Blake is throwing footballs around on Mystic Falls High’s field by himself at night. Ethan joins him and says a guy hooked him up with something that made his arm feel better than ever. It has no side effects and is completely undetectable. The Stallions are on a losing streak, so Blake could use the help.
He goes with Ethan to an old train yard, where Blake is skeptical about Malidon fixing him up. Malidon says that he spent centuries obsessed with consuming creatures, but he had it all backwards. He conjures a ball of Malivore goo in his hand. Blake yells for help and Ethan restrains him. “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine,” Malidon says. Those are Landon’s favorite last words, but “help” is good, too.
The Super Squad has been working hard at finding Ethan and Malidon, with no luck. Hope guesses that Malidon is cloaking himself. Alaric tells her and Kaleb that they’ll have to wait until the werewolves pick up their scent. Hope objects to sitting around and doing nothing, but Alaric says it’s basically a hostage situation. They can’t do something reckless and risk losing Landon, Cleo, and Ethan. Hope isn’t interested in Alaric’s opinion since he let Malidon leave in the first place and kept what he and Kaleb knew about Landon from her. Alaric says he had to make a judgment call.
Dorian, who stopped by to help, decides this is a good time to leave. On his way out, he sides with Hope about the secret-keeping. She thinks Alaric and Kaleb kept her in the dark because they didn’t think she could handle difficult news. Alaric says that’s not true but won’t tell her the real reason.
Hope gets a sword from his hidden weapons stash, planning to go find Malidon herself. Alaric warns that she could make things worse, but she’s not about to try his genius “just wait” strategy. Kaleb calls her out for thinking she’s the only person who cares. Remember how she agreed to be a team player? Hope snarks that her team lied to her, so she had to make a judgment call.
Inside Malivore, Cleo hasn’t made any progress finding a door that will lead her out. She conjures a ball of light and sends it out into the darkness so she can use ecolocation to find out if anything’s out there. M.G. and Lizzie pause their parts in the Malidon search to discuss how Alaric lied to Hope. M.G. thinks he made the right decision since it was for the greater good. Lizzie compares it to the trolley problem. She blames herself for what happened to Ethan, but M.G. tells her that Ethan wanted to be supernatural. M.G. left him defenseless. Lizzie thinks he chose the greater good, too: “Trolley’s gotta go somewhere.” They hear an alert on the police scanner of something happening at a packing plant.
Jed decides to split up the pack to continue the search for Ethan and Malidon, and he assigns Finch to lead a group at the falls. Josie pops up to tell her that when she was a kid, Lizzie dared her to hide by the falls and she got lost for a day and a half. Finch doesn’t really want to hear a story about Lizzie putting Josie in danger. Josie gets that Finch is having trouble coming to terms with the merge, which Josie’s known about a lot longer. Finch can take all the time she needs to adjust. Finch wants to know that if the merge happens, Josie will try to win. She can’t be with Josie if Josie’s already decided not to fight for her life.
Hope gets to the packing plant before the Super Squad and takes on a monster that’s on fire inside. (I don’t think it ever gets named here, but it’s a cherufe.) She stabs it with her sword, which just makes it leak lava. She asks where Malidon is, and the cherufe laughs and says with Landon’s voice that he’s right in front of her. “Do you like my new foot soldier?” he asks. “I made him especially for you.” Hope isn’t impressed by this distraction, but Malidon says it’s a warning for what the fight will cost her. The monsters will keep coming until all her friends are dead.
Hope advises him to make sure his next monster doesn’t have such a loud heartbeat. She sends some steel rods lying nearby into the cherufe’s chest, killing it. The Super Squad runs in just then and Hope assures them that she took care of things. But the cherufe wasn’t really Malidon – it was Blake. Hope has made her second-ever human kill.
Once Alaric has taken care of the traditional cover-up, he tries to comfort Hope, saying there was no way she could have known that she was fighting a human. That doesn’t make her feel better. She thinks there’s only one option left: “I have to become the tribrid before anyone else gets hurt.”
She heads to her room with Alaric on her heels, chastising her for ignoring him when he’s trying to talk to her. Man, he really does act like her father sometimes. Kaleb uses his vamp hearing to eavesdrop for Josie, Lizzie, and M.G. as Alaric says there has to be another option. Hope disagrees and reminds him that they’ve always known this day would come. M.G. reports to the others that Hope may die and activate her vampire side.
Hope knows there’s nothing else they can do to stop Malivore or the monsters he’ll keep sending their way. She won’t be able to live with the deaths of more innocent people. Alaric advises her to calm down, because telling a teen girl (or any woman, really) to calm down when she’s upset is a brilliant idea. Hope thinks that the vampire hunter he was when she first met him would have already made this decision. It’s the right thing to do.
Alaric doesn’t think it’ll work – Hope isn’t ready. She thinks that he doesn’t trust her. He reminds her that becoming the tribrid will give her unimaginable amounts of power, and no matter how strong she thinks she is, she’s Klaus’ daughter. So…he’s saying that if she activates her vampire side, she’ll eventually become evil? Nice. Hope coldly kicks him out of her room, telling him this isn’t his choice. Alaric warns that if she destroys Malivore, she’ll destroy Landon and Cleo, too, so she’d better be ready to give up on them.
Josie’s unhappy with the way Alaric talked to Hope, but he doesn’t care. She tells Lizzie that she thinks she knows who he’ll listen to. Caroline? If only. Alaric tells Kaleb and M.G. to research how to remove a parasite from a host. They need to find a way to get Malivore out of the people he’s infected before Hope goes through with her plan.
M.G. is fine with being a team player again, but Kaleb isn’t. They’re in a race here. Research is for Pintos; they’re “supernatural Maseratis.” Pintos won’t beat Hope in a race. M.G. wants Hope to be able to make her own choice, but Kaleb thinks that Landon, Cleo, and Ethan deserve to make their own choices, too. He tells M.G. it’s time to pick a side. M.G. replies that he may know how to stop Hope.
Josie and Lizzie let Hope know that they’ll support her in whatever she does. Before she makes any big decisions, she wants to go see someone who knows Landon better than anyone. She’ll need the twins’ help to get to him. That person is Rafael, who’s still living his best life (over and over and over) in the prison world. He’s also been enjoying having Excalibur by his side all the time.
Rafael tries to distract her from her guilt over killing Blake by talking about fishing. He thinks they should call this a mirror world instead of a prison world: “It’s only a prison if you feel trapped.” Hope admires how he’s able to make the best of wherever he is. He says he learned that from Landon. She tells him that if she kills Malivore, she might also kill everyone inside him. Rafael assures her that he’ll find a way to understand whatever she chooses to do. Landon would understand, too – he’d be willing to sacrifice himself to save others. Losing him wouldn’t be easy, but Rafael thinks he would find peace, which he deserves after his difficult life.
Dorian returns to the school, having been called by Josie, and shows Alaric a file he’s been compiling over the years. It contains a list of contacts and spells. It’s Dorian’s playbook for the day of the twins’ merge. It even contains blank letters that they can write to each other. Whichever one survives will get a goodbye from her sister and a promise of forgiveness. Dorian knows that Alaric won’t be able to think straight if the merge ever comes up; he’ll fight it until the last second. But if it does happen, they’ll need a plan: “There are some things that can’t be avoided, no matter how hard we try.”
Today is another one they’ve been trying to avoid, but Alaric knows as well as Dorian does that Hope can’t outrun becoming the tribrid forever. Whether Alaric is ready or not, it’s happening. Will he make Hope face it by herself?
M.G. and Kaleb go out into the woods, where M.G. brings up the trolley problem. He thinks they need to save the greatest number of people. Kaleb accepts that M.G. has made his choice, but he’s not making the same one. M.G. snaps his neck apologetically, sure that Kaleb will understand when he revives that Hope deserves their trust.
Cleo has found the ice cream parlor in the darkness. It’s wrecked and full of dozing monsters. She sneaks past them to the freezer, but as she opens it, the monsters start waking up. In the prison world, Hope asks if Rafael has any advice for how to face her last day, since he did pretty well with his. “I was only as good as the family around me,” he says. He doesn’t want her to be a lone wolf here. She doesn’t think she has a choice about that.
When she returns to the real world, she sees that the Super Squad has arranged a celebration of sorts for her. They want to hang out at the old mill, have dinner together, and share stories. Alaric tells her the school is her home, and if she’s going to become the tribrid, it should be there, with her friends and classmates.
Jed is stunned to come across Cleo in the woods. She tells him that she knows how Malivore can destroy Hope, and she’s worried that he’s already figured it out. They run off to warn her. At the old mill, where everyone’s enjoying themselves despite knowing what’s coming, people start sharing their favorite Hope memories. Wade’s is when Hope got annoyed with a professor during exams (to be fair, she was sleep-deprived because of the night hag) and spelled him so that he could only speak ancient Babylonian. Hope protests that there’s no proof that was her, then corrects that it was Sumerian. Dorian’s favorite Hope memory is when a slug left a trail of slime on her face.
M.G. asks what Hope will miss the most. She’s not sure what will happen to her magic, and she says she’d miss doing spells, especially with Josie and Lizzie. Lizzie replies that they were hoping she’d say that. The three girls go to a spot on the lawn that the twins have already marked off. They do a spell together that makes a tree sapling start to grow. Josie calls it “a promise of new life.” “And a new life full of promise,” Lizzie says. Alaric finds them and Hope says she thinks she’s ready.
Cleo and Jed reach the school…but when Cleo goes inside, she finds herself back in darkness. In Jed’s form, Malivore gives her a sarcastic slow clap. He’s proud of himself for the amount of detail he put into this trick. He’s also impressed with Cleo’s idea for how to kill Hope. He disappears and Cleo screams in frustration.
Kaleb finds Malidon’s hideout, explaining that since a candle he’s using to hide from the werewolves eliminates sounds as well as smells, he just listened for a really quiet place. Malidon tells him he was dumb for coming to fight alone. Kaleb says he’s actually there to make an offer.
Alaric takes Hope to her room to collect some mementos she can have with her during her transition. When she wakes up, she’ll be disoriented and really emotional, so she should have something comforting with her. She just takes a couple of photos, including one of herself with the twins. He gives her a drawing she did when she first got to the school, using an art set he gave her. It’s of her and Alaric sparring, with Caroline and the twins looking on. Hope comments that his family seemed so happy and she just wanted to be a part of it. “You are,” he assures her.
He’s sorry for what he said earlier. He’s the one who’s not ready for her to become the tribrid. The old Alaric would have let her do it without hesitation because he was an idiot and didn’t know what it would be like to watch her grow up. He didn’t know who she would become. That person is someone he dearly respects and loves. “You have everything you need,” he tells her.
She cries and thanks him, but he thinks she should hold on to that gratitude until he makes one last confession. The family meal and the spell with the twins were just a stall tactic so someone would have time to get there. He takes her to Landon’s room, where Freya’s waiting for her.
Alone with her niece, Freya notices that Hope is still wearing the Mikaelson insignia Rebekah gave her. “You’re going to be this beautiful forever,” Freya notes. “Rebekah’s going to be so jealous.” Rebekah wanted to be there but couldn’t make the trip in time. (No word on whether Kol was contacted or has any clue what’s going on.)
Hope asks what it will feel like to transition. Freya tells her how Elijah once described it to her: “At first there’s nothing, but then you slowly start to realize that there’s nothing.” Colors and sounds will be different. She’ll feel things she’s never been able to sense before. It could be overwhelming, but Freya’s sure Hope will be able to handle it. There’s nothing for her to worry about. She jokes that she only came to town to get a milkshake from the Grill and be able to say that she was there for the birth of the one and only tribrid.
Hope hesitantly brings up something she’s been worrying about: Klaus had a lot of wonderful qualities, but what if her transition gives her some of his less-than-wonderful qualities? He used to say that the good in Hope came from Hayley, so what if she becomes more like Klaus and loses what she has left of her mother? Freya tells her that she’s equal parts of her parents, and Hayley “would never disappear without a fight.”
People have always been afraid that Hope would turn out like her father, but Freya loved him. He was flawed and complicated, but he was also loyal. “He would have let the world burn just to save the people he loved,” Freya says. “But you – you’re willing to let go of someone you love to save innocent people that you’ll never even meet. So I think that you’re already better than all of us, and that your father and mother would say the same.”
Lizzie waits with Alaric until Hope’s transition is done. She asks if they should talk about the possibility of her or Josie becoming a vampire to thwart the merge. Alaric just says it’s possible. Lizzie isn’t volunteering or anything; she just knows it’s an option. He agrees that they need to consider all their options, because the day they’re afraid of might come. Lizzie asks if they can talk about it more often so it isn’t just looming over them. Alaric gives her Dorian’s file, ready to accept that he might not be able to avoid the merge forever.
Josie finds Finch back at the old mill after everyone’s left. She can’t say that she’ll try to win the merge, since it means her sister will die, but she knows Finch gets that. She thinks Finch is looking for a reason to leave her instead of a reason to stay with her. Josie doesn’t know everything about Finch, but she knows that Finch has spent her life running. “Is it easier when it’s the other person’s fault?” Josie asks.
Finch says it’s never easy, but what is she supposed to do when the person she’s falling for might not be around in the future? “You stay anyway,” Josie tells her firmly. Hope is doing the unthinkable, and it’s scary and sad, but it’s kind of beautiful, too, because she has people by her side to help her through it. One day, Josie might also have to do the unthinkable. She’s not sure what she’ll choose, but she’ll need someone who will love her no matter what, because she wants to be surrounded by people who will face death with her and not run. “For once, I want someone to love me enough to stay and fight, even if it is a lost cause, because I’m worth that,” she says.
Freya tells Hope how proud she is of her for making this difficult decision. She helps Hope relax, then uses magic to slow and then stop Hope’s heart.
Hope wakes up in limbo. She follows a sound to limbo’s version of the dock on the school grounds, where she finds the Ferryman waiting for her. He points out across the water, where bright lights are shining. Hope asks if she’s supposed to go there to complete her transition. The Ferryman shakes his head. Hope is confused for a moment, then asks if he’s pointing her toward peace.
Kaleb joins M.G. as he’s checking in on Hope. Kaleb isn’t mad about what M.G. did; he knows they couldn’t have stopped Hope anyway. He admits that he almost went too far. M.G. convinced him that someone will get hurt no matter what. M.G. promises that they’ll save Cleo. Kaleb embraces him, his eyes turning black. “I already did,” he says. He pulls back and punches M.G. so hard that he flies up and hits the ceiling. Dragon wings emerge from Kaleb’s back as he smiles to himself over how powerful he is now.
Lizzie comes in later with snacks for M.G. He’s still there, unconscious. The window is broken and burning, and Kaleb and Hope are both gone.
Etc.: Dorian’s list of people to call in case of the merge includes Bonnie, Elena, Damon, Jeremy, Matt, Freya, Emma, and Vardemus.
Speaking of Dorian, this is his last episode, which is too bad. He was a great addition to the cast, and I liked seeing his story continue after The Vampire Diaries.
It would have been fun if they’d spent the season having Malivore jump into different people’s bodies, so everyone could get a chance to play a villain.
The big dinner at the old mill reminds me so much of the Mikaelsons’ last dinner together. I’m sure that was intentional.
As much as I like that Freya came to be with Hope, I wish Rebekah or another vampire had been there. Freya could offer her comfort and encouragement, but not answers to Hope’s questions about transitioning.
Also, Freya doesn’t stick around until Hope revives after her transition, which seems weird to me. Wouldn’t she need her family even more then than before?
An Eternity of Misery 