On Saturday at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, KSiteTV participated in roundtable interviews with the cast and crew of The Vampire Diaries in a very crowded press room full of folks dying to get the scoop on Season 4. One of the people we were able to catch up with was Julie Plec, the well-liked executive producer and writer who knows perhaps better than anyone what is coming next.
So what could we find out?
“We pick up, if not right away, within those several lapsed hours of where we left off, early the next morning,” Julie explains, “so everything that we left hanging, is still hanging, and there’s been no off-camera resolution to any of this. So, we’ll see all these things play out as we pick up. Elena realizing, ‘oh my God, what’s up with me?’ Damon and Stefan arguing over Stefan’s choice. Klaus-as-Tyler realizing that maybe his body didn’t burn after all, as was planned and intended. All of those things. It just dives right in, hits the ground running and we go,” she says, referring to the cliffhangers left from the show at the end of the season.
There’s more to Season 4 than body posessions, brotherly arguments, and Elena becoming a vampire. Most of the show’s characters will also be facing a life milestone that a lot of the audience can identify with – senior year of high school.”It’s funny, because that’s, to me, one of the most fun parts,” Julie says. “That road to graduation is all about ‘who am I? Who am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to be? What’s my future? Is my future here? Is it out? It is away?’ And all of those questions that every single high school senior gearing up for graduation asks themselves on a human level, parallels what Elena’s asking herself on a supernatural level. We are really excited this year to be able to have all of our characters on that soulful journey of growing up and getting out. So that’s fun. It’s going to be fun to be able to play that over the year.”
Julie tells us that Stefan thinks he screwed up, but she doesn’t believe Stefan screwed up with the decision that he made in the season finale. “The mechanical logistics aside, Stefan didn’t screw up. Elena said ‘help my friend’ and he helped her friend. Damon would have not helped her friend. We know that. We’ve had three years, that we know that. That is the fundamental difference between the brothers, and I think that a point that Elena will make very quickly is ‘yes, that’s why, when I had a choice to make about who I wanted to be with, that helped inform the choices I made.’ Knowing these things about Stefan versus Damon, is Stefan respects me and my choices, and me as an individual, and Damon loves me, and I know that, and who could avoid giving in to that? Except he wouldn’t be the kind of guy that would save my friends. Granted, this is a much more extreme situation, but a woman who’s having a baby, and the doctor comes to the husband and says ‘it’s either your wife or your kid. You can only save one of them; what do you do?’ There is no right answer. You save your wife, she’ll never forgive you. You save your kid, you’ll never forgive yourself. So that’s poor Stefan. There was no good outcome to that, but yet, he blames himself profoundly, and he’s not happy with himself. It’s going to be up to Elena to lay that out for him,” she says.
The fourth season of The Vampire Diaries begins October 11 on The CW. Come back soon for more interviews, and you can read more about TVD at our Vampire Diaries portal, VampireSite.net, as well as here on KSiteTV.
