The Vampire Diaries Season 6 Episode 5 Recap: Welcome Home, Brother

Boy oh boy. did this week’s episode of The Vampire Diaries have a ton of information packed into one hour-long episode. Plus, they made sure to stick to the usual scenario by making something happy out of a sad event, endlessly toying with our emotions.

To start off, Trip calls Stefan to thank him for Enzo. Stefan thought Enzo was already dead, but Trip lets him in on his little secret weapon idea. He tells Stefan that he wants to know everything that Enzo knows, but there can’t be that big of a vampire problem because Enzo would’ve talked by now. Looks like Enzo isn’t that bad of a guy, since he hasn’t ratted out Stefan.

Trip also tells Stefan that he’s sending in some of his troops to Savannah just to be safe. Looks like Stefan needs to take his newbie along with him.

Ivy, meanwhile, is going through the normal newbie vampire issues of constantly being hungry. She tells Stefan that his training methods of sunlight stories and two bags of blood isn’t going to cut it. Ivy then proceeds to get angry with Stefan because she realizes that she’s never going to be able to stop killing people. She tells him that since he lied about who he was, Enzo made her this way and it’s ruined her life. All Stefan’s fault. I’d like to point out that Stefan didn’t lie about being a vampire and actually told Ivy the truth. Stefan is at the same point I’m at of not wanting to hear her complaining anymore … so he snaps her neck and takes her on a little joyride.

The-Vampire-Diaries-Season6-Stefan-CarolineLooks like the only person who can help now is good ol’ Caroline Forbes. Stefan shows up to her dorm and barges in, even though she’s only dressed in a towel. He brings in his trunk with Ivy inside to explain her story. Stefan asks if Caroline can just watch Ivy and teach her the basics until he can get one of the witch twins to make Ivy a daylight ring. Caroline flat out tells Stefan she doesn’t want to clean up his messes, and she’s right. She shouldn’t have to deal with this, because he left her in the cold. Stefan has the nerve to say this is all Caroline’s fault because she wouldn’t leave him alone. Ouch! Harsh! You can cut the tension between these two vampires with a knife.

Elena decides to invite Liam as her date to the Whitmore corn maze. I’m not understanding why she’s liking this dude. but I guess she’s trying to start over just like Stefan. She also makes Alaric go. so she can set him up with Jo, the doctor professor that Alaric is crushing on.

Let’s not play matchmaker here, Elena. You know how those things can work out.

Damon is so positive that he can trust Kai to take him and Bonnie home that he’s already planning what he’ll do for a date night that night with Elena, but Bonnie, having always been smarter than Damon, knows that Kai can’t be trusted. She still hasn’t seen this magnificent spell that’s going to send them all home. Kai continues to be super secretive and it’s weird that he wouldn’t let Bonnie see the spell.

Not only can Vampire Diaries fans see that a Steroline ship is forming, but even Ivy can see that Caroline has a major thing for Stefan. Of course Caroline denies feeling anything more for Stefan than a friendship, which is suffering thanks to the way he’s been acting lately. Ivy wants Caroline to ease up so they can go have some fun. She feels like Caroline has taught her the basics of being a vampire — but what newbie doesn’t think they have control over themselves?

When Caroline resists going anywhere before Stefan comes back, Ivy snaps Caroline’s neck and runs off to play with her new tricks. She finds someone she used to know and starts to attack him and then thinks that she can simply say “erase” to compel the guy to forget. Really, Ivy? You think it’s that simple and there’s no greater power that you could use as an immortal vampire? Now we have someone on the loose who knows your secret. Caroline can’t find Ivy or get ahold of Stefan so she continues to leave him voice mails once again.

The-Vampire-Diaries-Season6-Alaric-ClassroomStefan visits Whitmore to get Ivy’s daylight ring from Luke. Before he leaves, he stops in Alaric’s classroom to have a little chat. He lets him know about Ivy, but Alaric couldn’t seem to care less. He refers to Ivy as the fake witch that Stefan told him was his lead on getting Damon and Bonnie back. Alaric isn’t too happy when Stefan basically asks for his help in breaking up with Ivy by compelling her to forget about Stefan and move on with her life. Alaric explains that it’s not that easy, but Stefan retorts that it was so simple for him to help Elena forget about Damon. Ding, ding, ding! Let the fight begin!

Alaric quickly fires off the knockout punch, telling Stefan that he was the one who forgot about his own brother first. He adds that Stefan needs to leave before he compels him into the guy he used to know. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you finish a battlet like that! I love Stefan but Alaric is telling the truth in everything he said. I hope he sticks to what he said and doesn’t help Stefan.

Bonnie has finally had enough of playing games with Kai, so she tells him to take all her powers, the way he threatened her. Damon doesn’t advise her to do so, but she’s fed up and at this point she doesn’t care anymore. She tells Kai once again to take all her powers because she’s not going to help him or go anywhere until she sees the spell. Kai proceeds to drain her powers, which scares Damon. Bonnie tells him not to worry because Kai won’t kill her — and she’s right. She also finds out that he doesn’t know the spell like he said he did.

Since they don’t need him, Bonnie quickly kills him before Damon has a say-so in what happens.

Tyler has been trying to get Liv to go on a date with him for a while and it looks like he’s finally getting his chance. He gets a text from her while he’s driving saying that she’ll meet up with him, but it doesn’t look like he’ll get to that date. Thanks to Ivy’s little snack, the guy she fed off of comes running out of nowhere into the street making Tyler swerve into the Whitmore corn maze, plowing down tons of people with his truck. Tyler gets out of his truck and can see that the guy he hit is pinned between a tree and stuck underneath his truck. It looks like he’s going to die and that’s when I remember the Lockwood curse. Uh oh, Tyler’s going to turn into a werewolf again! Tyler quickly realizes what could happen to him, so he calls Elena for help. She’s busy helping all the others injured at the corn maze, so she tells him to wait until she can find Alaric and Jo. She had to tell him the bad news about all the other potential people’s blood he’d have on his hands.

Liam finds someone who looks like they’re not going to make it. Elena rushes The-Vampire-Diaries-Season6-Elena-Fieldover to him and the girl, but she knows what she really needs to do in order to save this girl’s life. She tells Liam to go find other injured people, so she can feed the girl her blood.

Alaric and Jo are injured, too, and while she’s a doctor, it’s actually Jo who should be worried. Alaric sees the blood from her wound and starts to get hungry. Jo asks for Alaric to help her aid all the bleeding people around the, and I was waiting for Alaric to snap, but luckily he didn’t.

Caroline starts walking around town and notices a car with a ton of blood on it. Sure enough, this is the car where Ivy attacked her helpless victim, but there’s no sign of either of them. That’s when Stefan shows up and tells Caroline that he was leaving again after he dropped off the daylight ring. Stefan tells Caroline that he just wants to start all over, but he can’t.

Caroline is beyond furious that Stefan would think he could drop his problem vampire on her doorstep and just leave her behind again. She tells him that a month ago she really wanted Damon to come back because then that meant Stefan would come back, too. Now all she wanta him to do was get back into his car and leave.

Doing what she requested — even though she never really wanted him to go — Stefan gets in his car and drives away. I don’t blame Caroline for getting so angry with Stefan. Whether she has stronger feelings for him or not, he can’t treat her like that! He can’t expect her to take care of his problem — Ivy — while he hasn’t been there for Caroline.

I don’t know who this new Stefan is but I’m sick of him. I want the old Stefan back!

Always looking on the bright side, Bonnie thinks that she can still find a way to get her and Damon out of there. She thinks that this place was created by a Bennett witch. When her grams told her to stay strong, she thinks that was a way to say she had a way to get out. Bonnie starts doing her witchy chanting and sure enough, it works! Looks like that’s why Kai wouldn’t kill Bonnie — he needed a Bennett witch. Now Bonnie is all fired up to get herself and Damon home.

As they go down in the caves to finish the spell, Kai pops up and shoots Bonnie with an arrow. He tells them that he’s tried killing himself before but it’s useless to try and die in this other world. Probably should’ve thought of that one, Bon Bon. Damon and Kai begin to fight and Bonnie tells Damon that she won’t be able to make it out alive. She realizes that Damon will be able to, so she uses her powers to pull him away from Kai and hands him the relic to send him straight up back into present day. Now Bonnie is stuck with Kai in his personal Hell. Poor Bonnie is always sacrificing herself for others — even the ones she can’t really stand like Damon.

Tyler continues to struggle with getting his truck off the corn maze guy until Elena comes with help. Lucky for Tyler, Liv pops up and is able to move the truck for him. Tyler tries calling Elena again and gets instructions from Jo on what to do to help save the poor dude from dying. He and Liv describe what the guy looks like to Jo and all she can tell them to do is make sure he’s comfortable because he doesn’t have too much time left. The-Vampire-Diaries-Season6-Tyler-LivFinally the guy dies and Tyler cannot begin to think of what’s about to happen all over again.

Liv is able to bring the man back to life, giving Tyler and me the same reaction — what the heck just happened? Liv tells Tyler that he didn’t kill the guy, she did. Yeah, both Tyler and I are still confused. At the end of the night, Tyler says that he talked with Elena and no one else died, so that means no werewolf. He tries to talk to Liv about what she did, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. All he can do is thank her for saving his life and promise her that he won’t waste it. I sense a relationship about to happen.

At the hospital, Jo reveals her feelings for Alaric. Turns out she really likes him and might already — dare I say it — love him. Alaric surprisingly feels the same way and expresses himself to Jo. However, Alaric doesn’t want Jo to remember what they just discussed so he compels her to remember that they had a horrible night and that he’s just a huge alcoholic. After they share a kiss, she agrees with him but she still likes him. Alaric is confused about what just happened because he compelled her to forget everything about liking him and it didn’t seem to work. Is she sipping vervain?

Ivy calls Caroline to have her come pick her up but it doesn’t look like she’ll get there in time. Trip shows up on the same road Ivy is on and stops to play the Good Samaritan. He asks if she needs any help, until he stabs Ivy with vervain and takes her away in his truck. Poor Caroline showed up just in time to see everything happen but she’s not going to risk herself getting caught too. Ivy is Stefan’s problem anyways, right?

As they were leaving the corn maze, Liam saw the girl that was basically dead walk out of the corn maze looking like she was perfectly fine. He questioned Elena how she was able to help that girl since he would’ve given up hope on helping her out. Elena distracts him by kissing him, which seemed to do the trick. She then tells him that when he asked before what her type was, well, it’s hero. He was a hero in the corn maze and that got him brownie points. Talk about cheesy, Elena. Yeah, hero may be your type, but it’s a completely different type of hero. I thought for sure Damon would’ve popped up to see this happening or she would’ve opened up the door to see him standing right there. Luckily he wasn’t because then his heart would’ve been broken into a billion pieces.

Stefan ends up in his family crypt with a big bottle of bourbon. He laughs at himself since he’s going there to try to talk to Damon. He tells him that he’s sorry but he’s lost. He tried starting over and getting a fresh new start but he just hasn’t been successful at doing so. You can hear the pain in Stefan’s voice and it was heartbreaking to watch.

The-Vampire-Diaries-Season6-Stefan-DamonStefan gets so upset that he tries to throw the bottle of booze at the wall, but he doesn’t hear the loud sound of breaking glass. Sure enough, Damon is there to catch the bottle and get mad at his baby brother for ever thinking he could throw a good bottle of booze away like that. Stefan can’t believe what he’s seeing and thinks Damon is just a ghost that he can somehow see. Damon tells him that he’s really there and this time he’s here to stay. My heart melted as the two brothers grab onto each other and hug each other like they’ve been separated for thousands of years. It’s like they had forgotten about all the fights and all the problems they had in the past in this one moment. You could even see that Stefan began to cry that he was so happy. Wonder if Elena will be just as happy?

Next week’s episode looks like Damon won’t have the happy welcome home reunion. Trip has a hold of him and the only person Damon will be seeing is Enzo.

What were your thoughts on “The World Has Turned and Left Me”? Do you think Elena will be happy about Damon being back? Do you think that she’ll ask for Alaric to give her back her memories now? I kinda feel like Stefan will keep Damon away from Elena so that way he doesn’t have his heart broken but maybe Trip is getting that part done. Do you think Bonnie will ever get out of there? I know she’ll eventually get out, but how? What’s going on with this relationship between Liam and Elena? I don’t like it but what do you think? What’s going to happen with Ivy? Tyler thanked Liv for saving him but what does she mean when she says that she killed that guy and not Tyler? Does she have the power to bring people back to life easily now too? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

New episodes of The Vampire Diaries premiere Thursdays at 8pm ET on The CW

Photos: Bob Mahoney/The CW — © 2014 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved.

1 Comment

  1. Liv didn’t bring the guy back to life, she killed him before he died so Tyler would avoid the curse. He was going to die anyway, so she did it for Tyler.

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