‘The Originals’ Review: Tyler arrives to destroy Klaus’ life; Mission Accomplished?

Tonight’s episode of The Originals left us with a lot of thoughts and feelings, which is a good thing. When you’re as obsessed with a television show as we are with this one, it should stay with us for hours, days, weeks after it ended. But here’s the thing. It’s been over an hour since it ended, we’ve had time to let it sink in, and we still can’t decide how we feel about “Bloodletting.”

So let’s talk about it and see what we can come up with: first, it was the big crossover episode, aka the first time a character from The Vampire Diaries, has made his way to New Orleans to visit the Originals. When it was announced that Tyler (Michael Trevino) was the first one making the journey, the decision was met with a lot of confusion and unhappiness, but to us, he was the character who made the most sense, considering everything that has happened with Tyler and Klaus.

On the positive side, we were impressed that the episode didn’t waste a lot of time with exposition, telling us what we already know from TVD. Klaus gave Elijah the quick rundown, like any siblings would when telling a story, of how Klaus forced Tyler into being his hybrid experiment, tried to steal his girlfriend and then eventually killed his mom. Once Elijah was all caught up, they set out to rescue Hayley from Tyler.

That’s right; as predicted, Marcel was innocent and it was actually Tyler who had snatched Hayley. This is where the story started to fall apart a little for us because Tyler being the villain was strange. Yes, Klaus killed his mom and he’s got nothing to lose and Hayley betrayed him by hooking up with Klaus, but it was still hard to wrap our heads around the fact that a guy we’ve seen grow into a hero over four seasons would be assaulting a pregnant woman and threatening to kill her baby. We love our moms too, but we draw the line of vengeance well before murdering babies.

But fine, whatever, Tyler is the big bad all of a sudden and he wants to turn Hayley’s special royal werewolf family member (seriously, another day, another rant on this one) into a hybrid as an experiment. Okay, this is where the story really started to lose us because we watched TVD faithfully over the years and the only way to make a hybrid is with doppelganger blood so to borrow something really funny from Tumblr, unless Hayley is going to give birth to another Nina Dobrev look alike in a few months, how on earth could they make a hybrid without the doppelganger blood?

We can begrudgingly look the other way when it comes to the absurdity of a dead man getting a woman pregnant in the first place. Whatever, it’s a TV show about vampires and witches. Things happen. But don’t try and tell us that this universe we’ve watched for over four years now suddenly has a new way to make a hybrid. We’re not here for changing mythology midstream. So what if the baby has Klaus’ blood? Klaus has Klaus’ blood too and he can’t make a hybrid without a human Petrova girl. We’re calling ‘fail’ on this one, show.

Things picked up when Hayley got away and ran off into the woods where she was reunited with Elijah. They hugged! They hugged and we died of happiness. It was everything and then some. These two are the best.

While these two were being the cutest, Klaus and Tyler were having a reunion. Our favorite part of the scene was when Klaus taunted Tyler that he’d call Caroline and mention that he was dead. That’s right; the shipper mention was the highlight, not only because we still support them (Team Klaroline: Sorry not sorry), but also because Klaus vs. Tyler is so last year and the year before. We’ve seen it; we’ve rolled our eyes during it; we know how it ends. Klaus put his hand in Tyler’s chest, but stopped from ripping his heart out because he wanted Tyler to suffer a lonely existence. Fair enough, but again, nothing we haven’t seen before.

Now let’s talk about when things really started to get ugly. Elijah and Hayley return to the cabin and question whether or not Klaus knew that Hayley’s baby was a Nina Dobrev look alike hybrid maker. Klaus is not happy that Elijah and Hayley are so close or that they think the worst of him (really, Klaus? Remember when you daggered Elijah and handed him over to your enemy? Or when you told the witches to kill Hayley and the baby? Any of that ring a bell?). So Klaus responds like he always does and bites Elijah before abandoning Hayley and Elijah in the bayou. But then we got a cute moment where Elijah and Hayley bonded even more and looked like they wanted to kiss, so whatever, Klaus. We win.

Unfortunately for Klaus, his brother was not the only sibling who is not a fan of his at the moment. After Rebekah knocked Marcel around the church for kidnapping Hayley, Marcel showed her the garden, which was actually the foundation of a house that he wanted to build for her back in the day before she fled New Orleans with Klaus. We know this was supposed to be a big, romantic moment, but this pairing is just not working for us. It got even worse when Rebekah pointed out that not long after they left, Klaus daggered her for 90 years. Yes, but she had time to fall in love with Stefan (not that we blame you), but that just proves Marcel was not on her mind.

Anyway, Marcel wants Rebekah to help him kill Klaus so they can be together and Rebekah clues Marcel into the fact that if Klaus dies, all the vampires he sired die, including Marcel. So instead he wants to lock Klaus away in the garden and asks Rebekah to side with him. She needs to think about it so she heads home to see Klaus, who fills her in on his misadventures with Elijah and Hayley. She’s not amused, but she pretends to cower beneath Klaus’ threats per usual, even as she lies and tells him that Marcel is not plotting against him. Meanwhile, Tyler has made his way to Marcel’s bar to warn him about the hybrid-making baby.

Before we wrap up, let’s just take a minute to talk about how cute Davina and Josh were. Marcel brought Josh to her so she could undo Klaus’ compulsion and they bonded and it was adorable. Both of them have had rough lives and it was sweet when Josh promised to keep her secret if Davina went against Marcel’s wishes and didn’t make Josh forget her existence.

Okay so let’s try and come to a conclusion on this episode. We do feel bad for Klaus. It sucks that he always thinks of himself as nothing more than a bastard because of everything his father has said and done to him over his long life. But at the same time, we can’t blame his siblings for thinking the worst about him because he’s done really terrible things to his entire family and usually for selfish reasons. That’s why we love this family dynamic so much. It’s beyond complicated and messy and these vampires have over 1,000 years of issues to work out.

But we’re kind of bummed that it’s fallen apart so fast. Even as they grumbled, the Original siblings presented a united front last week and it was awesome. We liked watching them play house and now things have gone to hell and we’re sad. However, we know this is the show we signed up for and we’re looking forward to seeing what comes next – in two weeks (boo!).

As far as this episode goes, we didn’t hate it, but it probably won’t be making our Top 10 list for season one either. The performances were fantastic, as always, but overall, the episode is not sitting well with us. What did you guys think? Hit the comments and let us know!