It’s been just over a year since The Vampire Diaries concluded after eight seasons, leading to hours upon hours of rewatching by devoted fans. The show was truly something else, part horror show, part drama series, and part soap opera. The brutal portrayal of vampires and other supernatural figures satisfied fantasy fans and eased some of the concerns of those skeptical about the show being just another vampire show, amidst the era of Twilight and True Blood.
Across eight seasons, The Vampire Diaries developed a rich, and sometimes confusing mythology. In an effort to keep the show’s conflict fresh, The Vampire Diaries often introduced new creatures or amped-up versions of figures we had already seen in previous episodes. While this tactic served the show well for the most part, there were instances in which the show seemed to contradict itself over its 171 episode-run.
Maybe a new character’s abilities call those of a fan favorite into question. Maybe the rules of a vampire or werewolf seem to go out the window for the sake of story progression. Whatever the reason, there are some elements to The Vampire Diaries that are, let’s just say, questionable. Despite this, many hardcore fans can look past these discrepancies, citing them as mere road bumps in the grand scheme of things.
No show is perfect, and The Vampire Diaries is certainly no exception to that rule.
Sharpen those fangs, here are 20 Things Wrong With The Vampire Diaries We All Choose To Ignore.
20. Pastor Young’s Town Council
Despite the impression that the vampires of Mystic Falls were left to play by their own rules, there was a group in place to keep the town out of harm’s way. The Founder’s Council was comprised of long-standing residents who were in the know and willing to protect the town, but not everyone was convinced.
Season four saw the emergence of Pastor Young’s new, much more aggressive town council. After only managing to detain Elena, Stefan, and Rebekah for a short period of time, Pastor Young incinerates the members of the new council in his own home.
The new council was no more effective than the Founder’s Council and was eliminated off in no time. What was Pastor Young’s plan again?
19. The Brotherhood of the Five
After the announcement of The Originals, The Vampire Diaries found itself in need of a breath of fresh air. With Klaus and company’s absence, the show needed a new antagonist to push the story forward.
The answer, it seems, was The Brotherhood of the Five. Connor first hit the screen in season four and promised to be an exciting addition to the show. Between Connor’s skills as a vampire hunter and Elena’s learning curve as a newly turned vampire, viewers should have been in for a suspenseful run.
What they got, however, was a runaround plot that was really just about releasing the evil Silas. All the set up and backstory of The Five was just a footnote in the grand scheme of the show.
18. Cade’s Power Over Stefan
After seven seasons, it seemed that The Vampire Diaries had run its course. When fans learned that the eight season would be the show’s last, it’s reasonable to assume that their expectations were high.
For the most part, the final season of The Vampire Diaries lived up to the hype of its fans. There are some elements of season eight, however, that are hard to ignore.
Throughout the season, Damon and Enzo find themselves under the control of Cade, the ruler of Hell. While they are eventually freed from Cade’s control, the ruler soon overpowers Stefan, forcing him to act as a Ripper.
The finale reveals that Katherine had been behind the whole thing.
This not only led to a strange ending for the series, but to much of the final season being easy to overlook.
17. The Originals and the Immortals
With their first appearance on The Vampire Diaries, the Originals are introduced as the first immortals. Kol, Finn, Elijah, Mikael, and Rebekah are said to be more powerful and more ancient than any other beings seen in the show before.
This is all well and good until Silas’ introduction in season four.
Although Silas was a witch, he drank an immortality potion thousands of years before some of the Originals, making him a much older immortal.
Silas has a rather negative view towards the blood-suckers too, claiming they are simply poor impressions of himself. It’s unlikely then that the Originals were simply unaware of his existence, leading many to wonder why they were portrayed as all-powerful in the first place.
16. How Did They Manage to Graduate High School?
The Vampire Diaries begins when much of the main cast is just partway through high school. Throughout the first season, we get to see the cast at school, but there’s never a lot of studying going on.
All we really see of their time at school is partying.
This continues until their graduation in season four, but how did they even manage to graduate? With all the violence and despair around them, maybe math class wasn’t the most pertinent thing at the time. Still, a scene or two with the crew studying for the big math final once in a while could definitely help with the tone of The Vampire Diaries’ earlier seasons.
15. Damon and Stefan’s Lack of Vampire Knowledge
Damon and Stefan Salvatore are introduced to us at the young - at least by vampire standards - age of around 150 years old. In that time, the two have gotten into all kinds of shenanigans and met up with people, mystical or otherwise, from all over the world.
Why do the two always seem to be caught off guard by whatever new threat approaches?
Damon and Stefan seem to have no real grasp on the Originals, werewolves, hunters, and witches or the threats they pose.
Given that they’ve had over a century’s experience being vampires, you’d think the Salvatore brothers would have at least a basic understanding of the mystical world around them.
14. Jeremy Bails on Elena
Jeremy is a bit of an oddball character in The Vampire Diaries. We only really see Elena’s younger brother Jeremy used as a plot device. He can’t seem to keep a girlfriend alive and he’s almost always used simply as leverage against Bonnie or his older sister.
It seems the pressure of all these mystical happenings got to be too much for Jeremy, who eventually runs off to “art school,” though we know he really leaves to take up vampire hunting.
When Elena finds herself in a coma, however, you’d expect that her younger brother would at least check in, right? It’s understandable, given that the showrunners had to write Jeremy’s character out, that he wouldn’t appear on screen again, but he could have at least written an email.
13. Damon’s Disappearing Mystical Skills
The pilot episode is a chance for shows to test the waters a little bit with some of their ideas. You might see subtle attempts to establish a trope, but recurring themes or elements are usually written with the intention to last throughout the show.
The Vampire Diaries’ pilot is pretty in line with the rest of the series but features one pretty glaring outlier. In the episode, Damon is shown being able to produce fog and have crows appear out of thin air. Used primarily to confuse and scare his victims, Damon’s abilities seem like they might be useful in creating suspense later on in the show.
It seems that the showrunners didn’t feel the trope was worth the effort, as the only time fans got to see Damon’s use of these skills was in the pilot episode.
12. Klaus’ Lack of Compassion for his Hybrids
Klaus had a goal in mind from his first appearance on The Vampire Diaries – to gain access to his inner werewolf. Making relatively quick work of this, Klaus’ next step was to develop a new family, something he accomplished by siring hybrids.
Apparently a dozen hybrids wasn’t enough for Klaus, who obviously longed for a real family.
He was willing to sacrifice them whenever he felt it was necessary. Later on, when Tyler tried to break his bond to Klaus, the leader of the hybrids attaacked Tyler’s mother along with the rest of the “family” he had sired.
11. The Doppelgangers
Early on in The Vampire Diaries, we learn that Elena bears a striking resemblance to Damon and Stefan’s sire, Katherine Pierce. This isn’t just a coincidence, as we later discover that Elena is a Petrova doppelganger and actually belongs to the same bloodline as Katherine.
If this doesn’t sound confusing enough already, actress Nina Dobrev juggled both characters throughout the show, swapping back and forth between the two.
The later addition of more Petrova doppelgangers did little to help the show, with Stefan discovering an evil twin later on as well.
For whatever reason, the show’s production team stuck to the doppelganger idea when they should’ve cut things off after Katherine.
10. Bonnie’s Many Returns
Mortality is kind of a strange idea in the context of The Vampire Diaries. Many main characters either can’t perish, have gone to the afterlife and been brought back, or anything in between. While Jeremy lost his life multiple times during the show’s run, he doesn’t hold a candle to Bonnie.
Between her time spent on the other side and the instances in which she died deliberately, Bonnie found herself a busy witch.
Whether it be an immediate return or one that takes some time, Bonnie always seem to find herself back amongst the living. It’s because of this that her demises are hard to take seriously. If we know she’s going to come back to life every time, who cares when she goes?
9. Sheriff Donovan
Matt Donovan had a tough run on The Vampire Diaries. The orphaned Mystic Falls resident was often used as bait for the other characters. Matt wasn’t much better off emotionally either. His former girlfriends often preferred the company of the town’s werewolves or vampires - or became them.
Donovan sought to make a positive change by becoming the town’s deputy. Sheriff Liz Forbes’ passing in season six meant that, for some reason, Donovan was immediately promoted to the new sheriff.
Despite his frequent association with suspicious passings, both accidental and otherwise, the town felt it was best to just give him the job rather than looking for someone even a little bit qualified.
8. Does Age Equal Strength?
It seems to be a common belief that the older a vampire is, the stronger they are. While other variables, like diet and feeding schedules, are also important to a vampire’s strength, it is their age that is most commonly related to their power.
Because of what we know about the strength-age correlation, some of the events of The Vampire Diaries start to seem a little bit off. In season three, Caroline is able to defeat Damon while battling to save her father.
Given the fact that Damon is considerably older than Caroline, how is it possible that she beats him?
Emotional distress is often used as an explanation for seemingly impossible bouts of strength, but why establish these kinds of rules if they’re just going to be broken?
7. The Underwhelming Solution to Elena’s Sleeping Spell
The production team behind The Vampire Diaries were left in a bit of a tough spot when Nina Dobrev, the actress who played Elena, decided to leave the show after its sixth season. Rather than eliminate her character, they decided to tie her life to Bonnie’s through a spell which stated that, as long as Bonnie was alive, Elena was stuck asleep.
Elena entered into the spell admirably, happy to help Bonnie live a long, happy life. It seemed that the show gave Elena’s character the chance to ride off gracefully into the sunset.
Then came the series finale. Bonnie somehow figured out a way to break the curse without really offering a proper explanation to fans.
6. Whitmore College as a Setting
Given what we know about the cast of The Vampire Diaries’ time spent in high school, did we really expect them to hit the books in college? Elena and Caroline attended Whitmore College starting in season five and the show used it as a chance to develop their characters further.
While the change in setting does allow for new conflicts to develop, Whitmore College as a setting really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
Midway through the season, The Vampire Diaries shifts focus back to Mystic Falls, emphasizing that the same story could have taken place anywhere.
Whitmore College was really just a change of scenery that tried, but unfortunately didn’t succeed, to convey character growth.
5. Why Wasn’t Jenna on the Other Side?
Elena’s Aunt Jenna was a mainstay of the first two seasons of The Vampire Diaries. Acting as the maternal figure for Elena and Jeremy, Jenna’s season two passing was a seriously emotional one.
Where Jenna’s demise differs from many others seen in the show is that she doesn’t appear on screen after the fact. While that may sound like an obvious result of losing life, The Vampire Diaries does things a little differently. Many characters who’ve passed appear on screen during later episodes, especially when the show brings in “the other side,” a place where all dead supernatural figures seem to end up.
Despite being a vampire when she went to the grave, fans never got to see Jenna again.
4. Vervain
The anti-vampire herb is portrayed as a hot commodity for residents of Mystic Falls, with the town council keeping their supply of vervain well guarded for emergency use.
As The Vampire Diaries went on into its later seasons, it seemed that Zach Salvatore’s reign as the main supplier of the herb was coming to an end. People had started sporting vervain jewelry, slipping it into food and drinks, and even sneaking it into the town’s water supply at one point.
Wait, isn’t vervain supposed to be rare?
Where did it all come from? There’s never any mention of a new supplier or an easy growing method, vervain just seems to become commonplace.
3. The Diaries Don’t Really Matter
The name The Vampire Diaries certainly implies that journals and diaries are a key part of the show.
The pilot episode sees Elena and Stefan first meeting as a result of their respective diaries. Moving forward, these two’ journals were key to the progression of the show. The unique perspective Elena had on the situations surrounding Mystic Falls were part of the show’s charm and then diaries were a natural way for the show to share it.
As the show progressed, the emphasis on the journal-keeping waned. Having established so many new characters, it seemed that Elena’s writing didn’t hold nearly the importance that it once did
2. “The Cure”
The idea of being able to cure one’s vampirism was huge for The Vampire Diaries. Becoming most prominent later on in the show, the cure, and the desire to obtain it, were major story elements.
Initially, the cure seemed to be a one-use thing, stripping a vampire of his or her immortality. Despite this, Elena and Damon seemed awfully keen to share the potion. Is the cure even a smart move for these two?
Given that he is nearly 150 years old, it seems like Damon would perish of old age shortly after ingesting the cure.
It was also never made clear just how to ingest it. Does it have to come directly from the victim? What about the time Bonnie used a needle to get it from Elena?
Even when they aren’t changing, the rules of the cure are just too complicated.
1. How Oblivious the Rest of the Town Is
There’s a lot going on in the town of Mystic Falls. Vampires, werewolves, witches, and all the problems that they bring took hold of the town, leading to countless deaths and gallons of blood spilt.
Despite all the wild events that take place in Mystic Falls, it seems that only a select group of citizens are aware of what’s really going on. The town councils were put in place to protect these less knowledgeable residents, and that explains some of it.
During the Heretic story arc, the residents of Mystic Falls were told that a hazardous gas leak was to blame for the bizarre happenings.
Does that really sound like enough to dismiss such a wild time in the town’s history?
What other mistakes get overlooked in The Vampire Diaries? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
