Annette Brown/The CWKlaus (Joseph Morgan) may have gone too far this time, and it's not something "always and forever" can fix.
Though it was revealed during the penultimate episode of The Originals season two that the Original hybrid wasn't actually working with Dahlia (Claudia Black) and giving her baby Hope, and it was actually all a ruse to find a way to defeat Dahlia once and for all, he ended up killing Elijah's (Daniel Gillies) girlfriend Gia (Nishi Munshi) right in front of Elijah's eyes. It was brutal. It was cruel. And it was totally avoidable.
"Klaus is going to make a very strong case that ‘I had to do what I had to do to protect our family,'" executive producer Julie Plec tells E! News. "But Elijah's going to make a very strong case of, ‘You didn't have to do it the way you did it.' I don't see those brothers coming to terms or any kind of agreement about Klaus' methods anytime soon. That's going to be one of Klaus' big problems, is he believes everything he did was justified but he has to admit that there was a bit of pettiness attached to it too. He was so betrayed that his family didn't stand by him when he asked them too, when he said, ‘Trust me,' and they didn't believe his concerns about Freya [Riley Voelkel]."
She continues, "Now, it turns out he was wrong about Freya but he was also right about her because when all is said and done, Freya's singular goal was to free herself from Dahlia and she would have gone to great lengths to do so. Klaus is Klaus. Elijah is tormented by his codependency to his brother and we'll see how he chooses to handle this latest round of abuse at the hand of his brother. I'm rooting for him to hold strong and stay pissed for a while."
Series star Daniel Gillies agrees with Plec, adding that if he could choose, he'd make sure Elijah didn't forgive his brother for a very long time.
"One would hope not," Gillies tells E! News. "But if the past is any indication of the way they'll behave in the future, then all will probably be forgotten in a week. I appreciate you bringing that up, because people seem to forget about that great atrocity. Everyone seems to be focusing on what Eljiah will do now that Hayley's [Phoebe Tonkin] been turned into a wolf. But he did just watch his girlfriend go up in flames!"
Gillies reveals that Gia's murder is going to be the most important thing to Elijah right now.
"He's got more to be concerned about right now than Hayley, even though of course he's going to do whatever he can to remove the curse from Hayley," Gillies says. "That's a given. We know he's devoted to her and loves her. But I don't know how Klaus and Elijah are going to proceed and the terrifying thing is they have to work together in terms of defeating Dahlia. They have to get over, at least in the short term, the atrocities Klaus has committed in the name of winning the war."
But rest assured, Elijah will not be handling Gia's death well in the finale.
"For the next episode at least, there's a degree of fallout and certainly anguish and a desire to force Niklaus to reconcile himself with what he did in the name of what he needed to do," Gillies says. "They both have an enormous mountain to climb, and how will that affect them in season three? Who knows. In a perfect world, this would be etched in stone for Elijah for the better part of next season. This would be the unforgivable act of treachery and betrayal, if it were up to me."
In fact, the biggest point of contention is the fact that if Klaus were really committed to fooling Dahlia into thinking he was truly on her side, he would have killed Cami (Leah Pipes) as well as Gia, instead of faking Cami's death.
"That's just how Klaus functions!" Gillies says with a laugh. "You want to commit to the ruse, but if you're really committing, you have to kill Cami in this moment. And yet he doesn't. It really speaks to the fact that he does what he wants. But the only mildly redemptive part of the whole situation is that he didn't kill Cami."
Plec agrees, adding, "And the finale is all about how, in spite of all the vicious, horrible acts that Klaus had to commit in the name of fighting the villain, the family begrudgingly standing side-by-side fighting together against Dahlia, knowing that's the only way they will survive, and then the next challenge for them is how will we survive as a family emotionally, given the past destruction that our crazy brother has once again left in his wake."
And "the family" includes the original Original sister, Claire Holt, as she makes her triumphant return as Rebekah in tonight's finale! But will she be sticking around past the finale, or will we be seeing a "new" version of Rebekah next season?
"Yes, every season is just going to be a new actress play the role!" Plec jokes, before getting serious. "No, we're hoping to see more of Claire and we're hoping to see more of Maisie [Richardson-Sellers], truth be told, in different ways. We have lots of flashback opportunities, we have lots of opportunities for the future of that character. So it's really just going to be yet again, a matter of scheduling, logistics and availability. All that boring stuff that we have to go through to tell a good Rebekah story!"
The Originals season two finale airs tonight at 8 p.m. on the CW.