Yesterday, The CW hosted a special preview screening of tonight’s episode of The Vampire Diaries, titled “The End Of The Affair.” Following the screening was a Q&A with one of the show’s executive producers, Julie Plec, where she talked about the episode as well as some of what’s to come in the show’s future.
We teased some of this material yesterday on our Vampire Diaries dedicated site, VampireSite.net, but now we share some additional details from the chat, including what’s in store for some of the show’s other characters. And after “The End Of The Affair” airs, come back to KSiteTV late tonight to hear what Julie had to say about tonight’s major happenings!
Come join the forum countdown to tonight’s episode on our forum!
Beware of some SPOILERS below.
* One of the series’ mysteries will be solved on tonight’s episode. “One of the big questions that we left last year with was ‘Why did Klaus take such an interest in Stefan, specifically, of all people?’ What we wanted to do is show the roots of Klaus’s character as it relates to his family, the people that he has known for a thousand years and been with off and on for a thousand years, that we, notoriously, of course, know that he’s daggered one by one and carted around in coffins,” Plec says. “So this notion of this big, bag, evil hybrid ‘dick,’ I guess, is what they said in the episode, who, like, everybody else in our show, is in his own way trying to fill a hole that’s been left inside of him as a result of loss of family or desire for family; a desire for that brotherhood. So this is just the beginning. It’s the beginning of our glimpse into Klaus’s life. It’s not the last we’ll see of his story and his family’s story. There’s so much story there that you could give them their own show; but right now we want them to have our show and be able to tell that story in the midst of everything else that we’re doing in Mystic Falls.”
* We may even be seeing the mother of the Originals at some point. “I would actually say, to be perfectly frank, I think that that was our intention, until we did the math. The realistic math, and realized we’ve said there’s 7 children. That’s a lot of new people to bring into the story. So I think – we’re only about a third of the way through the season, so far, in what we’re breaking. Certainly, the mother is going to be someone that we meet in the past, as will other siblings. We’ve already said that we will see Elijah again. In fact, right now 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 family,” Plec reveals.
* Some familiar faces might show up in this week’s episode. “I would say that we get to learn some old, old secrets and return to play with some old friends slash foes,” Plec teases.
* Bonnie finally returns next week. “Bonnie returns from summer with the ‘normal side of the family.’ Bonnie says ‘the normal side of my family is like watching paint dry,’ and Caroline says ‘well, I’d give a lot for a normal side of my family right now,’ having what she’s just been through. So it’s a nice return for Bonnie next week,” Plec tells us.
* The simmering attraction between Elena and Damon will finally be addressed soon – even though Damon makes many innuendos in “The End Of The Affair.” “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’s 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, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed with other people,” Julie says.
* Will we be seeing Katherine again? “Katherine is such a fun foil to our characters, and she’s such a hilarious, wild vixeny showcase for Nina Dobrev, which I’m sure is a nice exercise for her as well,” Plec says… which gives us the feeling she’ll be back again sooner rather than later.
* What can Julie Plec tease about what’s going on with the ghosts that Jeremy is seeing? “What I can tease is that there definitely is an agenda happening with our ghosts that isn’t just ‘hey, I want to make amends with my loved ones’,” Plec says. “I think as we get into the next episode and Bonnie’s return, and Jeremy holding this secret now – this person that’s been very easy to keep a secret from because she’s been away, now a couple months have gone by, and he hasn’t fessed up to it. So at what point did it become not wanting to let her in on something, and when does it shift to an out and out lie? We’re going to see the emotional consequences that we’ve talked about before, of Bonnie bringing Jeremy back to life, which is that it’s put a rift in her romantic relationship with him. And then over the next couple episodes, our arc is to see what the ghostly and supernatural consequences are of that.” A lot of this ghostly action comes to a big episode around Halloween. “We kind of go all out on Halloween, and have ourselves some fun. It’s not Halloween in the show, but we still do an episode where we get to have a little bit of fun with ghosts, and really pay off that chapter, and really put a finish to it.,” Plec says. She’s vague about whether or not Taylor Kinney might be returning as the ghost of Uncle Mason, though there have been rumors to that effect. “It’s hard to keep things secret when he’s galavanting across Atlanta with the biggest pop superstar on the planet,” she says, “so all I’ll say is that he’s in Atlanta.”
* Are we seeing the Council making a comeback? “There’s a couple juicy Council moments that come up next week, for those of you that follow the moves of the Council and their glorious incompetencies. Next week really showcases that beautifully,” she laughs. Things will especially prove to be conflicting for Carol Lockwood. “That’s the big thing next week. It’s like, wait a second. Who in this Council is not somehow carrying a secret for their child, that are supposed to be the very people that we’re fighting against?”
* Stefan’s diary plays a role in tonight’s episode, “The End Of The Affair.” “A device that we moved past early on was the narrating diaries, because as Kevin and I like to say, a diary is for when you have no one that you feel like you can talk to, and it’s an expression of your loneliness, and a secret that you’re keeping when you feel like there’s no one you can trust to keep your secret. Once Stefan and Elena found each other, they could express everything to each other, and so we moved away from framing our episodes with that. But we still like the idea that there’s a canon, a folklore… centuries of storytelling, and especially in our vampires’ centuries of life, that can still be referenced and looked back on during times when they didn’t have anybody, or they still felt like they had to keep things secret. It’s the Vampire Diaries. We will always find some way to give a little shout out to that,” she says.
* Are any more big deaths coming to The Vampire Diaries in the near future that we will be able to look forward to and/or dread? “Always, and I don’t know,” she says vaguely.
* Why can’t Matt just like vampires? Julie tells us that a great episode is coming up for Matt. “Matt has an episode coming up that’s so beautiful, and so sad, and so wonderful. It’s our fifth episode. It’s set the weekend before their senior year begins, and it’s an annual tradition of senior prank night. And things, of course, go horribly wrong. But for Matt specifically, it’s kind of bittersweet, because just at the beginning of last year for him, he was a football player, he had Elena, just came out of that relationship, his friends were good, he had a sister, his mom was in and out… there was a sense of life that he had, that he’s really lost over the two seasons of our show, and it’s reallh hurting him, and we really get to explore that in a beautiful, tragic way in the fifth episode.” You can find an official description for that episode here. There might be a chance that Matt will finally “get some” this year, also. “Matt’s gotta get laid this year, for sure. He just needs that. He just needs love. So maybe, after Christmas,” Plec teases.
* Will Stefan and Elena have sex with anyone other than each other? “I would never say,” Julie says wisely, avoiding possible fan uproar.
* Several weeks ago, Plec tweeted that she had an emotional night of writing a scene that left her sobbing. While Plec wouldn’t tell us who it was about, she did offer some idea of what it was about. “I can tell you that thematically, so tragic… it hit what I feel like is one of the sweet spots of this show, emotionally, which is utter fear of being alone. And I feel like that’s ultimately at the root of the vampire foundation. It’s the orphan fear. It’s the person that loves so deeply. It’s all borne out of fear of spending all of eternity alone. And when I was writing this scene, it just kind of all hit with this character, and this moment, and the theme of the episode, and everything that was going on, and it just ruined me,” she explains.
* Would they have killed Andie if Dawn Oliveri hadn’t landed a role on The House Of Lies? “Actually, no, I don’t think we would have,” Julie reveals. “It was knowing that she had booked a new series that had Don Cheadle on Showtime that sounds cool, and she’s so great, we kind of figured ‘Oh, that’s going to do really well so we might never get her again,’ and so knowing that, and knowing that we wanted Stefan to do something very extreme to make his point, the two notions gave us Andie in that episode. She probably would have been that intrepid reporter who’s Damon’s buddy, ’til the end of time, if she was available,” she says.
* One journalist asked if Elena is a bit of a maniac for not being affected by murder very much. “It’s funny. I get into debates with people about this on Twitter,” she laughs, “That was in Season One. I learned that lesson the hard way. Don’t debate on Twitter. I think there’s an element of escapism in this world that you have to embrace, and if you don’t embrace it, then you’re never going to go along the ride, and if we start stacking up the responsibility for body count… I mean, Caroline, our glorious, beautiful Caroline who says ‘I don’t need to be fixed’ ripped some dude apart at the carnival. There is a sense of hyper-surreality that you just have to embrace. I compare it to the timeline of our show, which makes no sense in the real world timeline, but it works. So, yeah. I mean, look. Elena is human. She’s going to defend the integrity of humans. She’s going to protect the people that she loves to the end of time. She’s going to be a hero. She’s going to struggle. She’s going to ask herself some really tough questions. She’s going to realize ‘who am I that I love these people, and why? And what do I do about that?’ But there’s still that escapism that you’ve just got to go with,” she explains.
* What’s up with Klaus and Stefan? “The great Stefan-Klaus Bromance of 2011 – it’s really powerful. I think there’s some fun stuff to explore there, as far as what Klaus expects out of that friendship, and what Stefan is willing to give,” Plec says, fueling slash fiction writers across the country.
* And what of the show’s other power couple, Tyler and Caroline? “Tyler and Caroline – they’ve really blossomed into this really nice, for me at least, watching it, looking at it as a fan – I really like them. I like the connection they have with each other. I like this idea that he’s just dealt with his mother discovering that he is a ‘monster,’ and she’s fighting with the fact that her father thinks that she’s a ‘monster,’ and these two ‘monsters’ as labeled by the people that are supposed to love them the most, have kind of found each other. So, we’ll get to live in that for a little while, and then, of course, as often happens in our relationships, something will go terribly wrong. They’ll struggle this season as well.” Could that union lead to a werewolf-vampire hybrid like Klaus? “We’ve said two things on this show very clearly. Vampires can’t procreate, and yet, vampires’ bodies work like anybody else’s. So, I don’t know. The door is open to take either rule,” Plec says.
The Vampire Diaries is new tonight at 8PM (ET) on The CW! Here are some extras associated with the episode that you may enjoy:
