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Dear Nadia, sorry I had to kill your boyfriend, but it was the motherly thing to do. Suicide, however, not very motherly of me. I ran from my enemies for 500 years, and then one day, I stopped. Now a new enemy wants me dead. Sure I could run from the Travelers, but there's still one enemy that I can never escape, time. So, call it pride or vanity, but after the life that I've led, I refuse to drift off into the sunset. Good-bye, Nadia.

Dead Man on Campus is the eighth episode of the fifth season of The Vampire Diaries and the ninety-seventh episode of the series overall.

Summary[]

THE PARTY'S OVER - At Whitmore College, Elena and Caroline decide it's time to throw a big party, but their plans are interrupted when Jesse suddenly needs Caroline's help. At Elena's request, Damon comes up with an effective method to get Wes to answer his questions. At the party, Elena finds that she and Aaron have a lot in common, and Caroline grows more concerned about Jesse. Meanwhile, Katherine does a favor for Matt and manages to get through to Stefan, who is still struggling to overcome the events of the summer. Finally, Bonnie does her best to cope with her new reality, and Damon makes a terrifying discovery about a secret society.

Plot[]

Dr. Maxfield continues his experiment on Jesse, who has turned into a vampire over 14 days. Dr. Maxfield hooks a bag of blood into Jesse's arm and expects a positive response to the first bag of Augustine blood. Jesse is much stronger than he expects, however, and breaks free. Before Maxfield can initiate his emergency procedures, Jesse attacks him, vamping out times ten.

Bonnie joins Caroline and Elena in their dorm room, and through awkward Windows phone product placement, we learn that she's not a witch anymore after coming back as the supernatural anchor. Elena and Caroline plan Bonnie a blow-out "welcome back from the dead" party. Bonnie makes a lame excuse to go meet Jeremy and make-out. Across the quad Bonnie sees an old woman staring at her. Jeremy can't see her. When Bonnie leaves, the woman finds her and tells her she's ready. She touches Bonnie's arm and vanishes and Bonnie screams in pain.

Elena calls Damon to come to her party, but pauses to hand Aaron a flyer inviting him. She accidentally mentions something she compelled out of him before and has to do it again, but makes him agree to come to the party. Elena suggests Damon to invite Stefan to their party. Damon tries to talk to Stefan, but he's freaking out, reliving his repeated drowning. Damon can tell something is wrong, but Stefan won't say what. At the Grill, Katherine trades Matt drinks for Czech translation of the video he took of himself. She explains he has a Traveler inside him. Katherine realizes Nadia was the girl who followed Matt back to the States.

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Caroline finds out that Jesse is now a vampire

Jesse calls Caroline in a panic, begging her to come to his place. His roommate is about to come home. Caroline rushes over. Jesse's roommate arrives: It's Aaron. Jesse apologizes to him then attacks him. Caroline arrives and pulls Jesse off. "Who the hell turned you into a vampire?" she asks. Jesse explains Maxfield's torturous conversion. Jesse left him locked in the lab. Elena arrives with blood bags. Caroline suggests Jesse be the one to heal Aaron. They start showing him the perks of being a vampire.

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Katherine kills Gregor's spirit inside Matt's body

At the Grille, Katherine convinces Stefan to join her for a pity drink. He tells her about his summer of safe flashbacks, which she thinks is PTSD. She thinks she can help, after he life of traumas and running, but she has a favor to ask. Nadia arrives, Katherine called her. She introduces Stefan to her daughter. At the Grille, Katherine, Nadia and Matt meet up in the walk-in fridge. Nadia calls on the Traveler in Matt, Gregor. He explains he's in Mystic Falls to find and kill Silas. He's also interested in an antique knife that Katherine now has. And after Silas is dead, he's supposed to kill Katherine—which is news to Nadia."Travelers are ruthless, manipulative, hypocrites. I know, because your grandfather was one," Katherine says. She stabs Matt in the side with the knife, expelling Gregor's spirit. The knife is the only way to kill a Traveler.

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Damon tries to find out about Wes' experiments

At their college party, Bonnie waits for Jeremy to show. Caroline is teaching Jesse to sublimate his vampire urges through grain alcohol. Elena sent Damon to question Wes Maxfield, but Caroline is pretty sure that means Damon is going to kill him. Caroline's Damon hatred is not subtle. In Maxfield's lab, Damon pokes through his lab samples. He explains to Maxfield that he's going to inject him with a disease and he'll heal him with his vampire blood if Maxfield talks. Maxfield says his experiments were for the greater good. Damon questions what that could possibly be and injects him with rabies. Maxfield explains he was trying to create a new kind of vampire that doesn't feed on human blood.

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Jesse bites Caroline

At the dorm party, Bonnie sees the old woman she helped over before. The woman was a witch, but is doing fine on the other side since Bonnie helped her transition over, Jeremy finds Bonnie. On the dance floor, Caroline cozies up to Jesse and kisses him. He bites down on her lip and fully vamps out. He hides it from her and rushes out.

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Katherine helps Stefan in overcoming his PTSD

Aaron arrives at the party and bonds with Elena over Jell-o shots and stories of how their parents died. He was out camping when he was six when he woke up to his mom screaming. They were covered in bite marks and everyone said it was a bear. He got passed around among relatives until he ended up with Maxfield. Elena leaves to go call Damon and make sure he doesn't kill Maxfield. Back at the Grille, Stefan has another safe flashback. Katherine finds him and tries to help him through it by making him name the people he has killed, to remind him that he's in control and on solid ground. Nadia finds them, angry at Katherine for killing Gregor. She storms off.

Damon tells Elena about Jesse feeding on vampires, and she makes him promise not to kill Maxfield. In the lab, Damon slices his wrist to heal Maxfield of the various diseases he's injected him with, but Jesse storms in, wanting answers from Maxfield.He sees Damon's bleeding wrist and attacks him. Damon isn't worried, since he's a much older vampire than Jesse, but he soon finds out the usual strength-age rules don't apply. Jesse tackles him out a door and into the hallway.Jesse overpowers Damon and begins to feed on him when Elena finds them. With Jesse attached to his neck, Damon tells her Jesse's about to rip his head off. Elena grabs a shard of the broken door and stakes Jesse, killing him, just as Caroline runs up in time to see it.Elena feels awful, but Damon tells Caroline she had no choice. "The Elena I used to know would have given Jesse a chance," Caroline says.

Stefan finds a note from Katherine to Nadia, apologizing for killing her boyfriend. Then Stefan realizes he's reading a suicide note. Katherine works up her nerves on the top of the clock tower, then finally falls over the side. As the ground rushes up beneath her, at the very last second Stefan swoops in and catches her. She tells him she's dying of advanced old age. "You're Katherine Pierce, suck it up," he says. Katherine savors the turn of events, and the glimmer of hope that Stefan might care about her.

Finally alone, Bonnie struggles to light candles with a lighter. Jeremy joins her and she admits she misses magic. He helps her forget, by taking her to bed, but before they get very far, she sees Jesse standing in the room. She realizes Jesse is dead. He touches her and Jeremy watches as Bonnie screams in pain. After Jesse is gone, she explains that as the anchor, she's going to feel the death of every supernatural being. She says it's worth it to be there with him and they have sex for the first time. Elena and Caroline clean up after their party. Caroline apologizes for what she said, but tells Elena again how dangerous she thinks Damon is.

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Damon realizes he is back in Augustine

Back in the lab, Damon cleans up as Maxfield secretly works his way free from his restraints. Damon plans to compel the whole thing out of Maxfield's head. When he sees a bag of labeled blood in the fridge, the number jars his memory. Damon remembers his own number from trials 60 years ago. Maxfield realizes Damon was an Augustine vampire, too. Maxfield breaks free and Damon is unconcerned as he runs to the opposite side of the lab. But then Maxfield hits his "emergency procedures" button and atomized vervain fills the room, dropping Damon. "I'm sure Augustine will be thrilled to have you back," Maxfield says. Damon wakes up in a cell that is hauntingly familiar. His initials are scratched into the wall and memories of his time in captivity, being tortured, come rushing back.

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Recurring Cast[]

Co-Starring[]

Trivia[]

  • Antagonists: Gregor, Jesse, and Wes Maxfield.
  • We learn that it has been fourteen days since For Whom the Bell Tolls, which means the events of Monster's Ball, Handle with Care, and Death and the Maiden have taken place over the span of two weeks.
    • Likewise, it has been fourteen days since Wes turned Jesse into a vampire to make him his test subject for Augustine.
  • Despite having killed Silas to give him closure with regards to the trauma he cause, Stefan is still suffering from the effects of his time in the safe, and Katherine informs him that he has PTSD. When Stefan scoffs at her attempts to help him, Katherine admits that she suffered from PTSD as well after the loss of her daughter in 1490 and after Klaus slaughtered her entire family and hunted her for five hundred years.
  • The experiments Wes did on Jesse turned him into an Augustine Vampire who craves the blood of other vampires rather than the blood of humans. It's was also demonstrated that an Augustine Vampire, even one who is a newborn like Jesse, possesses equal or superior strength to regular vampires; when Jesse caught the scent of Damon's blood, he attacked him and easily overpowered him despite the fact that Damon had been a vampire over 150 years longer than he had.
  • When Jesse began to feed so hard on Damon that he became concerned that the fledgling vampire would literally rip his head off, Elena was forced to stake and kill Jesse to save Damon. 
  • Katherine attempted to kill herself by jumping off the clock tower so she wouldn't have to face dying by aging, but was saved by Stefan.
  • It is revealed that Katherine speaks Czech when she translates the video Matt took of Gregor talking to a man named Kristof on the phone while he was in control of his body.
  • Katherine, feeling sorry for Matt and curious about Gregor and his involvement with Nadia, decided to help him by summoning Stefan and Nadia to assist her. She then called Gregor's spirit forth to give him control of Matt's body so she could interrogate him as to what he's doing in Mystic Falls. Gregor reluctantly admits that he was only with Nadia so he could get closer to Katherine, because he had orders to kill her after he killed Silas.
  • Damon is revealed to be one of the Augustine Society's former vampires test subjects, on whom their doctors experimented for years in hopes of using their accelerated healing and their vampire blood in order to research their use for possible medical advancements for humans. Shortly afterward, Wes knocked Damon out with atomized vervain gas and captured him, making him an Augustine test subject once again. 
  • Katherine's father was a Traveler, which is why she knew so much about Passenger spells and the culture of the Travelers.
  • Stefan mentioned his first victims as a vampire when Katherine forced him to list them in order to come down from his PTSD-induced panic attack. Among those listed were his father, Giuseppe and fellow Founders Thomas Fell, Honoria Fell, Marianna Lockwood, Christopher Gilbert, and Margaret Forbes.
  • Wes' major plan is to revealed to be his desire to create vampires that will only drink from other vampires, which would eliminate humans as a food source for them and would therefore protect them from harm and/or death at their hands.

Body Count[]

  • Jesse - Staked; killed by Elena
  • Gregor (spirit) - Stabbed with the Traveler knife; killed by Katherine
  • Old Woman - Natural causes

Continuity[]

Locations[]

Behind the Scenes[]

  • This episode had about 2.67 million viewers in the USA, which was 0.05 million less than the previous episode.
  • Hashtag during the airing is #BeremyKisses

Cultural References[]

Quotes[]

Stefan: "I thought that killing Silas would have let me move on with my life, but I was wrong."
Bonnie: "See you tonight?"
Jeremy: "Yeah."
Unknown witch: (to Bonnie before passing though her to the Other Side) "I'm ready."
Bonnie: "We knew there'd be consequences."
Katherine: "Stefan, relax."
Stefan: "I can't.. do that!"

Damon: "So, apparently we've been invited to a college party." (He pauses when he hears nothing but silence from Stefan) "Yeah, that was my first reaction too. But then Elena promised ..... alcohol." (Damon sees Stefan is in the midst of a panic attack and becomes concerned) "Stefan, are you okay?"
Stefan: (embarrassed) "Yeah, I'm fine."
Damon: (worried) "How about my favorite ..... chair?"
(Stefan realizes that he clawed through the arm of the leather armchair and quickly takes them out)
Stefan: "Just tell Elena thanks, but I'm not really up for a party tonight."

Elena: (to the newly-turned Jesse) "First rule of being a vampire is realizing how awesome you are."

Elena: "Okay. I know this is going to sound lame, but-"
Damon: "Anytime you start with "This is gonna sound lame," guess what? It is!"

Stefan: "Just out of morbid curiosity, which one of you is younger?"
Katherine: *simultaneously) "I am."
Nadia: (simultaneously) "I am."

Katherine: "Dear Nadia... Sorry I had to kill your boyfriend, but it was the motherly thing to do. Suicide, however? Not very motherly of me. I ran from my enemies for 500 years, and then one day, I stopped. Now, a new enemy wants me dead. Sure I could run from the Travelers, but there's still one enemy that I can never escape-- time. So, call it pride or vanity, but after the life that I've led, I refuse to drift off into the sunset. Good-bye, Nadia."

Stefan: "Hey. You're Katherine Pierce. Suck it up."

Multimedia[]

Soundtrack[]

Last.fm_play.png "Harlem" – New Politics
Last.fm_play.png "Bad Intentions" – Digital Daggers
Last.fm_play.png "Slipping Away" – Barcelona
Last.fm_play.png "The Night Out" – Martin Solveig
Last.fm_play.png "Come A Little Closer" – Cage The Elephant
Last.fm_play.png "All Night" – Icona Pop
Last.fm_play.png "The Other Side" – David Gray
Last.fm_play.png "My My Love" – Joshua Radin

Videos[]

Pictures[]

References[]

See also[]

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