Reviving of the undead in 'Vampire Diaries' episode 5, season 7

Again, "Vampire Diaries" starts off in the future in episode five of season seven. This time we're following Alaric (Matthew Davis), who is at home with twin daughters when Damon (Ian Somerhalder) shows up demanding his cooperation.

Back in the present day, Damon is trying to orchestrate trading Oscar (Tim Kang) for Elena (Nina Dobrev) - till he discovers Oscar has been killed.

Damon goes to his brother for help, but Stefan (Paul Wesley) makes it quite clear this dead body isn't his problem.

 

At the Salvatore house, Lily (Annie Wersching) laments the fact that the Elena for Oscar handoff didn't happen as scheduled, though she doesn't yet know why.

She seems to suspect Valerie (Elizabeth Blackmore) might be involved and confronts her, but the heretic doesn't admit to anything.

Two of the heretics show up at Stefan and Damon's dorm - they're crashing at the local college - and are clearly suspicious. They don't find Oscar's body, though, as the brothers have ingeniously hung him out the window as a Halloween decoration.

They think they've gotten over, but then Nora sends a message to say that one college student will die every hour until Oscar is returned.

To keep the heretics busy with things other than killing college students, Caroline (Candice Accola) goads the lesbian couple into going to a party. The distraction fails, though, as they get in a fight and kill a guy while they're getting ready to get wild.

Meanwhile in the morgue, Bonnie (Kat Graham) and Alaric are discussing how they'll use the Phoenix Stone to bring Jo (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe) back from the dead when Damon drags in Oscar's dead body and demands that they revive that instead.

Bonnie agrees and starts trying spells to see what will work.

As the trio tries to revive Oscar, back at the Salvatore mansion Enzo (Michael Malarkey) confronts Valerie with his suspicion that she killed Oscar.

With surprising rapidity, Valerie confesses and explains it was done to prevent Oscar from completing his mission to bring back Julian (Todd Lasance).

At the morgue, Bonnie finally succeeds in bringing back Oscar, who wakes up with a scream. He doesn't seem to know where he is and is absurdly bloodthirsty.

When Damon tries to drive him back for the exchange, Oscar goes nuts and jumps out of the car.

 

Donovan (Zach Roerig) comes up on the scene and demands to help.

Back at the college party, Caroline and Stefan ambush the lesbian heretics and force them to remove the spell Valerie cast on Caroline to turn her skin into Vervain.

While that's a definite improvement for them, for Oscar things seem to be getting worse. He's gone full-fledged ripper and is slaughtering a bus full of people on a ghost tour when Lily finds him.

In his efforts to help, Donovan comes across Valerie and threatens to shoot her. He nearly succeeds, but then Enzo attacks him at the last minute and drives him and saves her.

By the last scene, Damon has gotten Elena's coffin back and is sitting in the middle of the woods writing to her in his journal.