Have I somehow accidentally ingested werewolf venom or was Thursday night's episode of The Vampire Diaries extra trippy this week? In what has to be considered this show's cruelest fake-out to date, we were led to believe that Lily was the mystery vampire huntress chasing after Damon and Stefan in the future. So you can imagine our confusion when Lily staked herself and died on TVD by the end of the hour. I mean, how could this be possible if she's still around and hunting after her sons three years later? Well, it turns out that it was all a lie. Apparently the arrow tips Damon had been shot with in the flash forward contained traces of werewolf toxin in them, which means Damon had simply hallucinated talking to Mama Salvatore. So Lily really is dead.
Looking back on it now, I feel slightly foolish for not seeing this coming. After all, she was one of the few characters we hadn't seen in a flash forward up until now and that sweet mother-son bonding scene she had with Stefan was just too precious to not come with some sort of fallout. (Whenever two characters on bonding on this show, you can rest assured that one of them won't be around much longer. Devastation will always follow.) And while I've never been a huge fan of Lily considering what a bad mother she seemed to be, the episode did a great job of helping her to redeem herself at least somewhat.
You see, instead of choosing to save either Damon or Valerie from death, Lily refused to play Julian's game and opted to take her own life, thinking that his life was still linked to hers. Unfortunately, Mary Louise had already unlinked them, so basically Lily's death ended up being for nothing. It did prove, though, that she did love Damon and would sacrifice anything for her children. Of course, in true Damon fashion, he didn't appreciate the gesture quick enough and had his last words to his mother be: "You made your bed. Have a nice nap."
Way harsh, dude. But it does help explain why he hallucinated her in the future. He regrets what he said to her, and now — ironically — he may end up joining her in the afterlife sooner than he thinks if he doesn't get an antedate for the werewolf poison relatively soon. But that's a worry for another day. RIP Lily Salvatore. You will be missed.
Image: Eli Joshua Adé/The CW
