You Can’t Go Home Again

The Vampire Diaries Recap: Season 6 Premiere — You Can’t Go Home Again

Four months have passed since Damon and Bonnie were sucked into oblivion, and everyone seems to be handling the loss differently on the Season 6 premiere of The Vampire Diaries. Caroline has dropped out of Whitmore to focus all of her time on finding a way to come home. And when she’s not burying her nose in spellbooks, she planning picnics with her mom—on the border of Mystic Falls (literally five feet outside of town). Caroline can’t seem to let Mystic Falls go, and we can’t really blame her.

Meanwhile, Stefan found a new life working as a mechanic in another small town. He’s even found himself a new girlfriend—her name is Ivy; she’s from Colorado and loves dogs. But he didn’t exactly drive off into the sunset looking to start over. He’s on a mission to find a way to bring Damon and Bonnie back from the “dead.” And he also seems to be working with Alaric.Tyler is trying is trying to outrun his werewolf gene by becoming a Whitmore frat bro. He’s joined football so he can take his aggression out on unsuspecting boys in tights. He’s also taken up flirting with Liv, who couldn’t be more unlike Caroline. Liv is definitely going to keep Tyler on his toes—and she also might bring out his worst behavior.

And then there are Matt and Jeremy, who never leave Mystic Falls. Matt has joined a volunteer neighborhood watch, led by a man named Tripp. He’s clearly up to something, and I’m pretty sure he knows all about vampires. As for Jeremy, well, he’s taken to alcohol and hookups to help him cope with Bonnie’s death. He struggling, and it’s really sad to see. Jeremy has lost just as much as Elena—but he also has to live with the fact that he seems to have the kiss of death. Anna and Bonnie? Jeremy is pretty much the Rogue of the TVD universe. No wonder he’s so messed up.

But no one has taken Damon and Bonnie’s death worse than Elena. Elena isn’t just living in denial—she’s living in a Delena fanfic! She’s taken to drinking a hallucinogenic witchy drug to see Damon on a daily basis. Luke is her dealer; he still feels guilty for killing her friends. However, the drugs come with a nasty side effect: they make Elena hungry. So Elena’s been lurking the border of Mystic Falls and attacking whoever she can find.

Things start to go awry when one of her victims slips out of her grasp (thanks to a surprise visit from Caroline) and crosses the border to Mystic Falls. Elena’s victim, bloody and scared for her life, falls into the arms of Matt Donovan, who knows that kind of bite wasn’t from an animal. But that doesn’t stop Tripp from being suspicious. Before she can tell him the truth, however, Matt intervenes and takes her to “the hospital.” Luckily, Caroline was able to compel her to forget outside of town.

Needless to say, everyone is a mess in this premiere. But it’s Elena and Caroline who are really breaking my heart. Elena doesn’t want to deal with her grief, so she turns to drugs to help her forget about her loss. And no matter how badly she tries to stop, she just can’t seem to quit Damon. (Side note: no one plays heartbreak quite like Nina Dobrev. When she cries, I cry—well, OK, sometimes I laugh. Watching Nina try to flip a table was kinda funny.) So she asks Alaric to do something drastic: if she can’t kick her Damon habit, she wants Alaric—who is now an Original vampire—to compel her to forget she loved him.

And then there’s Caroline, who’s trying so hard to keep her friends from falling apart that she’s neglecting to deal with her own issues. If Elena is in denial about losing Damon, then Caroline is in denial about losing Mystic Falls. Of course, it doesn’t help that her best friend Stefan has ignored every single one of her calls. (Seriously, she calls him every day.) Caroline is trying to get her home back, but she can’t do it alone. Hopefully, Stefan comes around soon. We hate seeing our Care Bear so sad!

There is one person Stefan does talk to regularly, though: Alaric. Ric seems to know something about how to bring Damon and Bonnie back—but he’s not quite ready to share his discovery with the rest of the group. 

While everyone seems to be going through hell, Damon and Bonnie are enjoying the free breakfast buffet that seems to be heaven. At the end of the episode, we get a glimpse of Damon and Bonnie's new reality: flannel, vampire pancakes with whipped cream fangs, and morning coffee. But everything can't be as it seems, right? Where are Bamon—and why does it look so heavenly? 

Catch the next episode of The Vampire Diaries on Thursday, October 9 at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.