It’s nice to see The Originals staying true to itself in its final season. And it was nice to see Elijah back to his normal self, even if it was in a flashback.

Spoilers Below

It should really come as no surprise that it’s Klaus’s (Joseph Morgan) old enemies that took Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin). I will note, I’m very sad that we haven’t seen much of Hayley this season. When she was kidnapped I didn’t even think about her not being around much. I guess I thought she would be rescued soon. In the final season of One Tree Hill, Nathan was kidnapped and he didn’t appear in many episodes during the last season. I hope that will not be the case for Hayley, but it looks like it might be so.

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We’ve met a lot of Klaus’s enemies in The Originals. This one, of course, has to tie Antoinette (Jaime Murray), Elijah’s (Daniel Gillies) new girlfriend, into the mix, and Roman (Jedidiah Goodacre) the guy that Hope (Danielle Rose Russell) likes. Of course, he wasn’t there just to be eye candy, he has a much bigger role to play.

One the one hand, I hate that the writers made Hope fall for his tricks, on the other, she needed someone to talk to and it didn’t matter that it was a boy. I’m not sure what their plan is for Hope. Do they want her to still bind her werewolf side or is it something bigger, now that they have her?

This was a good episode because it was tying all the pieces together. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one wanting to know more about Antoinette and what her backstory was. I also wasn’t convinced it was just Marcel’s (Charles Michael Davis) vampires that had taken Hayley. They may have made themselves at home in New Orleans, but they aren’t Marcel’s vampires.

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It is nice getting to see Marcel and Klaus work together again. It’s also nice that they are butting heads and still trying to find a way to make it work. Marcel is trying to be Elijah to Klaus, and Klaus so desperately needs Elijah that he has no choice but to lean on Marcel.

I am also really enjoying the auntie/niece scenes. Freya (Riley Voelkel) is helping Hope a lot in Hayley’s absence. It’s a different side of Freya we haven’t seen. She’s the powerful witch, protective older sister, and we’ve watched her fall in love, but we haven’t seen her play this role. It might not be the most exciting role for Riley to play, but I’m sure we’ll have some powerful witch moments before the series ends. I can’t imagine the writers ending the story without Freya playing some role in saving the day.

Through all the years we’ve known Josh (Steven Krueger), he’s been the luckiest and unluckiest character. I say luckiest because he hasn’t died when he could have probably a million times by now. Unluckiest, because he keeps ending up in trouble. That probably has to with the fact that he keeps being pulled into Mikaelson messes. He hasn’t learned to bite his tongue yet and it’s amazing that Klaus hasn’t killed him.