The Originals recap: 'Bag of Cobras'

The (temporary?) pseudo-alliance of Vincent and the Mikaelsons is proving to be mutually beneficial for now, but it’s tested tonight when a member of the Hollow’s followers dangles a carrot in front of Elijah’s face. As Klaus and Elijah stage a search party — quite literally speaking — to track down those loyal to the Hollow, a familiar, albeit a little unsurprising, suspect emerges with a deal in mind: if the Mikaelson’s will turn over Vincent (and then Marcel) to the Hollow squad, the Mikaelson’s will be exempt from all the hell that Hollow’s about to rain on the living and undead realm. Will they bite?

Let’s walk through what went down on tonight’s new episode of The Originals.

Vincent’s been playing detective by combing through the New Orleans history books for murder sprees that have something in common with current events. His studious research has revealed that the Hollow emerges every few years and convinces people to commit heinous crimes in clusters of four — each centering on a different location.

Vincent is still not pleased with Klaus and Elijah right now because they’ve kidnapped Marcel and hidden him in an undisclosed location, but he’ll have to put away his hurt feelings for now and fill Elijah in on what the Hollow is after. It’s just that bad. “It’s a ghost. It wants access to this world, so it reaches out and whispers to the desperate,” he explains.

It’s in Vince’s best interest to help both Marcel and Klaus survive this thing because if the Hollow were to absorb their powers, there’d be no stopping it from being reborn into physical form and wreaking havoc on everything in existence.

Klaus’ grand idea for sniffing out the Hollow’s helpers is to throw a bash in Marcel’s honor and then pretend he’s “unfashionably late” to it. People might not care for the Mikaelsons much, but they love Marcel, and so attendance is thick. Vince roams around the party shaking as many hands as he can to absorb their energies and do a little location spell that’ll help them figure out who’s working on behalf of the Hollow right now. He uses tarot cards to determine that the symbol he needs to look for around the place is a snake, and whaddya know, he visualizes a serpent planted right on the arm of none other than Dominic downstairs. Can’t say that one’s too much of a shocker.

Other notable guests of the evening include: Sofya, who’s convinced Josh to use his RSVP to add her as a plus-one so they can look around the manor for Marcel; Keelin, who’s giving new meaning to the idea of making eyes at someone with Freya; and, eventually Hayley. But Hayley has more important business to attend to before she can show up to the shindig.

She asks Freya to perform a seance for her at the place where her parents perished, since their violent deaths might be part of this overarching Hollow pattern, and while Hayley’s dutifully warned that the experience of reliving that tragedy will be difficult, she’d much rather dredge through ancient history than see her daughter Hope become the Hollow’s next victim. So, she’s willing to endure the heartache of watching her parents’ death scene unfold before her very eyes if it could possibly protect her daughter. Indeed, the Harry Potter Boy Who Lived vibes are strong with this murderous flashback moment, only 10 times as bloody, but she does manage to catch a glimpse of her father ditching a key through the front door slats before he succumbs to his wounds from the attacker.

Immediately, she locates the key, and she and Freya find the storage unit the key belongs to. It’s spelled shut, but that’s hardly a barrier for their entry, and inside Hayley discovers a ton of personal family memorabilia that’s like a time capsule of her lost childhood and innocence. She sends Freya back to the party, saying that combing through her family’s artifacts is a one-woman job and commences with the nostalgia session solo. But she knows there’s a reason her father wanted this place out of reach of his attackers; it’s not all family photos and ceramic horses in there. As she squeezes a teddy bear, she discovers something pretty grisly buried inside of its stuffing: a set of teeth. As in, real human teeth. That’s … not the kinda thing you give to a toddler, no matter how supernaturally inclined your family happens to be.

Meanwhile, Elijah’s been trying to take a diplomatic approach to handling the Holllow’s minions, while Klaus has been dealing with the uninvited presence of Sofya in the only way he knows how — by flirting like a madman while hurtling insults and threats in between each sauntering dance move.

Elijah dispenses with Vince after a witchy forcefield showdown commences between himself and Dominic, preferring to try the long-winded approach to resolving their discord. Dominic insists the Hollow team has the upper hand on the Mikaelsons and that their only path to safety is to turn over Vince and Marcel to the Hollows. Elijah entertains the offer, bemused, and manages to learn that the Hollow needs to feed in order to sustain new life on the Earthly plane again. He doesn’t want to turn over Vincent because it would gaslight their status with the city’s covenants, but Dominic points out that’s a fight they can win, whereas this tussle with the Hollow forces is not. Deal? Well, there are other negotiations in play with the other Original brother…

See, Sofya’s main objective tonight is simply to spring Marcel from whatever prison she knows Klaus is keeping him in. (Thanks to Josh’s keen sense of smell for sandalwood and a keen eye for fake cabinetry that’s really just a disguised dungeon door, he figures out exactly where Marcel is, even if the isolation circle Marcel’s in makes him unable to leave the small space he’s cooped up in and he’s cloaked from view by anyone not named Mikaelson.) Marcel has insisted there’s nothing romantic afoot between himself and Sofya, but it’s pretty clear she’s got a shine for him, and it’s not just her friendship that’s guiding all of these thick threats against Klaus & Co. during their swoony spat.

Ultimately, the two reach a detente. Klaus convinces Sofya to offer up her Hollow loyalists in exchange for Marcel’s release, and she does so. Rather than killing the Hollow henchmen, though, it’s the ordinarily blood-thirsty Klaus who plays good cop and decides to give these men the choice to switch gears or go down with the Hollow ship. How gentlemanly of him.

In turn, it’s Elijah who becomes a brute by not only turning down Dominic’s offer of clemency in exchange for Vince and Marcel’s heads, yanking his heart out in a ceremonious showcase from the party balcony as a declaration of war against the Hollow and its foot soldiers. He beckons all in attendance to forget that they don’t like the Mikaelsons and see the bigger picture of this threat and join them in their pursuit of its demise.

He hopes his decision to turn down the offer of safety for his family in exchange for Vince’s continued existence will be enough to forge a true bond with Vince — sure, he might still be mad at Elijah and Freya over what happened with Davina, but can bygones ever really be bygones? We’ll see. For now, Elijah insists, “This enemy’s a dark force, and it can’t be bargained or reasoned with … I don’t bargain and I’m done with reason.” Vince might not be ready to shake on it just yet, and not just because he wore out his hands tracking down Dominic earlier. But Vince isn’t going anywhere for now.

By the time Hayley arrives with the news of her storage room discovery, there’s blood on the floor. She ignores it and informs Klaus and Elijah that the bone fragment must be part of a quartet that’s necessary for the Hollow faithful to collect in hopes of securing their leader’s second life on Earth.

This gives Klaus an aha! moment because he realizes that he, too, is in possession of a bone. Or he was. What he thought was just a bone dagger worth locking away in a safe was actually part of this curious collective, and all that time spent wooing-slash-fighting with Sofya was just a distraction for someone to break into his safe and steal it. Serves her right that Klaus didn’t deliver Marcel to her right away as promised — or does it?

Klaus may think he’s gotten somewhere with Sofya after all’s said and done — he even promises to deliver Marcel safe and sound once the Hollow situation is handled — but that’s when Sofya reveals there’s much more to her distaste for Klaus than his present-day penchant for nefariousness. Turns out, they have a nasty little bit of history together, as she watched him slay her entire family during a wedding feast in Russia 500 years ago. Some grudges die hard, guys. “Be careful not to overplay your hand,” she warns him. “I’ve hated you a lot longer than I’ve known Marcel.” Is that a glint of regret there in his eyes?

And what’s become of that dagger? Well, it’s now in the possession of none other than Dominic, who’s successfully raised from the dead by its proximity to his emptied heart chamber and a little voodoo-ish ritual performed over his corpse.

“They used our own deception against us,” Klaus notes. “If they get to the other bones before we do, they will try to raise this monstrosity and it will come for us all.” Fun times!