#to meta

Mikael; a villain, but not an antagonist.

 To start with, let’s talk about his backstory. The Mikael who kicks children and whips people half to death? A complete fabrication by TO that in no way reflects TVD.

 “But Nik was not born a killer – none of us were! You did this to us when you turned us into vampires! You destroyed our family. Not him.” – Rebekah TVD 3x09 Homecoming

 “My family was quite close, but Klaus and my father did not get along too well.” – Elijah TVD 2x18 Klaus

 The emphasis here being that it’s all wrapped up in them becoming vampires. Klaus’ fall, Mikael ruining their family all of it. Before, they were all content, a whole loving family. Yes, Klaus and Mikael had troubles, there will be people whose personalities don’t mesh.

 Now, is this to say that Mikael was actually an all loving father and Klaus is just a lying liar who lies? No (well, at least not in this specific instance), as I said, Mikael is a villain; a harsh man from a harsh time. His children loved him, but they also feared him, and that’s generally not something indicative of a father of the year award nominee. But the man who Elijah confessed he should have killed a thousand years ago, the man Rebekah tried to kill in his sleep, the man who hated Klaus just because (WE WILL GET TO THAT) didn’t come about until TO.

 So then, who is Mikael? We first see him as a mysterious figure whose presence scares Klaus into running, both in the flashback to the 1920s, and in modern day. The first real glimpse of him we get is in Ordinary People, when he grows angry at Klaus and Elijah’s play-fighting. This angers him, as he believes that combat should be taken seriously. When confronted, Elijah backs down; Klaus tries to defend it, and gets a swordfight in response. It goes on until Esther, who at first permits it, tells Mikael that he’s ‘made his point’ and to stop. Which he does.

 Mikael is a Viking, and though Plec and co. erroneously assume that Viking refers to the entirety of Norse culture, the fact that he is one means he’s a warrior. He was the guy that went out and fought and pillaged. Which informs a great deal about his worldview. How to treat combat, and how to respond to threats.

 Which in turn leads to his pride, dubbed by Rebekah to be his greatest weakness. Mikael ran once, when his eldest died, because a disease has no form you can fight, there’s no enemy to be beaten, but still it pained him to do it. And so, when Henrik dies, he decides he won’t run again. The werewolves are a physical opponent, they can be beaten, but suppose another child gets sick? Or another enemy comes, one who is beyond Mikael’s ability to fight. He’s been unable to protect two of children, has had to outlive two of his children, and he will not permit another. And so he and Esther come up with a plan. One to make it so that their family can’t lose anyone else; make them immortal. No more running, now they fight.

 Until everything went to hell, culminating in the revelation of Klaus’ true parentage, the casting of the hybrid curse, and Klaus murdering Esther in a fit of rage.

 And so Mikael lost basically everything, his son murdered his wife, and his other children believed that Mikael was responsible. And so he spent the next thousand years hunting. Seeking to avenge his wife, and to kill his son.

 And really, that was what he dedicated himself towards.  TO pretty much erases all of it in order to say that it was the fact that Klaus was a hybrid and not biologically his son that spurred him to hunt down his children -and it was all his children on TO- but that ignores a whole lot, as shown here:

 This scene is incredible, for starters, because it alone manages to give more depth to Mikael than an entire season of TO did. Mikael loves Rebekah, he loves all his children, and Klaus was his only target. In TO, Mikael seems incapable of anything but hatred. The show forgets that pride -not rage- was his defining trait, the pride that prevented him from apologizing to Rebekah, of acknowledging that no matter how justified he felt, he still caused harm to her. In TO, Mikael hates Klaus, hates hybrids, werewolves, vampires, his children, his wife. The only person he doesn’t hate is Freya, who’s a frigging retcon character.

 Speaking of retcons, on TO it’s repeatedly stated that Mikael burned down cities in his hunt for his children, hell we see him burn down an entire opera theatre. Remember this quote from Homecoming: “I had a hand in creating vampires, but bloodlust was never my intention. Over the centuries I learned to feed from the predator, not the innocent?” The bloodlust, described by Rebekah as being the darkest consequence of what they were because it drove them to kill, and Mikael trains himself to overcome it because he doesn’t want to kill innocent people. At least not needlessly, he is a vampire, an Original, he definitely has the will to kill, but a guy who spent god knows how long training himself to feed on vampires, a guy who refused human blood after being dessicated for a decade, destroys cities willy-nilly for the hell of it? That’s not even getting into the fact that TO shows him multiple times willingly feeding on living people. Again, this is the guy who refused human blood after going without any blood for a decade.

 Oh, and going back to Klaus:

Notice Klaus calls Mikael father in this scene. On TO, when Klaus did that in a flashback during 1x15 Le Grand Guignol, Mikael mocked him for it, derided him for “still clinging to that word.” On TVD? Nothing. Because Klaus is Mikael’s son. The narrative irony, that the child Mikael got along with the least would come to be the one most like him. After all, Klaus wants to be the biggest, baddest, strongest guy out there, and growing up, who was that if not Mikael?

 Mikael was a villain, but not an antagonist, his role in the story was an ‘enemy of my enemy’ type with the MFG. They both wanted Klaus dead. This narrative role allowed for a bit of nuance. Mikael and Klaus were mirrors of each other, and both had their own twisted senses of honour and love. And yes, I do fully believe that Mikael loved Klaus. In their meeting, he doesn’t deride Klaus’ biological parentage, he doesn’t insult him for calling Mikael his father, he chastises him for his “impulse” and calls out the fact that between compulsion, sirebonds and daggers, there isn’t a single person who’s loyal to Klaus who is so willingly.

 The entire meeting is of two family members calling each other out on their failings: Klaus calling out that Mikael always underestimated him, never gave Klaus’ own strength the respect it deserves, embodied through attempting to call Mikael’s bluff. But Mikael wasn’t bluffing, and as far as Mikael and Klaus were aware in that moment, Mikael killed Elena and Klaus’ access to more hybrids. And then Mikael dies, killed by his son, whose strength he never acknowledged. Is it really any wonder that the only response to this is cry, however briefly?

 Mikael’s relationship with Klaus was a focal point for his character, and TO’s complete derailment of it, therefore, had a huge impact on the character. On TVD, Klaus was a villain and an antagonist, but on TO he’s the protagonist (ostensibly anyway, in reality, the deuteragonist to Hayley’s protagonist), and Mikael the antagonist. Now there are two different ways that this could have gone.

 1)   Recognize the incredibly complex relationship between these two and build on it in order to help cement the relative moral nature of a show focused on the oldest serial murderers in the world

2)   Say ‘fuck relative morality and nuance’ and make the antagonist as evil as possible so that by comparison the guy you had choke a pregnant woman for trying have an abortion seem like a good guy

 Three guesses which option the show went with. First two don’t count. Yes, they eschewed any complexity by making Mikael out to be a sadistic psychopath who tried multiple times to murder Klaus BEFORE he ripped out Esther’s heart and blamed it on Mikael. Oh wait sorry, ~choked her to death~ and blamed it on Mikael. As opposed to the intense regret he felt upon seeing Rebekah on TVD, on TO Mikael shows nothing but anger when meeting Elijah, even when he’s ostensibly saying he’s proud of him. On TO, he can’t mention Klaus without saying the word bastard, on TVD it’s never uttered.  On TVD he explicitly states that Klaus is the only one he ever wanted dead, on TO he plans to help Finncent kill them all. On TVD, avenging Esther was what spurred him forward, on TO, upon meeting he screams at her and tries to hit her. Hell, their entire relationship is reduced to a Stockholm syndrome-fuelled abusive horror show.

 And it all culminates in that scene. Klaus has the white oak pointed at Mikael’s heart and asks ‘why?’ Why was he a kid kicking, Klaus whipping, no-good-awful-abusive-piece-of-shit? Why, for Klaus’ entire life did Mikael hate him?

   “I don’t know, I just did.”

 A character’s motivation: why they do what they do. Why they feel what they feel. It’s fundamental to them. Without that, a character could be replaced with an object. They stop being a character and become a macguffin. And TO cares so little for Mikael, the man who created vampires on their vampire show, that they didn’t even bother to give a motivation as to why he was an abusive ass. They retconned him into a complete psychopathic monster because they didn’t have the necessary skill to make us care about Klaus despite the fact that he’s a monster, so why not make Mikael irredeemably horrible because abuse survivor=relatable right? This despite the fact that Klaus was still an abuse survivor on TVD, and they still managed to make him likable without relying on the image of him being kicked as a child.

I thought this season was going to explore Elijah’s mental struggles more than it did. We learnt in season 2 that he can become incredibly unstable, but that he manages to pull himself together for most of his time by burying all of that behind the Red Door. We didn’t see much of it since, so I was eager to delve deeper into it.

Elijah normally exercises an extreme amount of control in everything he does, from the way he looks to the way he thinks to the way he acts. He’s not rash or impulsive at all. When he uses violence, it’s almost always because he rationally decided to do so. Attacking someone impulsively because his emotions got the best of him is rare, although it can definitely happen. No one is always in full control over themselves and their emotions, after all. *whispers* pulling out Marcel’s heart. To Elijah, this lack of control is abhorrent and he will always regret those lapses. After all, this is the man who has been berating Klaus (and frankly all of his siblings) for their temper and lack of control for centuries.

When the Red Door is opened however, it’s a different story. Elijah’s mind is attacked by memories and feelings of guilt and self-loathing, so powerful and overwhelming that he shuts down. He loses all of his ability to restrain himself and think rationally. His violence becomes uncontrolled and unreasoned. He no longer makes a conscious decision to use violence, it happens involuntarily. Some people argue that this is the real Elijah, while the suit-and-handkerchief Elijah is merely pretending to be something he is not, but I don’t agree. Both of these sides of Elijah are part of who he is. In fact, I’d argue one side would not exist without the other. Would Elijah be so desperate for self-control and self-restraint if he didn’t become so horrifyingly violent without it? Would Elijah try to bury all of his memories behind the Red Door if they didn’t torment him with guilt, self-loathing and regret? There’s a whole debate to be had about what exactly defines us as a person (instincts, actions, decisions, feelings…) but for the sake of keeping it simple now, I’d argue they’re all part of who you are. People are complex.

I thought this season might explore that paradox of Elijah’s deliberate vs indeliberate violence, by leading him to a breaking point again. With Klaus getting better and better at keeping his temper in check, it was the perfect time for Elijah to dissolve, and it really did seem to go into that direction – but it just feels half-assed, if I’m honest. They made Rebekah say:

“Now that our brother has found his noble purpose, what about you? (…) You're no longer tethered to him. You must have thought about it. So what will you do with your immortality, now you're not burdened with saving Nik's soul?”

I was excited. I thought I would get what I wanted: an unravelling Elijah in an existential crisis because the sole objective he had for the entirety of his life, the redemption of his brother, suddenly seemed achievable. The one thing he had devoted himself to for a thousand years within his reach – and of course he wouldn’t know what to do with his life anymore. It would be enough to give anyone an intense feeling of loss, let alone an immortal who has lived for so long. Not to mention how Elijah is a controlfreak who has poured all of himself into saving his brother simply to forget his own struggles. There is no person Elijah feels more guilt towards than Klaus. Therefore, devoting himself to his brother is the surest way for Elijah to soothe his mind and basically keep the Red Door tightly locked. He’s not ready to let Klaus go, because then what else would Elijah focus on? He desperately clings to his brother still, because his brother is the only thing that gives his life purpose. 

Klaus’s redemption being the potential reason for Elijah’s downfall is something I really, really love. His devotion to Klaus has always been unhealthy, and it was bound to backfire. This season definitely did reference this a little – the finale talked about how they needed to let each other go, after all, which was a good sentiment to conclude the season with. I just don’t feel like this was much explored in the season itself at all. I feel like Elijah’s struggles were mostly just there to create Hayley/Elijah drama.

Elijah has never exactly been a good guy, but this season he noticeably made more horrible decisions without scruples – which I feel like he would’ve mostly tried to avoid before. I think this is because Elijah is painfully aware that with Klaus changing for the better, it would fall up to him to do the dirty work, the things necessary to protect the family from all harm. Those have always been Klaus’s tasks, and Elijah has always vehemently protested against those ‘reckless actions’ – but I think Elijah can’t help but admit that Klaus’s actions, however he may dislike them, are the reason their family is still here today: a necessary evil. So suddenly the roles get reversed. As Klaus attempts to be better for his daughter, Elijah is prepared to take over the responsibility of doing the necessary evil stuff for the sake of giving his brother the chance to become a good dad without any tarnish. He spent almost a thousand years trying to achieve his brother’s redemption – now that it’s within reach, what else is there for him, than to do everything in his power to make sure his brother gets to keep it? He does so by offering up his own morality for the sake of Klaus’s, kind of figuratively in the spirit of: ‘I’ll damn make sure my brother goes to heaven – even if I have to go to hell for it’. He’s protecting Klaus’s purity and innocence – or well, what the hell’s even left of it, of course (anyone remember in S2 when Elijah told Klaus: “whatever innocence remains, we must protect it at all costs”?).

Now, I don’t know how much of this is actually in the show itself. This is what I think should have taken place, but I definitely feel like the writers dropped the ball on it. It does look like the writers were going for kind of  the same idea as me. After all, they made Elijah pretty much beg Klaus to let him be the monster and do all the dirty work, so that Klaus can simply be a dad:

“And how do we protect Hope from all of this? She worships you, Niklaus. She must not see the monster. (…) Let me do this, please. And should any turmoil arise, should anyone dare to disrupt our kingdom… let them answer to me.”

Now, keep in mind, Elijah made a deliberate choice to go dark, and therefore this still fits into the category of “controlled, deliberate violence”. This is not Red Door Elijah yet, but the Red Door might just start to creak and shudder a little under the extra weight. I think Elijah’s task of protecting his family would definitely be a large burden for him. He’s not as skilled as Klaus in taking down enemies by doing whatever it takes. Elijah is much more in his element when he can plan ahead, and he’s not as capable of handling himself in stressful situations when things change very quickly. He may have an act of cool indifference, but once placed in extremely tense situations, he can lose his cool - especially when he deals with things that he feels are out of his control, as the true controlfreak he is. And when Elijah becomes desperate, he is very much capable of going off the deep end, further than he would’ve liked.

As much as the lack of Hope/Elijah scenes dismays me, I think it would’ve made perfect sense for Elijah to avoid all interaction with Hope, if he were to go to such dark places. Klaus needs to be good and light to be in Hope’s vicinity as her father, so Elijah will simply disappear into the darkness and perform all the deeds that Klaus now cannot. For Elijah, it’s of the utmost importance that Hope should never have to see her father as the monster he is/used to be. He’s protecting Hope’s innocence, because in turn that means he’s protecting Klaus’s. However, I can’t tell whether those lack of scenes between them are deliberate or not, and that’s the whole problem. I love subtlety, but this isn’t even subtle anymore. This is just unexplained and messy. If they wanted to show Elijah avoiding Hope, we should’ve actively seen Elijah avoid Hope. The groundwork was there, why not follow it through? If they didn’t want to show Elijah avoiding Hope, there’s really no excuse why they have so little scenes together – yes, they do have some scenes together, but they contain so little interaction that they hardly count imo.

Elijah’s relationship with Marcel was also neglected in this season, to be honest. It was there, but most of the time not really in a substantial way. Most of the season consisted of Elijah and Marcel putting aside their differences temporarily for a partnership in which they tensely kept snarking at each other. Snark is fun, but after all the abuse that has taken place between them, I do find it quite a muted response.

The one scene I think is absolutely amazing, is the one in 4x05, when Marcel is locked in the cellar and Elijah threatens him. In that scene, Elijah reiterates what I’ve been saying above: he’s obsessed with his brother’s redemption. Everything is about Klaus and for Klaus. He will do everything for his brother’s redemption and take out everyone who threatens to stand in the way. Even if that goes for Marcel, whom Elijah once considered a son. It was a very ruthless, cold and chilling scene. Elijah was calculated in his words; he had obviously been thinking about it before he entered the cellar. All of his words were carefully crafted to make it hurt more for Marcel, make the impact greater. It was essentially parental emotional abuse, and deliberate abuse at that. Does Elijah mean what he says? Yes and no. He means it in the sense that he really would choose Klaus’s redemption over Marcel in a heartbeat, but Elijah pretending not to care is just an act. We know he cares. We saw how he cried after he had ripped Marcel’s heart out. But, as he told us, as long as Marcel forms any threat to either Klaus’s safety or his redemption, Elijah is not capable of showing any mercy to Marcel. So he puts on the act, and he puts it on perfectly, all to threaten and intimidate Marcel into obedience. Not to mention how he tells Marcel how worthless he is – it’s chilling how much that echoes Mikael telling Klaus how he’s useless and weak. It’s clear that Elijah picked up a thing or two in Abuse 101 class taught by Mikael.

The 2x02 flashback was the first time that we saw Elijah pushing away Marcel for the sake of Klaus, and he has never really stopped doing so. This is how far Elijah’s dysfunctional devotion to his brother goes. His devotion to Klaus will always stand in the way of his relationship with Marcel, so the only way it will ever be possible for Elijah to make amends is by letting go of that devotion to his brother. That’s why I do kind of like how it was Marcel in the end who compelled Elijah’s memories away and ‘set him free’ (even if the compelling thing itself doesn’t make a whole lot of sense). Marcel basically set Elijah free from one of the major obstacles always standing in the way of them having a loving, familial relationship. This is once again something I wish was introduced more throughout the season, but I’m at least curious to see how that will change things between Elijah and Marcel next season.

One thing I found the most interesting about that scene was how Elijah viewed Marcel’s worth (or seemed to, at least) almost solely in the light of how useful he has been for Klaus’s redemption. That’s really disturbing. And it’s not like it’s just Marcel either: even before Hope’s birth, Elijah has always been obsessed with her primarily because of what she would mean for Klaus. Since we don’t have much actual Hope/Elijah scenes, it’s difficult to tell how much he cares about Hope outside of her good influence on Klaus, which is a question I desperately want answered. After all, what if Hope also ended up failing in contributing to Klaus’s redemption? I do feel like Elijah places more value on blood relatives than on adopted ones, unfortunately. Klaus has always been about “we can choose our own family”, but I’m not sure if Elijah ever shared that sentiment. I’m pretty sure he silently considers that an affront – why would you choose others over your own family? He’s kind of affronted everytime Rebekah goes in search of her own family somewhere, too. The irony of course is that Klaus is only half a blood relative of Elijah, and yet he is the one Elijah clings to the hardest.

The Red Door episode of Elijah’s mind, 4x10, was underwhelming, because I feel like it didn’t actually tell or show us anything new, anything of substance. Elijah’s Red Door never actually opens throughout the season – pretty much all his violence and horrific deeds this season have been deliberate and consciously done. He’s been a little more touchy, definitely, which made him look like a ticking time bomb, but we never actually saw it go off. We didn’t get an explanation as to why Elijah seems a bit more unstable now. Freya says that Elijah’s mind is unstable, but it seems like that’s more a result of his mind shattering in the pendant, than because of  anything psychological here. The show framed it like “this is who Elijah is underneath, all the time, always - we’ll show you now just to remind you, as we like to do every once in a while”. So what was the point? Was all of that just so Elijah could fall off Hayley’s pedestal? Why did we not actually explore what it would take for Elijah to open the door again?

I feel like this is one of my most incoherent rants ever. Mostly because this season left me feeling like the writers technically agree for the most part with my take on Elijah and his relationships, they just have a really bad way of showing it. Like, what I did here is ‘explain’ the storyline of Elijah and his various relationships on the show this season… yet I don’t recall seeing much of this actually on screen. Maybe if you squint hard enough, but mostly this just feels like me drawing conclusions based on the few hints they’ve dropped, paired with my own judgement on what should’ve taken place. I think that might be the most frustrating thing: seeing these little hints dropped in the show where it seems like the writers agree with me, but then they don’t really come through. It was mostly just a line here or there, and a couple of outstanding scenes, but I feel like all of the relationships suffered as most screen time was attributed to… just plot. (A plot that I didn’t care much for, I might add, because the Hollow was so underwhelming as a villain and a character, but maybe that’s just me.) I feel like the plot should’ve revolved more around these relationships, instead of trying to cram relationship substance into a completely unrelated plot.