Posted by Dayna Barter | June 8, 2011, 10:01 (EST) | 34 Comments
Category: TV Series

It’s the summer hiatus – and IT SUCKS. So to help wile away those lonely TVD-less hours as we await Vampire Diaries Season 3, we’ve rounded up a slew of guest bloggers (and huge Vampire Diaries fans) for a series called Ripping Open TVD. Each blogger will be focusing on one particular aspect of what we’ve just experienced in Vampire Diaries Season 2 and adding a hefty dose of Season 3 speculation. Remember: These are guest posts, so these are the opinions of the person writing them, not necessarily Vampire-Diaries.net. Cool? Cool. This week, Dayna Barter takes a look at the impending Year of the Originals and what that means for our core cast of Mystic Falls citizens.

Coming off of the second season finale, there is a lot of mystery surrounding The Vampire Diaries’ Original recipe. First we taste-tested the original Original Recipe, Elijah: Smooth, savory, and satisfying, with an old-fashioned appeal. Then came the Extra-Kreepy – er, Krispy – Klaus: Bolder, noisier, and spicier, with an added kick. With the stellar performances turned in by Daniel Gillies and Joseph Morgan in these roles, the fandom has fast developed a taste for these powerful, ancient vampires, so much so that Season 3 of The Vampire Diaries has been touted as “The Year of the Originals” by executive producers Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson. With the four-month hiatus yawning before us, we have a whole summer to speculate like mad as to what the rest of the family will bring to the table.

So what exactly will the “Year of the Originals” entail?

According to Julie Plec, “certainly it’s in our intention to dig deeply into the backstory of the original family.” Kevin Williamson confirms, saying:

“It’s one of the big things that’s going to happen next year – this family of originals. We’re going to find out who they are, what they’re about, how The Salvatore’s are intertwined with them – Klaus took Stefan for a reason. There’s a big story here. There’s a whole third season of plot we get to mine through these fascinating characters. They’ll show up and hopefully be just as delicious as Klaus & Elijah turned out to be. But what The Originals have done for us is make us excited again about a whole new chapter in this story. We got all jazzed about this third season – if we can pull it off.”

Known Ingredients
So what do we know about the Originals, as a unit, so far? Here’s the down-and-dirty:

• They are a family – mother, father, and seven children
• They were the first vampires (the method by which they became vampires is, according to Elijah, a very long and complicated story)
• From the Originals sprang all other vampires
• Nothing can kill them – not sunlight, not fire, not a werewolf bite – except for the wood from a single tree, an ancient white oak which Daddy Original made sure to burn
• Ash from that tree, when alchemically bonded to an enspelled silver dagger, can “kill” an Original, rendering them for all intents and purposes dead as long as the dagger remains in the heart. Exception: because of his dual nature, the dagger will not work on Klaus
• Mama Original liked it doggy-style, and had an affair with someone from a werewolf bloodline, producing Klaus
• Daddy Original, unimpressed, killed Mama Original’s lover and all of his family, thus setting off the vampire/werewolf feud
• The rest of the Originals were “killed” by Klaus

Prep Work
While it’s fun and encouraging to see our show runners so enthusiastic about the upcoming season, the logistics thereof seem a little daunting. How do you roll out seven new guest stars – in addition to Klaus as a regular, and the presumed return of Elijah – and not completely overrun your regular cast of characters? The casting process alone sounds like a Herculean task.

But first things first. Before we worry about how this influx of new people could affect our Mystic Falls gang, someone needs to remove them from their packaging. In the season finale, we saw Klaus box Elijah and store him away with the rest of the family in what looked to be a warehouse/storage unit in Mystic Falls. Though it appears that he has been traveling around with the whole collection, his conversation with Stefan about leaving “this tragic little town” would seem to indicate that he intends to leave the entire boxed set there while he and his “Rippah” go running amok, thereby creating an opportunity for someone to resurrect the family – if anyone learns that they are there.

Obviously, Klaus is not going to share that information. But Stefan knows the location as well; he could product-placement a text to Elena and/or Damon and clue them in that “Here Lies Elijah” before Klaus cuts off his communication. Or, though she may not know where the collection is archived, Katherine could get a message to her doppelganger that Elijah has suffered a dagger relapse.

However the information comes out, Elena, Damon or Katherine would seem the most likely candidates to bring back Elijah. I suspect this will happen early in the season, rather than later; not only because Gillies’ Elijah proved to be a fan favorite, but because Elijah is the only one who has a… um, stake in resurrecting the rest of the family.

Of course, we all know that The Vampire Diaries rarely takes the expected route. Perhaps Stefan will shake off Klaus and return to do it. Perhaps Klaus will decide to stage a family reunion himself. Or, my personal favorite scenario, perhaps Elijah made arrangements with someone beforehand, knowing full well what a treacherous bastard his brother is – literally. However it comes about, there is sure to be an OMG! attached to it.

Combine Ingredients, Mixing… Well?
Once Elijah is recovered from his latest bout with the dagger, the field really opens up for speculation. Are all of the family members recoverable? How long has each been boxed? Will Elijah seek to resurrect everyone immediately? Will the gang try to prevent him from doing so? Will they join forces to bring down Klaus, or are there competing agendas amongst the family? What will their resurrection mean for the town of Mystic Falls and its inhabitants?

If we play the numbers game, I have a hard time imagining that we will see a full Originals family reunion in present day Mystic Falls. For one thing, I have to believe that at least one member of the family was permanently killed by a stake from the white oak, leading it to be burnt to the ground. While I’m tempted to guess it was Mom being staked by Dad, I think it is more likely to have been one of the siblings. Seven would be a huge number of sibs to deal with, and there is far more dramatic potential to be mined from the parent-child dynamic, especially when it comes to Klaus. Either way, I think the maximum number of coffins in the cabinet will be seven, and that’s counting Elijah’s.

Another deterrent to bringing all of the family out to play is the little matter of how long they’ve been riding the bench. Assuming that Klaus has been on his patricide-fratricide spree ever since 1492, that leaves a space of 510 years for the various family members to have been taken out of commission. We caught a small glimpse of the re-acclimation process when the tomb vampires were freed in season one. Difficult enough to bring someone up to speed after 150 years; what if some of the family have been boxed since the 1500s? Even someone boxed 50 years ago would need a period of adjustment to current technologies and social mores. Do Elijah and company really have time for hand-holding and product-placement lessons when they need to stop Klaus from creating his zombie werepire empire?

My gut feeling is that while we may meet all of the family, some will only be introduced through flashbacks. Certainly any who were killed permanently, and perhaps any whom Elijah feels it would not be advantageous to raise at this particular time. He may have said that they were a close-knit family, but all families have their issues, and when each individual person has that level of power, they could really put the “fun” in “dysfunctional” – one family spat could level the town. That potential for destruction rises exponentially if Mom and Dad are resurrected. Klaus already had a volatile relationship with the father even before he learned that he was a bastard. Blend Dad’s disdain, Mom’s likely over-protectiveness as a means to overcompensate, and Klaus’s full-blown bat-shit crazy, and the results could be nuclear in their devastation.

Given the potential for disaster, I fully expect Elena, as the voice of the audience, to make the argument that perhaps waking them all up at once would not be the best idea in the world. For that matter, if Elijah’s eventual savior is smart, they’ll take his coffin elsewhere before pulling the dagger out, and only tell him the location of the rest after a few guarantees are in place. Either way, I would be very surprised to see them all descend en masse.

Dining Out
For the first two seasons, the show has been set in Mystic Falls, with only occasional forays out of town, such as Damon and Elena’s Excellent Adventure to Richmond. But with Klaus poised to leave town and take his pet Rippah with him, it looks like we may finally see some of our main cast leaving home for an extended away trip. Klaus and Stefan: on a bender, partying it up. I can see them hitting Atlantic City, Vegas, some trendy L.A. nightclubs. Damon and Elena: on the hunt for Stefan, forced to stay in a roadside motel, where there is only one room left, which of course has only one bed… Katherine: the proverbial fox in Klaus and Stefan’s foxhunt. Elijah, either with Damon and Elena or with some of the family: hunting Klaus. The entire season is shaping up to be one big episode of The Amazing Race. Surely that means we’ll see some of the characters venture further from home than the Mystic Grill.

Complementary Dishes
As interesting and as packed with potential awesomeness as the Originals storyline may be, it wouldn’t have any place on The Vampire Diaries if that preeminent family weren’t somehow connected to our regular characters. After all, “Klaus took Stefan for a reason,” leading to the biggest question of all as we head into season three: What is that connection?

The most obvious answer, which on this show would seem to render it the least likely, is that the Salvatores are blood descendants of the Originals. The entire family became vampires, but all of the siblings were presumably adults when that occurred. It stands to reason that some of the siblings must have been married and had families of their own, now long buried by the sands of time. As simple as that explanation would be, it is ultimately a weak one. Even if the Originals were meticulous and somewhat obsessed record-keepers, at over a thousand years out, there would be so many descendants of the family that I find it extremely difficult to believe that the Salvatores would be anything all that special to them based solely on that bond alone.

If not a simple blood connection, then perhaps Klaus and Stefan share a different common denominator. Could Stefan, like Klaus, somehow carry the potential to become a werepire? Was Mrs. Salvatore a little too friendly with the Lockwoods? The easy answer would appear to be “no.” If Stefan carried the werewolf potential, wouldn’t he have become a werepire the first time he killed someone after being turned into a vampire, just as Klaus did? Perhaps, but perhaps not. The curse placed on Klaus to keep his werewolf side dormant could have extended to any future individual who carried the same potential. Or, perhaps Klaus would only have spontaneously turned and taken on the dual nature because he was an Original, and any subsequent vampire who harbored the werewolf gene would not trigger that curse unless helped to do so – maybe by a cadre of witches, such as those Klaus surrounds himself with.

Or finally, perhaps Klaus’s interest in Stefan has nothing to do with bloodlines and curses at all, but with a more personal connection to the younger vampire. Klaus had obviously heard of both Salvatore brothers and knew of their pasts. We know that Katherine hasn’t been whispering in his ear. Isobel provided Klaus with information and assistance, but I doubt her research extended too deeply into the Salvatores’ distant past. How then is Klaus privy to Stefan’s little 1917 indiscretion in Monterey? Could the link to the Salvatores be someone whom we’ve already met?

I had harbored some hopes that that person would turn out to be Lexi, but since the Stefan’s Diaries books have apparently gone into her back story, that would no longer seem to be a possibility. Also making such a retcon difficult is the tendency of any new vampire in town to wind up the permanent variety of dead. That’s not to say, however, that our stealth Original couldn’t be someone initially assumed to be human. If there were someone who could fit that bill, it would accomplish a lot from a storytelling standpoint. For one thing, it was never stated how Klaus had come by the knowledge of Elena’s existence. While the easy conclusion is that Isobel got too close to Klaus in her research and thus got ensnared and compelled to reveal that information, that’s not a given. If the final Original were to be someone we’ve seen in passing over the course of the last two seasons, then that individual could easily have been the one to tell Klaus about the doppelganger. Either his sibling could have sought Klaus out and offered up the info, in the hopes of being spared, or Klaus could have caught up on his own, and been told as a last-ditch attempt at salvation; thus, Klaus learned where to find his doppelganger.

By having an Original who was boxed so recently, it would give Elijah one sibling who would be a no-brainer to resurrect. He/she would be up-to-date (okay, the Mi-Fi might be perplexing), so Elijah would not need to spend time on a prolonged orientation to the present day. Also, the person would have at least a passing familiarity with the players involved. Finally, going that route would reduce by one the number of roles that will need to be cast to round out this big family. Personally, I like this idea best. It feels less predictable and less coincidental than going with a scenario where the Salvatores are descendants of the Original family. And it’s less contrived than shoehorning in another parallel between Stefan-Damon and Klaus-Elijah by making Stefan a Lockwood bastard rather than Guiseppe Salvatore’s biological son. What do you think? Are there any likely candidates?

Nutritional Value
The success or failure of the Originals story arc will eventually ride on what it brings to the overall story of the series. A marked strength of this show is its dedication to portraying its characters not as White Hats and Black Hats, not as Good or Evil, but as people. Whether they be human, vampire, witch or werewolf, characters have both positive and negative traits. They have agendas and motivations, some of them questionable. Their individual values and mores are not a set of absolutes, but a series of choices they make, day by and day and, sometimes, moment by moment. They make mistakes, they fail and have to face the consequences of that failure, they laugh and cry and love and hurt – because that’s what people do. The introduction of the Originals is a chance to show that same sensibility, that same human condition, writ large, with characters who, despite immortality and a ridiculous amount of power, are still, at the heart of it, just people.

Ultimately, The Vampire Diaries is and always has been a show about family – the family we’re born into, and the families that we form with friends and lovers. By bringing the Originals in not just as a powerful group of old vampires, but as an ancient, nuclear family, the writers have created an opportunity for themselves to tell a story about what happens to a family over the course of time when secrets and lies are revealed, when familial loyalties are stretched to the breaking point, when jealousies are left to fester untreated. Will that story serve as an example to our core characters, or will it prove to be a cautionary tale?

One thing is certain: I’ll be tuning in to Season 3 to find out!
 

Dayna Barter is an executive assistant and aspiring writer. She has a BA in medieval history, of all things, with a minor in Latin and Classical Studies. Writing vampire fiction has allowed her to do something with her degree other than ask, “Would you like fries with that?” An active and vociferous member of Team Elijah, she has been known to commit a wanton act of fanfic now and then. You can follow her on Twitter at @Dayna_Barter.

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