Released from the Phoenix Stone, Stefan’s soul is thrown into a human serial killer’s body. Damon sets out to save him from a snowstorm, while Alaric and Valerie attempt to track Stefan’s real body. Here is a recap of the Vampire Diaries episode “I Went to the Woods.”
Recap:
Stefan wakes in the middle of the road and stumbles toward a bus crash. With coiffed hero hair, he saves the trapped victims, then gets a sobriety test. Turns out, Stefan’s stuck inside the body of a human named Marty. Driving down the road, Damon spots Stefan walking the line and picks him up, but it’s not really him. Rayna calls Matt for help, but he’s done his part. No more. She reveals that when the Stone was broken, every evil vampire inside was released to run free in the world inside another body – like what happened with Jo, but more random.
Handcuffed, real Stefan (in Marty’s body) runs into a cabin in the woods of Arkansas. He breaks the window and tumbles inside, but finds no food, no water, and no help. He breaks his thumb and slides his hand free from the restraints, then powers up a generator. The news report informs him that he’s a wanted man – an addict with past DUIs. If he doesn’t die of hunger or frostbite, the detox will surely do the job.
Fake Stefan chows down on a waitress, then everyone else. Realizing it’s not his brother, Damon calls Alaric and learns that if real Stefan is in a human body, he only has three days to live. Back on the road with Damon, fake Stefan wants to go to Memphis, so he hops out of the car and disappears.
Answering his door, Alaric invites Valerie and the unconscious Rayna inside. Using Rayna’s psychic connection to Stefan, Valerie discovers he’s in Arkansas. There’s a severe blizzard on the way. Rayna, strapped to a chair, jumps up and smashes the chair to pieces, freeing herself. Real Stefan hotwires a car, but it quickly and conveniently breaks down next to another stopped driver. He tries to borrow the woman’s phone, but a radio announcement scares her off.
Disguised as a policeman, Damon questions the woman Stefan encountered. She mentions having dropped her phone, so Damon calls it. Stefan answers. Damon proceeds to give his brother a pep talk, but Stefan is still angry that Damon bailed on him when he was running for his life and doesn’t think his brother will be there when he can no longer go on. Tracking the phone, Damon races toward Stefan as Stefan staggers in his direction, but the strengthening blizzard threatens to kill Stefan before the two meet. Right after Stefan passes out, Damon arrives. In the warm car, Stefan’s nose starts bleeding all over his donuts. Only forty-eight hours to find his real body.
Waiting it out with Valerie, Alaric knows a thing or two about Memphis. Stefan’s body is inhabited by a serial killer who plagued the University of Memphis in the 1880s. He forced frat boys to murder each other, and he was never caught.
Comments:
– “I Went to the Woods” spent a lot more time reveling in the present situation rather than dwelling in the past or thrusting the characters into crazy futures (like most episodes typically do), and it created one of the best Vampire Diaries episodes in a while. It took a wild concept and humanized it with the brothers, while also sidelining just how wild the concept of widespread possession is.
– That being said, this episode felt somewhat familiar. 1) One of the brothers tried to rescue the other from what seemed like certain death. Hello, prison world and Phoenix Stone storylines. 2) A serial killer is now possessing Stefan’s body and is out there about to wreak havoc. Hello, Silas terrorizing Mystic Falls. 3) It’s a race against the clock to save Stefan before his body breaks down on him. Hello, Faux Jo, Rose, Katherine, Sheriff Forbes
– Speaking of Mystic Falls, I miss that place.
– Nice twist on the all-to-familiar “Damon lying in the middle of the road for an unsuspecting snack” scene.
– The intercutting with Stefan walking the line during a sobriety test and Damon seeing him walk along the side of the highway was top notch.
– For a second there, I thought disheveled Marty’s reflection was that of flashback Klaus or even Julian. That had to be on purpose, right?
– Where’s Bonnie? Seriously. She got mad at Damon for abandoning her, his brother, and his other friends, and then she turns around and does the exact same thing? It’s more likely that her absence is related to Kat Graham’s contracted number of episodes than it is about Bonnie’s motivations, but she always seems to be absent when another witch would come in handy.
– The more I think about it, the more the Phoenix Stone seems like a really bad idea from a Hunter standpoint. Let’s put all of the evil vampire souls in something that can easily be stolen or broken and then hope that no one breaks it and releases all of that evil back into the world. Maybe with the Other Side no longer in play, releasing the souls back onto Earth is the only play possible. But still, is the retribution of torturing these souls worth the risk of them being set free?
– Instead of tracking down her victims and marking them, and then having going back on another quest to kill them, why hasn’t Rayna decided to go around marking as many deserving vampires as she can? Sure, some innocents might be killed if she lets the marked vampires run free for very long, but this way, when she dies, she has maximized the number who die along with her.
– The score in this series usually does not stand out much because the series relies more heavily on current pop music, but the score as Stefan walked up and into the cabin was hard to ignore. As intriguing and mysterious as the scene, it added a wonderful element.
– While the Vampire Diaries has never been a huge stunts show, they can pull out a few tricks here and there in such natural and understated ways. Stefan tumbling through the newly shattered window and Rayna breaking herself free from a chair particularly impressed me this week.
– Alaric fell in love with Caroline, and Caroline said yes to marrying him because “it made sense for the kids.” Well, that’s depressing no matter who you are and what ship you sail on. A marriage made from a logical standpoint rather than an emotional one seems doomed to fail from the beginning, and with Alaric having already suffered so much loss when it comes to the women in his life, I don’t look forward to watching this story play out. In addition, without having seen much of the three years that the series recently jumped over, it’s difficult to actually gauge the state of their relationship. I’m still way too familiar with Alaric being Caroline’s teacher and mentor that this pairing is flat out awkward. But maybe with a little time and exploration, it’ll feel more natural and less like it was a flash forward thrown in there just to shock us.
– According to Julie Plec’s Entertainment Weekly diary entry, it sounds like the weather (real and fake) was the true nightmare of this episode. All the crew’s struggles were worth it because the snow looked pretty incredible on screen.
– Damon (impersonating Matt): You don’t need to see a badge because Matt Donovan is the finest, bravest, least stupid cop you ever met.
