Missed a week. Don’t you hate when life gets in the way of your TV viewing?
Let’s get started, shall we?
1. Marcel likes to run. I guess being a vampire doesn’t mean you don’t have to work out. (Well, that settles it. I don’t want to be a vampire anymore.)
2. The Strix (or a “legion of egomaniacal sociopaths” as Elijah calls them, are a very . . . interesting . . . group of vampires, and they don’t so much invite you to something, they indoctrinate you. They do so with Marcel, by stealing his Daylight Ring and passing it around, challenging him to figure out who has it, and challenge them – physically – to get it back.
3. Elijah boxing away on a heavy bag – then sending it flying across Marcel’s gym – is impressive. (And also reminiscent of Captain America…) And Hayley and Elijah still have some serious chemistry. We are reminded of this not once, not twice, but three times in this episode.
4. Please leave Klaus a note when you intend to stay in your own house for the day, but it turns into a cute (read: ALMOST normal) moment between Freya and Klaus.
5. Lucien built his company – the one killing wolves in the Bayou, remember – upon Alexis’s visions. Which sounds like a set up for an issue. And, sure enough, she goes missing early in the episode.
6. Elijah brings Hayley along to walk into “only the most dangerous and influential congregation of vampires the world has ever known” – aka the party at The Strix. And, you know, he’s “kind of a big deal around here” because he sired most of them.
7. Lucien and Klaus party crash like no one’s business. (Lucien: My God, its a room full of Elijahs. Klaus: I had that exact same nightmare once.)
8. Freya locates Alexis, only Alexis isn’t the captive they thought her to be. She says she’s seen Lucien’s doom – his sire destroyed – and she knows exactly how it happens. It seems she’s switched sides. When she kisses (yes, kisses) Freya, Freya sees some of what is to come – apparently herself being buried alive! “The family blood you sought to find, shall be what lays you low in kind,” Alexis says afterward.
9. Marcel is a tricky dude (and very smart), and Hayley his willing accomplice. And he shows a loyalty to Klaus that is somewhat unexpected, considering. Or is it merely self-preservation?
10. Marcel is now a member of The Strix. The first such member to be sired, not by Elijah, but by Klaus.
11. Once Alexis is back with Lucien, she confesses that she saw his demise, brought on by Klaus’. She says that she saw the weapon, but for them to understand it, they must see it as she did. She raises her arms to Hayley and Elijah and as they feed – just as a new part of her vision is about to be revealed – both Hayley and Elijah begin to gag on her blood. Alexis has been poisoned, and she dies coughing up blood in Lucien’s arms.
12. Marcel is as curious as the rest of us about who really killed JFK.
13. Tristan believes – and he tells Elijah as much – that Lucien poisoned Alexis in order to jump start the war between the sire lines.
BONUS: Hayley will start with “Always and Forever” when she starts explaining this family to Hope. A point she tells Elijah, which seems to please him.
SECOND BONUS: It wasn’t Lucien or Tristan. It was Aurora. She slipped something into Alexis’s drink (and if you watch the episode again, you’ll see that vivid blue dress come down the stairs and walks behind Freya – dressed in that hot pink wig – as she considers whether or not to go up the stairs after Alexis) once Alexis was inside Tristan’s compound.
And, “loyalty doesn’t make people dangerous, Elijah,” Hayley says.
But I’m starting to think that family does.
