Posted by Vee | May 24, 2009, 20:03 (EST) | 17 Comments
Category: Books, TV Series

We thought we’d point out some details that caught our eye in all of the recently released footage from The Vampire Diaries pilot. How about you guys – notice anything significant? Speculate away!

We’ve lumped the more spoilery stuff near the end, so here’s the Obligatory Spoiler Warning for those who’d rather not make any possible connection between plot points in the books and the TV series.

• The names of Elena’s parents: Grayson Gilbert and Miranda Sommers Gilbert. Elena’s parents are never named in the books, so this is a special bit of canon unique to the TV series. (Intentional Batman and Bionic Woman references? Probably not, but we’re geeks – sue us.) Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert, we might add, died on May 23, 2009 – yep, yesterday, and two days after the upfronts.
• We note a distinct lack of Caroline (Candice Accola) and Elena and Jeremy’s aunt, Jenna Moyer (Sara Canning), in any of the footage. And though it’s not so notable that Mr. Tanner didn’t make it in there, we’re thinking of you, Ben “OMG, it’s Cowboy from jPod!” Ayres fans.
• Why, hello there, significant glance between Stefan and Matt.


Alright, we’re getting more spoilery now.

• In the second promo trailer, you can hear a male voice say to Stefan, “You said you had it under control.” Is this Pete (was Whitmore – will this be changed to Salvatore, too?), who runs the boarding house? We’ve been speculating that this new character may be a Mystic Falls native/descendant of Stefan and Damon – but it’s just that: speculation. The actor playing Pete is still unknown, though we have a theory on that.
• In the flashes of Brooke and Darren’s roadside adventure, you can see a large silver ring on the hand that grabs Darren by the throat. The easy assumption is that it’s Damon, but we don’t know if we’re entirely convinced of that.
• Speaking of the rings – those are some hefty ones. We’ve analyzed the promo photos of Stefan to see if we can spot any tell-tale lumps beneath the t-shirt and have so far come up empty-handed. Also, black leather jackets – thank you very much. Though we await the inevitable sweater.
• Stefan’s room at the boarding house? Not quite what we pictured his lonely attic room to be like, but in many ways very Stefan. Lots of books, lots of natural objects and random bits of statuary and knick knacks – horses, cars, a jar of marbles, porcupine quills (?), globes, a griffin, pheasant feathers, and a few clocks (which makes us laugh in that “Aww, Stefan, why are you torturing yourself with clocks?” kind of way). And one of my personal favorite details is the typewriter right next to the Mac monitor. (Which, of course, makes Damon the PC in this equation. Though Red notes this: This is either a home base for him that he leaves intact and he’s been away for a while – which explains the ‘I should never have come home thing’ – or he’s been back a couple of months and pulled things out of storage. Actually, that explains the typewriter – the computer is probably brand new for this return home and he doesn’t have anywhere else to put the typewriter.) Uber-fans will note a few things of significance: there is a short blade/dagger sheathed at the very front of the desk, a balcony, and we’re assuming somewhere in here is an easy access point to the roof, considering the opening shot of the first teaser reel. There’s something very New World about this entire set, with a few small but significant Old World touches. Has us very curious. Big props (ha!) to the set designers because it’s beautiful and lots of fun to stare at – we just wish we had an even higher-res version so we could read the book titles. And to think this is only a small portion of the room; you can see other angles in the Stefan/Damon scene from the initial teaser reel. We’ve noted some sort of silvery white tree branch in a vase on a dresser.
• Stefan and Elena duck away from the party to have a chat – on a bridge. A large footbridge. Way too narrow for a car, but significant nonetheless. Because we all know about The Vampire Diaries and bridges. Though we’re dead curious if the river flowing beneath is Drowning Creek (or an incarnation of) – which could feasibly flow from the falls. Again, we wish for a higher resolution so we could suss whether Steve the Homeless Guy is sleeping under there somewhere.

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