy say something about her on a “suicide mission” to “take Klaus the moonstone” and then get killed. She immediately takes the moonstone and her keys and tries to leave the house. “To see Stefan,” she says, but she’s been caught. She tries to leave anyway; too bad Bonnie’s spelled the door and trapped her in the house.

Damon brings Stefan up to speed on Elena being trapped and tries to give him some supplies - mostly lighting devices, but he also brings blood. Too bad Stefan would have to share it with Katharine. Damon leaves again, blood in hand.

Carol quizzes Tyler about where he’s going all day, and his answer is fine: lunch at The Grill, practice, then probably hanging out with the guys. He might sleep over at Matt’s, not sure yet. He heads out the door, only to run into

Jules, the woman listening in on Mason’s - or her, more precisely - landline. Tyler tries to squeak by her, but she drops the bomb on them before he can. Mason never made it back to Florida.

I see today’s episode has no big party to guide the action, so we’re going to get just a bunch of two-sentence scenes.

I’m not mad, not really, it was just time to break the text up with a pic or something, dang. I also do find these episodes to be pretty boring, but I suppose in the Vampire Diaries ecosystem, they’re necessary to set up the rest of the season, probably, or at least the next couple episodes. We hope, anyway.

(and now my brain won’t shut up about how in the Vampire Diaries system, good writing is considered especially heinous.)

Jenna’s leaving lunch with Ric because she has to “play hostess” to a writer doing a book about small-town Virginia. They seem happy. I’m sure that’ll end any minute.

Tyler’s meeting Caroline for lunch. He tells her about Jules, and Mason being missing, and I can’t remember if Caroline knows that Mason’s dead - I get the feeling she doesn’t, she looks genuinely confused. Ric overhears all of this, of course, and he does know Mason’s dead, right? Wasn’t he there for it? or heard about it? I’m pretty sure he knows.

Damon goes back to Elena’s. She wants to know what Stefan thought about Elijah still being alive, and of course, Damon didn’t tell him. He asks where Bonnie is, Jeremy says he thought she was with Damon already, and Damon says no - Bonnie’s on moonstone duty, and he’s on Elena patrol. Jeremy asks who’s watching Tyler and the full moon, then? and Damon says “Vampire Barbie asked me if she could handle it, and I said why not.”

her name is Draculaura! 

Ric calls Damon to tell him that Sheriff Liz has officially declared Mason a missing person, so Damon has to skedaddle down to the grill (or maybe to Liz’s office or whatever) to handle it.

Caroline and Tyler drive out to the crypt on Tyler’s land, and she offers that Mason probably just went surfing, decided to take off and see the world. That sounds like him. Tyler isn’t convinced, but I’m gonna assume Caro doesn’t know Mason is dead.

Jules pulls off the road to make a phone call just after leaving Carol’s. She tells whoever’s on the other end that Mason lied, and there is another werewolf: his nephew.

Cuts to commercial immediately. Nice job, VD. Sometimes, they do get it right - and this is a trick that I rely on to pace my chapters. If it seems like an ad break would fall naturally, you should definitely end the scene/chapter/section. Trust me. People will flip that page right over and keep on going till the wee hours.

Damon and Ric see Jules come into The Grill and ask Matt something. Ric asks where Mason is, anyway. “Decomposing in his truck,” Damon says, while flamboyantly taking a small baggie out of his pocket. Coke? Alas, no: wolfsbane, to test the strange lady looking for wolves.

Tyler and Caro prepare for the full moon. Tyler strips down and Caro turns around, asking if that’s necessary. He says he doesn’t think it’s like the Hulk; he probably doesn’t get to keep his pants.

Bonnie goes to return the dog tags to Luka (son of the evil witch helping Elijah, remember.). He snatches them from her, justifiably. Bonn used him without knowledge or consent, and her spell ended up fizzled anyway. She apologizes and he forgives her, which is kind of him, but I can’t trust him. More specifically, I don’t trust his dad, and I have a feeling Luka will be used by his father and disturbed by divided loyalties. Poor Luka.

He shows Bonn his family’s grimoires, shelves full of them, a library full. She asks if he knows how to break the bond between a talisman and a spell, and he says they can figure it out, and starts researching.

At The Grill, Ric and Damon are running a scam to figure out Jules’s were-status. Jules is played by Michaela McManus, and I couldn’t place her so I was calling her Not 13, because she looks a little like Olivia Wilde, but clearly isn’t - but it turns out she was on L&O: SVU!

in the Vampire Diaries system….

Anyway, Ric plays a drunk hitting on her, Damon is her sober savior. Instant trust. Jules turns to Damon while Ric doses her cocktail, but of course she’s not going to drink something a man could have tampered with. Very few women would, werewolves or not.

Stefan and Katharine fight in the tomb. Katharine tries to seduce him, because apparently that’s the only trick in her book when it comes to Stefan.

Elena comes down the stairs to find Jenna dragging a bunch of boxes up from the basement for her little hostessing assignment. They’re Elena’s mom’s stuff from the historical society, so the author can go through them. Jenna closes the door and reveals the author on the other side.

It’s Elijah.

And another cut to commercial, they’re killing the transitions this week. So Elijah’s been invited in. He doesn’t need to stay long, and says he’ll send someone to pick the stuff up tomorrow, and of course immediately is upstairs threatening Elena.

Since this is the VD version of a clip show, we now have to go back and check in with everyone else, even when there’s no change. Jules won’t drink the drink. Tyler is waiting for the moonrise. (He’s really scared, poor kid.) Caroline feels helpless.

Elijah is no longer in Klaus’s inner circle, and he wants to use Elena to draw him out. He wants her to just - stay put. Stay alive. Elijah will come for her when he’s ready, they’ll draw Klaus out, and Elijah will kill him. And Elena and all her friends and family will be fine. I wouldn’t want to take the deal, either, but Elena uses it as a negotiation. Damn, Elena, when did you get good?

Bonnie and Luka attempt despelling - unsorceling? - the moonstone. It seems to work: the stone explodes in a shower of sparks.

Damon is being creepy at Jules and finally gets her to drink the wolfsbane. She calls him a fool and he tells her to leave town. She says his “vampire arrogance” is going to get him killed; he should not be picking a fight with her on the full moon. She says he’s been marked, and she leaves. Ric tells an angry Damon to go home and lock his doors, and Damon agrees, but $10 says he’s out looking for her in the woods in about five minutes.

Caroline stays with Tyler. Can’t fault her commitment, though she does have to step outside when he tries to attack her. Good thing, too: he manages to break out of his chains and through the door and Caro can’t hold him. She has to run.

Damon actually went home!

(they are not holding wolfsbane, but wouldn’t that be amazing?)

Where he promptly finds what’s-her-name, from Walking Dead. With the Spiky Bob. ROSE. Jeez, it’s almost enough to make me stop smoking weed.

Almost.

Anyway, Damon goes home and finds Rose. But, like, where else does she have to go? You might not like her habit of running, but you have to admit it serves her well.

She wants to apologize. And she has nowhere to else to go. Damon says there’s nothing here for her, but before they can argue too much, there’s a wolf in the house. Damon takes a sword off the wall to fight it, but it goes right for Rose, and gets her!

And then she - HEALS?!

And then we cut to Luka. And I will get to that, but first - WHAAAAAAAAA?! Is that what destroying the moonstone did? Did they destroy the curse and therefore diminish the power of the werewolves against the vampires?! This is fascinating, I am Spocked out over here, man!

Oh, except - no. They didn’t destroy the moonstone. Luka tells his father that Bonnie fell for the “whole show” and hands the stone over. He’s obviously angry about it; he seems to really like Bonnie. Poor Luka. And poorer Luka: Dad says Elijah has one more thing for them to do.

In the home stretch, and we’re back in the tomb with Stefan and Katharine.

Katharine wants Stefan to trust her. Stefan tells her to do anything trustworthy. She offers help finding Klaus, and tells him to start with Isobel. This seems like a poor start, Katy, gotta say - but before Stefan can decide what he thinks of it, Elijah is in the tomb. Ah, that was what Elena bargained for: Stefan’s release from the tomb.

Elijah compels Katharine to stay, of course, and I assume he’ll reinstate the spell quickly. He tells Stefan to ask Elena about their deal, and leaves.

Katharine begs Stefan not to leave her locked up. He does.

Caroline, after running, has returned to the Lockwood crypt. Tyler broke the door, it’s true, but he didn’t get out, ultimately. She goes in to help him. I feel so bad for these two. I would watch 8 seasons of Tyler and Caroline trying to understand their lives now, trying to heal from the trauma of being monsters. (Oh, wait, that’s why I write novels, isn’t it?)

Stefan and Elena have reunited-and-it-feels-so-good sex.

Damon gets word that Tyler stayed locked up, so the wolf who attacked Rose - AND DIDN’T KILL HER, I’m back to being fascinated for opposite reasons now - must have been Jules. Damon thinks the whole thing was fake, just a story from the wolves to make the vampires afraid.

Rose says she’ll be staying. She wants to help with Elena’s whole deal. And she likes Damon. They agree to be friends - “special friends”, and they start making out. Damon touches Rose’s shoulder, and she flinches. They draw down her robe to reveal her skin, decomposing, flaking away.

Y’all, for an episode I thought would be dull as dishwater, this one really delivered. I’m shocked by all these wolfy twists and turns! Elijah! Luka! No one knows Klaus personally! Werewolves are fine! Werewolves are deadly!

Too much for my little brain. Gonna go smoke a bowl and watch some TikToks and zone out for a bit. Have a great week!