The Travelers are on the move again, so a woman named Maria wakes up her husband so they can get going. Her husband is Julian, the Passenger in Tyler’s body, and he’s currently unavailable because Tyler’s emerged. Tyler’s very confused to wake up to a woman he doesn’t know kissing him. He pretends to be Julian and she doesn’t catch on. She tells him that Markos is ready to do the spell that will allow the Travelers to settle down in Mystic Falls. He’s going to grab Stefan and Elena today. Tyler makes himself wolf out so he can break out of the chains Markos put on him. Maria tries to get Julian to emerge, but it doesn’t work, and Tyler is able to escape.
Luke has been trying to do a locator spell at Vamp Villa for a while, but he’s only succeeded in repeating the same thing so many times that he’s annoyed Damon into throwing ice cubes at him. Luke is supposed to be finding Enzo, and he doesn’t know why he’s not having any luck. Stefan plays innocent and asks why Damon wants to find Enzo. Damon says that Enzo flipped his switched and wants him dead, so it would be smart for Damon to have a heads-up about where he is. Stefan suggests that Enzo got a witch to do a cloaking spell to hide him.
Tyler arrives and announces that they have a problem. He tells the Salvatores about what Markos did with the doppelgangers’ blood and how it kills vampires. Luke wants to know what it’ll do to witches. Everyone ignores him. Stefan and Damon guess that the Travelers will next come after Stefan and Elena. Damon thinks the solution is simple: just kill Markos. Unfortunately, Tyler doesn’t know where the Travelers are going. Also, nothing on this show is ever that simple.
Damon tries to put Luke to work with another locator spell, but Luke knows he won’t find the Travelers before they find the doppelgangers. Damon asks if he can do a cloaking spell instead. Luke says yes, if Stefan and Elena are in the same place. Damon tells Tyler to try to figure out where the Travelers are going. He, Stefan, and Elena (“our ex-girlfriend”) will hide out somewhere from the Travelers. Stefan fakes enthusiasm for that.
The gang decides to use a cabin Bill used to own as the hideout. Stefan and Elena aren’t looking forward to holing up with Damon. As an added wrinkle, they’re keeping the secret that Stefan killed Enzo. Caroline is also at the cabin, and she gets suspicious when she catches Stefan and Elena talking quietly. Damon’s helping Luke set up for his spell, though Elena thinks that’s mostly so he can avoid her. Stefan tells her that Damon was the one who got her home after Enzo kidnapped her.
Caroline catches them chatting and laughing again and comments that they seem to be handling their possible impending doom well. Stefan says he’s been in worse situations. As they head inside, Caroline pauses as if she senses something. Maybe it’s Enzo’s ghost, hanging around unseen. She walks right through him and he laments that it didn’t feel as good as he’d expected.
Damon makes small talk with Elena, who used to come to the cabin as a kid, before Bill and Liz split up. Bill told great ghost stories. Damon hopes his ghost isn’t hanging around. Elena tells him to respect the dead, and he replies, “I respect that he’s dead.” Heh. He knows he’s supposed to be avoiding Elena, though that’s by his own choice. He’s not sure if that’s really what he wants. Elena gives him permission to leave if he doesn’t want to stay, though she’s not sure she actually wants him to go.
Damon apologizes for the fact that Enzo went after Elena to hurt him. He plans to hunt Enzo down, beat him up, and force him to apologize. Elena makes up an excuse to leave the room so she doesn’t have to play along like she doesn’t know Enzo’s gone for good.
Bonnie and Jeremy take advantage of an empty Super Suite to make out. He can’t stop thinking about what’s happening on the Other Side, though. She repeats her lie that Liv is working on a spell to keep her in the real world. Jeremy gets a text telling him that Tyler’s back, so they decide to go to Mystic Falls. When he leaves the room, Bonnie blips to the Other Side. Sheila confronts her for lying about Liv’s spell and not telling Jeremy how serious things are on there. When the Other Side collapses, Bonnie will be gone.
Bonnie wants a few more days to enjoy her relationship before she breaks this to Jeremy. But things are getting worse – Sheila accidentally knocks over a lamp, which means she’s able to interact with the real world, something that isn’t supposed to happen. She urges Bonnie to tell Jeremy the truth: “False hope doesn’t protect him, it protects you.”
Stefan and Elena go to a shed to get fire wood/have a private conversation about how she doesn’t like keeping secrets from Damon. Enzo watches them there, annoyed that they’re sweeping his death under the rug and are just going to wait until Damon forgets about him. After they leave, Enzo angrily bats at a hanging light fixture and is pleased to realize that, like Sheila, he can interact with real objects.
In the kitchen, Caroline is brainstorming suggestions for a game of charades. The theme is secrets people think they’re getting away with hiding. Damon asks how someone’s supposed to act out Watergate. I suggest doing a silent Richard Nixon “I am not a crook” thing, which will automatically make people think of Watergate. Anyway, Caroline says Stefan and Elena, AKA Stelena, will figure it out. Damon asks what he’s missing and she tells him that Stefan and Elena have seemed secretive recently. Damon thinks it has something to do with Enzo, since Elena acted weird when Damon mentioned him. Caroline doesn’t think that’s it – she suspects that Stefan and Elena are getting back together. Damon decides to keep an eye out for indications that Caroline’s right.
Jeremy makes a wolfsbane/vervain concoction at Vamp Villa, an activity very different from what he and Bonnie had planned for their weekend together. Matt chains Tyler up in a cell so he and Jeremy can get Julian to come forth and talk to them. (Bonnie bows out of participating.) Julian isn’t interested in telling the guys anything, so Jeremy force-feeds him the wolfsbane/vervain cocktail.
As the Travelers head to their new camp, Markos asks Maria why she couldn’t tell that Julian wasn’t really Julian. Right?? She says she didn’t know Tyler would reemerge so quickly. Markos doesn’t like her excuse and tells her to find her husband and make him a permanent Passenger in Tyler’s body. The rest of the Travelers need to find Stefan and Elena.
That night, while Luke sits on the cabin porch, keeping the cloaking spell in place, the others play charades. Elena and Stefan make a great team, which feeds Caroline’s theory that they’re an item again. Damon wants to switch the game to Never Have I Ever, where someone names something they’ve never done, and anyone who’s done it has to drink. I think Damon is sad that he never got to go to a sleepover when he was a teenager.
Caroline starts off with making everyone drink because they’ve all died. Stefan makes Elena drink because she was possessed by her evil doppelganger. She makes the others drink because Katherine fooled them into thinking she was Elena. Caroline cuts to the chase, saying, “Never have I ever kissed a Salvatore brother…today.” Elena’s confused, but Caroline doesn’t enlighten her. Stefan tries to lighten the growing tension, but Damon blurts out, “Never have I ever lied about where Enzo is.” Stefan and Elena stay silent and don’t drink. Damon reminds them of the rules of the game, but Stefan continues to play innocent.
Elena decides this is a good time to end the party and get ready for bed. She goes upstairs to take a bath, unaware that Enzo’s watching her. He lets her get relaxed in the tub, then pushes her head under the water. She fights him, managing to get her head above water long enough to yell for Damon. When he comes in, he just sees her flailing in the bathtub until Enzo lets her go. Damon thinks a ghost was trying to hurt Elena, but he doesn’t know whose ghost would target her.
Matt and Jeremy continue their interrogation/torture session, but Julian’s still too stubborn to talk. He doesn’t think they’ll hurt him, since Markos destroyed the Traveler’s knife, and killing Julian now would require killing Tyler. Jeremy and Matt exchange a look, then move to plan B. Matt stabs Julian with a stake and demands to know where Markos is. For some reason, this breaks Julian and he tells the guys he doesn’t know where the Travelers are. He does know where his body is, though. Markos doesn’t like problems, such as Tyler escaping, so he’s going to try to get rid of Tyler for good by making Julian permanent in his body. That means destroying Julian’s body.
Stefan calls Bonnie to ask if things are getting worse on the Other Side. She confirms that people over there can now physically interact with the real world. Stefan guesses that that means Enzo is the one messing with them. Caroline hears the end of the phone conversation and realizes that Enzo’s dead. Now Caroline knows the real reason Stefan and Elena have been so secretive.
Damon enters, also having eavesdropped, and he’s pretty unhappy about Stefan and Elena lying to him. Stefan points out that that’s not their biggest problem right now. Damon calls out for Enzo to knock off what he’s doing. Caroline asks why Enzo would try to hurt Elena by drowning her, which wouldn’t kill her. Amused, Enzo encourages the gang to figure out what he’s really up to. Damon does: The stunt in the bathtub was just a distraction. Enzo’s going to take all of them out at once. They run outside and discover that Luke is no longer on the porch, which means the group now has two threats to deal with, Enzo and the Travelers.
Caroline and Elena go looking for Luke in the woods. Caroline’s unhappy that Stefan and Elena didn’t tell her about Enzo, since that just made things awkward for everyone. Elena’s like, “I don’t remember making you accuse me and Stefan of secretly being back together.” She’s not even sure where Caroline got that idea. Caroline admits that she isn’t, either. Off on their own search, Stefan wants to talk to Damon about Enzo, but Damon says he would have killed Enzo if he were in Stefan’s position. In fact, he would have done it months ago. Stefan says he didn’t want to kill his brother’s friend. Damon replies that because they were friends, he should have know that Enzo was dead.
Bonnie and Jeremy go to a cave where the Travelers have stashed the bodies of those who are now Passengers inside Mystic Falls residents. There are a lot more of them than the gang thought. Back at the cabin, Damon asks Stefan what he thought Damon would do when he found out Enzo was dead. Stefan admits that he was worried that Damon would hate him. They hear noises nearby and find Luke unconscious in the shed. Enzo has spilled gasoline on the floor, and when the Salvatores enter, he ignites it.
Enzo slams the door to the shed closed before Damon can leave. He stakes Stefan through the back so he can’t grab Luke, then shoves a big piece of wood into Damon’s stomach, pinning him to the wall. “If only this wasn’t totally avoidable!” Damon says sarcastically. Stefan would prefer not to hear an “I told you so” right now. Damon says this won’t stop – he killed Maggie, Stefan killed Enzo, and now Enzo’s going to kill both of them.
Damon tells Enzo he can bring him back. If Markos was able to return from the Other Side, so can Enzo. But he has to call off this murder plan first. Also, if the Other Side keeps collapsing, Enzo runs the risk of blinking out of existence, so he’d be smart to place nice so Damon will save him. Enzo thinks it over as Stefan finally pulls out his stake and frees Luke. Enzo decides to accept Damon’s offer and lets him go, warning Damon not to let him down again. Dude, he can’t hear you.
Bonnie and Jeremy locate Julian’s body just moments before Maria and some other Travelers arrive. Jeremy tries to shoot her with a crossbow but she magically deflects the arrow, then makes him choke. While Bonnie’s trying to help him, the Travelers leave with Julian’s body.
Luke is okay but is really regretting getting involved in the chaos that comes with getting close to the gang. He does admire how they protect each other, though; his family isn’t like that. Stefan thinks Damon lied to Enzo about finding a way to bring him back from the Other Side. Damon says there must be a way to do it. As Stefan is trying to smooth things over, Damon punches him. He says that’s the last he’ll address Enzo’s death. Elena isn’t happy with his reaction, but I think Stefan is fine with it. It could have been a lot worse.
Bonnie and Jeremy return to Vamp Villa and tell Matt and a reemerged Tyler that the Travelers took Julian’s body. Tyler’s out of the loop and doesn’t know why they want his body. He suddenly gets hit with Julian’s memories since coming to Mystic Falls. It’s like Elena’s run through the woods while seeing Katherine’s memories, and it means the Travelers are doing the spell to make Julian a permanent Passenger in Tyler’s body.
“Never have I ever had a ghost try to burn me alive,” Stefan says as he joins Caroline in watching the shed burn down. Do you guys not have a fire extinguisher? She confirms that they’re friends and trust each other with secrets. She’s upset that he told Elena about Enzo, but not her. Stefan says he tells Caroline some things Elena doesn’t know, if that makes her feel better. He admits that he might not have wanted Caroline to know he killed Enzo. He didn’t want her to think less of him. He leaves her at the shed for a few more minutes, heading to the car so the group can leave the cabin and find a new hideout.
Elena checks on Damon, who doesn’t see the point in talking about how she kept a secret from him for Stefan. He tells her she was right to protect him from something that would have made him spiral. If he’d acted out, he would have proven that they shouldn’t be together. But he didn’t spiral – he’s holding it together for her. Yeah, he’s still mad, but part of that is because being around her drives him nuts. Then again, not being around her does the same.
They look at each other silently for a few minutes before he kisses her. “What was that for?” she asks. “Because I’ve had a really crappy day, and I needed it,” he replies. He goes inside to finish packing, which means she’s alone when the Travelers descend on her and Markos grabs her.
Etc.: Elena’s justified irritation at her friends for not realizing Katherine was impersonating her pales in comparison to how mad Julian should be that his own wife didn’t realize he wasn’t himself.
Can we all agree that there’s no reason for Damon to stay at the cabin with Stefan and Elena, and the writers never offer a viable excuse for it?
Caroline planning games instead of just letting people hang out is perfectly on brand for her, and a nice reminder of that side of her.
Please note that when Enzo is trying to drown Elena, she calls out for Damon, not Stefan.
Enzo needs to get past his obsession with fire. Maybe he can have a therapy session with Cami about that.
I don’t get why Enzo tries to kill Stefan and Damon first. Why not kill Elena and make Damon watch?
An Eternity of Misery 