The gang is partying at a popular Whitmore hangout, Scull Bar. Elena’s dancing on the bar, and her friends are happy to see her so happy. She toasts to their friendship, but as everyone drinks, she asks if they really don’t know her well enough to realize that she’s not acting like herself. She doesn’t dance on bars. She doesn’t take Jeremy out and drink shots with him. She’s not Elena – she’s Katherine. How can they not see that?
Elena wakes up from this dream in her bed in the Super Suite. The dorm is quiet as she goes down the hall to see if anyone else is around. She runs into Stefan, who tells her everyone’s gone for spring break. She’s been in and out of consciousness since they expelled Katherine from her body. Elena tries to approach him but is stopped by a boundary spell. Stefan explains that they sealed her in the dorm.
Elena doesn’t remember anything after running through the woods during Mia’s spell and finding Damon. Stefan tells her three weeks have passed. She does remember waking up and realizing that Katherine infected her with the Ripper virus. She feels fine, so she’s not sure she needs to be in lockdown, but Stefan doesn’t want to take any chances. The virus will make her want to attack vampires. Elena asks who did the boundary spell and Stefan tells her about Liv. He assures her that Caroline is working on getting an antidote.
Elena wants to talk to Damon, who’s back in a cell in the basement of Vamp Villa. Jeremy amuses himself (and Matt) by bringing him blood but putting it just out of his reach. Damon’s annoyed, but Jeremy points out that he didn’t have to help Damon at all, considering Damon was going to let Enzo kill him. Matt piles on by bringing up Aaron and asking if Elena knows Damon killed him. Damon wants to be the one to tell her.
Elena calls from a pay phone in Whitmore’s lounge (she never figured out the pass code Katherine put on her cell phone) and Jeremy answers Damon’s phone and chats with her before letting them talk. The conversation is light until Elena asks Damon how Katherine broke his heart. He downplays how bad it was. She tells him she remembers running to him and feeling safe when she reached him. She wanted to fight for him, and she still does. Damon promises that as soon as they’re both free of the Ripper virus and no longer at risk of killing each other, they’ll have a memorable time reconnecting (in bed).
Caroline searches Wes’ lab for an antidote and listens to the same recording Katherine did about Wes adding werewolf venom to the Ripper virus. Enzo finds her there and comments that he didn’t know werewolves were real. He thought talk about them was just a joke. He tells Caroline that he wants to cure Damon. She guesses it’s because it’s not as much fun to kill people without a murder buddy. Enzo says Damon told him about her – that she’s judgy and likes guys with accents. Caroline tells him to stay out of this, but he’s already further in than she is. He has the antidote.
Elena worries that being replaced by Katherine for weeks has tanked her grades. Damon’s sure that Katherine compelled someone to spend his spring break doing her work. Elena says she’ll have to fix that, along with her friendship with Aaron. Damon replies that she probably won’t find him. Elena hangs up since Stefan brought her a new phone and some blood, which she really needs as the virus is starting to give her cravings. She insists that she’s fine, but he proves she’s not by biting himself so she’ll vamp out over his blood. Elena’s upset that Katherine has turned her into a monster. She can’t believe she forgave Katherine while she was dying.
Caroline calls to tell Stefan that “Dr. Creepenstein” made a new version of the Ripper virus, so Elena’s condition is more dire than they thought. There’s an antidote, but Stefan has to meet Caroline somewhere to get it. She can’t give him any details. Stefan refuses to go without more information, so Caroline says the Travelers are involved and don’t want their plans widely known by people like Liv.
After Stefan hangs up, Elena asks him why Katherine stayed after taking over her body instead of running like she usually does. He thinks she wanted more than just to survive. Elena guesses that she wanted him. She hesitantly starts to ask if they did anything, and Stefan tells her they kissed but he wouldn’t let things go further. Then he figured out that she wasn’t Elena.
Bonnie looks through a grimoire at Scull Bar, where Liv works. Liv is thrilled that she was able to perform a spell to keep Elena in the dorm. It’s not something most newbie witches can do. Bonnie tests her by pouring out some salt and telling Liv to set it on fire. When she can’t, Bonnie hints that she shouldn’t brag so much about her skills.
Elena leaves Aaron a message asking to talk about the things he learned the last time they encountered each other. She finds Katherine’s journal and reads her entry about how becoming Elena was the best thing that ever happened to her. She also reads about Katherine and Stefan’s road trip. She imagines them in the motel room, but in opposition to what Stefan told her, he doesn’t stop after just a kiss. Instead, Elena emerges and tells Stefan that she’s not herself. She’s surprised that he doesn’t get that after everything they’ve been through, she wouldn’t lead him on.
She tries to leave the motel room but Damon’s at the door. He agrees that Stefan was foolish to fall for Katherine’s manipulation. Stefan points out that she tricked Damon, too, but Damon says he didn’t go so far as to make out with her. Elena tells them to stop fighting because Katherine wants them to turn on each other. Stefan says that if she thinks this is bad, she should just wait – there’s more. Elena emerges from her daydream/hallucination with a nosebleed.
Stefan and Caroline meet up in an old rail yard, debating whether Damon will actually tell Elena that he killed Aaron. Enzo offers to break the news to her. Travelers join him, and he and Sloan confirm that they have the antidote to the Ripper virus. Before they hand it over, they need another Stefan.
Elena calls Damon to tell him that a) she has werewolf venom to deal with on top of the Ripper virus and b) she’s started hallucinating things she fears. Damon wants to come see her, which is a horrible idea. She asks him what she missed while she was “gone.” He tells her some meaningless stuff, then shares the big gossip that Caroline slept with Klaus. Yes, Tyler knows. Yes, Katherine told him (sort of). Just another reason for Elena to hate her. But she has bigger problems now – she’s coughing up blood.
She doesn’t mention this to Damon, instead asking why the gang doesn’t hunt Wes down and force him to develop an antidote. Damon admits that he killed Wes. Elena’s not happy about that, since she told him not to for Aaron’s sake. Matt interrupts to bring Damon his next blood ration, so Damon’s off the hook for talking about Aaron for a while.
Enzo has been hanging out with the Travelers for the past few weeks, so he can answer Stefan and Caroline’s questions about what Sloan meant about needing another Stefan. Markos, the Travelers’ leader, wants blood from the last remaining pair of doppelgangers, Stefan and Elena (which is why the Travelers got a bucket of their blood). But there’s another Stefan doppelganger, and as long as he’s alive, the blood doesn’t do anything. Sloan wants to link Stefan to that doppelganger so she can find him and kill him. Stefan’s understandably hesitant to agree to that, considering what happened when Qetsiyah linked him to Silas, but Sloan doesn’t seem like the type to take no for an answer.
Elena hallucinates running into Aaron and telling him that Katherine took over her body. She sees that his room is empty. He tells her he’s not really there, and she imagines him covered in blood. She realizes he’s dead and emotionally asks if she killed him.
A dormmate named Luke snaps Elena back to reality, thinking she’s out of it because she’s drunk. He was supposed to spend spring break in Cancun with his boyfriend, but said boyfriend dumped him after accusing him of cheating, so Luke came home early. He knows who Elena is but not vice versa – they met at the Bitter Ball, so he actually befriended Katherine. She apparently told him about her crush on Stefan.
Elena finds it hard to concentrate on their conversation since all she can think about is drinking Luke’s blood. She compels him to stand still while she feeds him her blood and kills him to turn him. But she stops when she sees a scar on his neck – the scar his boyfriend thought was a hickey, and therefore proof that he was cheating – and realizes that Katherine was feeding on him. She compels Luke to forget their conversation, find Bonnie, and tell her to bring Liv to the dorm to take down the boundary spell.
Elena calls Damon, anxious over her progressing illness and her inability to tell what’s real. She thinks she killed Aaron and Damon’s been delaying having to tell her. He promises to tell her everything, but not right now. Elena thinks this is the perfect time, since she’s getting sicker and almost turned Luke. Damon tries to calm her, promising to help her through this. Elena accuses him of lying and asks why everyone is keeping things from her.
She hangs up, so Damon summons Matt to his cell and tells him to charge his phone. He puts it on the ground so Matt has to kneel near him to pick it up. When Matt gets close to him, Damon grabs him and pulls off his Gilbert ring. Matt yells for Jeremy, and Damon threatens to kill Matt if Jeremy doesn’t let him go to Elena before she hurts herself. Damon promises not to hurt her.
Stefan is willing to submit to Sloan’s spell, though Caroline thinks that would be a bad idea. He jokes that if he loses his memory again, he won’t remember that there was something to worry about. She can’t believe he’s going to voluntarily submit to “witchy electric shock therapy.” He says he would do it for her if necessary. He asks her to remind him that they were friends if anything goes wrong.
Stefan tells Sloan he’ll do what she wants, but he wants Elena and Damon’s antidotes first. Enzo offers to deliver them, inviting Caroline to tag along if she doesn’t trust him. She wants to stay with Stefan instead. Sloan takes some of Stefan’s blood and starts the linking spell, which doesn’t look pleasant for him.
Bonnie and Liv arrive at the dorm, where Elena’s burning everything Katherine helped herself to while impersonating her. She’s still upset that no one noticed she wasn’t herself. She tells Liv to drop the boundary spell, then threatens to kill Bonnie if she doesn’t cooperate. Bonnie tells her that the virus is making her act like this, and if she gives in to it, Katherine wins. Elena agrees, but she just can’t fight her urge to feed. She breaks a field hockey stick someone left in the lounge and throws it at Liv, impaling her. Now Liv has to drop the boundary spell to get access to Elena’s blood so she can heal.
Sloan’s spell is working, and it allows her and Stefan to see what his doppelganger, Tom, sees. He’s in Atlanta, working as a paramedic. Sloan insists on going deeper to get more information. With enough power, she can kill Tom. But that would hurt Stefan, so Caroline stops her, putting a blade to her neck. Sloan warns that the Travelers will take her out if she kills Sloan. Caroline orders her to tell them to stop the spell.
Looks like Liv followed her own orders because Elena’s now stumbling around Whitmore’s quad, getting sicker by the minute. She hallucinates Aaron again but now thinks he’s alive. He’s actually Damon, who gives her some of Stefan’s blood. She tells him Katherine won: “The plague of Katherine Pierce lives on.” Elena’s a monster now. She almost killed Liv, she wants to hurt her friends, and she murdered Aaron. Damon finally tells her that he’s the one who killed Aaron.
Elena asks if he turned Aaron to feed on him. Damon admits that it was before he was infected with the Ripper virus. He wanted to convince himself that “Elena” was right about him being a killer who would never change. He presses her to say something, but Enzo has arrived with the antidotes, so that’ll have to wait. He quips that Damon and Elena would probably both prefer death right now.
Caroline sits with an unconscious Stefan while he recovers from the spell in the rail yard. When he wakes up, he messes with her by pretending he thinks she’s Rebekah, then Lexi. Enzo’s there to take Caroline on a road trip. She explains that since she stopped the spell before Sloan could kill Tom, she had to agree to take care of things by other means. Caroline and Enzo are going to Atlanta to kill Tom themselves. Stefan doesn’t like that idea, but Caroline doesn’t want to risk the Travelers killing him instead. Enzo refuses to let Stefan come along, so Stefan will have to let Caroline go off with Enzo alone. She knows Stefan would do the same for her.
Liv is much cheerier than someone who almost got killed by a vampire would normally be. She’s proud to be able to say she survived her first vampire attack. Bonnie gives her the chance to bow out of the gang’s activities, but Liv wants to learn more magic, and she wants Bonnie to teach her.
She heads to her dorm room, magically lighting a bunch of candles like the witch pro she really is. Luke is waiting for her for a post-mortem. He’s her brother, and he regrets dragging Liv into things, but he had to let Elena believe she’d compelled him. Liv says Bonnie (whom they know is the anchor) still believes that Liv is a newbie witch and needs to be taught basic spells. Liv thinks it’s cute, but Luke knows it won’t last once Bonnie finds out her friends are in danger.
With the Ripper virus out of their systems and no more Katherine screwing things up, Elena and Damon are finally able to be in the same room at the same time. But their reunion at Vamp Villa isn’t happy. She’s upset that he wasn’t able to tell that she was really Katherine. If he had, they wouldn’t have been infected and he wouldn’t have killed Aaron. Damon takes responsibility for his actions, though he also says that Elena has so much control over him that losing her led him to kill Aaron. Elena replies that he has the same control over her, since she’s still with him.
Damon declares their relationship toxic. He killed her friend and she’s blaming someone else. She blasts him for screwing up once again, which means she has to bend her morals and defend him again, because she loves him. He tells her to stop loving him, but she can’t. Damon says that’s the problem. The two of them don’t work. Elena agrees, so they decide to end things.
Then they make out and rip each other’s clothes off in his bed.
Etc.: They should have at least put Elena in lockdown somewhere in Mystic Falls instead of leaving her at Whitmore. They also should have given her a babysitter because leaving her alone was just asking for something to go wrong.
How is Stefan not more freaked out that there’s a doppelganger? I think I would be freaked out.
No points to the show for being like, “Let’s add some diversity by making Luke gay!” and then promptly forgetting to make it actually mean something. Also no points for never giving him even the slightest amount of character development, so that after season 6, we forget he ever existed.
An Eternity of Misery 