'Vampire Diaries' Recap: Elena Admits She's Torn Between Stefan & Damon

Plus, Klaus' shocking connection to Tyler is revealed! (I've never been so worried.) The Vampire Diaries' March 29 episode, "The Murder Of One," certainly lived up to its hype as one person was, in fact, murdered. And even though it ended up being the one person fans probably cared least about on the entire show, it triggered a reveal about the Originals that changed everything. Are you sitting down? OK, let's do this...

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Reading Time: 3 minutes
March 29, 2012 9:39PM EDT

Because Klaus (Joseph Morgan) is pretty much the worst, he threatened to hurt Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) and Abby (Persia White) if Bonnie (Kat Graham) didn’t perform a spell to separate the Mikaelsons. He even showed Bonnie a video of Jeremy playing with a puppy on his phone, though honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference between them. In my mind, Jeremy has — and always will be — a tiny puppy. To make matters worse, this all went down just as Stefan (Paul Wesley) killed Finn, which sort of put a dent in the gang’s kill-all-the-Originals-at-once plan.

But wait… there’s a twist!

Shortly after Finn met his end, Sage (Cassidy Freeman) and Troy — the gentlemen she turned into a vampire as back-up — also bit the dust! This led the gang to realize that when an Original dies, so too does every vampire they created. Am I the only one who was surprised how quickly Elena (Nina Dobrev) put those pieces together, by the way?

Caroline also made the astute observation that, because Klaus turned Tyler (Michael Trevino) into a hybrid, killing Klaus will also kill Tyler.

Say it with me, everybody: “Nooooooooo!”

In other terrible news, Alaric (Matt Davis) realized his “alter ego” has a hold of the remaining White Oak stakes capable of killing the Originals — but his regular old Alaric self has no idea where he put them. As if it wasn’t enough that this show has doppelgangers, now it also has a character with multiple personalities?! I can’t handle this.

But this week’s episode wasn’t all stabs and surprises; it also marked a huge milestone in the series’ seemingly never-ending Damon-Elena-Stefan triangle! Though Elena told Stefan she never stopped loving him, she couldn’t deny she also has feelings for Damon (Ian Somerhalder) — even if she doesn’t quite understand what those feelings are.

Now let’s break down this week’s episode to see how each team fared, shall we?

  1. Elena refused to let Stefan go up against Klaus alone for fear he’d get killed. (+5 points)
    x
  2. Stefan, in turn, kept Elena safe by refusing to let her confront Rebekah. “You don’t stand a chance against her,” he warned. (+5 points)
    x
  3. “I never stopped loving you,” Elena admitted. (+20 points)
    x
  4. “I will never stop loving you,” Stefan replied. (+30 points)
    x
  5. TOTAL: 60 points
  1. The episode began with a sexy conversation about muffins. “Fine, keep convincing yourself you’re still mad at me,” Damon said. (+10 points)
    x
  2. Elena rescued Damon from Rebekah’s evil clutches, let him drink her blood AND leaned in for a kiss! (+200 points)
    x 
  3. Oh wait, it was a dream. (-200 points)
    x
  4. Elena couldn’t tell Stefan she doesn’t feel something for Damon, even if she’s not sure what that is. “I don’t know what I feel,” she admitted. (+15 points)
    x
  5. TOTAL: 25 points

x
In my eyes, this week’s episode was clearly a victory for Team Stelena, but hey, I’ve never been great with math. So you tell me which brother YOU think came out on top, then head down to the comments section to make sense of everything we learned this week. Because it was a lot.

— Andy Swift

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