The Vampire Diaries S07E21: "Requiem For a Dream"

While a lot of us might suspect that our friends secretly want to murder us, statistically speaking it probably won't happen. For one thing, murder is physically difficult and most murders involve a surprising amount of arm strength. For another thing, a lot of people frown upon murder, and that includes most of your friends. Most. So while, sure, some or maybe most of your friends secretly want to murder you, rest assured you're much more likely to be murdered by animals or inclement weather. HOWEVER, one thing you'll never see coming is when one of your friends is suddenly possessed by an unslakable bloodlust derived from the transferred soul of a vampire hunter fueled by the life force of a Native American in a casket. In that case, you will die. Sorry.

"Requiem For a Dream" was one of the weirdest episodes of this show I've ever seen, and that alone made it great. But it also felt tense and meaningful in a way that much of this season has not. Because we are all smarties and you are a smartie AND a cutie, we know that Damon Salvatore is in zero danger of being murdered. Same with Caroline. That is just a fact of being a main character sometimes. But that doesn't mean it's not upsetting and effective to see another main character (Bonnie) CHOP Caroline's head off on camera. You know? Talk about triggering. I would rather not see a character I love get beheaded, regardless of whether it's a dream sequence or not. But where I'm usually very disinterested in dream sequences as storytelling, this episode figured out how to make them important and resonant. And yeah, it's almost like the writers are fully acknowledging that 95% of our interest in this season has been Bonnie (and her friendship with Damon), so it makes sense that this has been what the season's been building to. I really liked this episode. Let's talk about it!

I love when the 'previously on' segment directly leads into the cold open, and this episode did that without even an edit! I loved that. Anyway, we were back in the Salvatore living room and Bonnie woke up from her sleep full of hate for vampires. At first she seemed fine, but then she seemed less fine when she busted a glass against Enzo's head. Normally that kind of behavior between a girlfriend and boyfriend gets the cops called, but Bonnie wasn't done yet.

She broke his neck and pushed him in the fire! That is a breakup in my opinion. Bonnie, what did you do?? Then Caroline ran in to object and this happened:

Okay NOW Bonnie had gone too far. Like, whatever went on between she and Enzo was between she and Enzo, but THIS was too much. Fortunately it wasn't real.

So, the idea behind this first half of the episode was that Bonnie somehow knew that she was going to be possessed by an evil killer, so she was refusing to wake up, which was her way of rejecting Rayna's soul.

So the gang decided they should go into her head and get her to mentally reject the killer instinct so that she could accept the soul but not be a killer. Which lead to a series of scenes in which her vampire friends attempted to enter her dreams (which had become VERY dark suddenly).



For example, like many dreams, this one was set in a college lecture hall. But in Bonnie's version, all her classmates were vampires, and also the lecture seemed off-topic, and worst of all, the video projector wasn't properly aligned with the screen:

Ugh, what kind of unprofessional professor would display course materials so sloppily? Oh, right:

Professor Alaric! But he was a vampire too. Then everybody got up and chased Bonnie, and she had no choice but to run to her dorm room (which was the same building as the lecture hall?), mostly because it's a set that was already built.

It's at this point that Caroline showed up (real Caroline, via dream-fingering) and attempted to get Bonnie to relax about vampires a lil. But Bonnie did not want to relax, she wanted to MURDER.

The twist was that, much like in the Nightmare on Elm Street films, Caroline snapped out of her trance and was STILL injured. This meant she was now 'marked' and Bonnie would FOR SURE wanna kill her now.

Fortunately her ex-boyfriend Stefan, with whom Caroline now had a fraught relationship with, was present, and he had a good idea of how to keep her safe.



That's right. VERVAIN AND ABDUCTION. Which is a definite cool-dude move. Their friendship couldn't take any more steps back if they were moonwalking.





Next: Page 2