Warning: Spoilers for tonight’s episode of The Originals, titled “When The Levee Breaks,” are discussed here.
So, that happened.
In tonight’s emotional and intense episode of The Originals, the show said goodbye to a popular character, as Colin Woodell’s character Aiden was killed by Dahlia — and everyone but Cami now thinks it was Klaus who did it. The death of Aiden will affect numerous factions on the show, in addition to the fans who loved the character, who was half of one of sci-fi TV’s few prominent same-sex male pairings.
“We knew off the bat that we wanted to tell a beautiful Romeo and Juliet story between Josh, a vampire, and a werewolf, and our goal was to create a complicated, layered person who was put in many dilemmas with regard to his loyalty to the pack, and outside sources putting pressure on him… the difficulty of being a werewolf loyal to the Crescents and dating a vampire, but also his belief that maybe he should be Alpha,” Executive Producer Michael Narducci said when asked when killing Aiden became part of the plan. “Him being an ambitious person, and questioning the leadership of his own friend, led him to be vulnerable to Klaus and his own Klausian machinations. Once we had that story in motion, we felt like ‘wow, we’ve really put this guy in a dilemma,’ and simultaneously, that story was going forward, and we had another story, which was ‘Dahlia comes to town,’ and her goal should be to divide the Mikaelsons, and to ruin the vow of ‘always and forever’ so that they would be easier to take down, and we thought if Dahlia is smart, she could use someone’s death the way that she says she’s going to use Aiden’s death – as the kindling to light a fire that divides the Mikaelsons,” he explained.
Aiden’s death certainly lent itself to character drama. “I remember being in the room, and the discussion came to the point of ‘well, what if she takes Aiden and kills him and frames Klaus for it, and Klaus couldn’t just say he didn’t do it, for many reasons. One, it’s a sign of weakness, and two, he wants the Crescents to be questioning loyalties so that Hayley doesn’t have the freedom to run. So, all of these story points kind of collided in a way that the idea really seemed like it would be the thing that would happen, even though every one of us in that room loves Aiden, and every one of us is really sad to see Colin Woodell go, because he was such an incredible actor. Such a beautiful performer, and a star in the making. But we felt like that was the best story. With any death, you arrive at it, you think about it, you debate it, you discuss it, and if it’s right, then that’s what you have to do. That’s what it was in this case,” Narducci told us, promising that Josh’s dealing with the grief from losing Aiden will be dealt with more in next week’s episode.
Any character death in the Originals universe also brings up the whole notion of how much death sticks on the show. “With Klaus, you haven’t seen the last of Klaus Mikaelson,” he assured, referring to the staking he took at the end of tonight’s show. “With Aiden, Aiden’s gone. Josephine LaRue is gone. Oliver is gone. I could go through the list of the people that we’ve killed. There is no ‘other side’ in this show, because the ‘other side’ was dissolved on The Vampire Diaries last season. On this show, if you’re a witch and you die and your body is consecrated, you could go into what we have called the ‘ancestral spirit well’,” Narducci explains.
“So, if you’re a witch, there is the possibility that we will see you again in a vision; the possibility that, like Celeste last year or Esther this year, you might be able to come back in somebody else’s body. Finn has been ejected from Vincent’s body, and Freya keeps him in a little necklace. I think we may see Finn again someday. But right now, we’re having so much fun exploring the character of Vincent. Eva Sinclair is dead, which gives Rebekah the right to own that form; that body. But for how long, we don’t know. I think our goal is to make the drama count by making these deaths as permanent as we can be on a show like this. We won’t be seeing a corporeal Mikael anytime soon. Mikael’s dead, so that death last episode, it was meant to be the definitive finale between Mikael and Klaus, and that last conversation between them was meant to put everything on the table. It was intentionally left inconclusive, when he says ‘I don’t know why I didn’t love you.’ I think that’s more hurtful for Klaus to hear that, than if Klaus hears ‘yeah, I didn’t like you because you weren’t my kid.’ It was before that that Mikael started to dislike Klaus,” he said.
And, of course, now the “levee” has broken, and everyone should buckle up for more drama, and perhaps, more death. “This is the beginning of the storm that will take us through the end of the season,” Narducci promised.
The Originals airs Mondays at 8PM (ET/PT) on The CW.
