The Vampire Diaries: Let Her Go Recap

Synopsis: Caroline and friends plan and execute Liz Forbes’ funeral before Caroline decides to turn off her humanity switch. Bonnie also escapes the prison world after she meets Damon’s mother.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Wow, so Damon’s telling a lot of harsh truths this episode.

After last week’s episode where Sheriff Forbes died from cancer, we pick up with Caroline dreaming about saying goodbye to her mother. Caroline wakes up and walks into the kitchen to be greeted by a frustrated Damon. Sheriff Forbes asked Damon to write her eulogy, and Damon’s having trouble. It doesn’t help that when Damon’s mother died, he ditched the funeral service because he couldn’t write her eulogy.

Salter-of -wounds Damon decides to tell Caroline that tomorrow will not, in fact, be the worst day of her life. Tomorrow, all of her friends will be afraid to leave her alone. Sometime next week will be the worst day of Caroline’s life. That’s when she’ll be completely alone.

Yeah. He told her that the day after her mother, his best friend, died.

Damon also talks to Stefan and tells him to “pull the ripcord” if he doesn’t think Caroline is his ‘true love.’ I mean, he’s not wrong, and I love Damon for it, but holy goodness could we please get a little more sensitivity here? Her mother died yesterday and here you are telling Caroline the worst is yet to come and telling Stefan to cut Caroline loose. Can we all just take a moment for poor Caroline?

After Damon’s depressing truth raincloud rolls through town, Caroline rallies the troops and organizes her mother’s funeral service within the day.

All while this is happening, Stefan is freaking out about his kiss with Caroline. He thinks that they’re not endgame and he’s fully intending to cut her loose – after the funeral. Stefan puts off talking to Caroline until after the service, but poor girl already knows what’s coming.

Caroline’s weirdly calm throughout the entire episode. She efficiently handles her mother’s funeral flawlessly – she even sings in the church. Even though we’ve come to expect this kind of repressive planning from Caroline, this feels different – Caroline seems like she genuinely doesn’t anticipate the weeks after the funeral service.

During the service, Damon delivers the eulogy admirably and Stefan starts looking at Caroline with googly eyes while she sings, so we’re made to understand that he’s not going to cut her loose. After the service, Damon and Stefan talk again, and Stefan thinks his thing with Caroline could be better than what he had with Elena and Katherine, so he goes to her house to talk to her.

Turns out Elena beat him to the Forbes’ residence. Elena realizes that Caroline plans to turn off her humanity switch at the end of the day. Elena tries to convince her friend not to abandon her humanity, but Caroline isn’t having it. She doesn’t have anyone after her mother died, and she can’t handle the pain. Elena preachily tells her not to go this route – but Care isn’t super convinced.

Caroline has a point: Elena’s a hypocrite. Elena cannot handle her shit. Elena doesn’t get to tell Caroline how to handle grief when she erased her memories of Damon and turned off her humanity when people in her life died. So when Caroline snaps Elena’s neck and Stefan finds Elena crumpled up on the floor, I kind of want to cheer. I don’t want to see a deadly Caroline, but I’m firmly Team Caroline, and everyone’s being a jerk to her right now, so chica gets to handle things the best way she knows how.

In other news, Kai’s sick from the slapshod Merge with Luke. Turns out that he needs Jo’s magic to stabilize himself and the prison worlds. Jo gives up her magic to stop the gross, bloody Kai vomit session (and, you know, preserve her family line. Whatever).

During all of this, Bonnie gets transported to another prison world in 1903 where she meets a woman who turns out to be Damon’s (apparently not) dead mother. Bonnie finally comes back at the end of the episode.

After Kai heals, he tells Jo that the reason she’s been feeling sick as well is because she’s pregnant. Ric decides to propose to Jo after hearing the news, so we may get a wedding soon.