Handle with Care

The Vampire Diaries

Season 5, Episode 6 (95)

Air date

November 7, 2013

Written by

Caroline Dries & Holly Brix

Directed by

Jeffrey Hunt

Episode Guide
(Transcript)
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Handle with Care is the sixth episode of the fifth season of Template:The Vampire Diaries and the ninety-fifth episode of the series overall.

Summary

The_Vampire_Diaries_-_Handle_with_Care_Preview — The Vampire Diaries - Handle with Care Preview

Promo

INDESTRUCTIBLE — Silas happily announces his new goal to Damon and Elena, but they are skeptical when he promises to accomplish one important task in return for their help. Qetsiyah confidently tells Stefan about her next move, then realizes that Silas has managed to outsmart her. A desperate Katherine discovers a new and unexpected consequence of becoming human again, and realizes she needs a new place to stay. In exchange for a spot in the dorm room, she offers to show Caroline how to get answers from Dr. Maxfield. Bonnie is touched by Jeremy’s strength and determination to stand by her. Finally, Damon is stunned when he figures out the secret to Qetsiyah’s plan.

Plot

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Cast

Main Cast

Nina Dobrev as Elena Gilbert/Katherine Pierce/Amara
Paul Wesley as Stefan Salvatore/Silas
Ian Somerhalder as Damon Salvatore
Steven R. McQueen as Jeremy Gilbert
Kat Graham as Bonnie Bennett
Candice Accola as Caroline Forbes
Zach Roerig as Matt Donovan (credit only)
Michael Trevino as Tyler Lockwood (credit only)

Recurring Cast

Co-Starring

Uncredited

James Remar as Giuseppe Salvatore (archive footage)

Trivia

Antagonists: The Travelers, Qetsiyah and Silas.
Silas appears as a witch for the first time in the present-day, after having taken the cure by feeding on Katherine, whose blood became the cure after ingesting it in Graduation.
When Qetsiyah learned that Silas had taken the cure, she tortured Elena to blackmail Damon into killing Silas, since Silas had trapped her in her cabin until sundown and was unable to do the deed herself.
Silas demonstrated how powerful he was as a witch by exhibiting a rather refined form of telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and by managing to trap Qetsiyah and Stefan in their cabin with a solar energy-based boundary spell from afar.
Wes was revealed to be a member of the secret society Augustine at Whitmore College when Katherine and Caroline drained his blood of vervain to compel answers out of him.
Silas refused to allow Elena join him, Damon, and Jeremy in their search to find the anchor, simply because she looks like Amara, and, in his words, he didn't want to spend the day looking at her "impostor face."
- In a humorous twist, when Damon replies that Silas' demand to make no sense, Silas claims that it would make sense to him if he had ever been in love with someone who looked like Elena. However, Damon has been in love with someone who looks like Elena—Katherine, who he was madly in love with from 1864 until 2010.
Bonnie and Jeremy grow even closer in Jeremy's effort to help Silas, who had promised to bring Bonnie back to life in exchange for their help.
Amara and Silas are reunited in this episode after 2,000 years.
Amara was revealed to be the original anchor to the Other Side. Silas spent 2,000 years believing that Qetsiyah cured Amara of her immortality and then killed her out of spite, while in reality, Qetsiyah had actually allowed her to remain immortal and desiccated in order to make her the the new anchor to the Other Side, as a powerful spell of that magnitude would need to be bound to something equally powerful, and Amara's invulnerability and immortality made it so that the Other Side would live as long as she did. This was also intended to work as a fail-safe in case Silas did take the cure and choose to die, because it would ensure that even if Silas tried to destroy the Other Side altogether in order to spite Qetsiyah and ruin her plans, he would be unable to do so because he would not be emotionally strong enough to kill his true love.
Like Silas, the Travelers were also revealed to be seeking to destroy the Other Side due to their hatred of spirit magic, which is why they intended to keep Silas alive just long enough to cure Amara of her immortality before they killed them both, destroying the only truly immortal species and the supernatural purgatory that were both created by Qetsiyah.
Amara, after 2,000 years of desiccation and misery, drained Silas of the cure in his blood so that she would finally be able to kill herself and end her suffering. This makes her the third vampiric character to become mortal again by ingesting the cure, after Katherine and Silas, and the only immortal to become a human after being cured (as Katherine and Silas both returned to their former witch identities after they were cured).
Amara was shown to be consistently harassed by entities only she can see, which contributed to her desire to die and end her misery.
- It is revealed in the following episode that, as the anchor to the Other Side, Amara existed on both planes, and could not only see all ghosts, but could also physically interact with them, as demonstrated when Amara grabbed Bonnie's spirit form by the wrist. It was also revealed in the same episode that Amara had felt the deaths of every supernatural being who died as they passed through her, which explained why she was so desperate to die and why she appeared to be being harassed by unknown spirits.
Katherine suspected something was wrong with her when she began developing gray hair and lost a molar while eating a sandwich at an Augustine function. She sought out Dr. Wes Maxfield's help in determining what was happening to her.
- It was later revealed in Death and the Maiden that as a result of ingesting the cure, Katherine's body had begun rapidly aging to compensate for the roughly 500 years she spent as a vampire. It is implied that had the cure remained in Katherine's system, she would have continued to age normally, a hypothesis that was confirmed to be true by Damon in Season Six's I'd Leave My Happy Home For You.
After Stefan betrayed Qetsiyah to save Elena from her, Qetsiyah revealed to Stefan that she took his memories to help him so that he wouldn't feel so much guilt or pain. She then cast a spell on him to return all of his memories, and put an emphasis on the most painful memories, such as stabbing and feeding on his father to the point of death, convincing Damon to become a vampire, meeting Elena, and the torturous three months he spent locked in a safe at the bottom of the quarry after Silas had hid him there. She then reminded Stefan that she was the one who saved him from the safe, and not his loved ones whom he kept defending, such as Elena and Damon.
Katherine met Wes and Aaron for the first time in this episode.
Elena described her relationship with Damon to Qetsiyah in an effort to make her feel guilty for putting him in harm's way.
Elena was tricked by Qetsiyah into entering the cabin, which had been sealed with a boundary spell, by making her believe that she and Stefan had slept together the previous night.
Elena originally believed Stefan hated her after his behavior toward her in the episode, but Stefan revealed that he had only pretended to in order to lower Qetsiyah's guard before severely wounding the witch to allow himself and Elena to escape the cabin. Afterward, Elena informed him that it's always been his instinct to protect her, and suggested that there was still a part of the real Stefan in him, even if he didn't have his memories.
Katherine's gray streak is similar to Nancy Thompson from A Nightmare On Elm Street and Rogue from the X-Men movies.
Tyler, Matt, and Nadia do not appear in this episode.
Elena has now met three of her ancestors as of this episode; she had previously met both Katherine and Nadia Petrova, and in this episode, she meets Amara, the progenitor of the Petrova bloodline and as well as the progenitor of the female doppelgänger bloodline.
- However, because doppelgängers are considered to be a supernatural species, and because Amara later claims she has never forgotten the face of a supernatural who has died and passed through her as the anchor, it's likely that Amara has previously met her other doppelgängers, such as Tatia, after they died and crossed through her to get to the Other Side.

Continuity

This episode marks the first appearance of Amara in the present day.
- She was last seen in Original Sin during the flashback scenes.
Dianne Freeman was last seen in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Rudy Hopkins was mentioned by Silas. He was killed by Silas in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
This is the first episode since Season Two in which Caroline and Katherine have interacted.
Gregor's friend Kristof, whom he mentioned in Matt's video feed in For Whom the Bell Tolls, appears in this episode at the warehouse when Silas, Damon, and Jeremy are looking for the anchor.

Cultural References

Handle with Care is a 1988 song by Travelling Wilburys.
Caroline's friends call her "Care."

Behind the Scenes

This episode had about 2.59 million viewers in the USA, which was 0.52 million more than the previous episode.
Hashtag during the airing is #TheCampusKat

Quotes

Silas: "Well Damon, after 2,000 years of a miserable existence, I finally get to die."

Silas: (to Damon about resurrecting Bonnie) "Did you want me to pinky swear?"

Silas: "Men only, you're staying here!"

Elena: "Are you serious? (She turns to Damon) He's not serious."

Damon: "No, he's not serious."

Silas: "Actually, I'm 100% serious. She's a freaky carbon-copy of my one true love, Amara. You can understand why I don't want to stare at her impostor face all day."

Damon: "That makes no sense."

Silas: "It would make complete sense if you were ever in love with somebody who looked exactly like her."

Elena: "This is ridiculous. We're bringing my best friend back from the dead. I'm going."

Tessa: "Silas is looking for the anchor. It's the object I used to bind the spell when I created the other side. Destroy it - the spell is broken. No more supernatural limbo, and Silas can die and find peace. I would rather his lying, cheating ass not have that."

Damon: (to Jeremy) "AKA, put the damn crossbow down, Pocahontas."

Silas: (tells a joke to Damon and Jeremy) "Knock, knock. (When Damon and Jeremy ignore him, Silas tries again) Knock, knock. (They continue to ignore him, so he finishes the joke anyway) "Who's there?" The mayor. "The mayor who?""

(Silas pauses dramatically, and after a moment, Damon sighs)

Damon: "Well, who?"

Silas: "No one! That's the joke. No one's there because I killed the mayor."

Jeremy: (bitterly) "You're a dick."

Elena: (to Tessa) "Well today, Silas was going to bring her back to life after he got the anchor. But, you told my boyfriend-- who has never put anyone's life before mine, including his own-- to kill Silas before he could do that. So, no. I'm not sad about the pizza."

Tessa: "The only thing keeping you sane was that one day one of the two people you loved would come rescue you, but they didn't. I did. Always remember that."