Bonnie takes flowers to Jeremy’s grave (so they found room in the Gilberts’ area of the cemetery after all) and wishes the last thing she’d said to him was better than, “We did it.” She never expected that to be a goodbye. Jeremy appears and tells her to wake up. She’s actually asleep on her couch, which has caught on fire. She quickly puts out the flames.
Over at Vamp Villa, Stefan and Damon have spent the past week or so honoring Elena’s request for them to let her be who she is now. She’s upheld her part of the agreement by not killing anyone. Since the guys’ lives revolve around Elena, they have nothing to do now, so they’re tossing a football back and forth in their living room. Damon doesn’t want to go back to looking for the cure; if Elena finds out, she’ll lash out. Stefan suggests that they make her want the cure. That will require getting her to turn her humanity back on.
Damon asks if he really thinks Lexi’s method of flooding someone with emotions until one breaks through will work. Stefan says plan B is locking Elena up until they come up with a plan C. Then when she turns on her emotions and gets overwhelmed with grief for Jeremy and guilt for hurting people, Damon will help her through it. Damon is skeptical that Stefan will really be able to walk away after that, like he said he would. But he’s willing to give Stefan’s plan a try.
Elijah has come back to Mystic Falls with Rebekah, who’s trying to convince him to give her the cure. Klaus laughs at her attempt and presents a better option: Give it to Silas so he’ll stop bugging Klaus. A romantic like Elijah should want to help Silas take the cure and reunite with his long-lost love. Rebekah reminds him that all dead supernatural beings will then come back. Klaus plays the family card, noting that Kol and Finn would be among those returning beings. Never mind that he hated Kol and had no use for Finn.
Elijah doesn’t consider Klaus’ annoyance with Silas a good enough reason to flood the world with angry supernatural beings. He thinks Rebekah deserves a shot at a happy life. Klaus vows to laugh in Rebekah’s face and compel her to forget him when she eventually reaches the end of her mortal life and realizes she made a mistake. She ignores him and asks Elijah where the cure is.
He’s not ready to hand it over just yet, though – Rebekah’s impulsive and makes bad decisions. Elijah can’t be sure this isn’t just a whim for her. He wants her to prove that she’s thought this through and understands what she’ll be giving up. She must live the rest of the day as a human, without any “vampire privileges.” If she can do it, and if she still wants to be human, Elijah will give her the cure.
Rebekah meets up with Elena, who predicts that she’ll fail. Rebekah should just hide out somewhere all day and avoid temptation. But Rebekah wants to go to the prom, since it’s such a human experience. Elena reminds her that she can’t compel herself a date. Rebekah reminds Elena that she’s only letting Elena stay at her house because no one else can tolerate her. She should be nicer. Elena decides she’ll spend the whole day with Rebekah to make sure she passes Elijah’s test.
Caroline and Bonnie go to Caroline’s last fitting for her prom dress as Bonnie talks about her dream, which she’s had before. Caroline thinks it’s normal since Bonnie’s grieving. The waking-up-to-find-the-couch-on-fire part isn’t as normal. Bonnie’s worried that Shane was right and she’s going to lose control of her magic without his help. Caroline wants her to take a night off from mourning, which is why the two of them and Matt are all going to the prom together. Elena and Rebekah enter the boutique they’re in, so Caroline and Bonnie make a quick exit.
That night, Elena – wearing Caroline’s dress – gets blindsided when Stefan and Damon invite themselves to go to the prom with her. They need to make sure she doesn’t renege on their deal and eat the prom queen. Elena tries to decline Damon’s offer of a corsage, but he makes her wear it. He compliments her dress and she says she stole it.
This means Caroline doesn’t have a dress, so she goes to the Haus of Klaus to complain. Klaus laughs at her, probably because she’s an immortal vampire whining about her ex-best friend stealing her prom dress. Caroline says it’s important to her. She wants to look amazing, so she asks him to find her something to wear.
To get to the prom, attendees walk a red carpet lined with screens displaying slideshows of photos of the senior class. Stefan and Damon make Elena look at them, starting with one of her and Matt on their first day of high school. They think this will be enough to make her tap into her emotions, but they’re wrong.
Matt and Bonnie arrive at the dance (which appears to be taking place under a big tent in the woods) and comment that it looks like something Caroline will try to recreate for her wedding someday. Damon confiscates a flask Elena brought with her, reminding her that she’s underage. She replies that he’s overage and it’s creepy that he’s there. He points out that that there’s always one date at the prom who’s a little too old to be there with a high schooler. (He’s totally right.)
When Damon calls himself her boyfriend, Elena busts him for trying to make her feel something. She thinks that’s ironic since he’s the one who told her to turn off her emotions. “Hindsight is almost a bigger b&%#$ than you,” he tells her. Elena says he’s nothing to her anymore, so he asks why she told him she was in love with him and it was the most real thing she’s ever felt. She blames the sire bond, saying it wasn’t real after all. If Damon thinks it was, he’s the one who needs help with his emotions.
Elena goes to talk to Matt and Bonnie, who miss hanging out with her (well, the real her). Matt doesn’t want her to look back later and realize she missed the best part of senior year. Elena thinks he would have turned off his emotions when Vicki died if he had the ability. Bonnie reminds her that despite all the horrible things that have happened to her, Elena still has friends who love her. Elena taunts her for not being able to bring Jeremy back and for being a “walking reminder” of the things Elena’s gone through. Bonnie realizes her best friend really is gone.
She goes outside to get some air and sees a picture of herself and Jeremy from the ’60s dance. Jeremy’s suddenly there for real, and he asks her to dance. (Music: “Stay,” Rihanna) Back inside, Stefan makes Elena dance with him. Rebekah chats with Matt, trying to figure out if he and Bonnie are dating. She asks if he thinks she would make a good human. Matt says “good” is a poor choice of words, since she’s never done anything good.
Stefan asks Elena if she really came to the most sentimental event in a high schooler’s life just to keep an eye on Rebekah. She replies that this isn’t a cry for help, but she’d be happy to hurt someone and elicit a real cry for help. He confirms that she feels nothing dancing with him, then says he doesn’t believe her. She tells him she doesn’t care. Stefan holds her closer and reminds her of how she used to feel when they danced. Elena stays poker-faced. He dips her and asks if her heart refuses to remember how she felt. She leans in, looking like she’s going to kiss him, but instead she says, “What heart?”
Caroline arrives looking as amazing as she’d hoped. She starts to go off on Elena for stealing her dress but holds herself back. Stefan invites Caroline to dance with him, probably partly because he thinks Elena might get jealous. He comments that Caroline has Klaus wrapped around her finger, but she notes that if that were true, Tyler would have been allowed to come back to town for the prom.
Stefan admits that he’s having trouble with Operation: Get Elena to Turn Her Humanity Back On. He keeps trying to convince himself to move on, but he can’t quite do it. Caroline gets it, since he and Elena were in love. Just saying you’re moving on doesn’t change anything. Stefan wonders how anyone actually moves on, then. She doesn’t know, but she guesses that one day, Stefan will fall in love with someone else and realize he’s moved on without knowing it.
April’s in charge of monitoring voting for prom king and queen, so Rebekah asks her to rig it so she wins. April refuses, adding that she drinks vervain tea now so Rebekah can’t compel her. Elena zooms up and threatens to kill April if Rebekah doesn’t win. Rebekah slams Elena for interfering, but Elena echoes what Matt said earlier: Rebekah isn’t a good person. Being herself won’t get her the cure.
Bonnie and Jeremy dance in the woods, happy to be together at her senior prom. He asks her if she misses him and wants this to be real. It can be if she uses her magic to do the spell to drop the veil to the Other Side. Bonnie realizes this is actually Silas. He tells her she’s dangerous and she needs his help to control herself. In return, he needs that teensy, tiny favor of dropping the veil. Bonnie refuses, but he implies that her fiery wake-up won’t be her last. She tells him the consequences aren’t worth seeing Jeremy again.
Elijah may have earmarked the cure for Rebekah, but he has a gift for Klaus, too: the indestructible stake. I guess it’s really a regift, since he got it from Rebekah. With the cure gone and Klaus in control of the stake, he and Elijah won’t have any threats to their immortality. Well, that’s assuming Klaus doesn’t use the stake on Elijah. Klaus knows Silas will keep harassing him, but Elijah says Klaus has been through worse and can put up with it. If not, he can outrun Silas.
Klaus notes that he can kill Katherine, but Elijah thinks Klaus will spare her just because Elijah wants him to. He’s Klaus’ only living brother and would like this chance at love. Klaus says he gave Elijah that chance before, and Elijah sided against him. If Klaus runs, it’ll be because he’s chasing Katherine. He’ll make it his goal to never let Elijah know a moment of happiness. Elijah taunts that Klaus’ life is hollow, then walks away as if he has nothing to fear.
Back at the prom, Rebekah tries to guilt Matt into dancing with her, since she’s having a miserable time. He gives in and she tells him he’s right about her having an uphill battle if she wants to be good. He doesn’t know why she wants his opinion so badly. She tells him he has all the qualities she wants to have – loyalty, honesty, and kindness. People want him to succeed, and Elena even died for him. Matt points out that he’s a busboy, not a superhero. But Rebekah admires how human he is.
Caroline complains to Damon that the prom isn’t going the way she wanted her last dance with her friends to go. He offers her a drink from Elena’s flask, but I don’t think it helps much. She decides to leave early and meet up with everyone at the after-party. Bonnie gathers Stefan, Damon, and Matt to tell them about the trick Silas pulled on her. Elena eavesdrops and tells Rebekah that Silas is bugging Bonnie about the spell. Rebekah notes that since Elena’s emotions are off, she doesn’t need to be afraid of any enemies on the Other Side coming back to mess with her. Elena’s not – she just doesn’t want Jeremy and Alaric coming back to bug her about turning off her humanity.
As April starts to announce who won prom king and queen, Stefan suggests that he or Damon take Bonnie home. Damon thinks she’s safer in public, since Silas won’t be able to make everyone there see the same thing at once. Matt notes that they can’t keep a lookout for Silas since he can disguise himself as anyone. April reveals the winners, Matt and Bonnie.
Elena tells Rebekah that everyone’s focusing on the wrong thing. Silas needs Bonnie for the spell, and if they can’t kill Silas, they can just kill Bonnie. Rebekah’s not allowed because of her deal with Elijah, but Elena doesn’t have to play by his rules. Of course, she promised the Salvatores she would behave herself, but I guess she figures she’ll just deal with the consequences when the time comes.
The after-party is at Lockwood Landing, and when Caroline takes some supplies over, she’s shocked to find Tyler there. She worries about Klaus coming after him, but Tyler reminds her that when he signed the deed to the house over to Matt, Klaus’ invitation got revoked. That means he and Caroline get to dance together on the night of their senior prom, even if it’s not at the actual prom.
Damon looks at the pictures outside the dance, then calls Stefan out for clearly not being past his relationship with Elena. If he were, he wouldn’t have acted so much like her boyfriend while they were dancing. Stefan says he was just reminding her what she’s lost, even that that includes her feelings for him. They have history and memories. Damon and Elena, however, just had a one-night stand that was probably a result of the sire bond. Hey! They had two nights together! But it doesn’t matter because this isn’t Stefan – this is Silas. Damon attacks him and Silas shoves a stake in his stomach. He’s already done the same to Stefan after appearing to him as Damon. Silas wants the brothers to get the message that Bonnie is his.
Elena approaches the king and queen as they pose for pictures. Rebekah tells Matt to get Bonnie out of there because Elena’s plotting something. Bonnie goes to a little backstage area, and Elena follows her and starts to attack her. Bonnie magically holds her off, simultaneously making wind whip through the tent and causing the lights to flicker. Matt bursts in and Bonnie tells him she needs to get out of there.
April comes in next, and Elena knocks her out and bites her neck in retaliation for her refusal to rig the voting for Rebekah. She leaves Matt alone to deal with April. Rebekah comes to see what’s happening and Matt begs her to give April her blood. That will mean breaking her deal with Elijah and missing out on her chance to get the cure. Matt can’t believe she’s even thinking about that. If she wants to be human, she can prove it right now by helping April.
Damon finds Stefan post-Silas’ attack as Bonnie heads to her car. Silas (appearing as Jeremy again) follows her and warns that if she doesn’t accept his help, her expression will consume her from the inside out. She tells him to get away from her, accidentally sending out a burst of power and setting off some car alarms. Silas tells her that her magic is taking on a life of its own. He tries to get her to calm down, but she doesn’t want him to have any control over her. He yells for her to take control on her own as wind whips up around them. Bonnie shouts at him to get out of her head. Everything goes quiet and Silas disappears.
That’s when Elena ambushes Bonnie from behind and bites her neck. But she spits out the blood and Bonnie’s wound heals itself. Bonnie starts magically breaking Elena’s bones as Stefan and Damon run up. Stefan reminds Bonnie that she’s hurting her best friend. Elena begs Damon for help, then Bonnie. Bonnie finally stops, overwhelmed both with her loss of control and the fact that her supposed friend tried to kill her. But on the plus side, Elena’s incapacitated enough not to fight when Damon injects her with vervain so the guys can lock her up. Plan B is a go!
Thanks to Rebekah, April has recovered, though Rebekah can’t be fully happy about it. Matt promises not to tell anyone that she used her vampire powers when she wasn’t supposed to. He admits that she wouldn’t make the worst human after all.
As he takes April home, Klaus approaches Rebekah and reveals that he knows she violated her deal with Elijah. Rebekah thinks saving April proved that she has humanity and is ready to employ it full time. Klaus notes that if she were really human, she wouldn’t have been able to save April. Rebekah gives humanity too much credit. But Klaus won’t tell Elijah what happened – he expects Rebekah to do it herself.
He voices over his expectations as Rebekah goes home. She tells Elijah that there were “complications” but she passed his test. He hands over the cure. Back at the dance, Klaus repeats Elijah’s suspicions that this is one of Rebekah’s whims: “You are bored, and you’re looking for a reason to matter.” He’s happy not to have to fight her about it anymore. At the house, Rebekah thanks Elijah and leaves. Just then, Elijah gets a phone call…from Rebekah. The real one is still at the dance, and she’s guessed that Klaus is plotting something. She tells Elijah not to do anything with the cure yet. Something isn’t right. Elijah has to confess that it’s too late. Is there anyone Silas hasn’t fooled in this episode?
Tyler reluctantly tells Caroline he needs to leave before anyone arrives for the after-party. She thanks him for giving her the best prom ever. On his way out, he runs into Klaus, who asks if it was worth it to risk coming back to Mystic Falls. Tyler doesn’t answer. Klaus gives him a five-second head start to take off so he doesn’t have to kill Tyler on Caroline’s special night.
Stefan and Damon deposit Elena in the basement of Vamp Villa until they devise a plan C. Damon already has an idea, inspired by Elena’s fight with Bonnie. Elena was scared because she thought she was going to die. If they keep scaring her, she’ll eventually feel it. Damon’s concerned about Silas being a problem, but Stefan thinks Bonnie can handle him herself. Damon asks Stefan what Silas said to him while he was pretending to be Damon. Stefan replies that Silas just took him to the woods, claiming he saw Silas out there. Damon lies that he only believed Silas was Stefan because he talked about his hair.
Klaus goes home to find a letter from Katherine. She knows that Elijah won’t give him the cure, which means Klaus won’t give Katherine her freedom. She wants to offer something else instead: a warning. There’s a witch named Jane-Anne Deveraux who’s plotting against Klaus in New Orleans. Klaus needs to find her because she has news for him that will put any thoughts of Katherine to the back of his mind. “It’s been a fun five centuries, Klaus, but I’ve worn down too many good heels running from you,” Katherine writes. She wraps up with, “Love and hate, Katerina.”
Bonnie finds Silas lurking in a cave. She was able to track him with a locator spell, even without using any of his possessions. He’s pleased that she’s finally accepting how powerful she is. He’s no longer disguised and is using his real voice. Bonnie asks why he’s hiding. Silas explains that Qetsiyah made him hideous so no woman would ever love him. Now he just wants to take the cure and die. Bonnie wants the same thing, even if that means all dead supernatural beings will come back. She asks to see Silas’ real face, and he steps out of the shadows to show her.
Significant item update: Silas has the cure.
Etc.: In Elena’s defense, that dress is really nice. It’s totally steal-worthy.
Caroline mentions that there’s no longer vervain in the water supply, so…what was the point of it in the first place? It was only there for a few weeks.
I don’t know why Klaus thinks Silas will keep bugging him after Rebekah takes the cure. Silas is only annoying Klaus because he wants the cure; why would he waste his time on something he can no longer get?
Bonnie and Matt are the most overlooked members of the gang, so I love that they get elected king and queen. Like, their friends might not appreciate them but the rest of the senior class does.
This should have been the last episode where Elena has her humanity off. Bonnie’s attack should have scared her into flipping her switch. The arc has gone on long enough at this point; it’s annoying that there’s still some left.
So Elijah really trusted that Rebekah would tell him the truth about not using her vampire abilities all day?
‘Bye, April! I still don’t know why you were here!
An Eternity of Misery 
