The Vampire Diaries S5/E16 Recap “While You Were Sleeping”
After a one week break “The Vampire Diaries” is back and Katherine Pierce is gone! Or is she? Katherine seems to be as dead as can be, but her presence still remains as Elena is stuck with the virus Katherine injected in her before she died. Elena also has to deal with the destruction Katherine caused while she inhabited Elena’s body.
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The episode begins with Elena dancing on the tables, taking her clothes off, at what appears to be a huge party. Caroline and Bonnie are there encouraging her as she continues to dance, but she suddenly begins telling her friends she is Elena and not Katherine, and they should know Elena would never take her clothes off while dancing on tables. She does not understand why her friends cannot understand she is Katherine, not Elena.
Elena wakes up and finds herself alone in a bedroom. It appears she was dreaming as she gets up and walks the hallways of her dorm. She finds Stefan and asks where everyone is. He explains it is spring break in the dorms. Elena tries to enter a different room in the dorm and she finds she is stuck. Stefan tells her she is on lockdown because of the virus inside of her. Stefan explains Liv, the new witch, put the spell to keep Elena inside the dorm so she won’t attack any vampires and Caroline is out looking for a cure.
At the Salvatore mansion, Jeremy and Matt feed Damon who is locked up in chains in the dungeon. Jeremy asks Damon if Elena knows Damon killed Aaron while she was inhabited by Katherine; Damon has not told Elena about Aaron’s death. Meanwhile Elena calls Damon and wants to chat. She is curious to know how Katherine imitated Elena for three weeks without anyone noticing. Damon does not have a reasonable explanation.
Back on campus, Caroline is in Wes’ lab looking for clues for the cure. She finds a voice recorder Wes left behind with clues about the virus. Enzo arrives to the lab and introduces himself while teasing her. He explains he has the antidote.
Elena is still talking to Damon on the phone. She explains to Damon she wants to find Aaron to apologize to him for trying to kill him. She tells Damon she has been calling Aaron but he does not answer. Damon avoids the conversation and they hang up when Stefan arrives to give Elena some of his blood to feed on. She drinks the blood and insists on more. Stefan tells her she cannot handle it, and when she protests he bites his wrist and she instantly tries to attack him. The spell put on the dorm stops her from attacking Stefan and she begins to get upset as she realizes she is a ripper. Caroline calls Stefan with information about the cure. She cannot give him too many details but tells him he has to go to an address to get the cure. Caroline explains the virus Elena is infected with is a different strain than Damon’s and has werewolf blood in it. Stefan leaves Elena to go help Caroline.
When Stefan leaves, Elena finds her journal and reads the entries Katherine wrote in it. She gets upset as she reads the entries and starts remembering Katherine being in her body, but the visions are not what really occurred. She sees herself kissing Stefan and when he pulls away, they pause and then begin passionately making out again; in reality Katherine kissed Stefan, he stopped her, and nothing occurred after that. In the visions, Elena eventually pulls away and tries to convince Stefan she would never act like Katherine is. When Elena comes to, her nose is bleeding.
Meanwhile, Caroline and Stefan are at some train tracks looking for the cure and Enzo joins them. The travelers arrive soon after and explain they are working on the cure but they need another vampire, specifically Stefan. They want to save Elena since she is the last doppelganger and they want Stefan’s blood since he can be linked to the last doppelganger. There is something special about the last two doppelgangers but the travelers won’t tell them. Enzo explains they won’t give him the cure unless he helped them. Stefan is hesitant to be linked to another doppelganger, but agrees to the plan to help cure Elena and Damon.
Elena calls Damon and tells him about her visions and how they are her worst fears coming true. In order to calm her down, Damon fills her in on everything that happened while she was not there. She coughs up blood as they talk, a symptom of the werewolf blood inside of her in addition to the hallucinations. Soon after her conversation with Damon, Elena has a vision of Aaron. In the vision, Elena tells Aaron she was not herself the last three weeks because Katherine took over her body. Aaron comments that that explains a lot. Elena questions his comment and asks if he is a hallucination. When he doesn’t answer she looks at him to see severe cuts and blood on his neck, and she realizes he is dead. She panics as she asks him if she killed him.
One of Elena’s peers, Luke, arrives and wakes Elena up. He helps her get to her feet and comments that she must have had too much to drink. His blood is too tempting and she attempts to bite him but when she goes to bite him she finds bite marks left over from Katherine. Elena compels Luke to go find Bonnie and bring her to Elena; she cannot stay trapped anymore and needs to feed. While she waits, Elena calls Damon and tells him she needs help. She is clearly losing her mind as she asks Damon if she killed Aaron. She goes on and on about why everyone is lying to her. Damon begs her to calm down but she suddenly hangs up. Damon is able to trap Matt and threatens to kill him unless Jeremy frees Damon so he can go help Elena.
At the train tracks, the travelers tie Stefan up and cut his hand to take his blood. The main traveler puts her fingers to Stefan’s temples and makes the connection between Stefan and the other doppelganger as the other travelers chant a spell. The spell works and the travelers can see the other doppelganger. They are able to see he is in Atlanta and an EMT. The traveler insists on keeping the connection even though Stefan is suffering because she wants to learn more about the doppelganger and kill him through the connection. Caroline threatens to kill the traveler if she don’t stop hurting Stefan.
Back at the dorm, Bonnie and Liv arrive and but refuse to drop the seal. Bonnie tells Elena she is too dangerous to be set free and she is letting Katherine win by falling apart. Elena agrees but then suddenly throws a stake at Liv, stabbing her in the chest. Elena tells the girls they can either let Liv die or they can lift the spell and Elena will cure Liv before she dies; Liv decides to lift the seal.
Once she is free, Elena roams free around the campus but she can hardly walk straight because she is so sick. She comes across Aaron and runs to him, but it turns out it is Damon. He gives her some of Stefan’s blood to feed on, and after she drinks she tells Damon she thinks she killed Aaron. Damon finally admits to killing Aaron. Before Elena can get too upset, Enzo arrives with the antidote.
While Elena and Damon are taking the cure, Stefan wakes up with Caroline and Enzo. Caroline explains the travelers were going to kill the other doppelganger through the connection with Stefan, and in order to make them stop Caroline made a deal to go with Enzo to kill the other doppelganger themselves.
Inside the dorm, Liv goes back to her room to find her brother, Luke. We learn the siblings are working together to some unknown end. Liv is only pretending to learn magic from Bonnie and Luke knows that Elena is a vampire. Luke makes sure the anchor, Bonnie, is doing well, and he implies Bonnie’s friends are all in trouble.
The episode ends at the Salvatore mansion with Elena upset with Damon for not knowing Katherine was taking over her body. Damon apologies, but the two of them fight because Elena is tired of having to make excuses for Damon’s bad behavior all the time and for loving him. Damon tells her to stop loving him, but she cannot. They decide they are not good for one another and break up, but within seconds they are ripping each other’s clothes off and making love.
And with that the episode is over! It seems the Elena/Damon love story will continue. However, one has to wonder why it was Stefan that knew Katherine was inside Elena and not Damon. Perhaps it was simply because Stefan spent more time with Katherine, or maybe it is because of Stefan’s love for Elena. Nevertheless, I have a feeling Elena and Stefan will somehow end up together this season as her relationship with Damon seems to be solely physical.
Now that Katherine and the Westfields are out of the picture, it seems the new villains this season are the mysterious siblings, Liv and Luke. I have to admit that turn caught me off guard and it will be curious to see what their plans are. We will have to wait until next week to see what their plan is. But until then, can we all hope Caroline and Enzo might hook up? I definitely felt the chemistry between those two, and Caroline deserves a good relationship after the mess she made with Tyler and Klaus. Let’s hope Enzo becomes a season regular; he reminds me a bit of Alarick and this show is in need of a dependable new character that won’t be killed off mid-season.
