In what episode does Elena turn her humanity back on? (2023)

Best Starting Point: ''Growing Pains'' (401) — A lot changed in last season's lead-up. It's probably best not to miss this season opener, which shows

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EpisodeRecaps
What season does Elena turn back on her humanity?
How did they get Elena to turn her humanity back on?
Which episode Elena turn on her humanity?
Does Elena still love Damon after her humanity back?

Now it feels like we’re finally getting somewhere. Between Elena discovering the cure and Carolineflipping her humanity switch back on, we are headed full speed ahead toward Nina Dobrev’s last finale. And if tonight’s hour set the tone, I think I’m going to like it. Let’s dig in!

We start with Stefan and Caroline, who have just arrived at a B&B. As Stefan previously told Damon and Elena, he has a fairly simple three-step plan to get Caroline to flip her switch:

1) Convince her that his humanity is still off.

2) Torture her until she breaks.

3) Drain her blood,make her weak, and then bombard her with everything she used to care about… with the real kicker being a letter her mother wrote her and mailed just before she died. (Do people really do that in real life?)

And yes, Elena, Stefan and Caroline hooked up. And yes, Damon, it’s likely Caroline will choose to have “sexy Stefan time” instead of “an assault on memory lane” because who wouldn’t?!

But when Damon arrives at the B&B and shoots both Caroline and Stefan—for show—with vervain,the plan seems to be off to a good start.

Three days later, we find Caroline and Stefan in a now-very-bloody room, where Damon has vampire-proofed the entire B&B. So while Jo and Alaric watch over the place—and makeout occasionally after talking about tasting wedding cake—Damon heads to ask Bonnie for a favor. He sort of gave Lily the ascendant, which means she’s going to come to Bonnie sooner or later to ask about saving her “witchpire” friends. As you can probably guess, Bonnie thenyells at Damon before deciding that she needs to get that ascendant back.

Meanwhile, Elena’s enjoying being on watch at the B&B, where she delivers Liz’s letter to Caroline. But it seems she tried to play that card too soon. Instead of opening the letter, crying her eyes out, and then flipping her switch, Caroline burns the letter. (Seriously, what is it with humanity-less vampires and their desire to burn preciousthings?)

Also, sorry Liz?

Back at The Grill, Matt—who’s a manager now or something?—is trying to stall Lily for Bonnie when Enzo enters. He’s decided he wants a reunion with the woman who turned him and then abandoned him. But much like Lily didn’t really abandon her sons, she also didn’t really abandon Enzo. She informs him that the night he turned was the night she was captured by the Gemini coven. See? She would never have left such an attractive man bychoice!

And speaking of attractive men, by the time Damon gets to the B&B, Elena has decided that she sucks at torturing people. But little does she know that playing a “let’s pretend we’re human fantasy game” will be all the torture Caroline needs. As Caroline listens in, Elena tells Damon where she’d be in five years if she were human: She’d be living in a loft in Tribeca, above the bar Damon works at. As he puts it, he’d be Matt Donovan in her fantasy … except she makes him owner ofthe bar. (Clearly she hasn’t seen Matt’s new button-up. Owner probably isn’t far away.)

Then she tells him that she would be in a surgical residency program and that they’d have two kids together. (Nobody tell her that they could never afford a loft in Tribeca.)

NEXT: The return of Caroline Forbes

When Caroline can’t take it anymore, she decides to makeout with Stefan until Damon and Elena come to say hello. Damon comes bearing police reports for all of thepeople they’ve killed. And, of course, he talks about how Liz would feel seeing her daughter this way. But Caroline doesn’t go down without a fight: First, she turns the tables on Delena and asks Damon what it’s like to know he can’t give Elena the life she really wants and to know that, as a vampire, Elena will always be settling.

Elena walks away, and when Damon catches up with her, she tells him that she’s not settling. And once again, the conversation rolls around to how, if Elena werehuman, she and Damon wouldn’t work. Damon points out that human Elena chose Stefan, which makes Elena finally admit that she’ll never be 100 percent okay with being a vampire … but she’s okay with that because she gets to be with Damon forever.

However, their chat is interrupted when Lily calls. See, Bonnie managed to steal the ascendant from the Salvatore house, and now, Lily is threatening to destroy the cure if Damon doesn’t get it back. Really? Damon hid it in a shoe box? Eventhe moonstone in the soap dish was better than that.

Upstairs at the B&B, Caroline is still trying to undress Stefan—can you blame her?—when she realizes that his switch has been flipped this entire time. So she snaps his neck with a sweater, kicks down the door, and leaves … only to get pulled over by her mom? Confused? It’s okay. It’s because Caroline’s really still back at the B&B. Stefan’s been in her head.

Caroline wakes up and stabs Stefan, only to be treated to one ofStefan’s last memories of Liz, when he stopped by to get a sewing kit to fix Bonnie’s teddy bear. In the memory, Liz says that she hopes that Caroline and Stefan will be more than friends one day, but he tells her that he’s willing to be patient because he wants the transition to be “perfect.”

Just as Stefan starts to dessicate, Caroline removes the stake and begs to see her mom again. But she can’t.

Flipping her switch, Caroline wants nothing more than to read her mother’s letter,but she’ll never get the chance. With her mom as her anchor, Caroline comes back to the world of feelings, where she simply can’t deal with anything, eventually leaving Stefan alone at the B&B.

Back in Mystic Falls, Damon tries to get the ascendant from Bonnie, but she calls him out on the fact that he doesn’t really want the cure. She knows him and she know that he’s more scared now than ever before, because he’s scared of what might happen if he gives Elena the cure. Bonnie handsover the ascendant and gives Damon a choice: Return the ascendant to Lily in exchange for the cure or let her destroy it and keep Elena vampire. Damon being Damon, he leaves the ascendant with Bonnie.

At home, he watches Lily burn the cure just as Elena enters the kitchen. And that’s when we realize that Lily only pretended to burn the cure. She really left it for Elena, because the real way to “punish” Damon would be to tell Elena that Damon was never going to offer it to her.

Withthat, Lily leaves, only to run into a poor man on the street and return to her ripper ways—decapitation and all. She then calls Enzo for help … so that should be an interesting relationship.

And of course, now that Elena knows that truth, she wants answers. Damon tells her that her fantasy of her life five years from now scared the hell out of him. She sees an entire future when all he sees is her. He knows he’s been acting selfishly, but he can’t lose her. So Elena offers to give the cureaway. She doesn’t want to live without him either.

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Best Starting Point: ''Growing Pains'' (401) — A lot changed in last season's lead-up. It's probably best not to miss this season opener, which shows

The Vampire Diaries

Ian Somerhalder, Nina Dobrev, and Paul Wesley star in the CW’s romance-infused vampire soap opera.

type	TV Show
rating
network	The CW

What season does Elena turn back on her humanity?

She took the cure and became human again towards the end of the sixth season. In the finale of the sixth season, Kai linked Elena to Bonnie's life by magic. Elena will only wake up when Bonnie dies in around 60 years.

How did they get Elena to turn her humanity back on?

A large safe in the basement of the Salvatore Boarding House was shown. Elena turns her humanity back on in this episode because of Matt and Damon. The plan was created by Matt, who asked for and gained Damon's help to execute it.

Which episode Elena turn on her humanity?

In "Stand by Me," Elena spent most of the episode in denial that her brother had died, but eventually came to accept the devastating truth and broke down completely. Damon, in his attempts to help Elena with her grief, persuaded her to turn her humanity off - a decision that would later prove to be a terrible one.

Does Elena still love Damon after her humanity back?

Damon doubted her feelings for him when it was discovered she was sired to him, therefore had to please him. After Elena lost her humanity, she taunted Damon, threatening to go back to Stefan since the sire bond was gone. However, after she regained her emotions, she confessed her love for Damon, choosing him.