“It’s Mystic Falls; nothing bad ever happens here.” – Elena Gilbert, sophomore year

Well, at least we now know why bad shit started happening in Mystic Falls. Elena uttered the words that are the TV equivalent of chanting in Latin and opening up a Hellmouth. Doesn’t she know that you never say stuff like that? That’s like saying “I’ll be right back” in a horror movie. YOU’RE NOT COMING BACK, DUDE.

But all kidding aside, I really enjoyed this episode. Which I know is basically like me saying, “Yeah, breathing is cool. I enjoy it,” because I love every episode of this show. But when you’ve got one of the best writing staffs on television, what do you expect?

‘The Vampire Diaries’ is one of the most consistent shows on TV in the sense that week after week you know it’s going to be amazing. You might not have any idea what is going to happen – and believe me, that’s a good thing – but you know when you sit down to watch an episode that you’re going to be entertained, you’re going to be knocked on your ass and you’re going to find yourself threatening the lives of Julie Plec’s unborn children if she so much as thinks about hurting another beloved character. It’s just what happens. And we viewers love it.

There was a lot of speculation about what would happen in tonight’s season finale, aptly titled ‘The Departed.’ And while I truthfully was a little upset that there was no Mark Wahlberg cameo, I think this show still went out with a bang. Again.

There has been talk for weeks about who Elena would ultimately choose, about which brother she would decide was more important to have in her life. Would she choose the sweet, romantic, beautiful stable relationship she has with Stefan? Or would she choose the passionate, dangerous and uncertain road with Damon? Let me tell you, I might have to redo my Pacey Witter theorem, because this show’s handling of the love triangle is brilliant – it blows every other triangle out of the water.

For weeks Elena has said that she didn’t know who to choose, that she couldn’t stand having to say goodbye to one brother when she’s lost so many people already. But for all her talk, we were assured that Elena would choose by the end of the episode. We were assured that the writers weren’t going to try to pull a fast one on us by having her choose herself. And I guess you can’t really say we were lied to; Elena did choose a brother – it just seemed a little half-hearted to me.

She chose to return to Stefan, and by extension to Caroline and Tyler, after finding out that Evilaric had staked Klaus. Homegirl actually decided that it was better to let Damon possibly face death all alone in order to return to Mystic Falls where her life expectancy was considerably lower. This, bear in mind, is the same girl who wouldn’t leave Damon’s side in last season’s finale when he was dying from a werewolf bite.

But while Elena chose Stefan, (after telling Damon that she never un-fell out of love with Stefan and that she cared about him which was  why she had to let him go – by the way, does that sound familiar to anyone else?) did she really choose him? Based on the fact that Elena is now in transition (I’ll get to that in a minute), it seems to me we have a whole new chapter to this love triangle. In fact, I might even go as far as to say this is an entirely new beginning to an entirely new love triangle.

But before I delve into that hot mess, and before I forget, let’s discuss the fact that Elena is now a vampire.

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“It wasn’t about you.” – Damon

Contrary to popular belief, the world does not revolve around Elena Gilbert. I know that she acts that way sometimes, and it’s probably only because most of the time everything actually is about her – she is the show’s protagonist, after all – but she’s not what makes the world go around.

And though it usually appears this way, she’s not what makes the Salvatore brothers’ worlds go around, either. She’s just a girl. A girl who’s been thrown to the wolves, vampires and generally all things from the nightmares of children. But she’s so often the cause of, and answer to, the problems plaguing Mystic Falls that we forget, and she forgets, that she’s just one person in a world full of them.

Damon so often prioritizes Elena and her safety because of his intense love for her that we forget the dude once had a life that didn’t even include her. We’ve seen him go to hell and back for this one teenage girl and we forget that sometimes he’s got other things going on in his life. Like Rose.

Last season’s episode ‘Rose’ is fondly remember by Delena shippers because it’s the episode Damon confesses his love to Elena in the most selfless -  but also somehow selfish – way possible. He brings back to her the vervain necklace she thought she’d lost, but before he hands it over he tells her, “I love you, Elena. And it’s because I love you that I can’t be selfish with you. And why you can’t know this. I don’t deserve you, but my brother does.” And with that declaration he compels her to forget his broken confession.

But in order to understand that moment we have to back up a little bit further.

I never cared for Rose, nor do I pretend to care for her now even if she’s a Delena shipper. But Damon had a connection with the female vampire and he shared a moment with her at the end of her life. He took away her pain and suffering because he could and because he wanted to. This was one of the handful of times Damon’s chosen to spare someone misery, one of the few times he’s shown that he truly can feel things for people who aren’t Elena and Stefan. Sure, he saves the lives of the people of Mystic Falls every time he thwarts some apocalypse or whatever, but showing emotion is something he’s never been good at – or wanted to be good at – and that moment with Rose is not one to be overlooked.

And it’s why I think that in an episode where Elena basically attacked Damon with her lips in a motel hallway, it’s important to mention that Elena does not define Damon. Does she make him a better person? Yes, Rose was right about that. But sometimes there are going to be things that happen that Damon doesn’t share with Elena, and unless she’s willing to make that leap and be in a relationship with him, she doesn’t need – or even really have the right – to know.

I’ll admit that the noises that came out of my mouth when Elena finally sucked it up and gave into her feelings for the sexy older Salvatore were not human. I was cheering that kiss on with the rest of you – well, probably not the Stefan/Elena shippers. But I also understood that there’s still a lot of ground to be covered – a lot of meeting in the middle, if you will – before these two can be a happy couple. And that’s why I didn’t really flip out when they had a fight about their feelings towards episode’s end.

While I wanted to grab Elena’s head and shove it into the nearest wall when she told Damon she didn’t know if she had feelings for him (because, girl, clearly you do – you don’t just soberly attack people with your lips and then have a steamy makeout session against a motel wall if you don’t have feelings for them), I understand her reservations.

Elena was right when she told Damon that he sabotages things and lashes out at people whenever there’s a bump in the road. We’ve see it happen. We’ve seen him snap Jeremy’s neck when Katherine and Elena both denied him in the same evening. We saw the way he acted at the ball when Elena went behind his back and made the deal with Esther and Finn to bind the Originals. He went after Kol, breaking his neck and then jumping. off. the. freaking. balcony. It didn’t matter that we all cheered the return of Damon the Badass. He still lashed out. For a man who claims to not have emotions, he sure does lose control of them easily.

But what Damon said in that scene also held a lot of truth. He’s the one to make bold declarations of love. He’s the one to make decisions regarding their relationship. Elena never takes charge of her own life regarding Damon. She waits for him to do something and then reacts to whatever he’s done – usually finding herself on the disapproving side. Tonight when he told her, “This time I’m not gonna make is so easy for you. This time you’ll have to figure it out for yourself,” I cheered. I cheered Damon showing a little backbone, because it’s about time he called her out on how she’s always playing games with his head and just assuming he’ll always be there for her because he’s in love with her. Homegirl has got to figure this one out on her own, she has got to make a decision. And from the looks of it, she’s got to do it fairly soon.

There were some other very lovely moments between Damon and Elena in this episode, though. I particularly liked the part of the episode where they were lying in the bed (and not just because of Ian Somerhalder’s sculpted abdominal region) and Elena asked him why he never let people see the good in him. And his response is something that also fits in to what I was saying above. Damon said, “Because when people see good, they expect good. And I don’t want to have to live up to anyone’s expectations.”

I took this to mean two things. One, Damon is tired of dealing with the disapproving looks Elena throws his way when he does something she finds despicable. He’s tired of feeling like he’s not good enough for her. But two, I think he also meant that he’s done trying to change for her because he is who he is. He’s not going to change for her and she’s going to have to accept him for the man he is.

This was a huge episode for Damon and Elena’s relationship, but we’ve still got miles to go and there are only three episodes left this season. Julie Plec has said that there will be a resolution this season to the triangle (as much of a resolution that there can be), so I’m really looking forward to this final stretch of episodes.

Anyway, now that we got that out of the way, we can move on to discussing the rest of the episode (other things happened in this episode, WHAT?)

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I’m the biggest Damon Salvatore Champion around these parts. I love him and not just because of his abs of glory. But ‘The Vampire Diaries’ fandom seems to think that he’s a saint and that anytime something horrible happens to him as a result of his actions, that it’s undeserving.

Damon used to be a terrible, terrible person. He did a lot of bad things to people who never deserved them. And he still does a lot of bad things. I think a lot of viewers excuse them and write them off simply because they’ve seen the way he’s also risked his own life time and again for Elena and Stefan. He’s the character who has changed and evolved the most over the course of the show. But those changes are limited to Elena and Stefan a lot of the time. Is it OK to write off everything a character has done over the last 150 years simply because we’ve seen the good things, the selfless things, he’s done over the past three? I hate to say it, but despite how far he’s come, he’s still not a great person. And he knows it. He loves his brother and he loves Elena and would die for the both of them, but he knows he’s not a good person. Remember this exchange from two weeks ago?

Elena: “You stood there and let him feed on an innocent girl.”

Damon: “I didn’t let him do anything. If you want to get nitpicky about it, I made him.”

Elena: “Why would you do that?”

Damon: “Because we’re vampires, Elena. We need human blood to survive. We’re predators, not puppies.”

And what he says is true; he’s a predator. He needs blood to survive and he chooses it to be human blood. And yes, he’s gotten better, he might not kill simply just because he can anymore. And he does seem to actively want to change who he is. He feels remorse now, but that’s because he’s in love with Elena. She makes him want to be a better person, but he’s not there yet. People who aren’t Elena? He’s still a dick to them and has no problem hurting them – like Rebekah.

But even now, despite the selfless things he’e done, it would be wrong to ignore the times he’s hurt Elena over the last three years. When he came to town, he hurt Elena in order to inflict pain on his own brother. He snapped Jeremy’s neck in front of her, too, simply because he was angry and hurt. Remember these things? I’m not saying he deserved to be tortured the way he was in the last episode, because Rebekah did it out of spite (she’s still a teenage girl inside despite her age). But I think that  Damon still has a lot of atoning to do for all of the pain and suffering he’s caused his family and friends and Elena over the years. He didn’t deserve to be strung up by what appeared to be bear traps, and tortured this way. He didn’t deserve to have Klaus compel him into giving up his secrets. But I kind of like the idea that Damon was finally brought down a peg, that he was finally held accountable for something he’d done to hurt someone. Maybe it was a little extreme, but it seemed true to Rebekah’s character. I love Damon and I will defend him until I’m blue in the face, but Damon is still not a good person.

Was I pissed that Stefan didn’t go to save Damon right away? Of course, I’m Team Salvatore forever. Was I pissed at Bonnie for not going to save him when she had the chance? Of course, but he’s also been terrible to her. He turned her mother and didn’t think twice about how it would affect anyone but Elena. Even though I can’t stand Bonnie and think she’s an annoying character, I think her reaction was a normal one. She’s angry for what he did to her, to her mother. I think that if viewers were in Bonnie’s shoes, they might not save the man who turned their mother into a bloodsucking creature, either.

I guess I just get annoyed when this fandom treats Damon as a vulnerable little puppy who never deserves the bad things that happen to him, or as a person who shouldn’t have to be held accountable for his actions. We’ve seen him grow and change and fall in love, but I don’t think that’s reason enough to write off the bad things he’s done. We saw how he hurt Rebekah for his own selfish gain. He had no qualms at all about seducing her and then having Sage basically mind-rape her while she slept. Damon felt no remorse for hurting Rebekah.

I love Damon, and I always will, but I love even more the fact that the writers understand he’s still a vampire and still someone who does bad things to people. To take that away from him would be wrong. It would rip the story of any sort of realism it has. It’s one of the many places the ‘Twilight’ fandom went horribly wrong (don’t even get me started on that piece of garbage) – vampires, no matter how many good things they’ve done, will never be good people. They will always have a darkness inside of them that they have to challenge and fight every day. And it’s that battle between the darkness and the lightness inside Damon – and Stefan for that matter – that make them complex characters that people can relate to.  It’s one of the reasons the show is as great as it is, why it resonates so well in our own world. But to simply say Damon didn’t deserve to be tortured for what he did to Rebekah is wrong. To quote ‘Breaking Bad,’ one of the greatest shows in the history of television, “If you just do stuff and nothing happens, what’s it all mean? What’s the point?”

Until Damon stops hurting people (something that I personally don’t think can ever really happen because of the nature of vampirism), even if his heart is in the right place – with the idea of saving his brother and saving Elena – Damon will never be a good guy. If he keeps doing bad things to people, even if they deserve it, and not having to deal with the consequences, he’s never going to fully change. He’s never going to be a good guy. And I think Damon is OK with being the bad guy right now. He’s okay with being the bad guy if it means he’s saving the people he loves. But the viewers need to realize that he’s not a prince, that he’s never going to stop being a predator – and that the same rules apply to Stefan, as well. They’re not the people they think they are. I don’t think they’re ever going to be able to be good people. But as long as they fight that darkness, as long as they try to be good people, I think that’s enough. I think that it’s enough for them, and it’s definitely enough for me.