Wetpaint Entertainment:
As far as Klaus is in Tyler's body. What happens next?
Julie Plec: What happens next is some awkward, ill‑timed, mischievous and otherwise naughty high jinks that begin and end quickly enough to still be fun, but definitely make Caroline very indignant.
So Klaus is definitely taking advantage of the fact that he is in Tyler's body?
I don't think he necessarily means to take advantage of that, but there is a moment in which — there is a shirt that comes off under false pretenses. So we'll just leave it at that.
Michael Trevino already said that Tyler comes back into his own body fairly soon. Are we done with Joseph Morgan?
No. Joseph Morgan will be right back. The minute Tyler's back in his own body, Joseph will be back in his. A little bit charred and worse for the wear, but he's a vampire, he can heal.
What should we know about the Tyler, Caroline, and Klaus triangle?
I think the important thing to know is that Caroline loves Tyler deeply. Caroline, especially after the first episode, will continue to loathe Klaus in spite of her strange fascination with him that sneaks in every now and then. Klaus is not giving up on Caroline, but he's by no means going to be a sick puppy dog. In fact, I think, he's going to get some perverse pleasure out of seeking alternate means to drive a wedge between Caroline and Tyler over the course of the season. So it's a slow play. He's a long-term thinker, Klaus.
As far as Klaus is in Tyler's body. What happens next?
Julie Plec: What happens next is some awkward, ill‑timed, mischievous and otherwise naughty high jinks that begin and end quickly enough to still be fun, but definitely make Caroline very indignant.
So Klaus is definitely taking advantage of the fact that he is in Tyler's body?
I don't think he necessarily means to take advantage of that, but there is a moment in which — there is a shirt that comes off under false pretenses. So we'll just leave it at that.
Michael Trevino already said that Tyler comes back into his own body fairly soon. Are we done with Joseph Morgan?
No. Joseph Morgan will be right back. The minute Tyler's back in his own body, Joseph will be back in his. A little bit charred and worse for the wear, but he's a vampire, he can heal.
What should we know about the Tyler, Caroline, and Klaus triangle?
I think the important thing to know is that Caroline loves Tyler deeply. Caroline, especially after the first episode, will continue to loathe Klaus in spite of her strange fascination with him that sneaks in every now and then. Klaus is not giving up on Caroline, but he's by no means going to be a sick puppy dog. In fact, I think, he's going to get some perverse pleasure out of seeking alternate means to drive a wedge between Caroline and Tyler over the course of the season. So it's a slow play. He's a long-term thinker, Klaus.
Wetpaint Entertainment:
What should we know about Elena as a vampire?
Julie Plec: You should know, it is by no means a walk in the park. In fact, it might be the worst, most horrible, sweaty run through the park in the middle of the night running from terrorists. That's about the equivalent of her experience.
Is it worse for her than for Caroline?
Julie Plec: Yeah. Caroline as we remember is a control freak and a perfectionist. So when she set her mind to being great as being a vampire, she just rocked it. And maybe one day she'll crack and collapse like a Juilliard pianist under pressure, but until then, she's a rock star. So Elena's going to have a much more difficult time with it. Every piece of compassion she's ever felt for anybody will be magnified, every piece of grief she's ever felt will be magnified, every piece of rage she's ever felt will be magnified. She's going to go through a lot, and it's not going to be quick, and it's not going to be easy.
What should we know about Elena as a vampire?
Julie Plec: You should know, it is by no means a walk in the park. In fact, it might be the worst, most horrible, sweaty run through the park in the middle of the night running from terrorists. That's about the equivalent of her experience.
Is it worse for her than for Caroline?
Julie Plec: Yeah. Caroline as we remember is a control freak and a perfectionist. So when she set her mind to being great as being a vampire, she just rocked it. And maybe one day she'll crack and collapse like a Juilliard pianist under pressure, but until then, she's a rock star. So Elena's going to have a much more difficult time with it. Every piece of compassion she's ever felt for anybody will be magnified, every piece of grief she's ever felt will be magnified, every piece of rage she's ever felt will be magnified. She's going to go through a lot, and it's not going to be quick, and it's not going to be easy.
Now that Elena is going to be a vampire on The Vampire Diaries, who (or what) will she feed on first? — Amy
NATALIE: Elena will of course struggle with this decision. "How she gets blood is going to be one of the big problems," showrunner Julie Plec tells us. But once she does, in the umpteenth Damon-vs.-Stefan choice that Elena has had to make, she will then choose the perfectly formed wrists of Ian Somerhalder to make her meal. Suffice it to say, Stefan will be mighty pissed by that turn of events.
-TV Guide
Interview With Julie Plec
Fanhattan: What should we get excited about for this season?
Julie Plec: We’ve got our heroine, Elena, who last we saw was waking up with vampire blood in her system so she has a choice to make of whether to be a vampire or whether to die. Since she’s the hero I think we can all guess where that goes and it gives us the opportunity to kind of go back to the beginning of the series and tell the same kinds of stories only with a different context. Instead of a young girl learning the secret of vampires in Mystic Falls, she now is a vampire in Mystic Falls and she’s got to keep her own secret. She’s got to learn how to live and how to feed and what to do. All of her emotions will be so heightened and she herself will become a little crazy so we’re going to watch her go through a pretty startling and traumatic journey, which is not going to be helped when a new vampire hunter comes to town in the second episode.
Fanhattan: Does that also shift the love triangle, to make her closer to Damon than Stefan?
Julie Plec: In a weird way it resets the love triangle. She made a decision about who she was supposed to be with and who she wanted and who she loved as a human, and now she’s not human anymore. So by no means is it going to change her mind overnight, but it’s definitely going to add some complications into both sides of that triangle. Does she want to be the kind of vampire that Damon is? Is she drawn to that or does she now more than ever want to stay as far away from it as possible? Can she still be as close to Stefan knowing that he loved her as a pure innocent human? Does she have insecurity about what that means for their relationship? And can he hang with her as she’s feeding on blood when he himself has issues with that.
Fanhattan: Right, how does Stefan feel about it?
Julie Plec: Well, Stefan is devastated. Stefan is devastated. He knows that she never wanted this. He would do anything he could to make sure she didn’t have to go through it but it’s kind of inevitable that she has to. So now he’s got to be her champion and her partner and her true love, and yet also adjust to he having to be a vampire when he himself is not very good at being one.
Fanhattan: Is the new vampire hunter a character from the books?
Julie Plec: No, no, it’s a fresh character.
Fanhattan: How do you create a vampire hunter that’s different from Alaric?
Julie Plec: Alaric came in hunting vampires because he had an axe to grind. He had vengeance on the brain but he himself was not a living breathing from the guy vampire hunter. The Gilbert family, Elena and Jeremy’s family, has a long history of hunting vampires but in that same way that is something they feel like is their family duty. This is the first time that we’ll see a vampire hunter who is made, created, born, lives and breathes to kill vampires. It drives him. He doesn’t care who gets caught in the crossfire and that is his purpose in life, so he is going to be a much more difficult and formidable opponent than what our heroes are used to from a typical humor.
Fanhattan: What’s coming up for Jeremy and Caroline?
Julie Plec: Well, Jeremy is now the man of the house which is going to be an interesting role for him to try to step into, because Elena as his big sister is still going to try to be bossing him around. But he himself comes from a long line of people who have hunted vampires and now he is living under the same roof as the brother to one. So he’s going to have some interesting exploring to do. Caroline of course is the object of affection of the original vampire Klaus who is nasty and dark and evil but who secretly loves her. So not only is she going to have to deal with his evil master plans but also his diabolical desire to break her up with Tyler. So she is going to have to deal with trying to keep him at bay while she tries to be a good girlfriend and remain in a committed relationship with Tyler.
Fanhattan: Are you torn between loving these characters and wanting good things for them, but knowing that great drama means messing them up?
Julie Plec: Yeah, I always say that there’s no conflict in happiness, yet I watch Grey’s Anatomy and Meredith and Derrick have been happy for seven years and I enjoy them happy and the one year they weren’t happy, I stopped watching. So I do think that there’s a potential for people to be happily in love. I just think that we’re not there yet. Honestly, I think that as much as anybody thinks they want something to go their way, after about five episodes, they might say, “Oh, what’s next.” So we’re always trying to keep it fresh and keep it interesting and switch things up as much as possible.
Fanhattan: How involved is Kevin Williamson while he’s working on The Following?
Julie Plec: Well, Kevin is launching The Following so he’s my soul mate in life and my life work partner and my work husband, and he’s on the other end of the phone for me 50 times a day but his focus right now is getting The Following up and running.
Fanhattan: Do you feel like you’ve paved the way for The CW to do shows like Beauty and the Beast?
Julie Plec: Well, I think what we’ve done is shown that you can have a commercial success with a genre show that is rooted both in scares and tension but also love, so we’ll see if that’s true, if the audience says, “Yeah, we want more of that.”
Julie Plec: We’ve got our heroine, Elena, who last we saw was waking up with vampire blood in her system so she has a choice to make of whether to be a vampire or whether to die. Since she’s the hero I think we can all guess where that goes and it gives us the opportunity to kind of go back to the beginning of the series and tell the same kinds of stories only with a different context. Instead of a young girl learning the secret of vampires in Mystic Falls, she now is a vampire in Mystic Falls and she’s got to keep her own secret. She’s got to learn how to live and how to feed and what to do. All of her emotions will be so heightened and she herself will become a little crazy so we’re going to watch her go through a pretty startling and traumatic journey, which is not going to be helped when a new vampire hunter comes to town in the second episode.
Fanhattan: Does that also shift the love triangle, to make her closer to Damon than Stefan?
Julie Plec: In a weird way it resets the love triangle. She made a decision about who she was supposed to be with and who she wanted and who she loved as a human, and now she’s not human anymore. So by no means is it going to change her mind overnight, but it’s definitely going to add some complications into both sides of that triangle. Does she want to be the kind of vampire that Damon is? Is she drawn to that or does she now more than ever want to stay as far away from it as possible? Can she still be as close to Stefan knowing that he loved her as a pure innocent human? Does she have insecurity about what that means for their relationship? And can he hang with her as she’s feeding on blood when he himself has issues with that.
Fanhattan: Right, how does Stefan feel about it?
Julie Plec: Well, Stefan is devastated. Stefan is devastated. He knows that she never wanted this. He would do anything he could to make sure she didn’t have to go through it but it’s kind of inevitable that she has to. So now he’s got to be her champion and her partner and her true love, and yet also adjust to he having to be a vampire when he himself is not very good at being one.
Fanhattan: Is the new vampire hunter a character from the books?
Julie Plec: No, no, it’s a fresh character.
Fanhattan: How do you create a vampire hunter that’s different from Alaric?
Julie Plec: Alaric came in hunting vampires because he had an axe to grind. He had vengeance on the brain but he himself was not a living breathing from the guy vampire hunter. The Gilbert family, Elena and Jeremy’s family, has a long history of hunting vampires but in that same way that is something they feel like is their family duty. This is the first time that we’ll see a vampire hunter who is made, created, born, lives and breathes to kill vampires. It drives him. He doesn’t care who gets caught in the crossfire and that is his purpose in life, so he is going to be a much more difficult and formidable opponent than what our heroes are used to from a typical humor.
Fanhattan: What’s coming up for Jeremy and Caroline?
Julie Plec: Well, Jeremy is now the man of the house which is going to be an interesting role for him to try to step into, because Elena as his big sister is still going to try to be bossing him around. But he himself comes from a long line of people who have hunted vampires and now he is living under the same roof as the brother to one. So he’s going to have some interesting exploring to do. Caroline of course is the object of affection of the original vampire Klaus who is nasty and dark and evil but who secretly loves her. So not only is she going to have to deal with his evil master plans but also his diabolical desire to break her up with Tyler. So she is going to have to deal with trying to keep him at bay while she tries to be a good girlfriend and remain in a committed relationship with Tyler.
Fanhattan: Are you torn between loving these characters and wanting good things for them, but knowing that great drama means messing them up?
Julie Plec: Yeah, I always say that there’s no conflict in happiness, yet I watch Grey’s Anatomy and Meredith and Derrick have been happy for seven years and I enjoy them happy and the one year they weren’t happy, I stopped watching. So I do think that there’s a potential for people to be happily in love. I just think that we’re not there yet. Honestly, I think that as much as anybody thinks they want something to go their way, after about five episodes, they might say, “Oh, what’s next.” So we’re always trying to keep it fresh and keep it interesting and switch things up as much as possible.
Fanhattan: How involved is Kevin Williamson while he’s working on The Following?
Julie Plec: Well, Kevin is launching The Following so he’s my soul mate in life and my life work partner and my work husband, and he’s on the other end of the phone for me 50 times a day but his focus right now is getting The Following up and running.
Fanhattan: Do you feel like you’ve paved the way for The CW to do shows like Beauty and the Beast?
Julie Plec: Well, I think what we’ve done is shown that you can have a commercial success with a genre show that is rooted both in scares and tension but also love, so we’ll see if that’s true, if the audience says, “Yeah, we want more of that.”
Comic-Con 2012 Interview With Julie Plec
Interviewer: Wow, you guys went there. Elena (Nina Dobrev) actually died. Should we assume that she goes through the transition and becomes a vampire?
Julie Plec: After everything, for her to just go gently into the night would be a bit of a buzz kill! It will be very emotional, complicated first episode when the show returns, but the end result is fairly inevitable. Elena's future is pretty set.
Interviewer: Elena becomes a vampire early on in the books. Has it always been your plan to change her?
Julie Plec: It's a good turning point for the character. We were just holding it in our pockets until we were ready.
Interviewer: She, of course, chose Stefan (Paul Wesley) in the season finale, but will vampire Elena still want him?
Julie Plec: That's the best question of all. Everything has changed. Not necessarily how she feels about the boys, but who she is. This may bring her closer than ever to Stefan, or it may give her a deeper bond with Stefan, or it may give her a deeper bond with Damon [Ian Somerhalder]. And she'll start learning things, like how Damon compelled her to forget their first meeting. Those memories will come back, and it'll add more fuel to the fire.
Interviewer: And poor Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen)- everyone he loves is now dead!
Julie Plec: The journey that we have watched Jeremy go on has been great: from confused, grieving, troubled kid to -officially- the man of the house. So we'll see a bit of a role reversal. Instead of Elena being his caretaker, he is going to want to be hers.
Interviewer: Is that the last we'll see of ghost Alaric (Matt Davis)? He promised Jeremy that he'll always be there for him.
Julie Plec: And he will. He definitely will.
Interviewer: We take it that all deals are off now and Damon will be staying in Mystic Falls.
Julie Plec: No one's going anywhere! When we come back next season, one of the first fights between Damon and Stefan will be, "How in the hell could you have saved Matt instead of Elena?" Stefan will be kicking himself, and feeling that guilt, for putting Elena in this predicament. This could tear the brothers apart.
Interviewer: If Klaus (Joseph Morgan) has possessed Tyler's body, where is Tyler (Michael Trevino?
Julie Plec: All I have to say about this is that you have to look at the times we've done this before, which was when Klaus possessed Alaric, and when Rebekah [Claire Holt] was possessed and follow the logic of that.
Interviewer: So maybe this isn't the end of Klaus?
Julie Plec: It remains to be seen which parts of him were actually destroyed. The coffin was shut. It's anyone's guess.
Interviewer: The council knows about all the supernatural happenings in town. Now what?
Julie Plec: That's gonna be a really big problem. One of the first things they'll do [next season] is make their move.
Julie Plec: After everything, for her to just go gently into the night would be a bit of a buzz kill! It will be very emotional, complicated first episode when the show returns, but the end result is fairly inevitable. Elena's future is pretty set.
Interviewer: Elena becomes a vampire early on in the books. Has it always been your plan to change her?
Julie Plec: It's a good turning point for the character. We were just holding it in our pockets until we were ready.
Interviewer: She, of course, chose Stefan (Paul Wesley) in the season finale, but will vampire Elena still want him?
Julie Plec: That's the best question of all. Everything has changed. Not necessarily how she feels about the boys, but who she is. This may bring her closer than ever to Stefan, or it may give her a deeper bond with Stefan, or it may give her a deeper bond with Damon [Ian Somerhalder]. And she'll start learning things, like how Damon compelled her to forget their first meeting. Those memories will come back, and it'll add more fuel to the fire.
Interviewer: And poor Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen)- everyone he loves is now dead!
Julie Plec: The journey that we have watched Jeremy go on has been great: from confused, grieving, troubled kid to -officially- the man of the house. So we'll see a bit of a role reversal. Instead of Elena being his caretaker, he is going to want to be hers.
Interviewer: Is that the last we'll see of ghost Alaric (Matt Davis)? He promised Jeremy that he'll always be there for him.
Julie Plec: And he will. He definitely will.
Interviewer: We take it that all deals are off now and Damon will be staying in Mystic Falls.
Julie Plec: No one's going anywhere! When we come back next season, one of the first fights between Damon and Stefan will be, "How in the hell could you have saved Matt instead of Elena?" Stefan will be kicking himself, and feeling that guilt, for putting Elena in this predicament. This could tear the brothers apart.
Interviewer: If Klaus (Joseph Morgan) has possessed Tyler's body, where is Tyler (Michael Trevino?
Julie Plec: All I have to say about this is that you have to look at the times we've done this before, which was when Klaus possessed Alaric, and when Rebekah [Claire Holt] was possessed and follow the logic of that.
Interviewer: So maybe this isn't the end of Klaus?
Julie Plec: It remains to be seen which parts of him were actually destroyed. The coffin was shut. It's anyone's guess.
Interviewer: The council knows about all the supernatural happenings in town. Now what?
Julie Plec: That's gonna be a really big problem. One of the first things they'll do [next season] is make their move.