The Originals 2x18 Night Has a Thousand Eyes

 

If I had to sum up this week’s episode of The Originals, I would say it was a delightful combination of strange alliances, horror and suspense, as well as some truly spectacular pieces of poetry. Starting with a fantastically creepy opening sequence complete with a melancholic violin solo, a message about promises made, and a black dahlia, and ending with the devastating death of a beloved character, this episode was truly one of the best this show has ever produced.

This week it was all about preparing for Dahlia’s inevitable arrival, and trying to find way to protect Hope when her great-aunt finally rolls in to take her. Unsurprisingly, Klaus, Freya, Jackson and Elijah all had different ideas as to how to achieve this, and in the span of the episode we got to see all but one of those plans fall apart. It was actually pretty telling, the different methods each of these characters deemed appropriate to employ in the same situation. If I had to sum up each of them with one word, it would be: Klaus – fight, Elijah – protect, Jackson – run, Freya – prevent. Let’s take a look at how exactly each of these plans did NOT work out.

The first one to sizzle out was Freya’s plan to use Jackson’s body to trace Dahlia, after he’s been briefly possessed by her in the aforementioned opening sequence. The ritual for doing this went on for about two seconds before Rebekah, while trying to channel Freya, broke off when she realized that her sister was already being channeled, by none other than Dahlia. It’s not entirely clear to me why this new information prevented them to continue the ritual, but at least it put an end to one question that needed to be answered: whether Freya was secretly working for Dahlia all along. As it turns out, she wasn’t. She had no idea her aunt was using her to find her siblings, and she was appropriately terrified by this revelation.

Meanwhile, Elijah and Jackson were busy working their respective plans to ensure Hope’s safety. Elijah managed to get Josephine to agree to temporarily convert a club into a sanctuary against magic, where Dahlia can’t harm any of them, and Jackson... tried to convince Hayley to run away with him. Honestly, I won’t even try to understand the logic in this. Scarily powerful millenia-old witchlady who can find the baby simply because they share some of the same blood. Sure, going somewhere else is definitely gonna stop her. What’s even worse, though, is that Hayley, while initially reluctant, in the end she agreed to this plan, simply because she realized that if Dahlia was really so powerful that even Klaus and Elijah are afraid of her, then they don’t actually stand a chance and it’s probably best if they get out of there before she arrives. Still a stupid plan but whatever, at lest we didn’t have to worry for too long about it working, because Aiden, Jackson’s second-in-command, who he trusted with escorting them all away, has been secretly working with Klaus for a while now and he was too scared of what Klaus would do to him if he helped Jackson take his daughter away from him. Aiden’s hesitation gave Marcel time to find the wannabe-runaways, and return them to the safety of the magic-repelling clubhouse. Thus, whoever answered „Elijah” to the question I forgot to ask, that is, whose plan was the one to work, would have won whatever it would have been that I forgot to promise. Sorry about that.

Oh, and where was Klaus while all this was going down? Well, only in the middle of his probably most interesting and entertaining storyline to date. There’s no other way around it, Klaus was on fire tonight, and the one to bring that fire out of him was none other than Daddy Dearest, Mikael himself. To be perfectly honest I never wondered what it would be like to see these two working together for a change, and now that I’ve seen the results, I’m really sad that this was definitely a one-time thing. Joining the pair in their quest to find the only way to murder Dahlia was Davina, who’s been working on bringing back Kol ever since he died. The last thing she needs to complete the ritual is the ashes of the deceased, which just happens to be in Klaus’ possession. He promised to give them to her if she helped him find Mikael, and later, when she started questioning the value of his words, he swore to her on his daughter’s life. Recognizing the seriousness of that, Davina performed the ritual that bound the three ingredients that if combined, would represent Dahlia’s sole weakness, to a dagger Mikael provided, to create the ultimateweapon, the only one that can kill her. Those three ingedients were, in Mikael’s own words, none other than...

„1. Soil from Dahlia's homeland, that which links her to this mortal coil

2. Viking ash, that of her oppressors, the source of her immense hatred

3. Blood of her adopted child, my beloved daughter, Freya. The closest thing to love that miserable witch has ever known”

See what I meant about the poety? The Mikealson really do have a way with words.

Also proving the truth of that statement was Freya, while describing Dahlia’s modus operandi as follows:

"Dahlia will lure them into a trap. She prefers places of darkness. She'll be drawn to any site that's been steeped in death. I'm talking about dark power created by a massacre. Sacred ground that's been stained in the blood of the innocent."

Mmmm, beautiful words. I didn’t figure out that she was referring to the church, I honestly thought it was going to be the Mikaelsons’ own yard, where I seem to remember more than one massacre taking place, and it would have been a very fitting place for the ultmate Mikaelson family showdown, but I guess the church did just as fine. Especially because it wasn’t really a fight at all: Klaus and Mikael tried, and so did Elijah and Freya, but none of them were any match for Dahlia’s magic. Oh, and their only weapon was destroyed as well. Things seemed pretty hopeless by the end of the episode, until Klaus figured out a way to make a new weapon. They had most of the ingredients at their disposal after all. Freya’s blood could be taken again, Norwegian soil could also be easily obtained... all that remained was the viking ash, and Klaus took care of that too – by stabbing Mikael with the white oak stake, the only weapon capable of killing an Original vampire. It was a very emotional moment, both for Freya’s desperate screaming and for Klaus’ begging for an answer to the question that has haunted him throughout his entire life: why couldn’t his father ever love him. Sadly, there is no answer: Mikael himself didn’t know, but him letting Klaus kill and going up in flames to give a chance to his children to defeat Dahlia could, in a weird, twisted, undeniably Mikaelson way just might be his attempt at a final apology. All that said, I’m so relieved that he’s finally gone, while at the same time, as with Esther, I can’t help but wonder if this death will be a permanent one.

But this wasn’t the devastating death I was talking about, oh no. Dahlia had one last bit of terribleness up her sleeve before signing off for the week: as a way of sending a message to her family, she killed poor Josephine with a violin bow, after giving her the chance to play one last song. It sounds horrible but it was actually a really beautiful scene, which I wish could have turned out differently. I loved Josephine even though we barely got to know her, and while I would have hated to see her fight against Elijah after all she’s done for him, for a moment I couldn’t help but think: Josephine and Dahlia. That would be one badass team-up.

So what does all that leaves us with for next week? Well, for one thing, I wouldn’t expect any help from Freya again anytime soon. She was already planning on getting rid of Klaus, and I can’t imagine her abandoning that plan now that she can add revenge to the list of reasons why he’s not to be kept around. Dahlia is also still out there, so there might just be two villains we’ll have to deal with next week. Oh, and there’s also the whole Klaus-Aiden-Jackson thing which is bound to come out any episode now. The season finale is getting closer and I’m becoming more excited for it by the week. Bring it on, Monday!

Episode MVP: Joseph Morgan as Klaus Mikaelson

Quote(s) of the episode:

"This was quite the place back in my day. St. James infirmary. Vulgar, filthy, loud. Some of the best nights of my life." – Josephine

"One final hunt together, then. Do try to keep up, old man." – Klaus Mikaelson

(Wait, so you two are friends now?)

"Absolutely not. We're merely allying out of necessity for the purpose we both enjoy the most: glorious murder." – Klaus Mikaelson

Random tidbits:

 - No Cami again this week, and although I don’t think she could have added anything to this episode that it didn’t already have, she’s still supposed to be a regular and it would be nice of the writers to check in on her every once in a while, just to let us know she’s still out there somewhere.

 - No Vincent either, so I’m just gonna assume that they’re actually off holding therapy sessions for each other. Vincent because his wife died, and Cami because she’s still traumatized after that house fire. Yep, I’m gonna go with this.

 - Klaus saying "I was born ready" made me laugh out loud for real.