The Vampire Diaries #6.22 “I’m Thinking of You All the While” Recap

Kai continues to wreak havoc on the residents of Mystic Falls, causing Elena to say goodbye to her friends for several decades. Here is a recap of the Vampire Diaries season 6 finale “I’m Thinking of You All the While.”

Recap:

Lying in the road, Damon waits for Elena where they first met. She arrives in her bridesmaid dress and wants to know how bad her injuries are. He just wants to dance. We crash back into the wedding barn where Elena isn’t conscious enough to drink Damon’s blood. Having worse luck with his significant other, Alaric cradles Jo’s dead body. Papa Parker crawls toward Kai, so Kai puts an end to it by stabbing himself in the neck. With the leader of the coven dead, the others will die too. Tyler and Liv lock hands. He’s ready for them to succumb to their injuries, but she has other plans. She wants him to trigger the curse and transform to heal himself. After professions of love, Tyler suffocates her.

In a vision, Elena boxes with Alaric in the forest. She urges him not to give up, but he sees nothing to live for. In the real world hospital, Elena won’t wake, even though doctors say there’s nothing wrong. Stefan, Caroline, and Enzo find Lily searching for her friends. For them, she gave her blood to Kai, who wakes in transition and magically drags Daddy Dearest over for a snack. He’s a heretic now. Having laid Jo in his car, Alaric fires multiple rounds into Kia to no avail. Alaric then turns the gun on himself and pulls the trigger … no more bullets. Tyler rushes in, bites Kai, and runs off.

Another vision. Elena and Matt stand on the bridge where she and her family died. They toss flowers to commemorate her humanness. Present day Matt enters the Salvatore mansion where Bonnie found a recording from Kai. He linked Bonnie’s life with Elena’s, so as long as Bonnie lives, Elena stays in a coma. If they try to find a loophole, both die. Elena and Stefan hike along the lake where she told him she never wanted to be a vampire. Now she’s human again. Watching over Elena, Caroline asks Stefan if he’ll be okay because she won’t. Stefan’s grateful for the love he and Elena shared, but he’s more grateful that she repaired his relationship with Damon.

Bonnie barges into the barn and gives Kai brain pains, then breaks his bones when he won’t undo the spell. Because werewolf venom is magical, Kai magically removes it from his neck. All better. He throws Bonnie against the wall. Her lung collapses. Just arriving, Damon ponders what to do with a dying Bonnie. He apologizes, kisses her forehead, and leaves. Kai’s annoyed, until Damon sneaks up behind him and whacks his head off. Damon heals Bonnie. Still besties.

Everyone gathers around Elena’s casket for goodbyes. Caroline and Bonnie are first. They chill in their dorm. Elena tells Caroline to take care of everyone and constantly journal so she can read it and feel like she was with them. Elena tells Bonnie it’s her turn to make a sacrifice, just like Bonnie always does. For old times’ sake, Bonnie floats feathers. Next up, Matt. On the bridge, Elena makes him promise to spend his life fighting for loyal humans like himself. Deal. On to Elena and Alaric in the forest. She knows he’ll emerge on the other side of the pain a stronger man. Behind the school, Jeremy says he’ll spend his life doing what he was meant to. And Tyler. She encourages him to find himself and embrace the wolf. She thanks Stefan for bumping into her at school and hopes he’s happy with his new life.

Inside a previously cloaked shipping container, Lily reunites with her family. With Elena in the Salvatore crypt, which Bonnie will spell shut, Damon says goodbye. Elena orders him not to mope around waiting for her. They share an epic dance in the dark street, while Stefan tells Caroline he made a list of how loving her changed his life. Like Damon, he’ll wait for her. Days go by. Matt, an officer now, drives through the ruins of the town square. From the clock tower, Damon ominously observes.

Comments:

– “I’m Thinking of You All the While” was equal parts blood as it was tears. A rollercoaster of emotions, this season finale capped off a crazy year, and one of the best in a while, with a fitting goodbye for its lead character. If this hadn’t been Nina Dobrev’s final episode, then it would have been gratuitous on the mush factor, but the series has such a soap opera element that it works.

– Due to all of the goodbyes that had to be said at the end, the pacing of this episode winded up being unusual. The first act was chock full of violence. There was murder, suicide, temporary death, and an almost mercy killing/act of preservation death. It was flashier than it was forward progressing, although that it not too uncommon. Then the middle section resolved much of the lingering threads that needed to be tied up to move on, which typically happens later in an episode. Finally, the last section was mostly unnecessary to the story itself, but necessary to the characters and the audience. It was purely fan service.

– The locations and content of the dreamy goodbyes were perfectly specific to what was important between Elena and the other character. There was no explanation of how the shared consciousness with humans was possible, but it doesn’t really matter. Two of these goodbyes stood out far beyond the rest because they carried an air of nostalgia with them. The scene with the floating feathers was beautiful and a reminder of where these friends started out. The scene with Elena and Damon dancing called back to the first Miss Mystic Falls pageant but with more emotion, more grace, and more amazing choreography.

– Usually when someone leaves a series, they either die or flee town. Surprisingly, this was neither. They tried to pull off Elena’s choice to say in a coma like it was a sacrifice, but was it really? By staying asleep, Elena loses the chance to see Bonnie, Matt, Alaric, and Jeremy again, but if she allowed Bonnie to die so she would wake, then she virtually loses them anyway because her friends, Jeremy especially, would be furious with her. Regardless, it was a very Elena thing to do.

– In an episode filled with every character saying their goodbyes, it was odd that Alaric did not get a goodbye with Jo when Tyler got one with Liv. Perhaps this lack of emotional resolution becomes a significant factor in Alaric’s story next season, but even then, Jo’s exit provided the audience with no resolution and even spurred the hashtag #BringBackJo. Her stabbing, the shock that sent us spinning into this episode, was practically glossed over this week and her death almost fell by the wayside. The only character who seemed to care was Alaric.

– Sadly, with everyone in the Gemini Coven dead, there’s no more of these lovable and love-to-hate characters. Jo, Liv, and Kai and the twisted set of rules their family operated under have been one of the most interesting side stories that the series has had. At least there’s still a looming magical threat to keep the previously sidelined aspect of the series at the forefront.

– Kai’s sleeping beauty spell is a genius idea in itself, but it paints the writers into a consequential corner. The existence of the heretics combined with the nature of the spell causes an interesting conundrum. Often times, series take the “in order to defeat the enemy, you have to think like the enemy or become like the enemy” route. In this case, Bonnie would become a heretic. Granted, Bonnie would likely scorn the idea, but it would be such a bold and fitting story move for this world. It’s a perfect setup. The problem is that it can’t be done because of what it solves, unless this was one of those terrible loopholes Kai mentioned. Just like Kai needed to die to break a bond, so does Bonnie. Her transition into a vampire would wake Elena, which the writers seem pretty intent on not doing until maybe the series finale.

– Enzo taking Stefan and Caroline to meet up with Lily at the shipping yard was a rather insignificant moment for plot advancement, but a nice moment for family dysfunction. Annie Wersching plays these estranged mother moments so well that it’s both understandable and upsetting when she explains who her true family is.

– Kai was back to his pre-merge-with-Luke unremorseful self. His hatred and rage may have been enough to overpower his newfound emotions, but it would have been interesting to see Bonnie or Damon or Alaric even try to tap into those buried feelings.

– While he lost his head in Mystic Falls, fans of Kai can look forward to seeing Chris Wood in Julie Plec’s new midseason show, Containment.

– Just curious, how did they manage to sneak Elena out of the hospital? Good old-fashioned compulsion on the doctors, or did they stage a body theft?

– The fact that Damon saved Bonnie instead of Elena showed just how much he has grown from that selfish guy he thinks he is into the goodhearted guy Elena knows he is.

– The intercutting of Elena and Damon dancing and talking about waiting for their future together with Stefan saying he’d wait for Caroline smoothly demonstrated that this is no longer the same show it started out as. It closed the book on the love triangle that plagued the series and allowed everyone to move past their regretful murderous sprees they punish themselves for and have hope for a happy future.

– What’s with the showrunners this season filming a plea to the audience to come back next season and watch their shows? With both Arrow and The Vampire Diaries, the season finales could have served as series finales, but it’s fairly common knowledge that they’ve been renewed for a while now.

– “It’s just not as threatening when I’m seeing like four blurry versions of you” – Kai (to Damon)

– “I don’t necessarily think Elena came into my life to be my soulmate. She was. We loved each other, but she was also the only person I’ve ever met who actually believed that my brother was worth loving, and she reminded me that I used to believe that about him too. And her faith in him brought Damon and me back together. And yeah, I loved her more than I thought I could ever love somebody else, but I think in the end, I needed him more than I needed her.” – Stefan