The Vampire Diaries recap: 'This Woman's Work' 

'The Vampire Diaries' recap: 'Postcards From the Edge'

Ranking the magical elements from 'The Vampire Diaries' and 'The Originals'

What would you do for the ones you love? Spend 145 years attempting to free someone from a tomb? Create a whole new realm to force someone to spend eternity with you? Carry twin siphoner babies in your womb for a friend?

has always been about the lengths people are willing to go for love, and tonight that thread continues: Both our heroes and the new Big Bad show what they’re willing to do, even begrudgingly, for their loved ones.

And that is where Rayna Cruz’s origin story starts: with the love for her father. In Saint Malo, Louisiana, 1842, a young girl is sitting around a fire with her father; he’s sketched over his invisible hunter marks so she can see them herself. If you’ll recall, the hunter tattoos are only visible to the Brotherhood of the Five. She hopes to be in the brotherhood someday and wants to learn how to fight.

For 15 years her father trains her (and she grows up into the huntress we saw emerging from the fire last week — actress Leslie-Anne Huff); it’s then that a vampire named Julian comes to attack the town of Saint Malo. Rayna’s father doesn’t let her go with him to fight, but later she goes to see what’s happened. That’s when she finds Julian about to kill her father. She attempts to get him to stop by saying that her father is one of The Five, but that backfires: Julian compels her to kill her father instead, so he won’t suffer the hunter’s curse. As she tries to fight the compulsion, Rayna cries and tells her father she can’t stop. “Carry on my legacy,” he tells her before dying from her stab to the chest.

Angry about her father’s death, Rayna goes to a group of shamans who perform a ritual to imbue her with long life and power. Seven of them take their own lives so that they may live on through her. The head shaman gives her a sword, “a weapon of judgment, one that thirsts for those who prey upon us.” Before killing himself as well, the shaman says that when the blade draws blood from a vampire, it will help her in their destruction.

And in 1903 England, we see that in action. Julian, Mary Lou, Nora, and Beau are walking out of a bar singing (Beau has a voice!) when the huntress finds them and runs her blade through Beau’s throat. Julian is able to knock Rayna out before they all flee. Julian knows they need to get as far from her as possible, so they book a transatlantic trip to New York, with Lily who is offscreen.

And before Nora can even complain about her pine box accommodations on the boat, Rayna has found them and finally avenges her father’s death. She stabs Julian with her special sword, which sucks his soul into the Phoenix Stone.

Rayna is pretty bad-ass, and she proves that in the future, too. She’s still in Enzo’s glass box, which she attempts to punch her way out of. He tries to tell her she’s going to hurt herself when she shatters the whole thing. The huntress is loose. And she wants her sword back.

Enzo calls Damon and threatens that he’ll tell Bonnie what Damon did to Elena (I’m questioning how Enzo knows this, but for some reason Damon doesn’t) if they don’t bring him Rayna’s sword. Damon doesn’t want his friend Bonnie — who found out about his fling from last week, “Krystal with a K,” and was super cool about it — to find out about his other, bigger mistake.

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They go to Bonnie’s dorm room, where she pulls out the sword, but she doesn’t want to hand it over before Damon tells her what Enzo has on him. “Damon, it’s me — I’m your best friend,” she says. I really love these two being friends, and I wish he’d tell her the truth here, but he doesn’t. Also, where is Tyler? Why didn’t he give anyone a heads up about what happened??

Damon asks her to leave it alone, but she gives him the sword anyway. They take it to Alaric’s old classroom, where they find Enzo tied to a chair. Next thing they know, Rayna is there, demanding her sword. When they say no, she shoots Bonnie in the stomach with an arrow. This woman is not very patient. So Damon throws the sword out the window for her to go retrieve.

Now that Rayna has her sword, she can finally track down her old friends, the heretics, who all just so happen to be at the hospital.

NEXT: Welcome to Mystic Falls Hospital, the most dangerous medical facility on TV (aside from maybe Eichen House)

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