Previously, on The Vampire Diaries

If it's Thursday, Damon must be torturing! This week he's got ahold of one "Mister Sykes, head of corporate accounts". Sykes is carrying a Passenger who tries to chant his way out, only to be frustrated by the gag Damon's placed on him. He demands the location of Markos but before Sykes can mumble a response Caroline enters. She reports that erstwhile witches Luke and Liv are nowhere to be found, only to stop short at the sight of a bound Sykes. He helped her open her first savings account!

He gave her a lollipop!

Damon exposits that the spell to break the Traveler curse would undo all witch magic, leading to the death of all vampires. Sykes remains recalcitrant so Damon plunges a knife in his leg. This loosens Sykes's tongue a bit but all he says is it doesn't matter where Markos is because there's no way to stop him.

Elena hovers on the edge of consciousness, chained up in some sinister locale. She's being bled. Stefan's elsewhere in a similar state. Markos approaches Elena to feed her a couple of ounces of blood, which she spits back in his face. She insists he has enough of her blood; he cuts another bleeding line into her arm and says "enough" is when she can no longer speak.

Hands fumble with Stefan's restraint, setting him loose. He finds Elena and frees her. Title card!

Stefan calls Damon from the last working pay phone in America, collect. He and Elena are smack in the middle of fumblebuck and have been gone for four days. They bicker while Elena fumbles with a slingshot of some sort in the background. Their blood loss means they can't access their vampire powers so they're forced to hunt small game. Stefan tries to slip in some relationship drama but Damon shuts that noise down, strapping on his "hero hair" in preparation for saving the town.

Before said saving can commence Enzo the Unfriendly Ghost whips a random dagger into Damon's shoulder. Through Bonnie he communicates his displeasure about Damon's failure to keep his promise to bring him back from The Other Side, promising to pester them all as only a ghost can until it's done. Damon cites his excessively long to do list as justification for back-burnering Enzo, finally snapping at Bonnie to do it via the spell she's cooking up with Liv. Bonnie hems and haws at that since that particular spell is a fiction.

Lucky for her Jeremy arrives and he and Damon go off in search of Matt to run a mysterious errand.

Stefan and Elena are having no luck hitching a ride. Elena tries to amuse herself by having Stefan fail to zhoop but that sort of thing is only funny the first time. They stop walking to go into more relationship nonsense. Skipping ahead!

Luke joins Liv at some diner and she reports that their coven is pissed that he lost the Doppelgangers. Luke's all whatevs, not my fault we ended up in the Friend Zone but the coven remotely Mystic Migraines him until he starts being polite. Liv says their only remaining move is to kill Stefan and Elena. No, your move is to kill Stefan or Elena.

After the break a heretofore unknown woman receives a vial of Doppelganger blood from the mailman. Her husband asks after the mail but quickly escalates to a relationship talk. It seems "Pam" has been different lately and "Pam" is all took you long enough to notice that your wife has been possessed and by the way my name's not Pam, it's Karl.

The show's first transgender character!

She exposits a bit about the shitty Travelers before deciding "screw it" and stabbing hubby in the neck with scissors.

Back on the road The Doppelgangers pass the time by talking about what a great person Caroline is and how everybody loves Caroline and how every time Caroline is not on screen the other characters should be asking, "Where's Caroline?"

They spot a truck coming and Elena unleashes the girls in hopes of increasing the chances of a ride. The truck does stop but it's a lady driving, specifically Maria, AKA the lady Traveler from last week who's married to Julian, the guy currently residing within Tyler. Stefan, not knowing this, tries to compel her. She's all, really? and reveals she's who freed them.

Caroline greets the returning men and wonders about all the bodies strewn about the living room. Damon explains that he's taken the inert shitty Travelers hostage to lure Markos. He sends Matt and Jeremy on patrol for weirdness weirder than the usual weirdness and Caroline questions the wisdom of the "lure Markos to the house" plan. Somehow this turns into a relationship discussion and Damon speaks for the nation when he implores Caroline to spare him the advice. He goes on to suggest that since Tyler is apparently permanently gone that they should kill Julian. Caroline says nix.

As Maria drives Stefan and Elena home she exposits that should Markos cast his spell it will strip away witch magic one layer at a time. Eventually Tyler's body will go from being hybrid to werewolf and finally to dead. By running now she gets a head start on the spell. As a plan it's not quite "we fight the Mayor with hummus" levels of idiocy but it's an extremely short-term solution at best. Eventually they will run out of world to run to.

Down in the Salvatore dungeon Julian explains that Markos sees his mission as not only breaking the curse but eradicating all "perverted" witch magic. Shitty Traveler magic is supposedly the only "pure" magic and by destroying witch magic the shitty travelers will be "restoring the balance". I hate fundamentalists.

Markos goes into the caves to visit the inert shitty Travelers because plot. He finds them gone, along with a flyer directing anyone inquiring about lost inert shitty Travelers to contact Damon Salvatore. He does, just as Damon's about to test the limits of shitty Traveler inertia with a fireplace poker. As a responsible party Damon can't give the inert shitty Travelers to just anyone so he asks for a description. Markos says they are "ragged, beaten down by the world, desperate for a home" but Damon counters that that description fits the homeless, aging hipsters and Matt Donovan. Markos revises his description to reveal that he's right outside. And now he's inside.

As she packs up the Impossibly Large Dorm Room because it is somehow a full school year since this season began because time does not flow in the usual way through The Vampire Diaries, Caroline proposes a solution to the Tyler/Julian dilemma. They kill the body then use the spell Liv is concocting to bring Tyler back. Bonnie cops that there is no spell. Enzo hears this and is suitably pissed.

Damon smirks his way through some hostage negotiations with Markos, who demonstrates that he is not having it by driving a cork screw through the neck of an inert shitty Traveler. He explains that a shitty Traveler's three greatest weapons are fear, surprise and an almost fanatical devotion to the cause. They're all willing to die if it means breaking the curse. He continues that breaking the curse will trigger a ripple effect that will destroy all "spirit magic" everywhere and only shitty Traveler magic will remain.Damon's heard enough and zhoops to the attack. Markos tosses him away. He's completely transfused himself with Doppelganger blood which has apparently given him super strength and speed because why not. Not, he says, that it matters, because the spell has begun.

Cut to Passengered Mystic Fallians all over town, crushing vials of Doppelganger blood and chanting.

At just that moment Maria and the Doppelgangers arrive back in town. Elena asks if she could drain just the weensiest bit of Maria's blood. Rude! Maria suggests keeping a low profile, a task made more difficult when Tony and Tia Liv and Luke TK their truck to a halt. They try to make a break for it but the twins lock them down, forcing the truck to accelerate into Liv's magical barrier. Maria is killed instantly. Stefan moves to confront Luke while Elena takes on Liv but the twins take them down and start snapping limbs. One of them needs to die (now they get it!) and it doesn't matter which.

Enzo confronts Bonnie, dumping her box demanding to know when she was going to tell him the truth. She encourages him to accept that there's no coming back and Enzo starts channeling Susan Hayward in I Want to Live! (look it up). I have to say, for someone so gung ho about coming back from the dead, ripping your own heart out for a moment of petty revenge is really starting to seem like a bad idea. Bonnie has no response other than gathering her fallen possessions; then Maria arrives. She asks Bonnie to tell Julian she tried and crosses over. Julian glances up but it's hard to tell whether he's reacting to her crossing over or if he's just disturbed by the music from upstairs.

As Markos discusses his plans to take and remodel Casa Salvatore, Julian gets a message to Damon via Damon's vampionic hearing. Since Markos doesn't know Julian is there they can surprise him. Accordingly Damon leads Markos to the wine cellar, where Damon palms the key to Julian's chains and surreptitiously slides it under the door.

The twins continue dismantling Stefan and Elena until suddenly they aren't. Their magic has gone. Elena grabs Liv and Stefan moves on Luke but they both start sizzling. Their daylight rings have failed.

They bolt for the Grill and Matt leads them down into the network of tunnels that run under the town.

The shitty Travelers continue chanting on the town square and they are looking rough. Blood is pouring from their noses and ears. Honestly, if I were a shitty Traveler I would never volunteer for anything.

Down in the tunnels Elena starts spewing water from her mouth and we flash back to her drowning at the end of season 4. Then a gunshot wound appears on Stefan and we flash back to his death in the 1860s. Stefan explains about the unraveling spell and Matt suggests they keep moving to stay ahead of it. Again, a plan of limited usefulness.

Damon stalls for time until Julian takes Markos from behind in the single most ridiculous attack sequence in the history of ever.

He sinks his fangs into Markos's throat but before he can seal the deal Markos hurls him off. Julian rises but before he can continue the attack he claps a hand to his mouth and cries, "My fangs! What the hell happened to my fangs!" like he's Ronald Reagan in King's Row (seriously, look it up). Damon moves toward him but starts to sizzle. His daylight ring has failed.

The shitty Travelers continue to chant until they start falling over, apparently dead.

A gunshot appears on Damon and we flash back to his getting shot in the 1860s. Julian starts choking but interestingly we don't flash back to Tyler's death because Julian doesn't remember it. Markos suggests they make a run for it to buy themselves some time.

Damon makes it through the forest to a road where Jeremy picks him up. Caroline packs a go bag while Bonnie thinks. She hits upon an idea for bringing them all back from The Other Side and heads out to find Enzo. Matt delivers some blood bags to Elena and Stefan; Jeremy arrives with Damon. She kisses Damon because she's had a crappy day and needed it. This parallels Damon's kissing her last episode but it's relationship drama so I don't care. Jeremy and Matt head back to town to serve as spies while the rest of the gang finish getting ready to get 1,000 miles ahead of the spellfront.

At the wrecked truck that has literally been sitting in the middle of the road for hours with a dead body in it, Maria contemplates her corpse. Enzo finds her and asks if she knows the spell that brought Enzo back. She does but doesn't have the requisite shitty Traveler manpower to pull it off. Enzo tells her to let him worry about that but before anything else the Great Beyond sucks Maria into oblivion.

Julian catches up to Stefan and Caroline and Stefan has to break the news that Maria is dead. Julian freaks out. While Stefan tries to talk him down, Caroline tries to take him from behind and snap his neck.

Julian fends her off and wolf-snarls at her. Stefan moves to intervene and Julian rips his heart right out of his damn chest. Julian: "There. Dead Doppelganger. Stopped the spell." He drops Stefan's heart and walks away as Caroline screams for someone, anyone, to help her.

Bonnie and Enzo try to brainstorm Plan B when Bonnie spots Stefan. He asks if she's found a way to bring everyone back. She reports that she lost it. A crestfallen Stefan crosses over.

Well that was, by turns, quite exciting and very boring. I may have mentioned that I do not care in the slightest about the central Triangle so every second spent on that hot mess was torturous. Conversely the various attacks and consequences of the unraveling spell were pretty great. Loved the callbacks to all of the death scenes from throughout the series and not getting the flashback to Tyler's death was a nifty reinforcement of Tyler's absence. I do wonder why Matt and Jeremy are still alive seeing as how the witch-made protecto-ring has brought them back from the dead any number of times.

Next week: the season finale. I would love for the show not to hit the RESET button and leave Stefan dead but we'll never lose a leg of the Triangle. But since his inevitable return means the door to The Other Side is open, allowing for the return of other gone-to-soon characters. Who would you like most to come through that revolving door?