From Monsters to Heroes

Cynthia Sharp

The Inverse of Traditional Supernatural Mysticism in The Vampire Diaries

By Cynthia Sharp

 

Abstract

This feature explores how the contemporary romantasy genre reverses the traditional model of vampires and werewolves as pure danger into edgy love stories, examining screenwriting, shooting and editing strengths such as symbolism, juxtaposition and theme that carry The Vampire Diaries television series. Building on dramatic and thematic stage and literary traditions through centuries, writers like Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson adapt the coming-of-age group of high school and college friends from L. J. Smith’s books into a television series where love—family, friendship and romantic—takes precedence over difference, expanding and exploring changing relationships between once natural enemies evolving into community. Spoiler alert—endings discussed.

 

From Monsters to Heroes

The Inverse of Traditional Supernatural Mysticism in The Vampire Diaries

The resonance of supernatural mysticism in epic storytelling has been built upon for millenniums, since the beginning of culture. For the past six thousand years of the hero’s journey, supernatural figures and symbols have held a powerful place in story, often connecting with the nonverbal, inherent emotional and psychological depth of the collective consciousness of humanity. As spirituality in western popular culture, such as films, television and fiction, changes from a basis in organized religion to openminded, adventurous mysticism, feeding collective human hunger for meaning, traditions like horror are inverted into romance and hybrids (Nelson), such as in the dramatic teleplays of The Vampire Diaries. In this inversion, once outcast antagonists such as vampires and werewolves become protagonists audiences root for as they struggle to become more compassionate and human-like, now viable but still dangerous love interests for humans. Through symbolism, contrast, imagery and dialogue, this inverse captivates twenty-first century viewers with a penchant for redemption, suggesting that love really can conquer all even against dangerous odds, combining the rollercoaster action of the horror genre with satisfying contemporary romance. Rather than human heroes killing monsters or religiously emulating Christ on the cross sacrificing his life in the hopes of altruism changing monstrous human behaviour with grace, a theme through past centuries of western literature, monsters themselves, along with humans who love them, now sacrifice for each other and their human loved ones, always riding the dramatic tension of potentially snapping and giving in to the satisfying instinct to feast and kill without remorse. The Vampire Diaries delivers this new form of hybrid through the innovative use of image, sound and action to construct layers of depth in each shot in this age of radical epic storytelling.

Though shows like The Vampire Diaries have taken the inversion of horror and romance to new extremes with hellish monsters now ending up human themselves, often married to the innocent citizens they once terrorized, the idea of inverting audience expectations by revering violence, such as inverting murder by performing it with actions associated with religious sanction can be seen in Shakespeare. For millennia, writers have told underlying stories through symbols and subtexts, actions and gestures, fresh takes on character development and other approaches to flushing out the messages of their varied perspectives on merging traditional opposites such as murder and sacrifice. This has been an ongoing development in the arts, as literary and dramatic epochs, movements and genres react to and build on each other in large and small ways. In the scholarly essay, “Speak Hands for Me: Gesture as Language in Julius Caesar,” published in Drama Survey 5 in 1966, and reprinted at the back of the Folger’s edition of Julius Caesar, Robert Hapgood notes that “Shakespeare’s use of nonverbal elements (props, gestures, stage pictures) involves a pattern of reversal” (Hapgood, 230). He gives the example of Brutus’s gesture of stabbing Caesar. In this case, the trusted, ethical Brutus is manipulated into believing that Caesar has too much power and must be killed for the greater good of the state. Caesar’s assassination in daylight in the heart of the republic appears like a religious sacrifice in its presentation. Brutus’s later death stabbing himself on his sword becomes a visual reference to Caesar’s murder, an emotional pictorial reminder of earlier dramatic events. Artists have known the importance of crafting every element of structure to seamlessly and rhythmically serve the theme and angle of a narrative since Homer’s epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey. The example that Shakespeare and his troupe set in weaving theatrical devices together to convey story and create meaning, often inverting expectation for shock and dramatic effect, is a tradition that continues today in generously budgeted television dramas that deliver a well-produced range of emotional experience. This new hybrid of horror-romance draws on centuries of dramatic reversal of expectation, such as Brutus assassinating Caesar as though he is making a religious offering. Writers of current day vampire-human romance follow in the footsteps of great playwrights like the Bard, who himself leaned on earlier classics, expanding the notion of reversal of expectation to a subversion of traditional religion as characters find purpose and potential in compassionately befriending creatures once banished to hell.

This dramatic reversal of expectation as an overarching structural element incorporates typical themes of twentieth century drama, such as the resurrection of virtue in fallen characters, only this time with vampires, werewolves and witches capable of both destruction and healing, narcissism and selflessness, including the courage to be honest even when it might mean loss or death. The theatre has a history of meaningful dramatic moments, such as the point in Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible, set in a fictionalized version of Salem during the 1692–93 witch trials, when John Proctor, who has been blackmailed into falsely accusing others of witchcraft in order to save his life and keep his adultery secret, finally accepts responsibility for his affair. In honesty that moves him beyond the constraints of excessive religious control to the exhilarating freedom achieved in ethics, he professes: “I can. And there’s your first marvel, that I can. You have made your magic now, for now I do think I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor” (Miller, 105). Screenwriters like Kevin Williamson and Julia Plec who wrote the pilot and many of the teleplays in The Vampire Diaries series now give this human type of dramatic catharsis to traditional monsters, restoring them to human status.

Building on 1950s drama of an ordinary flawed character like Proctor standing up and doing what’s right, heroism in ordinary acts of courage from fallen people is built on in this century with an allure of supernaturalism in compelling entertainment that resonates deeply with current times. The transcendent act of ordinary grace that characters like Proctor find in The Crucible is now tested out on once stereotypical villains, monsters like vampires and werewolves, with an extra edge; they are not only dangerous and powerful, but also young and sexy immortals who have the capacity to become altruistic. This drives audience interest in their journey to redemption, the power of ordinary love as a driving force of change. Beneath the alluring exteriors and chemistry between attractive lead stars in shows like The Vampire Diaries, the thematic hook is the influence of ordinary human love to transform the mythical, to shape destiny and bend overarching laws of existence, to move the collective conscious to an overall greater good as active participants in its evolution, that an ordinary girl like Elena Gilbert can shine with such purity that even monsters seek to be worthy in her eyes, that her respect for their inner character becomes the holy grail of their existence. Rather than just the supernatural controlling the human world, as in much literature of earlier millennia, in twenty-first century spiritual vampirism, it’s dangerous but possible for humans to alter the supernatural, to reconnect lost demons with authentic love as an overall purpose, a utopian hope of eradicating darkness from the binary paradigm, beginning with demonic characters that are essentially mass murderers who turn off their humanity and behave like sociopaths, feasting on blood for pleasure.

In Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural, Victoria Nelson explains how contemporary society that has mostly moved on from religion seeks to replace the norms of cultural meaning once found in mainstream structures like Christianity with spirituality arising from supernaturalism, which is a strong thematic appeal of The Vampire Diaries books and television series, a world in which, “antagonist-villains (vampires, werewolves, assorted demons and imps of hell) have become protagonist-heroes who struggle with their darkness even as they incarnate on earth as gods” (Nelson, 8). The Vampire Diaries teleplays take this dramatic turn to a new level, especially in later seasons of the series, with a magnetic aesthetic resplendent in meaningful symbolism, visual and sound imagery and contrast.

The Vampire Diaries began as a series of four novels by New York Times bestselling author L. J. Smith, first published from 1991-92, reissued in 2007, and then followed by new instalments in 2009 and 2010, coinciding with the television series, which first premiered on September 10, 2009, running eight seasons until March 10, 2017. L. J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries books include the original series: The Awakening: Volume I (1991), The Struggle: Volume 2 (1991), The Fury: Volume 3, (1991), and Dark Reunion: Volume 4 (1992), which were rereleased in two volumes in 2007, followed by: The Return Trilogy: The Return: Nightfall (2009), The Return: Shadow Souls (2010), and The Return: Midnight (2011). Smith also wrote other book series in the supernatural genre before and after her Vampire Diaries trilogies: The Night of the Solstice, published by MacMillan in 1987, along with Heart of Valor (1990), The Secret Circle (1992), The Forbidden Game (1994) and Dark Visions (1995). When Alloy Entertainment, which had purchased the rights to Smith’s The Vampire Diaries series, let her go as its novelist due to creative differences about which Salvatore brother Elena should eventually end up with, Stephan or Damon, more books, The Vampire Diaries, The Hunters Trilogy and The Salvation Trilogy were then written by ghost writers and Aubrey Clark. Passionate about her vision for her characters, Smith went on to write The Vampire Diaries short stories, in a sense fan fiction to her own books, which she published on her website in 2010 and 2011. She also wrote several of The Vampire Diaries teleplays for CW.

Why the appeal? What gives this supernatural story such pull? The Vampire Diaries is a culmination of strong acting, editing, cinematography and story, launching in the right place at the right time to ride the wave of Twilight fandom. The phenomena of monsters to creatures with heart is woven exquisitely in subtle, subconscious symbolism, imagery and contrast to carry the transformation of once evil vampires into almost human family, friends and partners, capable of love, sacrifice and altruism.

With the first of the Twilight films, supernatural adventure love stories based on Stephenie Meyer’s four novels about vampire Edward Cullen falling eternally in love with human high school student Bella Swan, released on November 21, 2008, and the second one, New Moon, on November 20, 2009, the hitherto scoffed idea of supernatural beings as acceptable love interest for human beings was embraced by captivated teen readers. The frequent use of natural west coast rainforest settings surrounding the small town of Forks in Washington creates a symbolic contrast between good and evil. Vampire antagonist James, who killed Charlie Swan’s friend Whalen, stalks Bella into the act three climax, a contrast to the caring Cullen characters who only hunt animals.  

   CW’s The Vampire Diaries aired its first season right at the pinnacle of the vampire-human love fervor, feeding into a hungry market of fans, particularly young women. The Vampire Diaries contains elements of Twilight, even replicating lines of dialogue and shots, but with a darker edge, not being afraid to kill off important characters for shock value and horror, to give viewers an emotional rollercoaster ride. In the first few episodes, Vicki Donovan, main character Matt Donovan’s sister, is turned to a vampire by Damon Salvatore, then staked by Stephan Salvatore when she tries to kill female lead, Elena Gilbert. Stephan’s best friend, good vampire Lexi Branson, is staked by Damon in the first season as well, in a shocking move to take police suspicion off of himself and his brother as potential vampires in the town. The Vampire Diaries takes the romance of Twilight, fuses it with the thrilling suspense of horror, then lands firmly in love triangles.

Building on a book series without being married to it gave The Vampire Diaries television producers Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson a perfect palette to work from, a jumping off point of established characters and symbolism without having to invent all the world building from scratch, allowing them to achieve greater depth with the symbols and backstory from the books that work for their format than may have been possible if they’d had to create everything in a limited timeframe.

The character names L. J. Smith chose, for example, enhance the theme of a metaphorically murky guy, vampire Damon Salvatore, being tempted to selfishly lure an innocent human girl, Elena Gilbert, into his life, and instead being transformed to his true pre-vampire self in the radiance of her light. The name Damon sounds like “demon," which might throw people off his potential for redemption for a few episodes, but means “loyalty,” which is perfectly fitting for his character, someone who always stands by his brother in the long run, regardless of how much they irritate each other from day to day or decade to decade, and who will always choose to save Elena’s life when difficult decisions arise. The last name Salvatore means “savior,” which Damon and Stephan ultimately are to each other and to Elena. It’s especially fitting for Stephan, whose first contact with Elena is when he saves her from drowning in backstory, unbeknownst to Elena, who didn’t know why she had survived her family car going off the Wickery Bridge until he reveals their earlier meeting. Beyond just saving his brother and Elena, “savior” in the family name Salvator is martyrdom for Damon to aspire to, which he does at the end of Season 5, when he sacrifices himself to save the town of Mystic Falls and ends up on the crumbling Other Side, a void for dead supernatural beings, perhaps gone forever. The name Elena means “bright light, shining one,” a light so enriching when her humanity is on that her presence in the world gives the fallen Damon irresistible reason to become the best version of himself. Their love is sunlight. This transforms into cinematography with natural looking light in shots of them together as lovers when they are finally a couple in Season 5.

The most obvious symbolism in The Vampire Diaries centers around the mystical powers of blood, moving from its shock value in traditional vampire horror films to sophisticated layers of interpretation, an ongoing contrast of danger and love, as vampires, witches, werewolves and other supernatural creatures attempt to control their lust for power and instead serve others. The crossover of blood from menstrual mysticism associated with the life-giving force of women in ancient Goddess cultures, treated reverently for the first approximately 200 000 years of human existence preceding that last 6000 years of patriarchy, to its use in patriarchal religions, (Mor and Sjöö) most dominantly in western culture, the eucharist as the body and blood of Christ, is now reappropriated by teleplays like The Vampire Diaries in a hybrid of horror and love, danger and magic, death and rebirth. Where for many millennia, blood on stage has come to represent murder and injury, the menstruation myths that patriarchy appropriated and distorted over the past thousands of years are born anew in dramas that make the most of every connotation of blood possible, whether or not it’s palpable, finding positive as well as negative interpretations for it, as it moves plots forward, sometimes as a key to unlocking a mystery like a few drops of blood on a map leading the way to where a loved one is, other times representing mass murder. Menstruation itself is not outright acknowledged in The Vampire Diaries, but the novels and shows are written for a predominantly teen girl audience whose bodies are changing as they begin to menstruate, an unspoken draw of contemporary vampire fiction for the age group, that ritualized renditions of their mineral-laden blood have enticing power.

Blood sharing from a human to a vampire as a symbol of love and support in an effort to help him manage his addiction is especially sensual at the beginning of the last few episodes of Season 1 when grade eleven girl Elena feeds her pure-hearted vampire boyfriend Stephan a drop of her blood a day from her palm to build up his physical strength. He had been surviving the past few decades on animal blood, due to his alcoholic-like addiction to human blood. While animal blood kept Stephan “alive,” it’s no match for battling vampires who live on human blood, which resulted in him not being able to protect himself or his loved ones from escaped tomb vampires like Frederick who were plotting to take revenge on the town of Mystic Falls that had locked them up and starved them for over a hundred years when it was learned in 1865 that they were vampires. It becomes a sensual moment for Elena to feed Stephan just a drop of her precious blood every day, an inverse of the traditional vampire model of a monster attacking vulnerable humans to a love story of a human willingly trying to help him.

In that moment, the love story between Elena and Stephan, the first Salvatore brother she dates, is sweet and idyllic. Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson, producers and writers for this episode, don’t waste any potential though. Stephan’s relationship with blood soon transitions to a metaphor for addiction when Damon finds him in the cellar of the mansion they share, feasting on stolen hospital blood bags. By Season 1, Episode 19, “Miss Mystic Falls,” Stephan loses control and feeds viscously on pageant contestants, a reminder of the complexity and danger even well-intentioned vampires pose to the regular humans of the town. Yet the heart of the story is redemption, perseverance, forgiveness and support. All of the main protagonists, whether human, witch, vampire, vampire hunter, or werewolf, have lapses in self-control and selflessness, but ultimately come together as a reliable group of high school and university peers protecting their town from other supernatural dangers outside themselves. To this end, Damon and Elena lock Stephan in the Salvatore cellar to dry him out, then support him in coming back into a meaningful life, saving him from suicide with their belief that he is worth fighting for, that he is capable of controlling his addiction and being a worthy partner, brother and member of the community.

Blood is many things for the range of characters on the show and its symbolism changes through their relationships. For Elena’s fifteen-year-old brother Jeremy, in the second part of Season 1, the vile of blood that his vampire love Anna leaves him symbolizes her love for him in being willing to turn him into a vampire to share eternity with her. Depending on perspective, his desire to drink her blood and die with it in his system could also be seen as suicide to escape the overwhelming problems of human life. Though Anna falls genuinely in love with Jeremy, when they first meet, she flirts because she wants his blood for revenge. She intends to use Gilbert blood to revive her mother Pearl Zhu, who had been locked in the tomb by John Gilbert, a distant relative of Jeremy’s from 1865. Anna’s original plan was to trick Jeremy into being the blood that would bring her mother back to life and to allow him to be sacrificed in the process. Jeremy knows Anna is a vampire and has an ulterior motive of his own. He’s looking for Vicki, his girlfriend from the summer, not realizing that Vicki had been killed when Stephan drove a stake through her heart to keep her from killing Elena. Along the way, Anna and Jeremy fall in love. When he pushes her to feed on him, it’s erotic, a lifeline connection, though she gets angry at him for putting himself in potential danger if she had lost control. For vampire Anna and human Jeremy, blood symbolizes passion, love, romance, family connection, revenge and the power to give and take life, mortal and immortal, given the supernatural rule on the show that drinking vampire blood can heal human injuries, but if a human dies with vampire blood in his/her/their system, he/she/they will come back as a vampire and have to decide whether to drink human blood to complete the transition, or die again forever. The witches in the series have blood in their rituals too. The Vampire Diaries continually uses blood as an evolving symbol of mystery, life and death, with original incarnations from location spells to doppelgänger mysteries.

The thread of symbolic imagery has clearly been drawn from one serial story to another in the movement to redeem vampires into human-like gods, dream hunks and unattainable models with enviable manners and courting rituals of earlier centuries. There are obvious borrowed shots and lines from the Twilight series like Alarick Saltzman using one of Edward Cullen’s lines for Bella, “You are my life now,” and Stephan being very similar to Edward Cullen in personality and appearance, complete with jokes from other characters about his sexy hair, but the allusions go deeper and wider into popular stories. As a whole, especially in later seasons, The Vampire Diaries plays on classic fairy tales, borrowing shots and symbolism from stories like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, but keeping them in tune with the fast-paced, edgy overall style. Metaphor in the composition of shots is a classic The Vampire Diaries move. Not only do the writers establish the ever-classic Romeo and Juliet forbidden young love stories with traditional enemies such as werewolf Tyler Lockwood and vampire Caroline Forbes falling passionately in love when she risks her life to help him adjust to having triggered his werewolf gene, but they are filmed in poses that evoke fairy tale and romantic emotions. When Tyler rescues Caroline from a dungeon her father has locked her in to torture her out of craving blood by exposing her to sunlight without her daylight ring that protects her from burning to death, an irony since she accepts that her father is gay but he can’t accept that she’s a vampire, Tyler kneels in front of Caroline to place her daylight ring (that keeps her from bursting into flames in the sun) back on her finger as though he has just proposed, a symbolic gesture that is not lost on the audience. The actors are purposely positioned in this posture as a means of creating a correlation with traditional proposal scenes in the minds of viewers. Fairy tale shots continue through the series, with Elena put to sleep in a casket like Sleeping Beauty at the end of Season 6 when the actress who plays her, Nina Dobrev, decided to leave the show. Elena must wait out a witch’s curse that she and Bonnie will both get to live, but not at the same time, so Elena will sleep for a hundred years, a curse that’s broken near the end of the series so she can share her life with Damon. Subtle postures are used symbolically to equate fairy tale love stories with the viewers’ feelings for The Vampire Diaries characters, deep nonverbal messages that need no explanation for the youthful audience, suggesting that these once demons like vampires and werewolves are the new princes and princesses of happily ever after romantic love.

 The ultimate desire of a large population of The Vampire Diaries viewers is for the redeemed Damon to know and trust he is good for the pure-hearted Elena, and this is teased out with a multi-layered use of media and action. Juxtaposition drives the intensity of the drama in many ways, sometimes with contrast in the subtext, such as the lyrics in a song cutting against the grain of action in different ways. There’s intense juxtaposition, for example, when Original Vampire Klaus Mikaelson, an all-powerful entity stronger than all other vampires, an antagonist in Seasons 2 and 3, is so angry at feeling alone and betrayed, that he murders his vampire-werewolf hybrids while a Christmas hymn leftover from a holiday party plays beneath the scene, creating a jolting contrast between the peaceful lyrics and the depravity of the action on camera, blood and gore flying savagely. In scenes with main character love stories, it cuts the other way. For altruistic reasons, characters who should be together sometimes aren’t, so the lyrics speak for them. This happens several times with Damon and Elena near the end of Season 5. Even the way they break up plays with audience expectation. This is Damon who opened the series as an out of control, creepy murderer, who impulsively took away Elena’s choice to die a human by making her into a vampire so he wouldn’t lose her, so there’s an expectation when a break up is on the way that he’ll beg Elena to stay with him and she will leave, but the writers cleverly play it the other way, Damon leaving out of altruism because he thinks that Elena is better off without him and Elena forgiving him and wanting him to stay with her. They both obtusely think that they should stay apart for their own good while chemistry sizzles between them at every moment and supernatural enemies force them to stay together. In Season 5, Episode 20, where they’re still broken up for all the wrong reasons, but hiding out together from the season’s antagonists, the Travellers, Elena comes to Damon, who’s hurriedly packing his car, to see how he feels about her having lied to protect him from spiralling out of control. The passion between them erupts into a kiss and as that happens the delicate female singer Kerli sings underneath the action, “Every time the darkness falls around me, I can feel you move beneath my skin…this love is more than chemical…” “Chemical” is edited to perfection so that lyrics land perfectly in the scene. It’s been cut to perfectly align with the scene for the greatest emotional impact. Elena is the sun Damon connects with in his core, and despite the action on camera being the sizzling chemistry between the attractive characters, the lyrics shout what they can’t figure out, that their love is deep and meaningful in addition to being hot. Ian Somerhalder, who plays Damon, puts his whole body into the acting, which helps establish the tension in scenes that keep turning dramatically with up and down surprises. Sound placement and editing is one more careful factor that’s in tune with the thematic whole, evidence of what can be done when a team of producers, editors, writers, directors and actors work closely together. It’s also refreshing to hear a healthy amount of women’s voices in the music under the scenes. Visuals and sound emphasize the two leads not yet embracing the undeniable truth that they are good for each other and should be a romantic couple for life.

Music contrasting action is a common element of the series to heighten viewer emotions with the longing for the characters to trust that humans and vampires can successfully share their lives, that the supernatural among their peers are as worthy a mate as any other. There’s another evocative scene in Season 7, Episode 13, when vampires Stephan and Caroline, who was once human but is now a vampire, who had a crush on Stephan from the first day she saw him back when she was a human, are meant to be together, long after their romantic relationships with Elena and Tyler have ended and they’ve become friends. Caroline gives birth to Alaric and Josette’s twin girls who were magically transferred into her when Josette was killed and just when Caroline and Stephan should be together, Stephan leaves to protect his brother from a vampire hunter. As Caroline holds her newborns and Stephan drives away from her in the opposite direction, “The Highest Tide” by The Wealthy West speaks the characters’ real feelings, while realities beyond their control split them. “During the highest tide while the water is rising, will you still keep me in your sights?” the singers ask over acoustic music. Cutting opposites together intensifies emotion and tension, in this case lyrics and actions exemplifying heartbreaking contrast between the relationship Caroline and Stephan want and deserve and the sacrifices they make for the greater good, always putting others first to a painful degree when their humanity is on. (Young vampires in this series can switch off their humanity and behave without remorse, making them an ongoing danger to humans, which Stephan and Caroline have both done at times in earlier seasons, but at this point their connection is pure of heart and meant to be.) At the end of Season 8, the last of the run, Stephan and Caroline marry in the second last episode and he dies sacrificing himself in the finale while she tries to reach him with the heartbreaking purity of her love in the last voicemail message she leaves through tears on his cell, understanding that he chose to save others instead of joining her and the twin girls she birthed: “Stephan, please call me, please. I need you to know that I understand. I love you. I will love you forever. I understand.” Stephan and Caroline had promised “Family first,” and that meant her driving away with her daughters while he gave his life to save his brother and the town. Whenever one good thing happens like Elena’s life is saved, a consequence is paid, like Bonnie’s mother is turned to a vampire, or Stephan and Caroline get to marry, but he dies immediately after. The writers and directors employ dramatic contrast with every element possible, from the music under the shots to characters only getting part of what they want, creating a story where scenes move sharply from positive to negative and negative to positive, an ideal dramatic formula, as Robert McKee exemplifies in Story: Substance, structure, style and the principles of screenwriting (McKee).

Lighting and color in the shots makes the television series look like film, especially in later seasons, sealing in the theme of redemption, that a vampire can be a worthy life partner, with outstanding cinematography. In the finale of Season 5, Episode 22, “Home,” lighting is a gentle layer of symbolism in many key thematic settings, particularly for Damon and Elena’s love story and his ultimate sacrifice that lands him on the disintegrating Other Side, the dimension where the spirits of dead vampires, witches, werewolves, hybrids and magical beings go that is now dissolving to oblivion, as the season goes out on a cliffhanger with fans wondering if he’s really gone. Can they really kill off a main character while the actor still has a solid contract? The writing and directing create high suspense, backed up with layers of symbolism to feed the audience rewatching the finale through a long summer of waiting to see what will happen in Season 6, all of it highlighting Damon’s transformation from potential villain in the pilot to beloved life partner for Elena.

In the Season 5 finale, Damon and Elena, who officially resumed their relationship in the previous episode, are cast in sunlight in the forest right before midpoint, promising to be together forever. The screenwriters got them together at the end of Season 4, giving them a whole summer of freedom and love offscreen, but wisely kept them in close proximity but forbidding themselves from dating once Season 5 got going, to intensify the tension. Right before midpoint of the Season 5 finale, they are filmed in the forest in daytime sunlight, in love and committed to each other for life, as Damon confesses that he’ll be the one to trigger a gas explosion needed to get their enemies, the Travellers, out of their town of Mystic Falls and over to the Other Side, where these antagonists can be prevented from returning. He promises Elena that he’ll make it back safely, that Bonnie, the anchor between the worlds, can let him back through. There is a fade to black after their close up in sun to mark the significance of the scene. Even the transitions between shots, generally cuts, are symbolic. There’s a fade down again near the end of the teleplay when Damon can’t come back through from the dissolving Other Side because the witch Liv’s twin brother blows out the candles to save her from the toll the spell was taking on her before the last protagonist, Damon, is able to return. The only way supernatural spirits can return to life from the Other Side is to have a huge phenomena like all the Travellers passing at once from the gas explosion and a witch performing a spell at the same time. With the candles blown out, it appears that Damon is doomed. Writer and executive producer Julie Plec’s commitment to consequence comes into play. Damon gets to have Elena’s love and he gets to be a redeemed good guy who finally does everything right, but he doesn’t get to share his life with her, at least, not yet. At this point, the end of Season 5, it looks like he’s doomed to oblivion. Damon’s scenes on the Other Side are in cold, dark, blue lighting at night to symbolize death, disconnection and isolation.

When Damon gets to say goodbye to Elena from the Other Side before it completely disintegrates, the actors are in sunlight again in a small room with doors wide open and the lush, natural green of the forest behind Damon, the heart chakra in an open, peaceful setting. Symbolically, it appears that he’ll be exiting into a rich and liberating green light. It’s soft. Though most of the candles from the spell are out, he’s filmed with four-five still on behind him, closest to the exit of the green forest behind the open doors. The cream candles on either side of the doors behind him glow, another symbol of the inner peace he’s achieved with death, though the ones around Elena, who is sobbing on the floor, are out. Damon stands peacefully while Elena is crumpled, trying to reach out to him. Bonnie, who can see both worlds, tells Elena that Damon’s here and that she can say goodbye. The audience sees both of them. Contrast is established in the scene by the fact that Damon can see, hear and touch Elena, but she can’t see or hear him, just responds to him stroking her hair, wiping her tears and touching her hand. “You lied to me,” she says, referring to his earlier vow that he would make it back to her alive, part of the powerful screenwriting of the series, that seemingly casual comments in the first half of an episode come back and turn significantly in the end. There is a close up of Elena and Damon with sunlight streaming on them as he bends down and says goodbye, his inner peace and love pouring through his tone, “You are, by far, the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my 173 years on this Earth. I get to die knowing I was loved—not just by anyone—by you, Elena Gilbert. It's the epitome of a fulfilled life.” She begs him to come back as he gently leaves the chapel setting. Then Damon and Bonnie stand courageously together in the blowing wind in the last moments of the Other Side until the screen goes completely white, cutting off their last words, the white representing the hope of an afterlife or sense of peace with their lives and decisions as they hold hands into the void.

The integration of passionate, committed actors, writers, directors and producers with a smooth veneer of multi-layered symbolism, juxtaposition and imagery makes The Vampire Diaries a master of epic world building, drama and love stories. Of course, in real life, a theme of altruistic love alone being capable of reversing evil is a concept that’s flawed when met with the behaviour of psychopaths and sociopaths abusing power, since altruistic love from a place of less power is not in itself enough to alter dictators, especially from a place of oppression. From a social and political perspective, the dichotomy between real and ideal needs to be addressed with systematic and structural prevention of abuse, but for entertainment, the hope of human love impacting positively on supernatural monsters to turn traditional models of religion from humans living in fear of their wrath to monsters worshipping mortals is gripping. That human love can inspire monsters to alter their view of humans as play things to toy with or feast on at will to respecting purity to such a degree that serving and protecting the vulnerable becomes their motivation is exciting television. Instead of humans being expected to orbit around and bow down to narcissistic, badly behaving Greek and Roman gods, the model of worship is reversed and a faction of vampires, werewolves and other supernatural dangers seek to embody humanity by reigniting it in themselves. They take religion outside of its parameters and test the worth of altruism for its own sake. In twenty-first century supernaturalism like The Vampire Diaries, the gods are jealous of the meaning and integrity found in mortal lives and seek to become human.

 

Works Cited 

Campbell, Joseph, and Phil Cousineau. The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. New World Library, 2014. 

Dries, Caroline and Young, Brian. “Home,” The Vampire Diaries, Season 5, Episode 22, https://vampirediaries.fandom.com/wiki/Home/Transcript. Teleplay.

Hapgood, Robert. “Speak Hands for Me: Gesture as Language in Julius Caesar.” Drama Survey 5. Article in Folger Shakespeare: Julius Ceasar by William Shakespeare. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Book.

Kerli, “Chemical,” Utopia. Island Def Jam Music Group, 2013. Song.

McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. Methuen, 1999. 

Miller, Authur. The Crucible. Penguin Books, 1976. 

Nelson, Victoria. Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural. Harvard University Press, 2013. 

Sjöö, Monica, and Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. HarperOne, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2012. 

Snyder, Blake. Save the Cat!: The Last Book On Screenwriting That You'll Ever Need. Michael Wiese Productions, 2005.

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About the Author: Cynthia Sharp has been featured in July 2024 edition of Setu. She studied screenwriting as part of her Creative Writing and Literature Honours B.A. and continues to analyze films, novels and poetry since completing her Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing in 2022.

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Setu, November 2024