For anyone who ever thought discovering you were a vampire was a tough puzzle, imagine having to manage it while ignoring your entire emotional core. In season 4 of The Vampire Diaries, our leading lady Elena Gilbert decides she has had quite enough of feeling anything. She asks Damon to help her flip the metaphorical switch to turn off her humanity, and what follows is a fantastic journey of self-discovery, mostly because she has to unlock it again.
The Trigger: A Nightmare Involving Family
The whole debacle begins when Elena, not yet adjusted to the vampire diet, falls into a feverish, non-optional nap. In this nightmare, her brother Jeremy dies a gruesome death, a memory so traumatic she decides that not feeling is the greatest tactical response in the history of life.
She wakes up and looks over at Damon, essentially asking him to be her own personal switch-flipping valet. It is like the ultimate vampire life hack: if the emotions are too intense, just put them in a box and lose the key under the couch.
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The Cold Phase: College Hold Music Mode
For a solid chunk of the episode, Elena wanders around town making questionable sartorial choices, ruining relationships, and doing the kind of villainous things that make you miss her when she was just worried about a B-minus. She operates at a distinct level of sarcasm that makes her seem less like a person and more like college hold music on a loop.
The Exact Moment Of Return
The shift happens quite dramatically in the episode titled A Turn of the Screw around the 15-minute mark, right when you are leaning in for the juice. Stefan is aggressively trying to interrogate her to find out where she hid the cure for vampirism, or at least where she stashed her humanity.
Elena Gilbert with her humanity off - YouTube
During this intense back-and-forth, Elena has a sudden shock of a real thought, not about snacks or neck-dipping. She realizes that if the cure is real, her future doesn't have to be an eternal nap, and that is the ultimate cold-water-to-the-face moment she needs.
The Hand on the Switch
The immediate result is a massive run down to the hospital where her brother Jermy is working, proving again that family is the primary levers humans use. The actual turning on of the humanity switch is practically silent, but the metaphorical click is so loud you could be heard three galaxies over.
What Episode Does Elena Turn Her Humanity Back On
In that instant, all the accumulated cringe from the past month of being a heartless queen hits her with the force of a landslide of regret. She immediately calls a friend to effectively say, "I am emotionally a wreck, come slap some sense back into me."
Elena ends up in a state of absolute hysterics, needing what amounts to Bonnie Bennett's version of vampire therapy. This heavy emotional overload proves that sometimes, the only thing scarier than feeling everything is realizing you are the reason you feel so guilty.
