'The Vampire Diaries' poster.
Ten years ago today, the pilot for The Vampire Diaries premiered on the CW and became the most watched series premiere in the network’s history, since its start in 2006. Nobody knew it yet, but a franchise was born. The Vampire Diaries came on the heals of the popularity of the Twilight franchise (not to mention HBO’s new show True Blood), and it could have easily been labeled “just another vampire show,” and been passed over by the general public. Except. Except that there was something about this particular vampire show, and audiences quickly took notice. Each of the actors in their roles had boatloads of charisma, and natural chemistry with each other. Filling in the space around them was well done mythology/world building, and a small town with small-town secrets. It proved to be a perfect storm, and ten years later, The Vampire Diaries franchise is still going strong with not its first spin-off, but second spin-off series Legacies. So, what is it about this series that makes viewers unable to get enough?
The show was created by Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson. It starts like almost any other teen story. A girl - Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) - is recovering after her parents’ sudden death, and gets swept off her feet by the brooding and handsome new student (Paul Wesley). Her brother (Steven R. McQueen) has turned to drugs since the tragedy, and her young Aunt Jenna (Sara Canning) is trying to raise the two of them. There’s the quarterback ex-boyfriend (Zach Roerig), the supportive friend (Kat Graham), and the shallow cheer leader friend (Candice King). Sounds just like high school. This could be a season of Degrassi, except that the handsome new student is a vampire, as is his equally gorgeous older brother (Ian Somerhalder). Tada! A supernatural teen drama is born.
The first thing I notice whenever I go back and visit the pilot is that it’s extremely high school, but what happens as the series grows episode by episode, is that it goes much deeper than that. It would be easy for the show to get bogged down in cheesy cliches, but as it builds its characters and its mythological world, cliches are about the last thing that you find.
All of the characters get fleshed out. Shallow Caroline becomes fan-favorite bad-ass. In season 1 she shows that she has heart, but when Caroline gets turned in the season 2 premiere, the character gets a whole new chance to shine. Jeremy isn’t just Elena’s druggie brother, but someone who loves deeply, and takes loss particularly hard. Damon is Stefan’s dangerous older brother with a thing for Elena (creating the classic love triangle), but he also has a million layers to him, including the desire to be good. The season 1 finale is his crowning moment. (If you’re only going to watch one episode of the entire series, watch the first season finale. It is, in a word, epic.)
Almost just as important as the characters is the world they inhabit. Fantasy world-building is not easy. Every fantasy series wants to be Game of Thrones, but a lot of them can never quite figure out the mechanics of creating a complex mythology (I’m looking at you Carnival Row). The Vampire Diaries certainly wobbled with some of its mythological elements at first. There was the crow that Damon was somehow controlling, and also the fog. Both elements that the show thankfully did a way with within the first few episodes. There was also that bit about Bonnie having psychic powers as part of her being a witch, which doesn’t survive past episode 3. What emerged were rules about about vampires - what could hurt them or couldn’t and what powers they have. (The details about witches came more piece-meal as Bonnie learned how to use her powers, and of course werewolves didn’t even appear until season 2.)
Plec said in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly for the anniversary, “We basically used the pilot and did everything we had to do from the books and from vampire tropes to sell a vampire show, but when we got to series we realized that it’s just too much. When your heroes are capable of too much, then they should be able to do even more and it becomes more and more difficult to put real obstacles in their way while keeping the stakes grounded.”
That, is a pretty good mythological basis on which to build a series, nay, a franchise (Twilight certainly suffered from having its vampires be too powerful). In a backdoor pilot in season 4, The Originals debuted, and was soon ordered to series. Created by Plec, the series focuses on the Mikaelson family - the world’s first family of vampires - and takes place in New Orleans, in an expansion of the TVD universe. Having been established characters of The Vampire Diaries since season 2, there was more than enough meat on the bones of the world’s first immortal family to create an entire spin-off show. Less of a romance, and more of a family drama and power struggle, The Originals differentiated itself from TVD, but benefitted from the basis its source show provided. For example, one thing the show explores so much further is witch-craft, taking the mythology that TVD invented, and taking it in creative new directions.
The Originals ran for five seasons, and was enormously popular. It ended a year after The Vampire Diaries did (which ran for eight seasons), and like TVD, got to end on its own terms. What’s a person to do with both TVD-universe shows suddenly out of their lives? It turns out, just sit tight, because another spin-off series was on the way. After The Originals ended in August of 2018, it was soon announced that a new series called Legacies, focusing on Klaus Mikaelson’s (Joseph Morgan) daughter Hope (Danielle Rose Russel) and the supernatural boarding school she attends, was on its way. Also created by Plec, the series premiered in October of 2018, and has been renewed for a second season. Like the two series that came before it, Legacies has been extremely popular. For someone looking to fill the Vampire Diaries-sized hole in their heart, Legacies is the perfect antidote. Its first season starts out decent, but grows so much by the time it gets to the finale. I, personally, cannot wait for season 2 to start (October 10, by the way).
So something’s in the water of The Vampire Diaries-universe. Everything that grows from it just seems to do really well. But that’s because it’s based on strong characters and a well-built mythology. Plec (and Williamson) has proven herself very adept at handling this world, and I for one, will watch anything she puts out. Here’s to another ten years of receiving stories from this amazing franchise.
