The Vampire Diaries - Julie Plec Interview

How bad is Stefan going to get?
Julie Plec: Bad. Yeah. Yeah, he’s got it in him, man; he’s pretty hardcore when he falls off the edge, and it's not just going to be "one and done" with him. We wanted our hero to go down a really dark road and we’re going to take him down that dark road for a while. But you know, there’ll be levels of bad [that] I think Paul Wesley is really excited to explore. But no, we’re not going to back off of that.

Do you worry at all about crossing the line of irredeemable for him?
JP: You know, I will tell you this. I sort of decided there was no line when Damon killed Jeremy, and everyone was like “Oh, 'cause he was just really upset and sad." There’s a strange overwhelming majority that was totally fine with it, so it's surprising to us, and good for the character. So we’ll see if the same is true for Stefan or not. You know, what we don’t want to do is homogenize a hero or a villain by not taking them to the edge. You’re rolling the dice that your audience will be able to come back from it. So it’ll be risky — it's very risky — and we’ll see how we can get him out [to] the other side, but we’ll sure as hell be rooting for him to get out the other side. So that hopefully will go well.

Does this mean that Damon has to step it up as the good Salvatore brother?
JP: Yes, much to his chagrin. By no means are they swapping personalities, but yes, Damon, unfortunately, I think his big beef with Stefan is like, “Hey man, he went and fell off the edge and now I got to, like, be here cleaning up your mess.” It’s a nice role reversal for the two bothers; usually it’s the other way around. But Damon isn’t going to be happy about it, and he’s certainly not going to go gently into it; he’s not going to take that role on with much pleasure or comfort.

What’s going on with Jeremy, and how soon will we find out what his deal is?
JP: It’s a story that’s going to kinda slowly unfold. It’s going to have both kind of a great supernatural genre element to it, but also a really strong emotional element to it, which I think is one of the reasons we wanted to do it. Because you’ve got this kid that, in the second to last episode, Elena says [to] “I’m so sorry you’ve lost so many people.” And he has, and he’s just a kid [when it's] all said and done, and his two first loves of his life are now, you know, poppin’ around. So not only will it be cool and creepy, but also hopefully a little warm and yummy too.

How much will Anna and Vicki be on this season?
JP: We haven’t laid that out with them or anything, but we definitely want to re-explore some of those relationships that Jeremy had and make it a little bit difficult for Bonnie and Jeremy as a couple. And then of course when you’ve got strange people paying strange visits, then bad things are bound to happen. So I think you’ll see it more than once at least, I can say.

How much of the Elena/Stefan/Damon/Katherine love square do we get this year compared to last?
JP: We have a whole journey to explore, and thank God, because that means we can actually be on the air for a lot of years, as far as Elena and her feelings and her relationships with our Salvatore boys. Katherine last year was our mini-bad — she started as the bad and became the mini-bad — and so she got a lot of showcasing last year. We definitely haven’t seen the last of her; it's just a matter of when we’re going to see her again. That’s the fun surprise.

Is Alaric moving in with Elena and Jeremy, since Jenna is gone?
JP: Alaric is going to be struggling with this role that he’s sort of accidentally stepped into at the end of last season, where he sort of decided to spend the night. When we come back for our premiere we’ll see he’s been basically living on the couch for a while, and struggling with suddenly feeling like he doesn’t have enough to offer as a guardian, as a mentor, because he himself is going through a hard time in his life. So will he/won’t he be living there, and what will his relationship with those two be, is part of the story for the first couple episodes.

How about Caroline and Tyler and Matt?
JP: Well, for Matt it’s not going so well. Poor Matt has hit some hard times in life, and I loved what he said to her [Caroline] at the end of the season, which is, “You know, my life was hard enough without all this stuff, so I think I’m just going to try to live it and keep myself away from the supernatural." But one of the last things we saw at the end of the season, of course, was his sister Vicki making an appearance to Jeremy. So that’s not going to stay just Jeremy’s storyline for very long. I think that Matt having lost his sister, it’s a big deal, so we might get to see that play out a little bit for him. And then, of course, Caroline and Tyler, they have such wonderful chemistry, those two, and the characters have been through so much together. Tyler has been exposed to his core, and she’s been right there, you know, holding his hair back proverbially, and so we’ll see if that friendship lasts and how long it stays just friends. Because it’s kind of inevitable that there’s gonna be some naked action happening there eventually.

Are you going to continue exploring the relationship of Caroline and her mother?
JP: Yes absolutely, absolutely. We love ourselves some Sheriff, and we love the idea of this woman who is charged with protecting the town. And as Marguerite MacIntyre will say, completely ineptly and embarrassingly wrong and badly. But, [she] also now has to deal with the fact that the very thing that she was raised to hate is in her daughter. She found a nice level of acceptance for Caroline at the end of the season, and so we’ll get to see the fun mother-daughter dynamic now that Caroline is out in the open and the two of them are living under the same roof. And you know, how do you set those rules? What’s curfew for your vampire daughter?

Source: Buzzsugar