Meta: Mason Lockwood Is Not A Good Person
+ I’ve seen the new episode of The Vampire Diaries and I can’t even right now, I’m so full of rage and confusion and I can’t really make sense of my thoughts. I liked scenes, but I decidedly did not like the episode as a whole. And since the episode made me have so many feelings, I was able to put them to good use completing one of the metas on my to-do list. And because scorpiod1 is an enabling enabler who encourages good use of rage. So, here, have some Mason Lockwood meta!
Disclaimer: This is a persuasive meta, so it’s probably highly biased and opinionated. I don’t like Mason Lockwood. I really tried to like him because I don’t enjoy hating characters in anything I enjoy, I try to understand everyone and figure who they are as a person, and I think I do understand Mason, but I still don’t like him as a person. This is not intended to be character bashing, but rather a critical look of what we’ve been shown and analyzing his behavior. If anyone has a counter-argument, I’m totally open to hearing and welcome debate!
When we first met Mason, I didn’t know what to make of him, but I was willing to wait and watch and see what he became. At the end of The Return, I actually really liked him. He jumped on Tyler and helped him through his grief (and anger, because Tyler has reasons to be angry at his father) werewolf-induced rage-out and stopped him from attacking his mother. I remember thinking, “Oh, awesome! Someone has come to tell Tyler about his condition and help him out with it. Like a werewolf mentor. This is going to be good. Team Mason! \o/” And I was excited to watch Mason help Tyler out because Tyler desperately needed someone to take an interest in him.
In Brave New World, nothing happens on that front, despite Tyler’s questioning and Mason seeing the signs of the curse in Tyler. And we find out why Mason is really here: for the moonstone. I really wouldn’t have a problem with this plotline, if show didn’t constantly keep trying to say that Mason cared about Tyler, that Mason was also here to help Tyler. Mason didn’t care. Mason only cared about the moonstone. And the fact he didn’t tell him right away is your proof, that he kept asking Tyler about the moonstone and didn’t help him at all with his issues.
The problem with not telling someone something, it ups the chance of them doing it on accident. It’s worse here because it involves the curse, which I’ve always figured runs on rage, why Tyler would get so angry sometimes he’d black out and not know what just happed (i.e. His fight with Matt in Under Control). The curse wants them to get so angry that they kill someone and unleash it. It’s like a ticking time bomb, constantly pressuring them until they break. And Mason knows this. Mason lived through and Mason saw the consequences, and I bet he wished someone would have told him, too. So I don’t understand why he didn’t tell Tyler in hopes that he could find a way to manage it, learn to be zen or take anger management classes, just something. If you cared about someone and didn’t want what happened to you to happen to them, you’d take precautions, you’d help them make the right choices and stay on the right path. But Mason didn’t, Mason brushed off Tyler’s questions and called him a delinquent, blaming him solely for his anger issues when he knows that’s not all there is to it (I’m not entirely sure if he knows how his father treated him, or not, so I’m not going to include that), when he knows he’s grieving and confused and needs help.
And maybe this is a personal thing for me because I’m an aunt and would drop everything and do anything for my niece and nephews if they needed help, but I don’t understand why he won’t take the time to do the same for his nephew. I just don’t understand and it makes me think horribly of him by default.
So, yeah, I kind of cheered when Tyler took the initiative and took the moonstone out of his father’s safe and hid it for himself so he had some kind of leverage against Mason to get the information he needed at the end of Brave New World.
In Bad Moon Rising, it’s confirmed that Mason is a werewolf and Tyler finally has proof, he’s not just going on a hunch anymore. Now he has a hundred more questions and is even more confused and adrift. And the audience thinks, “Maybe Mason was just trying to protect himself and didn‘t think Tyler would have believed him anyway, but everything is out in the open now. Maybe Mason can help him now.”
We see them again in Memory Lane as Mason is rushing out the door and Tyler is trying to question him into giving him some answers, but Mason dodges and diverts them, and leaves, without even a promise of, “We’ll talk later.” And when later comes, Tyler has to yell and corner him, flat-out confront and piss him off to get any answers at all. All Mason does and yell back and makes Tyler feel cowed, like he didn’t have any right to be so demanding, when Tyler has all the right in the world to know. This is necessary information and Mason doesn’t want to give it away because Mason isn’t here to help, Mason is here to get the moonstone and get out. That’s his prerogative and Tyler doesn’t figure into that, so he doesn’t have time for him.
And Tyler realizes this, in Kill Or Be Killed he says to Jeremy, “He’s not here for me, he’s here for this.” And Tyler’s right. We find out at the end of the episode that Mason’s been here all along doing Katherine’s bidding because he’s in love with her and she’s who he cares about. I always figured that Tyler gave Mason the moonstone because he was done, he realized he had control of his future and as long as he kept himself in check, he’d have a future. And that he didn’t need Mason. His giving Mason the moonstone, to me, was him saying, “You can go now, I don’t need you.”
Mason spends Kill Or Be Killed trying to get rid of Stefan and Damon, which I honestly don’t blame him for. It’s the one of the few things I understand. They threatened him and anyone rational would want to kill Damon. I find his interactions with them on par with how they’ve treated him and understandable. It’s when he threatens to tell Liz that Caroline’s a vampire, then grabs Elena and threatens to snap her neck if she gets any closer that I have an issue with. They aren’t threatening him, they just are going to help their friends, that he understandably wants dead, but Elena has no power over him because he’s stronger and faster than her, and means him no direct harm. And to add to it, he’s friends with Jenna. Good friends with Jenna, friends since they were kids, and he’s willing to snap her niece’s neck. What the fuck, Mason? Seriously, what the fuck? And telling Caroline’s mother what she is, essentially, none of his business and just a cruel thing to do, to both parties. It wouldn’t just hurt Caroline, it would destroy Liz.
In his final episode, Plan B, we learn more about him and I learned to understand him on some level. He’s very much like Damon, twisted and used by Katherine because he loves her. They’re both fools for Katherine. Which is why I find Damon ripping out his heart oddly poetic because a part of Damon hates that Mason reminds him so much of that part of himself, that guy who he used to be, but he’s also doing him a favor: ripping his heart out literally before Katherine can do it figuratively. But they’re both similar people, willing to do whatever to reach their goals, threatening the lives of and manipulating others until they get what they want. And they did it all in the name of Katherine. The only difference is that Damon doesn’t pretend to be a nice guy when he does these things, Damon never pretends to be any less than a vampire, while Mason has a moral superiority about him, he thinks he’s a good person and in the right, probably because he’s doing it for love, but it just makes him a hypocrite and look foolish.
I will say that he’s capable of good things and that he can care, even if it is too little and too late and the show completely forgot about it and nothing ever came of it and the scene will forever haunt me because nothing ever came of it. He does tell Jeremy before he dies to look after Tyler, to make sure this doesn’t happen to him. One last good act before he dies. I think he realized, finally, how messed up he’d been acting and now he has no time to make amends, so he passes the torch to Jeremy, almost saying, “Please make amends in my stead.”
But showing one final act of kindness before he dies doesn’t redeem him, it doesn’t make him good all along; just a man facing his death and realizing the mistakes he’s made during his life.
Disclaimer: This is a persuasive meta, so it’s probably highly biased and opinionated. I don’t like Mason Lockwood. I really tried to like him because I don’t enjoy hating characters in anything I enjoy, I try to understand everyone and figure who they are as a person, and I think I do understand Mason, but I still don’t like him as a person. This is not intended to be character bashing, but rather a critical look of what we’ve been shown and analyzing his behavior. If anyone has a counter-argument, I’m totally open to hearing and welcome debate!
When we first met Mason, I didn’t know what to make of him, but I was willing to wait and watch and see what he became. At the end of The Return, I actually really liked him. He jumped on Tyler and helped him through his grief (and anger, because Tyler has reasons to be angry at his father) werewolf-induced rage-out and stopped him from attacking his mother. I remember thinking, “Oh, awesome! Someone has come to tell Tyler about his condition and help him out with it. Like a werewolf mentor. This is going to be good. Team Mason! \o/” And I was excited to watch Mason help Tyler out because Tyler desperately needed someone to take an interest in him.
In Brave New World, nothing happens on that front, despite Tyler’s questioning and Mason seeing the signs of the curse in Tyler. And we find out why Mason is really here: for the moonstone. I really wouldn’t have a problem with this plotline, if show didn’t constantly keep trying to say that Mason cared about Tyler, that Mason was also here to help Tyler. Mason didn’t care. Mason only cared about the moonstone. And the fact he didn’t tell him right away is your proof, that he kept asking Tyler about the moonstone and didn’t help him at all with his issues.
The problem with not telling someone something, it ups the chance of them doing it on accident. It’s worse here because it involves the curse, which I’ve always figured runs on rage, why Tyler would get so angry sometimes he’d black out and not know what just happed (i.e. His fight with Matt in Under Control). The curse wants them to get so angry that they kill someone and unleash it. It’s like a ticking time bomb, constantly pressuring them until they break. And Mason knows this. Mason lived through and Mason saw the consequences, and I bet he wished someone would have told him, too. So I don’t understand why he didn’t tell Tyler in hopes that he could find a way to manage it, learn to be zen or take anger management classes, just something. If you cared about someone and didn’t want what happened to you to happen to them, you’d take precautions, you’d help them make the right choices and stay on the right path. But Mason didn’t, Mason brushed off Tyler’s questions and called him a delinquent, blaming him solely for his anger issues when he knows that’s not all there is to it (I’m not entirely sure if he knows how his father treated him, or not, so I’m not going to include that), when he knows he’s grieving and confused and needs help.
And maybe this is a personal thing for me because I’m an aunt and would drop everything and do anything for my niece and nephews if they needed help, but I don’t understand why he won’t take the time to do the same for his nephew. I just don’t understand and it makes me think horribly of him by default.
So, yeah, I kind of cheered when Tyler took the initiative and took the moonstone out of his father’s safe and hid it for himself so he had some kind of leverage against Mason to get the information he needed at the end of Brave New World.
In Bad Moon Rising, it’s confirmed that Mason is a werewolf and Tyler finally has proof, he’s not just going on a hunch anymore. Now he has a hundred more questions and is even more confused and adrift. And the audience thinks, “Maybe Mason was just trying to protect himself and didn‘t think Tyler would have believed him anyway, but everything is out in the open now. Maybe Mason can help him now.”
We see them again in Memory Lane as Mason is rushing out the door and Tyler is trying to question him into giving him some answers, but Mason dodges and diverts them, and leaves, without even a promise of, “We’ll talk later.” And when later comes, Tyler has to yell and corner him, flat-out confront and piss him off to get any answers at all. All Mason does and yell back and makes Tyler feel cowed, like he didn’t have any right to be so demanding, when Tyler has all the right in the world to know. This is necessary information and Mason doesn’t want to give it away because Mason isn’t here to help, Mason is here to get the moonstone and get out. That’s his prerogative and Tyler doesn’t figure into that, so he doesn’t have time for him.
And Tyler realizes this, in Kill Or Be Killed he says to Jeremy, “He’s not here for me, he’s here for this.” And Tyler’s right. We find out at the end of the episode that Mason’s been here all along doing Katherine’s bidding because he’s in love with her and she’s who he cares about. I always figured that Tyler gave Mason the moonstone because he was done, he realized he had control of his future and as long as he kept himself in check, he’d have a future. And that he didn’t need Mason. His giving Mason the moonstone, to me, was him saying, “You can go now, I don’t need you.”
Mason spends Kill Or Be Killed trying to get rid of Stefan and Damon, which I honestly don’t blame him for. It’s the one of the few things I understand. They threatened him and anyone rational would want to kill Damon. I find his interactions with them on par with how they’ve treated him and understandable. It’s when he threatens to tell Liz that Caroline’s a vampire, then grabs Elena and threatens to snap her neck if she gets any closer that I have an issue with. They aren’t threatening him, they just are going to help their friends, that he understandably wants dead, but Elena has no power over him because he’s stronger and faster than her, and means him no direct harm. And to add to it, he’s friends with Jenna. Good friends with Jenna, friends since they were kids, and he’s willing to snap her niece’s neck. What the fuck, Mason? Seriously, what the fuck? And telling Caroline’s mother what she is, essentially, none of his business and just a cruel thing to do, to both parties. It wouldn’t just hurt Caroline, it would destroy Liz.
In his final episode, Plan B, we learn more about him and I learned to understand him on some level. He’s very much like Damon, twisted and used by Katherine because he loves her. They’re both fools for Katherine. Which is why I find Damon ripping out his heart oddly poetic because a part of Damon hates that Mason reminds him so much of that part of himself, that guy who he used to be, but he’s also doing him a favor: ripping his heart out literally before Katherine can do it figuratively. But they’re both similar people, willing to do whatever to reach their goals, threatening the lives of and manipulating others until they get what they want. And they did it all in the name of Katherine. The only difference is that Damon doesn’t pretend to be a nice guy when he does these things, Damon never pretends to be any less than a vampire, while Mason has a moral superiority about him, he thinks he’s a good person and in the right, probably because he’s doing it for love, but it just makes him a hypocrite and look foolish.
I will say that he’s capable of good things and that he can care, even if it is too little and too late and the show completely forgot about it and nothing ever came of it and the scene will forever haunt me because nothing ever came of it. He does tell Jeremy before he dies to look after Tyler, to make sure this doesn’t happen to him. One last good act before he dies. I think he realized, finally, how messed up he’d been acting and now he has no time to make amends, so he passes the torch to Jeremy, almost saying, “Please make amends in my stead.”
But showing one final act of kindness before he dies doesn’t redeem him, it doesn’t make him good all along; just a man facing his death and realizing the mistakes he’s made during his life.