The Vampire Diaries, at its core, is about family for its Executive Producers Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec. It doesn’t matter how much gore they show off or how many genre elements they introduce, at the end of the day it is about loving and fighting (and sometimes even fighting the love of) one’s family.
“Whether it’s your blood family, your urban family, your friend-family, however you want to define it,” Plec explained. “So often you find these people sneaking their way in.”
The familial element was started most prominently not only with Elena (Nina Dobrev) and her brother Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) but also the Salvatore brothers and how their push-pull drove so much of the action of the drama. But as if one brooding brother duo wasn’t enough, now the series has another one in Elijah (Daniel Gillies) and Klaus (Joseph Morgan).
From the moment it became clear to Plec that Elijah had to be a part of this story, she knew she was going to make him Klaus’ brother. She wanted fans to make the connection between the two sets of brothers and see that though they are at odds, they really have a counterpart in the other family.
Gillies himself joked that he and Morgan will read the scripts and try to dissect which of their characters is acting most like Damon (Ian Somerhalder) or Stefan (Paul Wesley) in any given scene, but we think it’s kind of obvious, especially given recent events. Klaus has been able to turn off his emotions and put his own selfish needs first and foremost, like Damon did for literally hundreds of years, as well, while Elijah is the one trying to embrace a little bit of humanity since he is immersed in such a culture.
Although, really, there aren’t many humans left in Mystic Falls!
Elijah and Klaus have also changed in their relation to each other through the years as they have grown and experienced new things. In other words, Klaus wasn’t always the badass he is now. At one point he was certainly vulnerable and “shiny and new” as a vampire. In that sense, they have combo elements of both of the “other brothers” because when it all boils down, don’t we all have elements of each other after a while!?
A lot has certainly changed since Williamson and Plec first sat down to break the second season of The Vampire Diaries and decided upon introducing this new set of brothers to wreak havoc in Mystic Falls. As the characters fleshed out, they became so much bigger and badder than the Salvatore brothers could even dream of because they are “originals.” And originals cannot die.
“Coming in, I guess you worry about coming in as a character who’s on the top of the food chain,” Morgan pontificated, “but everyone was very accommodating and it’s just a lot of fun. Even the scene [in “The Last Day”] with Ian where I get to get right in his personal space, it’s just a tremendous amount of fun on set. That’s one thing-- when I got to Atlanta, I came and I watched some of the sixties dance. That was the first thing I watched, and just to see even Nina standing and talking to the camera guys and everyone high-fiving after the shots, I thought ‘Okay, this will be good’.”
Plec shared that putting such a heavy weight on these new characters’ shoulders was not always the intention, but as she and her fellow writers and producers saw what gems they had in the actors, they expanded the characters accordingly. Specifically Elijah became much more an integral part of the end of season two-- and moving into season three-- later in the game.
“Elijah as a character was meant to bridge the gap between the introduction of Klaus, you know, in the script and then the actual reveal of Klaus late in the season, and he was meant to, like, get us from point A to point B,” she admitted.
“We didn’t have the true mythology of how to kill an original completely worked out when we first introduced Elijah, and then freakin’ Dan Gillies walks in that door in the old haunted house, and he has the suit and he has an accent, and everything about him is so great, we can’t make him easy to kill…We don’t want our characters to look stupid for not being able to get rid of him, so we just made it harder and harder until we were like ‘Screw it; originals are immortal’!”
And season three will be very much about the originals, which means that it is looking good for both these guys to become series regulars. It is also looking good for learning more about how the vampire-werewolf hybrid even comes to be a thing, as well as more flashbacks, seeing the brothers through the varied and copious years.
Morgan expressed interest in seeing the brothers during the crucifiction of Christ and jokes were made that perhaps they gave him a little vampire blood while he was strung up on the cross to help him “rise” once again. Needless to say, the show probably won’t actually be tackling that particular time period, though we think it might be ripe for content for an accompanying web series. “Behind The Times of Elijah and Klaus!” What do you guys think?
The Vampire Diaries airs on Thursday nights at 8pm, only on The CW.
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