The Vampire Diaries S06E10: "Christmas Through Your Eyes"

What is your favorite Christmas song? The obvious answer would be "Mary's Boy Child" by Boney M., but maybe you're more of an "All I Want For Christmas Is You" kind of girl. That's fine too, as it's pretty much the Platonic Ideal of holiday music. But a strong case could also be made for The Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping"; in addition to simply being plain fantastic in all ways, its lyrics tell a story that could weaken anybody's knees. Finding love or acceptance or friendship or warmth or comfort or relief seems especially important at this, the coldest and darkest time of year. And who doesn't love a humbug-to-merriment narrative arc? The writing staff of The Vampire Diaries, apparently! "Christmas Through Your Eyes" marked the show's first proper Christmas episode (apparently college years don't require artificial elongation, so it can finally adhere to traditional one-year-per-season timelines), yet, spoiler alert: It was a MAJOR bummer! Not a bummer in a bad way, just a bummer in a TVD way. Yes, friends, it was a Very Vampire Diaries Christmas.

I mean, leave it to this show to finally unveil a cancer plotline during the Christmas episode. Or feature one character celebrating the holiday alone in a parallel dimension before lighting a Christmas tree on fire. While the lack of any major character deaths was genuinely surprising (this was the fall finale, after all), "Christmas Through Your Eyes" was momentous in at least one big way: The magic-free dome is gone! So while the holiday was miserable for most involved, at least all of our beloved monsters get to go home again. At least there's that.



Let's talk about it!

We started in a bustling Whitmore emergency room where Jo was having a hard time understanding a new patient with suspicious-looking stab wounds.

And in a genuinely shocking moment, Kai jumped up all bloody-faced and syringed her right there in front of everybody! That's right, Kai maimed a group of people and snuck into the ER among them, which seemed kind of extreme to me. Couldn't he have just waited under her car or, I don't know, jumped out at Jo in the Burger King drive-thru after her shift was over? That's what I would have done, but that's just because I like that Hershey pie they got.

Meanwhile in a winter wonderland...

Elena and Bonnie were hanging out! Together! IRL! Except, wait a minute, Bonnie's hair was much too long for the scene to be present-day. That's because it was not present-day. It was a "winter festival" from before Elena or Bonnie knew about vampires. Oh, those were simpler times, weren't they? Still, it was undeniably cute to see the two ladies seem so care-free. Just no way of knowing that a pair of undead Italians were about to arrive and permanently destroy their lives in almost every way. Also, the high school parking lot looked pretty sweet:

Haha but then the most brutal cutaway happened. Here's what was going on in 1994 world:

Just Bonnie dragging a tree that I guess she'd sawed down by herself and setting it up in an empty parking lot before cussing out the sun.

We've all been there, babygirl.

Meanwhile, because Caroline could not physically go home without dying, she'd decided to spend Christmas in the dorms. Which, again, damn. But in what might be considered a sliiiightly better situation, Caroline's mom showed up to crash in the dorms WITH her.

Good thing crimes don't happen at Christmas! That's one of the biggest rules of the Criminal Code. Except just when it looked like things were going to be festive and uncomplicated, this guy showed up:

Apparently Sheriff Forbes had strongly encouraged Stefan to come by and hang out with them and Caroline was NOT thrilled about it. That's because sometimes when you tell someone off real good, it only works if you don't have to be around them anymore. So this was kind of awkward, if I'm being honest.

Then we got this amazing montage where three different teams of people planned their day.

So, Jo's magic dagger was definitely back in play. Alaric and friends decided to snatch it up before Kai could get to it. Meanwhile Tyler and the twins wanted it, probably because Kai had recently held a broken bottle to Tyler's neck and that's what he was after. Anycrap, everybody wanted that dagger! Also Matt had decided to become a cold-blooded killer, because why not? It's the holidays! And now that Jeremy was taking a break from boning randos, Enzo was toast.

Next: Page 2