When The Vampire Diaries came on the scene, I feared it would be a tiny show that would ride on the coattails of Twilight and fade into the darkness that is poor ratings and even worse writing. I’m eating vampire crow right now because the third season of Vampire Diaries has to be the strongest yet. It seems that the show has shifted from being a sappy show that invokes a gag reflex to action horror, with fully fleshed out back stories and even more shocking, a solid, serial plot.
So let me see if I understand what exactly happened this season. You know how Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer had an evil past under the name Angelus? Stephan had the same thing but he was called The Ripper had he was compelled to reactivate his old evil self by his supposedly BFF Klaus. Klaus wants Elena’s blood because she is the doppelgänger of Catherine, a sociopathic vampire chick from Stephan and Damon’s past. With Elena’s blood, Klaus wants to make vampire-werewolf hybrids. Since Stephan is all Ripper, Elena is spending time & falling in love with Damon. It only becomes a problem when Stephan is freed from Klaus’ compulsion. It’s too late, Stephan is pissed. Stephan steals the coffins Kreepy Klaus has been carrying around with him. The coffins hold his siblings but there is one mysterious coffin that needs Bonnie’s magic to be opened. That coffin holds his mother. The mother feels guilty for unleashing vampires on the planet and seeks to kill all of her children. She doesn’t succeed and is killed… or is she? Alaric begins to suffer the consequences of using his reanimation ring. It makes him crazy. Klaus’s mother’s one last give to her children was to make crazy Alaric an ultimate vampire so that he will have the power to kill her children. The catch is that his life is tied to Elena’s life. If she dies, he dies. Of course a convoluted set up like that doesn’t get mentioned without a payoff. Elena is killed and Alaric dies because of but Elena died with vampire blood in her system and rose from the dead as VAMPYR! I can’t wait to see how this turns out!
This has to be my favorite season of The Vampire Diaries. It dispensed with the sappy diaries and Twilight baggage to become a fun, action-packed television show. I can’t wait until next season!
The Vampire Diaries airs Thursday’s 9/8c on CW and will return October 2012.