SUMMARY
When the wolves are away, the vamps will play. Tonight’s episode of The Originals marks the coming of a dark prophecy that may see one friend, one foe, and one member of the family laying each of the vampire Mikaelson’s to their end. Davina struggles to maintain control of the covens by manipulating Hayley into becoming her assassin and Camille joins forces with a peculiar detective to solve the recent murders that mirror the killing style of one Lucien. Oh, and little Hope is walking now, and nobody filmed it.
INITIAL THOUGHTS
Very solid continuation from last week’s stellar premiere. The violence was chosen very carefully but absolutely delivered on keeping this show fresh and interesting especially when hamming in a “custody battle” line after a lengthy one on one fight between parents. The subplots are actually pretty well balanced considering where everybody stands and I think they revolve nicely when it comes to having certain characters interact with others. None of it feels forced with the exception of one engagement that probably could have waited until morning to handle. It’s good to see Jackson and Hayley own their scenes in savage fashion and look forward to more from the bunch as a whole.
RECAP
Elijah finds Jackson suffering from a bear trap and helps him as the two begin their search for Haley who is offered a lift of the crescent moon curse by Davina provided she kill Cara. Haley agrees and seeks the witch out. Camille visits Klaus and informs him she believes the serial killer is Lucien and implores Klaus to stop him. Elijah and Jackson find Lucien at his suite and attack him when he does not cooperate with finding Haley. Lucien suffers a bite from Jackson but later uses a vial to cure himself of the bite. Haley finds Cara and kills her but is attacked by nearby witches. It is later revealed Haley killed the witches with Davina presumably setting them on fire to hide the evidence. After the witches funeral, she is confronted by Cara’s son who vows to expose her. Hayley goes to Klaus and the two argue and fight over past transgressions and Hope. They stop when they realize Hope sees them and is walking on her own. Elijah offers Hayley and Jackson a nearby apt to live in with Hope for the present. Under suspicion of Lucien’s prophecy of the sire war and the end of the Mikaelson’s Elijah has Hayley perform a spell of her own to validate the vision. She sees the same images and agrees each of the siblings may fall from nearby friends, foes, and family. Elsewhere, vampire siblings Tristan and Aurora spar with Tristan informing her that he’s leaving again. She gets upset and he’s forced to subdue her with a promise to bring back a souvenir from New Orleans.
THE GOOD
The landscape for this season is already looking great. It’s not uncommon for characters to be warned that betrayals will be coming close by. It sows distrust in a realm where distrust is a rampant beast biting into everyone on a nightly basis. Here though I think it will maybe do the opposite. Klaus and Elijah are nothing is not resourceful and strong when aligned for a common goal. Klaus usually does prefer to work alone, but he has strength in family as long as at least someone can trust him, which is the hardest thing to earn for him when he actually wants it. There’s a lot of good vibes and real fear plaguing these immortals because there may be something out there that can kill them and they have no idea what it is. That’s real fear for the fearless.
Hopefully I’m not in the minority but I like Hayley and Jackson’s pairing this time around. Normally, I rant about when couples will break up when they get together because that what happens, but this time I’d like to see them last through the season if possible. Jackson is a survivor and tonight he got to show his fangs and do something positive like take a huge bite out of Lucien for being rather uncooperative.
The siblings Tristan and Aurora may seem a bit trite on the surface, but considering the picture that’s been painted of them and how they act toward each other, I’m interested to see how things will play out with them. I believe I heard it right when Elijah admitted that he was Tristan’s sire which makes 2 for 2 on the sired vampires under the Mikaelson line. If Aurora ends up being sired by Rebekah then we’ll have the exact turn out I want to see. Again, things are looking up and I like the concept of Aurora being very volatile and Tristan the level-headed of the two, which is opposite how he was described in the flashbacks last week.
THE BAD
Davina’s witch arc still isn’t resonating with me. Including Hayley in her attempt to regain composure and loyalty with the covens felt logical but the aftermath was a bit of a letdown considering the amount of witches she sacrificed only to get another member on her for being a bad leader. She’s being tested pretty hard this early in the season and Marcel is the only one who has any kind of relationship with her to help aside from Vincent who was strangely absent this time around.
Lucien is already vying for the top seat in being the one vampire that just has to get booted from this show; the other being Enzo from TVD of course. He’s too obnoxious and it’s not settling down. The absolute worst was his short little speech on the net about challenging authority and eliminating competition. Power hungry or not, his content was deplorable and nobody in such a position would make speeches about that, considering he was subtly comparing it to the violence of his personal nature as a vampire. There’s just nothing positive about him I can see right now except that Klaus will eventually have to put him down.
Detective Kinney. Either he’s the actual serial killer or he’s hiding something else up his sleeve. Maybe he’s copycatting Lucien’s old killing methods or he’s just a creepy detective who has a thing for Camille. Either way, he’s the unfortunate human who has to interact with Camille while she’s apart from Klaus’s supernatural plot. I suppose it’s better than not having her in episodes at all, but I wish they’d reintroduce that room of trinkets and weapons she was exposed to last season to utilize. If there’s a twist to be found here with these murders I hope it’s not the obvious one.
FAVORITE MOMENT
Klaus and Hayley fighting in the courtyard. For once, they let these two actually have at it for more then a ten second spurt and it was great to watch. There was intensity and anger in both parties which culminated in Klaus’s sullen and somber expression while Hayley beat into him only to notice their daughter which from across the way. It was a good scene and cleverly mirrored the kind of horror a child can experience when parents are at odds with each other. Good moment all around.
CHARACTER MVP
Elijah was in a bit of a supporting role this time but if you count up all the good deeds he did in this episode I think you’ll find he earned the MVP spot tonight. He’s looking out for both family, and more or less everyone else that’s in trouble. His concern over Hayley remains even though their ship has long since sailed and he’s still willing to put up with Klaus for the greater good of their family. And let’s not forget he through a sharp piece of table through Lucien’s throat and that alone made it easy to pin him the MVP tonight.
ENDING THOUGHTS
Nitpick time. So Elijah starts his first scene already holding Hope when last we saw her she was at the cabin with Freya watching. That means at some point he went from the truck of dead wolves back to the cabin to pick up Hope and then resume his search for Hayley while letting Freya go back to her party at the bar/club. Does that make sense to you? Was it that important to have a scene with Marcel and Freya at the club to help set up Marcel’s alibi about his vampires having nothing to do with the witch’s death?
Another nitpick. At the monastery, Tristan and Aurora are sparring with katana swords. This should point to the monastery being in Japan otherwise one would assume it would be in China, but that really doesn’t matter. What matters is Tristan is fighting under the form of what looks like sabre-style fencing which makes me cringe because one cannot effectively use a slashing weapon under the guise of a single-handed thrusting form. I mean sure, they’re sparring and Tristan is just completely toying with her but it’s either the wrong weapon for the form of the wrong form for the weapon. Manage your weapons combat people!
This one’s obvious, but what exactly is in the vials that Lucien used to cure his wolf bite? It wasn’t blood which suggests that maybe Lucien either synthesized the enzyme or DNA from Klaus’s blood a while back or he found something else that cures the bite which could be something of note if they decide to start utilizing tech on this show.
Camille was using a BIC push pencil while her writing style suggests she should probably stick with a pen or at the least an older style pencil. I’m reaching, I know.
Is it possible Celeste will make an appearance after almost refusing to help Davina activate the temporary block on Hayley and Jackson’s curse? Dead people have a way of returning on this show and I don’t think Davina should be handling all these struggles on her own. She won’t last long if the covens once more grow impatient and decide to overthrow her.
OVERALL SCORE
Another solid 8 out of 10. If this consistency keeps up, this will easily surpass last season which held strong all the way to the end. The characters are generally well-balanced with the most important ones showing their flaws early on. They’re not rushing in on any new romances and dealing with immediate threats to help project long arc coming our way. I wish they wouldn’t use Rebekah so sparingly and just make her a mainstay on the show. At this point I don’t care which actress plays her, I just prefer Claire. I have this small idea that made the vision itself is a ruse and it’s meant to break the family apart and either kick start the real sire war or something deeper. But I’m not convinced we’ve met every player in the game yet. Time will tell if I’m even remotely hitting on anything accurate. As always, thanks for reading, see you next week.
No more words