About halfway through the “Original Sin”, my boyfriend starting watching The Vampire Diaries with me. He needed to be explained what was going on and my description went something like this: “That’s Silas and he is bad and he’s the original Paul Wesley, and the girl he’s with is Katherine, the second or maybe third, possibly fourth Petrova doppelganger and the other girl is some weird traveller chick who killed her boyfriend by putting him in Matt, that one blond guy. Silas dated this one witch girl because he wanted to live for ever with handmaiden girl who is original Elena, but he tricked witch girl at their wedding so now she’s pissed, and came back to life, probably cause Bonnie dropped the veil earlier, and she’s trying to kill him now through Stefan.” It went on like that for a few minutes and still, all he got out of it was how to pronounce Ian Somerhalder’s last name, and that there were a lot of “Alanas.” I would like to excuse his lack of understanding by clarifying that he’s really pretty, but to be honest, this whole show has just gotten way too confusing. Sure, they do reiterate the shadow selves/doppelganger aspect until we fully understand, but as soon as that happens, another mystery is brought in.

With the least amount of confusion possible, I will try to explain the situation thus far:

• Silas was originally a witch/warlock/traveller who fell in love with a girl named Amara, originator of the Petrova doppelgangers
• Silas convinced Qetsiyah (Ket-SEE-a), another witch/traveller, that they should be together forever, so she made an immortality spell, only for Silas to run away and give the gift of immortality to Amara
• The universe does not like when living things don’t die, so it created doppelgangers of Silas (Stefan) and Amara (Katherine/Elena) t make sure that they indirectly do die
• The universe has fated the doppelgangers to be together
• Qetsiyah was scorned and decided to avenge her broken heart by creating a cure for immortality and “the other side” which is a purgatory for supernatural beings
• Qetsiyah made Amara take the cure and the killed her so she was no longer supernatural and therefore would just die without going to the other side
• Qetsiyah then locked Silas in a tomb with the cure, hoping he would take it, thinking he would be with Amara in the afterlife, but would really end up stuck on the other side with Qetsiyah
• Silas never took the cure, Katherine did
• The cure is now Katherine’s blood
• Qetsiyah is back from the other side and trying to kill Silas once and for all with the help of his doppelganger, Stefan
• Qetsiyah planted dreams in Elena and Katherine so that they would look for Stefan so Qetsiyah could use Katherine’s blood as the cure
• The Traveller, Nadia, puts Gregor in Matt’s body, but he is only summoned when she or another Traveller wants him to be
• Matt has no idea Gregor is in him, but knows something is up
• Damon admitted to Elena that fate is working against them but he doesn’t care because he loves her anyway
• Qetsiyah let Stefan return to the Salvatore home, with his daylight ring, but now his brain is wiped of memories of who everyone is

While finally revealing the origins of the doppelganger, and the identity of Qetsiyah, The Vampire Diaries have added so many other mysteries. It is quite entertaining to see how this will all unravel, assuming the writers do it right. The show has turned into one big course on mythology, kind of similar to Plato’s Symposium, in a two people searching for each other forever kind of way.

Still, I remain with questions:

• Where the heck was everyone else (Bonnie, Caroline, Jeremy, Tyler) this episode?
• Are there more Silas dopplegangers we haven’t met yet?
• What is Nadia’s motive?
• How are they supposed to use Katherine’s blood as the cure?
• Why is Silas keeping Katherine alive? If he wants the cure, why didn’t he take it in the beginning?
• Why doesn’t Stefan have any memory of who Elena and Damon are, but speaking English comes naturally? If he was on par with Silas’s Ancient Greek knowledge, shouldn’t he be speaking Greek?
• Does this mean the beginning of the end for Delena?
• Is Stefan going to try to woo Elena again, not knowing who either Elena or Damon are, but having some supernatural pull toward her?
• Is Zach Roerig actually going to be used properly, and not just as the token human?
• And again, most importantly, where is Tyler?