Klaus tortures Katherine and tries to play with Elena’s mind while Bonnie plans to sacrifice everything for Elena.
The Vampire Diaries gets better every episode, and “The Last Dance” proved this yet again. At the end of last week’s episode, we saw a witch put a spell on Alaric so Klaus could possess his body. This week, Klaus continued with his plan to get to Elena by pretending to be Alaric. With knowledge from Katherine about Alaric, he made his way into their circle and discovered vital information.
With the Salvatore house now in her name, Elena made it her home so she could control who could come in and who couldn’t. While at school, she talks everybody into going to the ’60s decade dance and Stefan isn’t so sure about going. At lunch she and Bonnie are talking when one of their classmates comes up to them to tell Elena that a guy named Klaus is looking for her. They realize the classmate has been compelled and this sends both the girls into panic mode. They return to the house to tell Damon and Stefan. Enter Alaric/Klaus to hear the news that Bonnie has enough power to stop him. Alaric/Klaus meets up with his witch henchman and the witch tells him that he wouldn’t be able to stop Bonnie, but he reveals that Bonnie would die if she used all of her power. Alaric/Klaus decides that he will have to provoke Bonnie in order to kill her.
The time comes for the dance and everybody is keeping their eyes open for Klaus with the problem being they have no idea what he looks like. Klaus dedicates a song to Elena and everybody steps up their guard. Damon overhears Bonnie and Jeremy arguing and finally gets it out of Jeremy that Bonnie could die if she uses her powers on Klaus. It’s funny how Bonnie tells Jeremy not to tell anyone and within a couple of minutes he tells Damon and then proceeds to Stefan. Elena finds out too and she tries to talk Bonnie out of it. Jeremy offers Bonnie his ring to protect her, but she tells him it won’t work for her.
Alaric/Klaus decides to make his move and compels some students to beat up Jeremy. When Damon and Stefan come to the rescue, the students shoot them with wooden stakes that Klaus found in Alaric’s house. The guys realize it is a trap and Damon goes to find Bonnie and Elena. Alaric/Klaus finds Elena and tells her that Klaus has Jeremy. He then leads them around the school to a place where no one is at.
When he has them alone, he reveals that is actually Klaus inside of Alaric’s body. He reveals that he is there to kill Bonnie and not Elena. Bonnie sends him flying across the room and the girls run back to the dance. They find Damon, who Bonnie says that Klaus is possessing Alaric and that he has a protective spell guarding him. Elena is sent to find Stefan while Bonnie and Damon head back to Klaus.
Bonnie finds Klaus and a fight ensues. She starts to torture him and he reminds her that he is in Alaric’s body. Bonnie tells him it would be want Alaric wants. Stefan and Elena arrive to help and Bonnie shuts the door on them. She starts to use all the power she has and her nose starts to bleed. Klaus tries to crawl to her and she makes the lights shatter and has things flying everywhere. Bonnie turns to give Elena a last look and when she turns back to Klaus she collapses. The door opens and Elena rushes in to find Bonnie lifeless. Ugh, this moment was actually heartbreaking. I really like Bonnie and was a little angry over the death of another character that I liked. Of course I wasn’t going to accept it until the end of the episode and I was thinking what a waste because Klaus got away!
Damon shows up and tells Stefan to take Elena home and he will deal with Bonnie’s body. Damon takes Bonnie out to his car where Jeremy is waiting. Damon was going to have to be the one to break the news. Back at the Salvatore house, Elena was beside herself. When Damon came to talk to her, she slapped him when he admitted he knew Bonnie would die if she took on Klaus. Damon then told her that they knew Klaus wouldn’t stop until Bonnie was dead so they had to make it look like she was. He revealed that Bonnie was alive and safe. Jeremy had taken Bonnie back to the house where the witches had been burned and she woke up.
Stefan confronted Damon about the plan, and he tells Stefan that he couldn’t know about it because Damon is the one that makes all the life and death plans. Damon knows that he would always be the bad guy, but he would be the one to keep Elena alive. You can tell how much Damon cares for Elena and it is sad to see that he just gives up on it for his brother. It seems though that the decisions Damon makes are the right ones.</p>
<p>Elena has a reunion with Bonnie via Skype (with a nice blatantly obvious product placement for AT&T) and Bonnie apologizes for not letting Elena know what was going on. They had to make it believable to everyone besides Klaus. Elena decided to make an apology of her own to Damon for slapping him. For a second, I thought it was Katherine paying Damon a visit, but she must still be in Alaric’s home where Klaus had her tied up. She tells him she doesn’t want Bonnie to die for her. He in turn tells her that he would let Bonnie die if it meant that Elena lived. He would choose Elena over anybody else, any day. Elena decided to decide on her own and makes a trip downstairs to where Elijah’s body is. She pulled out the dagger and sat down to wait for him to wake up.
This season has been superb and it seems that is going to get better. When there is one twist at the end of one episode, they bring out a different and unique one at the end of the next! That is one of my favorite things about this show — they keep the suspense and emotion going. It will be interesting to see where Elijah will fit in, either with helping Elena or sticking to his original plan. It definitely is risky for her to bring him back. I like how the writers are slowly bringing out Klaus and I am looking forward to his flashback episode next week.
Some stats and info about The Vampire Diaries, “The Last Dance”
TV SHOW – The Vampire Diaries
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 2, Episode 18
AIRED ON – April 21st, 2011
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – CW
GENRE – Drama, Supernatural, Horror
CREATED BY – Julie Plec, Kevin Williamson
CAST – Paul Wesley, Ian Somerhalder, Kat Graham, Candice King, Zach Roerig, Michael Trevino, Nina Dobrev, Steven R. McQueen, Matthew Davis
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.