by Ryan J. Downey
Saint Stefan is dead! Long live bad-boy, Originals hang-around, "ripper" Stefan!
With so many revelations in last night's brilliantly constructed and altogether thrilling season three stunner, "The End of the Affair," the central love triangle that is the driving engine behind "The Vampire Diaries" shifted in a major way.
Hollywood Crush and a small handful of television reporters were invited to a Q&A session with passionate and clever executive producer Julie Plec, who dished about all of the thrills and chills in the third episode of the third season. The revelation of why Klaus wants Stefan around; the introduction of another Original with blood ties to Klaus and a romantic past with Stefan; Stefan's secret Chicago lair and creepily recorded body count; Stefan's brutal sendoff of Elena…
There's also the necklace Klaus needs that happens to be around Elena's neck and the only two people in the world who know that are Stefan and…Katherine! Yep, Katherine. Yeah, it's hard to remember all of the awesome things that happened in "The End of the Affair" because there were so many. It was like a season finale… Three episodes in!
"One of the big questions that we sort of left last year with was, 'Why did Klaus take such an interest in Stefan?'" Julie pointed out. "We wanted to show the roots of Klaus' character, how it relates to his family. The notion of this big bad evil hybrid d----, I guess is what they said in the episode, who like everybody else in our show is trying to fill a hole that's been left inside of them as result of loss of family or a desire for family, a desire for that brotherhood. So, it's just the beginning.
"It's the beginning of our glimpse into Klaus' life and into Rebecca's life," she continued. "It's not the last we'll see of their story and their family's story. There's so much story there you could give them their own show."
Julie has said before that this would be the season of the Originals and apparently she meant it! We learned so much about Klaus and Rebecca last night. As she pointed out, the Originals could have their own show. But there's so much story to tell with Elena, Damon, Stefan, Katherine, Tyler, et al, that the show runners' original ambition to show us all of the Originals this season just wasn't workable. But we will certainly be seeing more of them in the coming weeks.
"There are seven children. That's a lot of new people to bring into the story," she admitted. "[But] certainly the mother is going to be someone that we meet in the past, as will other siblings. We'll see Elijah again. We're about to start shooting an episode that takes us back a little bit. A long bit, actually to the origin story of the original story."
Is it possible that one of the Originals is somebody we've already met, à la the revelations about the "final five" on Battlestar Galactica? "It's funny, we already had that conversation the other day. The 'Cylon pitch,' as we call it. I don't want to say no, because it's cool. I'm not saying yes or no. We do talk about the fun of that. We like to weirdly enough try and tell as much story without going back and ret-conning it. I kind of wish we had thought about it when we wrote episode one because it would have been so much cooler to go down that road knowing that we knew that all along.
In the meantime, there'll be plenty more Originals action to watch involving Rebecca and Klaus and their tag-along, Stefan. The mere existence of Rebecca, the revelations from Stefan's diary, the conversation in the alleyway where Stefan told Elena that even if she got him away from Klaus, it could take him 30 years to get himself together… Ch-ch-changes!
"This is a big deal for the Stefan and Elena relationship," Julie said. "In her plucky little heart, while she's really realistic and understands the realities of the world; she's also this overly compassionate savior of her friends and loved ones… [She'll be] learning the lesson that you can't necessarily let yourself be consumed in your own life by saving someone else's. That's a big thing that takes us for a long journey that begins in this episode and goes through half the season."
All of which, of course, would seem to leave the door wide open for a certain other Salvatore to step in. "As far as where that leaves her and Damon, there has yet to be an admission of that chemistry from her part. In fact, next week's episode kind of illuminates that a little bit. A lot has gone unsaid. There's a big elephant in the room as far as all these fun little stolen moments and romantic banter and their dynamic with each other. It hasn't gone unnoticed from other people. The fact that Stefan said 'go away' and Elena’s back in Mystic Falls trying to pick up the pieces and getting on with her life, all her friends and loved ones are saying, 'All right, what's going on there?' We're going to have some fun with that too."
Speaking of Mystic Falls, when we return there next week, we'll catchup with the little "ghost" situation Elena's brother, Jeremy, has been dealing with and we'll see the return of his girlfriend, super-hot witch Bonnie, who has no idea that ever since she brought him back from the other side he's been seeing dead people all "Sixth Sense" style.
"Bonnie has been very easy to keep the secret from because she's been away," Julie said. "Now a couple of months have gone by and he hasn't fessed up to it. At what point had it become not wanting to let her in on something and when does it shift to an outright lie? We're going to see the emotional consequences we had talked about before of Bonnie bringing Jeremy back to life. Over the next couple of episodes, our arc is to see what the ghostly and supernatural consequences are of that."
Are you excited we'll meet more Originals? Do you want to see a romance between Elena and Damon? Sound off in the comments and on Twitter!
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