Guys. This show. I can’t even.

SPOILERS

As The Originals barrels towards its finale, The Kindness of Strangers resolves like every plot thread ever and once again reinvents our family of protagonists by giving us some much needed sibling catharses and off-handedly getting rid of the stupid Hollow. Thank you for that, Ms. Plec.


Hayley’s death still stings... hard. Elijah’s comeuppance was well earned and damn if Daniel Gillies didn’t rip my tears out when his memories came crashing back. His wails were a thing of painful beauty. I am reminded of Angel getting his soul back and then remembering all the horrible things he did, times 10.

The Klaus/Elijah relationship has been the moral center of this show. Their rivalry, love, annoyance, affection, discussions, and betrayals have made for the best scenes I’ve seen on TV in years. When Klaus angrily yelled “It’s just a door Elijah! Open it!” I lol’d. His irritation was palpable, his love overriding. They broke through the barrier between Elijah & his memories together, as it should be. I nearly forgot about Klaus’s hybrid bite until he jacked up Antoinette and left her to die. Elijah calmly curing her and (presumably) leaving her was tough. Despite her knowledge of Elijah’s identity, she was one of the few characters with truly good intentions and I think her unintentional role in Hayley’s death was tragic. I liked amnesiac Elijah just chilling and playing bar piano in France, but I think we all knew it wouldn’t last.


On a side note, Kol and Rebekah got some decent closure as well. Kol is cool with just laying in bed naked all day until his wife comes home. I’m down with that. Rebekah acknowledged the real reason she pushed Marcel away: she’s an angry, sad person and will never be happy. She doesn’t want Marcel to share that fate. While the Marcel/Rebekah romance always lacked on-screen chemistry, I felt this was a fitting endpoint for them.

By way of criticism, turning Hope and Freya against the other Mikaelsons would have made more sense if we actually knew what they were planning beforehand, but hey, I didn’t mind. I didn’t even mind that the Hollow extraction/resolution happened entirely offscreen. Good riddance. Klaus now gets to be a dad! As much as I love and hate his character the writers and actor have done such a great job of establishing just how much he truly needs family in order to not be a raging asshole. I want Klaus to be a good dad. I want him to find contentment in nurture, as opposed to the violence done to him by nature. While nothing he has done to date has earned him happiness, he needs it and I want him to find it before the show ends.


...which probably means he’ll never get it. But hey, if the ending of The Vampire Diaries is any clue, we might just get a happy ending.