Vampire Diaries – “Children of the Damned” – review

“Children of the Damned” was the second major flashback episode we’ve seen so far on The Vampire Diaries, and it went significantly further in filling out the canvas of Damon and Stefan’s past than the first one did.  The Civil War era scenes focused on the hunt for vampires and the discovery of Katherine and her friend Pearl as vampires, while the present day scenes focused on the three-way race between Stefan, Damon, and Anna to reach the Gilbert journal and figure out where Emily’s grimoire was put.

Present day:  Jeremy tells Elena, Stefan, and Damon that he gave the journal to Alaric and that his new friend Anna was also interested in it.  Stefan goes to the school, where Alaric has made a copy of the journal just before Anna sneaks past him and steals the original.  Stefan confronts Alaric, who has gotten out his stake-gun, and Alaric tells him a shocking new detail of his tragic history–he is hunting Damon because he doesn’t know what Damon did with Isabel.  He ran off with her body…and it was never found.  Stefan gets the copy from him and he and Elena discover that Gilbert had given the journal to Stefan’s father to hide, a secret he swore to “take to the grave.”  Stefan deduces it was buried with his father so they go dig up the coffin, where, sure enough, they find Emily’s spellbook.

 Damon goes to the grill, where he recognizes Anna from his days as a human.  He follows her to her room and plays docile long enough to get a look at the original Gilbert journal, which he also takes to mean his father’s grave, and then tells her he works alone.  He finds Elena and Stefan with the grimoire, clearly having left him out, and he recognizes their betrayal.  He forces Elena to drink some of his blood and threatens to kill her unless Stefan gives him the journal.  They trade, and Damon swears they are no longer brothers.

In the flashback sequence we discover it was Gilbert who invented the vampire finder, and that Stefan had been the one who inadvertently revealed Katherine to his father, one of the fanatical vampire slayers of the township.  Anna was Pearl’s daughter, and getting her mother back is obviously her impetus for wanting to open the tomb.  We see Katherine in action as a vampire, and get a sense of Damon’s struggles with his father for approval and then what he considered Stefan’s betrayal.  We see Katherine showing him how she operates, and Damon being a bit wary but in the end charmed by her wild, savage energy.  Also we learn that Katherine’s hair is much better than Elena’s–Dobrev looks better with curls than stick-straight hair.

The only non-Gilbert/Salvatore story was Bonnie having a date with Ben, Anna’s newly made vampire partner, who drags her off to who knows where as soon as she realizes what he is and tries to leave.  The episode ends with Anna kidnapping Damon-blood-infested Elena from her room, leaving only an open window to announce their departure….

So I thought this was a great episode.  I really enjoy the flashbacks and hope they continue to do more…especially since we still don’t have the full story.  The pieces are bigger, and the gaps more clearly defined, but we still don’t know everything that went down that night Katherine got locked into the tomb…or how Damon and Stefan became vampires themselves.

There were a couple funny moments early on that were used to set up heartache later, both of them with Damon.  When he comes into Stefan’s room and they’re in bed, and all embarrassed at getting caught, Damon’s crack was absolutely golden:  “If I see something I haven’t seen before, I’ll throw a dollar at it.”  Cause God knows Damon HAS seen it all, probably more than once.  The other was when he’s having dinner at the Gilbert house (while Stefan is making an ally of Alaric) and Aunt Jenna starts going on about how “ridiculously hot” he is.  (Which, aside, can I just sigh and say is so true?  I saw a quote from Ian in Us Weekly about how leaving Lost being the worst mistake he’s made, that he just dropped off the face of the earth afterward.  I’m grateful he did, though, since it landed him in Mystic Falls–half the reason I love this show so much is his portrayal of Damon.  (1) So good, and (2) what Jenna said.  Ridiculous.)  Damon of course overhears Jenna’s remark with his vampire ears and smirks, and then Elena tells her “he’s an ass” knowing he’ll hear it, and he makes a very big-brother grimace.  It showed that he was starting to feel like part of her family, or that she was really part of his.  So this made it kind of heart-wrenching when he comes to the grave and finds not just Stefan but also Elena there, obviously behind his back.  I think it genuinely hurt him. 

I thought the cliffhanger ending was really exciting, and I can’t WAIT to see what happens next.  Nice to see some action again for an episode or two. And the continuing mysteries are getting deeper, such as will Elena’s real mother/Alaric’s wife come back, and what are the modern Founding Families up to, and will the Katherine-tomb-opening crusades ever end….

About Elena Nola

Elena Nola reads things, watches things, and edits things. She writes her BSC Review column, Elena's World, to tell you all about it all.