When we last left THE VAMPIRE DIARIES all the way back in May, the fates of more than one character was left hanging in the balance – not in life-and-death terms, but rather the fate of their souls and their increasingly intertwined relationships. Uber-vamp Klaus successfully completed the ritual allowing him to embrace both his vampire and werewolf destinies, but not without the ultimate sacrifice: the lives of Jenna, Jules, and John. Astoundingly, both Petrova doppelgangers, Elena and Katherine, survived the bloody sacrifice – thanks to some heroic acts by Damon and John. Damon foolishly fed his blood to Elena to make sure she would not die and John gave up his soul so that Elena would not lose hers when she revived from death.
Then, not to be left out, Stefan intervened to save Damon’s life, by agreeing to stay with Klaus in exchange for his blood to cure Damon from the werewolf bite. So many noble sacrifices in the end. But it may mean a world of trouble ahead this season with Stefan bound to Klaus and forced to participate in Klaus’ deadly games; and complications on the home-front as Elena confessed her love for Damon when she thought he was dying.
Plus, Damon has been left alone to fight the good fight in Mystic Falls while Stefan is caught in Klaus’ evil web. Also, lurking in the background is Elijah, Klaus’ loyal brother who could not kill him when he had the chance and Katherine who is now free of Klaus’ clutches, but without Stefan to fixate her blood-lust and desires may seek to seduce Damon yet again – or will she find another love to fixate her attentions?
Then there is the other-worldly complications of Jeremy’s ex-girlfriends appearing out of the ether as if coming back to haunt him from the grave. ‘Tis the season for ghosts, lost souls, and love in the cross-hairs.
While at Comic-Con in July, THE VAMPIRE DIARIES cast and executive producer Julie Plec was in attendance to tease a little about the third season. Talking with the press, Julie shared what is next for the good-hearted Stefan who made a noble sacrifice at the end of last season and how the parallel stories of Stefan/Damon and Klaus/Elijah will impact the upcoming season.
What can you tell us about the third season so far?
JULIE: I can tell you that so far we’ve shot 8 day of footage. It’s not much, but we’ve got ourselves underway — and already we are shaking things up and being bad — as storytellers, we are being naughty! Making some decisions and doing some things.
How many dead bodies have you racked up in just 8 days?
JULIE: I cannot answer that! But that’s a good question. I just had to think about it for a minute. [laughter]
So Damon broke Elena’s brother’s neck and now she’s going to be dating him?
JULIE: Well, I think dating is a strong word. I think the two of them have a strange and enticing chemistry. And I think there is a question of why do we always go for the bad boys. Why do we always go for the bad boys?! I don’t know. I don’t have the answer to that. So we’ll see if we can distort that a little bit. It’s funny ’cause she chose the good boy, but the good boy is a vampire — which is the opposite of one — so we’ll have to see.
So there’s going to be a switch up now because the good boy is not so good anymore and the bad boy looks like he may be just a little bit good.
JULIE: Definitely Stefan, who we defined as our hero, is about to go down a pretty dark road and we don’t want to handle that too lightly. We’ve seen that he’s really struggled when he goes to that place. So we are going to make sure that we continue to see that struggle. Damon, on the other hand, it’s kind of his fault and yet he wonders: ‘How the hell did I end up the hero? This is a bunch of bullshit!’ So he’s not going to be really happy about all that. He’s now going to be kind of the reluctant and annoyed and exasperated hero. So they have a nice role reversal. They are not by any means swapping personalities because Damon is still Damon in his own way. But he’s still left behind. So he’s going to be stuck protecting the girl and protecting the town and all that.
Can you talk about the relationship that has come about with Klaus and Stefan? Will it always be the puppet-master and puppet, or will their relationship evolve into something different?
JULIE: I think if you look back at the scenes between Klaus and Elijah, you’ll get a sense of that dynamic with Elijah of course being the older brother to Klaus, but also being in his own way strangely controlling and deferential at the same time. I’m going to be looking forward to seeing Klaus and Stefan’s relationship have an evolution that is not just, ‘I’m evil and you’re my minion.’ I think we can have some more fun with that. So I’m hoping that the audience connects to Klaus and Stefan as an unlikely duo.
What about Alaric? Is he going to step up and act more as a parent towards Jeremy and Elena since every parental figure in their lives has died?
JULIE: They would certainly like him to. But he spent a lot of time at the bar in the VAMPIRE DIARIES timeline between the end of Season 2 and the start of Season 3. So he’s really going to be struggling with what his role is with these teenagers. He really doesn’t want to screw them up and he himself is sort of screwed up. But that’s part of his journey. I don’t know. He certainly spent a lot of time on the couch since we last saw him. When he’s not at the bar, I think he’s on their couch. They need somebody looking after them. But he’s not so sure he’s ready to take that on.
Will this next season take the show closer in the direction of the book series incorporating more supernatural elements?
JULIE: Yes and no. Our mythology is coming a little bit closer to the books in that we are going to explore the history of the Originals and see how they ultimately and weirdly have connections to Mystic Falls that we were not aware of. What we do not want to do and we have made a concerted effort to keep the show centered on psychological war and not have to constantly make it bigger, bigger, bigger. Yet, as we said at the beginning of last season, ‘we’re not going to have rings of fire or anything’ and low and behold, there we were with rings of fire, which was great. But when we started the season, we didn’t think we would get there by the end of it. So we don’t want to use that as our jumping off point in scope and size. We want to pare it back down to the beginning to a good, suspenseful, character driven horror. So hopefully that works.
Even though the show is entering its third season, do you still worry that it may be perceived as just another vampire show on the TV landscape?
JULIE: When we set out to start the show, the big concern for us and for everybody was that this would not be seen as a “Twilight” knock-off or “Twilight” rip-off. We very much wanted to make sure we weren’t that and they choice that we made was that we would separate ourselves as much as we could given the source material and the comparisons of the two series. But we all the time have a moment where somebody pitches something that I think is original and fresh and brilliant and someone else in the room says, ‘oh, they just did that on TRUE BLOOD last week.’ And it sucks. Even with THE SECRET CIRCLE this season, they have witches and it’s sort of like, ‘uh, don’t we have witches?’ But we have a very, very passionate fanbase who seems to love us, “Twilight,” and TRUE BLOOD, and they cannot get enough of any of them, so that’s great. If all three of those things can exist in the same universe and everyone can appreciate it for what they do and how they do it, there’s room for all of us.
What can you share about the resurrection of the ghosts of Jeremy’s ex-girlfriends Vicki and Anna?
JULIE: What we have is at the end of the season we have two dead vampires who were very important elements of Jeremy’s life making an appearance. But we do not know what they are or why they are there, and that’s actually quite a lot of what’s happening this season — Jeremy is trying to figure out why his dead girlfriends and making the choice of maybe not sharing that with anybody and then ultimately deciding he can’t keep it to himself anymore, but not really wanting to open up to his current girlfriend that bringing her back to life has resulted in some visitation by his dead girlfriends. 
THE VAMPIRE DIARIES returns with new episodes on Thursday September 15th at 8PM on the CW (CTV2 in Canada) and stars Nina Dobrev, Ian Somerhalder, Paul Wesley, Steven R. McQueen, Kat Graham, Candice Accola, Zach Roerig, Michael Trevino, Matt Davis and Joseph Morgan. Catch up on past episodes you may have missed for free online at clicktowatch.tv
Tiffany Vogt is a contributing writer to TheTVAddict. She has a great love for television and firmly believes that entertainment is a world of wondrous adventures that deserves to be shared and explored – she invites you to join her. Please feel free to contact Tiffany at Tiffany_Vogt_2000@yahoo.com or follow her at on Twitter (@TVWatchtower).