The Vampire Diaries: Alaric vs. Klaus

With two episodes left this season, The Vampire Diaries took another big turn last week, as vampire hunter Alaric said his emotional goodbyes to his friends and died… But whoops, instead he's been reborn as a vampire himself! But one intent on wiping out the Original vampires and with them, the entire Vampire bloodline.

During a Q&A; with the press last week, Vampire Diaries executive producer Julie Plec talked about Alaric's new status and more about what's to come on the show.

Alaric, the Vampire-Vampire Hunter:
When it comes to Mr. Saltzman, Plec noted, "He's very clearly a badass vampire killer with a pretty magnificent, deadly and unburnable stake. So I definitely think he's going to be a conflict provider – not to make it an understatement. He's not going to be the friendliest version of Alaric that we've ever met. He's going to be pretty hardcore, which is going to be equally exciting and devastating, obviously, because he's one of our heroes - who is no longer one of our heroes."

Plec described the next Vampire Diaries as, "A very, very extreme, hardcore episode of Alaric sort of on a tear… and no one is safe." She added, "There's going to be a lot of people that at one point or another you're not going to be sure if they're going to make it to Season 4… That's all I'll say."

When it came to the specific decision to turn Alaric into a vampire, Plec noted they needed him to be physically strong and beyond that liked, "The idea of the kind of ironic symmetry of having this witch [Esther] who's desperate to eradicate vampires and this alter-ego of Alaric, who hates vampires… and knowing that in becoming a vampire, your darkest impulses and your greatest wants are magnified to such a degree, it felt like this way of bringing the original witch's part in this whole mythology full circle and her kind of passing the baton to a villain who actually could succeed at the task that she's been failing at."

Beware, Parents:
From Bonnie's grandmother being killed and her mother being turned into a vampire, to Caroline's father dying, to Elena and Jeremy losing their parents, Aunt Jenna and now Alaric, Mystic Falls has not been a safe place for parental figures. Joked Plec, "On the CW, if you're past the age of 34, they just take you out back and they shoot you."

More seriously, she noted, "The emotional stakes of this series are about these young people partnered with these people who have lived and will continue to live an eternal life and all of the complications of that and everything that means. And stripping away these kids from the comfort of a loving and caring and supportive family and giving them the challenge of survival, both emotional, and literal survival."

But Plec stressed that didn't mean that all parents on the show are doomed. She brought up Caroline and Tyler's mothers, remarking, "It doesn't mean that there will never be a successful parental unit on the show, it just means that this is a show about young people coming of age and into their own adulthood and facing the most horrific and difficult part of life, which is when you have to go at it alone."

Flashback:
The season finale will contain flashbacks to Elena's life before the series began, which Plec described as, "A nice, small little runner that goes through the entire episode, as Elena is looking back on a part of her life when things were more simple, at least from a supernatural level."

Plec said she assumed some fans would think, as the flashbacks play out, "Oh, they're going to reveal something huge about how that accident [that killed Elena's parents] went down!" Said Plec, "I will still say what I Said three years ago, which is that was an accident, period, end of story. No supernatural influence. So this episode isn't about peeling back a layer of the mythology onion. We actually will get a little flash of something else that happened during that time that we never even really considered. It's more of an emotional thing than it is a suspense thing."

Klaus:
While she manifested one last time to Bonnie last week, Plec said that was, "definitely it for now," when it comes to Esther. As for her son, "I think for Klaus, once he realized that the original Witch was screwing with him from the other side, he was like, 'Alright, I'm going to baton down the hatches, pull my family together.' Part of that was he was going to build an army of hybrids. He has big plans for himself and now that his mother, he realizes, she will not stop coming after him in some form or another, whether it's her own self or what she just did with manipulating the witches. So this is kind of like a second call to arms for Klaus, who may have gotten a bit distracted by pretty blonds and paintings and horses and all that. This is the reminder that this guy means business and he's not going to let his guard down again. So it's a nice reboot of the villain."

Plec said that Klaus has been trying to build an army, "To protect himself and those that he cares about. The problem is that his behavior tends to reject more than it magnetizes. I think Klaus probably, when all is said and done, with all the bodies strewn in battlefield, would just like a nice, pretty Caroline Forbes kind of girl to carry on through eternity, knowing that they'll be forever safe and untouched, no matter what strength the villain comes at them. But he's a work in progress our Klaus. He 's a messed up dude, for sure."

I mentioned to Plec that Joseph Morgan, who plays Klaus, has told me he'd prefer that Klaus stay a bad guy, while still evolving as a character, and she replied, "We like our villains to have a deep, emotional core that lets us understand them a little bit – lets us understand their want and their why. And when our villains have to work with our heroes for a shared agenda, we love our villains to be especially naughty and violent and bad, because we love them in spite of their behavior, because they're partnered with our favorite heroes. Klaus will never be a hero. That's not to say he won't do heroic things in this journey. This week, he has a fairly heroic moment that's interesting… and then does something so horrible, you're like, "Man, what is wrong with you?!" Just in the same way that Damon will never be a true good guy and Stefan will never be a true hero all the time. Life is more complicated than that."

A New Beginning:
Describing the final two episodes of Season 3, Plec said, "The penultimate episode is very, very adrenalin infused and there's some big, big mythology moves that happen and it's a pretty big deal. The finale is definitely more emotional, but it is by no means the epilogue to the season. If anything, it's closing the door to one year and then blowing the freaking lid off the door to the next."

Plec wouldn't reveal any specifics on Season 4 (the show hasn't been officially renewed yet, but clearly will be), but did mention that it would take the high school characters (presumably minus the younger Jeremy) though the rest of their senior year – Yes, the school year will again be split across two seasons, just as the first two seasons took place across the characters' junior year.

As with any show that begins with characters in high school, the producers of The Vampire Diaries will have to decide what will happen next after they graduate. "They're all going through some pretty extraordinary changes, " Plec said of the characters next season. "They're making decisions about their future and what that will bring. 'Will I stay, will I go?'"

I jokingly asked Plec if we would suddenly discover there was a "Mystic U" around the corner and she laughed, replying, "There will not be a Mystic U, although how great [would that be]?" That being said, she did note, "Grams taught at a nearby university and Jenna was getting her Master's Degree too, so there's something out there that we'll be introducing and seeing in Season 4."

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The Vampire Diaries airs Thursdays at 8pm on The CW.

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