Josie goes out to the old mill in the middle of the night to see Jade. Josie’s been thinking about her and wanted to make sure she’s okay. Jade has been thinking about Josie, too, and the two of them start kissing. Suddenly the version of Josie who took in all the black magic (hereafter Dark Josie) appears and warns Normal Josie that Alaric will be mad if he finds her out past curfew.
Josie wakes up from this dream to find Lizzie watching her. She thinks Josie was having a sex dream. She really hopes it wasn’t about either Landon or Hope. Josie denies that it was about sex. It also might not have been a dream, since her feet are dirty, as if she was walking outside barefoot.
Emma tells someone that supernaturals carry a burden. While getting dressed, Rafael sees a scar on his side and has a flashback to M.G. finding him in the trailer. Emma voices over that people deal with traumas differently – some process them, while others bury them. Alaric watches Josie in a classroom, where she’s acting like everything’s normal.
Emma is talking to Hope, Rafael, Josie, Lizzie, and M.G. in the gym. Hope preempts whatever Emma’s going to say next to admit that she isolates herself because the people she cares about are always in danger. She doesn’t think she needs therapy, since she already understands why she acts the way she does. Also, she’d like to be dismissed so she can keep an eye on Landon while he’s practicing flying. Emma tells her that she’s there for a group session about improving methods for processing trauma. Lizzie’s the only one who’s okay with it. Emma tells the kids that they’ll all be participating.
She shows them a box that was created by Rupert Vardemus – the real Vardemus. It’s a twist on a chambre de chasse. (We just call it the therapy box.) All the students’ psychological concerns will be transferred into the box, where they’ll create a fictional world that the students will all become part of. They’ll be unconscious in the real world, and unlike in a chambre de chasse, they won’t know that they’re in a simulation. When they reach the end of their story, they’ll get an escape word. When they say it out loud, they’ll become self-aware, exit the simulation, and wake up.
Jade joins the group, explaining her lateness by saying she had weird dreams the night before. Emma reassures the students that the scenario they’re about to experience is all fake. She’ll be there the whole time, and she’ll be self-aware, so she can keep an eye on everyone. Lizzie urges everyone to think of a tropical setting.
Instead, they get a black-and-white film noir world. M.G. narrates as a private investigator looking for his missing partner. He’s in Mystic Falls to check out a club called Landon’s, “a place where the lost things go.” Emma’s already there, singing on stage. Josie and Lizzie are patrons, watching a photographer (Rafael) who’s been following them. Lizzie’s an actress, so she’s happy for the free publicity. Josie, her publicist, wants to control the narrative. Lizzie gives her permission to scare Rafael off.
Hope, who runs the bar, catches M.G. staring at Lizzie and calls him on it. He shows Hope a picture of his missing partner, Vardemus, but she says she’s not familiar with him. M.G. puts pressure on her, saying he knows that her liquor license is expired. She advises him to talk to Emma. But when he goes to see her in her dressing room, he finds her dead. Vardemus is kneeling next to her, holding a necklace. He introduces himself to M.G. as Sherlock Holmes. In the real world, Emma wakes up and wonders how it’s possible that she was ejected from the therapy box.
The next morning, M.G. checks on Vardemus, whom he locked up in their office overnight. He thinks Vardemus was drunk the night before, which is why he’s having trouble with his memory. Vardemus keeps insisting that he’s Holmes and his partner’s name is Watson. He woke up to a changed world but remembers the case he was working on before. He was searching for a gem, the blue carbuncle. He saw it around Emma’s neck in a news ad “for this dreary world.”
M.G. notes that Emma’s dead and Vardemus’ fingerprints are all over her body. Vardemus is skeptical about that, since he was wearing gloves the night before. He asks if M.G. has figured out yet that Emma died of cyanide poisoning. M.G. realizes that it was in her champagne. Vardemus tells him to find the person who poisoned it. M.G. replies that he’s the sidekick and Vardemus is the brains. Vardemus says he has his own mystery to solve. M.G. tells him that James Ryder stole the gem. He gives Vardemus a copy of Sherlock Holmes stories and hopes that he’ll be back to his normal self when M.G. returns.
At Landon’s, Hope tidies up and gazes at a photo of the man the bar is named for. M.G. picks the lock to get in, and she threatens to call the police on him. She might mention to them that she knew M.G. was going to talk to Emma right before she died. He offers her money, which shuts her up. When she goes to the backroom to get him some whiskey, he looks at her ledger and sees that someone bought champagne under Lizzie’s name.
Lizzie’s on the set of a monster movie she’s completely unimpressed with. She gets murdered by a mer-man! What an insult to her career! Josie notices that Rafael is lurking around again and goes to chase him off. M.G. approaches Lizzie and warns that someone’s trying to kill her. She swoons and collapses in his arms. “Cigarettes kill people, too,” he voices over. “I’d never smoked a day in my life, but in that moment, I understood the urge to put your lips on something you knew was bad for you.”
He takes Lizzie to a kitchen (which looks just like the one at the school) and clarifies that the poisoned champagne Emma drank was intended to go to Lizzie. She doesn’t know who might want her dead; she’s “just a washed-up actress” no one cares about. She doesn’t want to die, no matter how messed up her life is. M.G. promises that his brilliant partner will solve the case. Also, he doesn’t think she’s washed up. Josie comes in with news that she found out who Rafael works for. M.G. leaves, pretending he was just a fan greeting an actress he likes.
Vardemus finishes the story about the blue carbuncle, and the word “liquet” (“clear” or “it is proven”) appears on the page. When Vardemus says it, he remembers who he really is. But before he can leave the therapy box, someone enters the office and pulls a gun on him. “You,” Vardemus says just before he’s shot.
As Emma looks for an explanation as to why she’s out of the box and everyone else is still unconscious, she hears banging coming from a locker. Inside is Vardemus, whom Clarke locked up months ago after putting Vardemus’ mind in the therapy box. Emma’s surprised to hear that he was in the simulation with the others. He tells her that he was murdered.
She wants to end the simulation, but he warns that that will harm the students. A sudden murder mystery indicates that someone in the box is on the verge of a psychological break. If they end the simulation, they could cause permanent harm. They’ll need to let it play out. The students will have to resolve things on their own. Emma asks if Vardemus knows who killed him.
Back in the box, M.G. finds Vardemus’ body. He’s used blood from his gunshot wound to write Josie’s name in the book.
Jade meets Josie for a drink at a hotel bar, seemingly so they can discuss the money Jade’s seeking if Josie doesn’t want her to publish some pictures of Lizzie. Jade has a different topic in mind: She’s figured out that Josie has arranged a fake murder scenario to get Lizzie some publicity. Jade, who happens to be Josie’s ex, bribed a waiter at Landon’s who told her that Josie bought the champagne that killed Emma. Josie admits that it was just supposed to make Lizzie sick; there wasn’t enough cyanide to kill anyone. She doesn’t know how Emma wound up with the champagne.
Jade plans to publish the story and send Josie to prison, which will keep her away from Lizzie. Josie asks Jade to have a drink with her “for old times’ sake.” Jade drinks from Josie’s flask instead and says this is it for them. As M.G. enters the bar, there’s a thump – Jade has collapsed, dead. M.G. easily guesses that Josie was involved.
Now out of the box, Jade complains that the simulation was a waste of time – she already knew she had feelings for Josie. Vardemus says that her early removal from the box means the rules have changed: “Someone’s rewriting them from inside the game itself.” That someone has to have access to powerful magic and is getting people out of the way to get what they want. That’s their killer. Now they need to figure out why they’re killing.
In the box, Hope asks Rafael if the police know who killed Jade. He thinks it’s the same person who killed Emma, but that the cops aren’t too interested in investigating. Hope urges him to develop the photos he took the night of Emma’s death and see if there’s anything helpful in them. He tells her he still talks to Landon, who’s moved to California. Hope is upset with him for leaving, so Rafael encourages her to call and go see him. She’s too stubborn to do it.
M.G. interrogates Josie, who’s confessed to killing Jade but hasn’t said why. She doesn’t think it matters. He should just be happy that he got the confession; it’ll get him a medal. “Medals are for heroes,” he replies. He’s just a guy trying to figure out who poisoned his partner. Josie repeats that it was her – she poisoned Vardemus, Jade, and Emma. M.G. calls her out for lying, since Vardemus was shot, not poisoned. Josie didn’t kill anyone.
“The pieces don’t fit, so why are you trying to make them?” M.G. asks. Because if Josie didn’t hurt anyone, it means Lizzie did. If one of them has to die, Josie would rather it be her. The word “praesidio” (protect) appears on her confession and she becomes self-aware. M.G. doesn’t see the word, and he also doesn’t see the person just outside his door who fires a gun at him. The person shoots Josie next, then puts the gun in her hand.
Lizzie’s back on the set of her movie, drinking. M.G. comes in and accuses her of being the “Mystic Mauler.” She seems shocked to hear that Josie’s dead. M.G. only survived because the bullet hit Josie’s flask, which was in his pocket. It’s actually Lizzie’s flask, and he thinks she used it to poison Emma. She tells him she’s innocent, but she might as well be guilty because she was too self-centered to see that Josie was in danger.
The word “caecus” (confused or blind) appears on the ground and Lizzie becomes self-aware. She’s thrilled to realize that Josie’s not really dead, and that she can now leave the simulation. However, she doesn’t wake up. Now she’s stuck in the simulation fully knowing what’s going on. She suggests that M.G. run away with her instead of arresting her. He asks if she’s making a serious offer, and though she says no, she thinks it’s significant that he considered it when he thinks she’s a killer.
He puts the handcuffs on her and gets his escape word, “heros” (hero). Again, nothing changes in the simulation, and they’re still stuck there. Suddenly there’s a gunshot from a catwalk and M.G. goes down. He tells Lizzie to run and find Hope. As she takes off, M.G. wakes up in the real world. He tells Emma that Lizzie’s trapped despite getting her escape word. Plus, Josie died, so she should have been ejected, but she’s still unconscious.
Hope is packing a suitcase at Landon’s when Lizzie finds her, once again calling her by her full name. Lizzie tries to prove that she knows Hope with her knowledge that Hope keeps people at a distance in case they die. “Please, help me help you,” Lizzie begs, asking to be let into the bar. Hope admits that she’s right about Hope’s treatment of other people, but she’s in the process of changing that – she’s going to see Landon. She won’t let Lizzie in.
Rafael develops his photos and spots a dark figure in the background of one. When he pulls down another picture to get a better look, the word “mortem” (death) appears on it. Before he exits the box, he looks through the other photos, getting agitated. Emma asks him if he had a breakthrough or if the killer got to him. He says he doesn’t know.
Running for her life, Lizzie comes across a delivery truck for a company called Gemini Provisions. “A little on the nose, don’t you think?” she yells. Heh. Josie finds her – more specifically, Dark Josie finds her. “Hello, sister,” she says, like, no, that’s not quite the franchise’s favorite sibling greeting. She doesn’t think Lizzie should be so shocked that Josie’s the murderer: “One of us was always going to become a killer.” Lizzie realizes that this is all about the merge.
Dark Josie says she manipulated everything so the two of them would be the last people standing. Normal Josie was willing to confess to murder so Lizzie could “win.” Dark Josie thinks it’s ironic that she had to kill her normal self so she could survive. Dark Josie is the parts of Normal Josie that she keeps buried – the parts that resent herself and Lizzie for making her weak. Dark Josie rewrote the rules to show that she’s stronger than Lizzie could ever be.
Lizzie says she knew that already. Josie’s always been stronger. Dark Josie pulls a gun on her and says they both knew it would come to this. Lizzie’s willing to admit defeat and get out of the simulation, but Dark Josie plans to keep her mind there, then absorb Lizzie’s body during the merge.
Lizzie begs for her life, saying she loves Josie more than she loves herself. Dark Josie says it’s Lizzie or her, “and there’s no fighting fate.” There’s also no fighting Hope, whom Dark Josie apparently forgot about. She attacks Dark Josie and they fight over the gun. A shot rings out and Dark Josie falls down, dead. Hope decided she couldn’t go see Landon yet if it meant an innocent person would die. “That is such a Hope move,” Lizzie says.
Hope’s escape word, “fatum” (doom or fate), appears on a hotel sign. She doesn’t know what it means, so Lizzie tells her to stay it and she’ll explain it in the real world. They both emerge from the box, giving Emma relief: “I was beginning to think I’d need therapy myself.” But Josie’s still inside.
Lizzie finds M.G. reading comic books later, not for pleasure but for research. He thinks Dark Josie is Josie’s alter ego, so he wants to find a way to help her after she wakes up. Lizzie worries that she won’t, but M.G. says they’ll go get her if they have to. The Super Squad never leaves anyone behind. Lizzie wants to tell her sister how sorry she is for not seeing that she was struggling. She apologizes for only paying attention to M.G. when she needs him for something. He’s fine with it, however, since he learned from the simulation that he can’t solve mysteries unless he believes in himself. He needs to step up and be a superhero instead of sidekick. He hasn’t decided on his superhero name, though. Lizzie suggests the Comforter.
Alaric thanks Emma for conducting the therapy session, which helped him see what they’re up against. Now she and Dorian are leaving the school – it’s not safe there anymore. (Also, Karen David was needed on the set of Fear the Walking Dead.) She needs to prioritize her and Dorian’s health, something she always tells the students to do. “There’ll always be another monster. Another threat,” Emma says. She feels like they’re abandoning Alaric when he needs their help with Josie, but he doesn’t see it that way. “The point of the game is to get out,” he notes. “So I guess you won.”
Rafael examines his scar again, then remembers the photos from the simulation. The figure in the background is the Necromancer. Hope comes to his room and asks if he looked at the pictures. He says he’s not sure what they meant. He asks if she made plans to see Landon, and she says she did, but she didn’t follow through with them. Now she’s looking for him in the real world. Rafael notes that he’s not really gone here, just busy. Hope confides that she wasn’t as clear about her issues as she thought she was. “Sometimes knowing what’s wrong doesn’t make things any easier,” he says.
She worries that the lesson the simulation was trying to teach her is that something will always come between her and Landon. She could have to make an “impossible choice.” Rafael thinks the decision is easy: Choose Landon. Hope says she did, and it felt right, but it wasn’t. If she’d gone to see him in the simulation, she wouldn’t have gotten out of it. She didn’t get her escape word until she chose someone else over Landon. Maybe the lesson is that no matter how much she wants him, they’re doomed. Rafael reminds her that it was just a simulation, but she feels like it was real.
Josie wakes up, and though she looks like her normal self, her father, sister, and friends know she’s not. Lizzie can even feel it now. She says this isn’t Josie. “It is now,” Josie replies, her eyes going black. “So get used to it.” With a snap of her fingers, she turns into her dark self.
Hope plans to put her under with a sleep spell, but Josie does it to her first. “Every Super Squad needs a super-villain,” she reminds M.G. She creates an earthquake, making all the lights flicker. She tells Alaric to stop trying to help her, since she’s never been better. She levitates the floor she’s standing on until she’s risen through the ceiling. With an explosion that sets the school on fire, she strides out the front door, fulfilling her vision.
Etc.: I don’t see the point in keeping Jade around. It feels like they had something bigger planned for her (and Josie) but then backed off. She basically serves no purpose in this episode. I think Alyssa should have taken her place in the simulation.
I’d complain about Alaric and Kaleb not getting to participate in this episode, but they get their own therapy-box adventure in the next one, and it’s a lot more fun than this. Landon has to wait, though.
In a nod to how the characters’ minds shape the film noir world, Landon’s looks like Rousseau’s and the hotel bar looks like the Stefan Salvatore Memorial Library.
Hope and Lizzie hug after they get out of the simulation, so their frenemiship has come a loooooong way.
Just like Nina Dobrev when she played both Elena and Katherine, Kaylee Bryant does an excellent job differentiating between the normal and dark versions of Josie. Just the way she moves makes it obvious which is which.
Seems like this would be a good time for Caroline to come back to the school, right? Hmmm, too bad.
An Eternity of Misery 