Vampire Academy Season 1 Episode 5 Review: Near Guard, Far Guard

On Vampire Academy Season 1 Episode 5, “Near Guard, Far Guard,” the second part of the novices’ benchmark assessment begins. It’s a lot of fun watching Rose being forced to take on a leadership role over her fellow novices.

As I said in my review of Vampire Academy Season 1 Episodes 1-4, one of the best parts of the novices’ storylines involves the comradery between them all. This is on full display here, and there’s even a nice moment where Meredith is proud of how Rose handles herself as a leader.

There’s a lot of tension in this episode, both with the novices not realizing the extent of the danger they are in and with Victor rushing around, trying to get someone to cancel the assessment.

Victor earns some points in my book for actually realizing the dangers of the situation and fighting against it, even though he probably should’ve been resting due to his health.

Oftentimes, shows will lose that element of suspense or tension when shifting focus to another storyline, so it’s great that Vampire Academy is able to keep us on the edge of our seats the entire time.

It’s one of the reasons why I love this episode so much. It’s a fun thriller with some low stakes because we know Lissa and Rose will both make it out alive, although Mikhail’s death really hurts. He and Sonya were too happy; I should’ve seen it coming.

It’ll be interesting to see how his death will affect everyone, especially Rose and Sonya, going forward.

Perhaps he’ll be the catalyst to getting them to challenge the council or go more against the traditions of this world. He’s too important to both of them not to have an impact on them, and it would be better if it went on longer than their more immediate reactions that we see at the end of “Near Guard, Far Guard.”

Initially, I thought Lissa reached out to Christian for help honing her spirit powers to be able to initiate a mind link in order to warn Rose about the Strigoi being loose.

The reality of them traveling into danger to save Rose is less exciting and much more stupid, but I’m reasonably certain we are dealing with high schoolers here, so I’ll allow them some dumb decisions.

Lissa’s choice to assemble a ragtag team once again highlights how she’ll do anything to protect Rose, which goes against how Moroi royalty should view their guardians.

Vampire Academy is doing the smart thing by constantly reminding us how different their friendship is from what society expects, and they manage to do so without feeling like that fact is being shoved down our throats every second.

Sonya and Lissa and their use of spirit elemental magic is being compared throughout the episode, and it’s done so well.

You can see the difference in how Lissa is so excited about her new healing abilities, not really grasping the dangers of using them, and then we see Sonya and her family, who are all too aware of the dangers.

I can’t wait til Sonya and Lissa are able to both discuss their experiences with spirit magic and help each other out. I feel like they’ll both learn so much from each other.

Lingering Questions

• Mia definitely saw Lissa use her powers to heal the wounded novice, right?
• Why do Rose’s eyes go black too?
• Is there any connection between Sonya, Lissa, and Rose’s eyes all going black around the same time or is it all just coincidence since Lissa and Sonya both had just recently used their healing powers?
• Will I ever not want to punch Jesse in the face when he speaks?
• When did Lissa start hallucinating and talking about “the darkness?”
• Is Victor completely okay now, or does Sonya just buy him a couple more years?
• What’s with Rose’s Strigoi sixth sense?

What did you think of this episode of Vampire Academy? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of Vampire Academy premiere Thursdays on Peacock.

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