The Vampire Diaries - Katherine Pierce's Obituary By Julie Plec

                             

After five hundred years of running, Katherine Pierce, the ultimate mean girl and quintessential survivor, died at the hands of her former love, Stefan Salvatore. She is survived by no one. There will be no funeral. In lieu of services, please say the most horrific thing she has done to you, and take a shot. Donations can be made in her honor to the organizations she cared about most—Prada, Gucci, and Dior. Out of respect for the dead, we will make no mention of Elena Gilbert in this fauxbituary.

Katherine never ceased to surprise us as a character. She was a 500-year-old vampire and for almost all of Season 1, we had only seen her in 19th century flashbacks. So when she arrived on the scene in present day Mystic Falls, we as writers expected her to be an old-world, distinguished woman with a taste for the classics. But she wasn’t. She was a sexy, modern-day woman of the world who wore designer heels and drove an Aston Martin. One carving knife and four severed fingers later, she quickly made her way into our hearts forever.

Using both seduction and good, old-fashioned blunt force trauma as her weapons of choice, she was never afraid to do whatever it took to get what she wanted. But over the years, we really got to see what was underneath those snarky one-liners and cascading curls. Katherine wasn’t born evil. Her life made her that way. Her infant daughter was torn away from her at birth. She lost her entire family to a rampaging Klaus. And she spent the next 5 centuries running, with no real place to call home. The closest thing she had to a family was her vast network of sketchy underworld contacts.

We always knew that Katherine would be one of our leading antagonists. What we didn’t know was just how much we, and the fans, would come to love her. Ms. Pierce’s survival skills had become so good even the writers couldn’t kill her. We tried so many times, so many ways. Allowing a 2000-year-old immortal being to suck her blood dry. Suicide. Old Age. Nothing would work. Every single time, she called out from the page, manipulating us into granting her survival. She was under our skin. The writers actually have shot glasses that say “You’re Katherine Pierce. Suck it up.”

When Stefan ended the tragic life of Katherine Pierce for good, Katherine got the most unique post-death experience of any character who has ever died on The Vampire Diaries: She got sent to something that felt suspiciously like “hell.” So much running—but a girl’s Jimmy Choos can only take her so far. Her fate beyond death remains a mystery, but wherever she is, it’s safe to assume she’s not floating on a white cloud strumming a harp.

RIP, HBIC. You will be missed by some, forgotten by none. 

The Vampire Diaries - Spoiler From TV Guide - 18th February 2014

Will Stefan and Katherine hook up again on The Vampire Diaries?

Well, Katherine has made it her mission to do just that now that she's taken over Elena's body. She's going to come really close in the first episode back when the two take a little road trip that, of course, involves a stop at a motel... and a steamy shower. 

The Vampire Diaries - Spoiler From TV Line - 10th December 2013

Any intel on Klaus’ upcoming return visit to The Vampire Diaries?

It’ll happen in early-ish 2014 and he won’t be making the trip solo. 
Bonus Scoop: The Katherine-Elena dynamic is about to get a lot more complicated (if that’s even possible).

The Vampire Diaries - Spoiler From E! Online - 24th September 2013

Even though she's human, I'm hoping Katherine is still her smooth-talking, stiletto-walking bitch self?

"Do you know how hard it is to run in heels?" Though our survivor is now human on The Vampire Diaries, she's still Katherine Pierce. But because of her less-than-stellar people skills, Katherine is going to be forced to rely on a familiar face for protection from some pretty big enemies.

The Vampire Diaries - TV Guide Video Interview With Nina Dobrev

The Vampire Diaries - Spoiler From TV Guide - 28th August 2013

Any Vampire Diaries scoop on Damon and Elena?


For once they'll be happy. But their bliss will be foiled -- yet again! -- by Katherine, who'll be back to meddle in everyone's lives. Although Damon says that he's over her, what will Elena — who's now off at college — think when she learns that Damon and Katherine have been bunking together at Chez Salvatore all summer long? 

Julie Plec on Season 4 Finale And Season 5

"The Vampire Diaries" has done it again. 

Going into the Season 4 finale, "Graduation," we knew a few things would happen: The gang would graduate, in a poignant scene that celebrated their history together. Elena would, once again, make a choice between Stefan and Damon. One character who had previously died would return from the dead. And, of course, we knew that someone would take the cure for vampirism and turn into a human. But while we were busy asking who would get the cure and who would spend the summer making out with Elena, we kind of forgot about another season-long mystery: Why won't Silas let anyone see his real face?

The slight of hand gave us one of the most jaw-dropping finale twists ever... and it was just one of many. We spoke with executive producer Julie Plec about what sort of fall-out to expect from some of the most surprising finale reveals when the series returns in Season 5.

1. Silas has a doppelganger -- and it's Stefan. Yes, the Petrova women aren't the only ones with the doppelganger enchantment in their blood. All of the convoluted twists regarding the legend of Silas, his goals, and his abilities came together. Thanks to a loophole, Silas came back to life, revealing that the immortality spell itself had a loophole: doppelgangers. Silas and Stefan share the same face. Stefan is Silas' doppelganger, and now he's trapped in a safe at the bottom of an ocean. 

This is a storyline that has been in the works for about a year. "Last year, when Season 3 was over, we kept a small group of writers and we stayed for five weeks, to try to break the broad strokes of Season 4. Last year, right around this time, we came up with the doppelgänger pitch," executive producer Julie Plec tells us.

There were some complications to introducing another doppelgänger character. In Season 2 and early in Season 3, when Nina Dobrev was playing both Katherine and Elena regularly, she grew worn out, physically. Some of the decision-makers behind "The Vampire Diaries" were concerned that playing two characters could take a similar toll on Paul Wesley.

"We had to convince a lot of different people of how it could work and what could make it work," Julie says. "So that we didn't end up in a similar situation as with Katherine and Elena, where we exhausted Nina to the point of being unable to get out of her bed, because we accidentally overworked her so much. Creatively, everybody was very excited about the Silas doppelganger, it was just a matter of how long it took us to cement it, knowing that's fundamentally what we're going to do."

At the moment, Paul's not concerned about working too hard -- he's just excited to face a new challenge on the show. "He is so happy," Julie laughs. "Playing the straight man hero is not always the most exciting job for an actor, and Stefan, of all our heroes, is the straightest on the show. We get to go deeper into his ripper side sometimes, but for Paul, those moments are just pocket moments of opportunity to dig deeply into his craft, and a lot of other times he feels like he's just grooming his hero hair. So obviously, he's very enthusiastic about this, and has been supportive of it all along. He's been dying for something; to be a jerk, to be evil, to be the bad guy, to be able to stretch his muscles."

And in Season 5, he definitely will.


2. The resurrection of Jeremy Gilbert: "Vampire Diaries" fans are used to characters dying -- and occasionally, they pop back up later, whether it's as a vampire or as a ghost. Still, we were (pleasantly!) surprised to learn that Jeremy was coming back from the grave permanently, particularly because his goodbye episode was so heart-wrenching. Didn't the writers worry that resurrecting him would dull the impact of his beautiful, memorable send-off?

"It's something that we talked about a lot," Julie says. "Our intention, originally, was to say goodbye to Jeremy permanently. But then a lot of questions came up about the power of this girl losing her only living relative. It was so important to her journey at that moment. The global, eternally reaching tragedy attached to that is really sad, and really depressing."

Though Jeremy had to die in order to push Elena into the next phase of her life as a vampire, the writers quickly realized that it'd be impossible to bring her back from that dark, desperately tragic point in her life unless they revived Jeremy. Without him, Elena was looking down a long, black tunnel of depression -- and that wouldn't make for a particularly lively Season 5.

"We argued a lot, in the writer's room -- could we successfully bring this character back in a way that wouldn't feel cheap? Ultimately, I think that the way that it plays out, it does feel like the natural gift at the end of the season for this character that has been through so much," she explains.

Now Elena has a chance at some happiness in Season 5. "Getting Jeremy back resets her, in a way, where she can now get on with her life and live like the Elena that we know," Julie says. She is cautious, because she knows that some viewers might not be pleased with the loophole Jeremy steps through to return to the land of the living. "Critically, you can look at something and go, 'Well, that's a take-back, it's not fair,' but emotionally, I think, it's a positive. We might get hammered for it. We'll see. I'm hoping people will be so glad to see our Elena pull her life back together, they'll accept it."


3. Bonnie will still factor in to the storylines. Jeremy didn't exactly get a free ride back to the land of the living. Bonnie sacrificed herself in order to bring him back for Elena, and now she's trapped beyond the veil -- invisible to everyone, except for Jeremy.

It's certainly a tragic loss, but don't worry, Bonnie fans. Kat Graham will still be a big part of the show. "Here's what I'll say about Bonnie: I haven't personally seen 'Being Human,' but I do know that they have a ghost character that operates pretty successfully on that show," Julie says. "This is not the last we've seen of Bonnie. If anything, she will be right there in the middle of story next season, just with a few new complications."


4. Delena goodness! By giving Jeremy his life back, Bonnie essentially gave Elena her life back, too. Unencumbered by the sire bond, her grief, or a gaping hole where her humanity should be, Elena finally got to evaluate her love life with a clear head -- and she chose to be with Damon. "In death, you're the one that made me feel most alive," Elena told him. Cue the mouth touching! Now, with her vampire boyfriend at her side, she might just be able to enjoy college. 

It's been a rough few years for Damon when it comes to his love life -- but Julie tells us it's finally time for him to have some legitimate joy in his life. "Yes. Absolutely," she says. "We're going to get to see Damon trying to be a good boyfriend, and while it's not going to be easy, he's going to try like hell to make it work, and they're going to have a real opportunity for happiness."


5. And what about Katherine? This season, we've seen a much more vulnerable side of Miss Katerina Petrova. She spent most of the year on the run. When she finally opened up and fell for Elijah, he rejected her in favor of a new beginning with his family. And then, in a moment of weakness, she allowed Elena to get the upper hand in a major showdown in the high school hallways. Elena, driven by very human emotions, shoved the cure down Katherine's throat. The thing that Katherine fears most is mortality. Elena gave it to her. 

Just don't expect Katherine to go all Elena on us now that she doesn't have to drink blood to stay alive. "As a human, she's still very, very bad," Julie laughs. "If anything, she feels silly for letting herself get vulnerable, and she's taking out that frustration of her own vulnerability on Elena. If Elena goes after her, Katherine's still ready to kick that puppy."

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Spoiler From Zap2It - 18th February 2013

Our not-so-merry band of monsters is currently stuck on an island off the coast of Nova Scotia, and that's not the only traveling outside of Mystic Falls they'll be doing this season. The Atlanta set of "The Vampire Diaries" has recently been transformed into both a bustling NYC street, and a festival in Pennsylvania. Katherine may have committed the ultimate crime against Elena, but after she snagged the cure, she's not going to disappear again. We can expect her to stick around long enough for her to come face-to-face with Elijah. Could there be a centuries-old romance rekindled?

Joseph Morgan On Klaroline & Katherine

Is all hope for a Klaus-and-Caroline friendship officially gone?

In one of the most heartbreaking Vampire Diaries scenes, Caroline (Candice Accola) and Tyler (Michael Trevino) were forced to say goodbye — yet again — so that Tyler could leave town before Klaus (Joseph Morgan) could kill him. While it seems this act would be one of many final straws, Morgan says the dynamic between the two is much more complicated than that.

"There's always got to be a hint of hope for them, hasn't there? I would like to think that she is understanding enough because this is the thing: No one is truly good or evil. There's always some redeeming quality somewhere, maybe buried very, very deep within someone. I was filming a scene with her the other day, so the characters are still interacting. Their relationship, and I'll use that term loosely, becomes much more complex the more we go on, which is so interesting to play."

While the trio's drama was playing out in Mystic Falls, a very big enemy of Klaus' was returning out on the island. Just as Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) was trying to get the cure free from Silas' fossilized hands, Katherine swooped in, grabbed the cure, and was gone before Jeremy could breathe his final breath. What does this all mean for the hybrid who despises the doppelganger? "Well, there are going to be interesting developments with that," Morgan says. "We've got to bear in mind this is someone who Klaus hunted down for 500 years. So she's going to want to do everything she can to avoid him, whether that's trying to kill him or make peace with him or trying to broker a deal with him, that remains to be seen, but absolutely not something that's brushed over."

Source

Spoiler From TV Line - 18th December 2012

Where’s the love for The Vampire Diaries?

Have you looked in your local roller disco? Because that may be where the show is headed. Though exec producer Julie Plec hastens to note that nothing is set in stone, she does admit, “We’re just now writing a script which, in a perfect world, will take us back to the ’70s in New York City. Everything could change, but it’s an era we haven’t explored yet. It could be a lot of fun.” Especially since she adds that “it’ll definitely involve our brothers in some form or another.” Cue the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack in 3, 2, 1…

I am enjoying this season of The Vampire Diaries, but the one thing it needs is Katherine back! Any chance that’s happening anytime soon?

“That elusive vixen is still somehow lurking in the shadows,” teases Plec, “but keeping herself well hidden… Given Klaus’ continued presence in Mystic Falls, we shall see if we’ll be able to get her back into town.” Scram, Klaus!

Julie Plec's Interview for TV Fanatic

TV Fanatic: Were you and the writers nervous at all about taking that step of Elena becoming a vampire?
Julie Plec: We were nervous in that it was a choice that takes her in a very clear direction, and if the audience unilaterally decided it didn’t like that direction and rejected it, we were pretty hosed. I think we had ‘they did it in the books’ excuse on our side, that gave us a little bit of confidence and, realistically, in the way that Twilight is always sort of its own little focus group of what works and what doesn’t.

TVF:  On "The Rager," we witnessed Stefan’s concern about his own past as a ripper and keeping himself grounded. How will that manifest in the coming episodes?
JP: What it’s done is we’re seeing the nuclear fallout of this big move. Elena’s a vampire and so while we could very easily make the transition simple for her, instead we wanted to make the transition as complicated and as fraught as possible. Though we knew we wanted Stefan to be her hero, to really reaffirm all the ways and all the reasons why she chose him at the end of last year... we also didn’t want it to come without its own difficulties and consequences for him, where he may not be able to be a true hero to her, because he, himself, is plagued by infinitely deeper problems that come with being a functional vampire.

We wanted to let Damon have the point of view, which, you know, for three seasons we all sort of rolled our eyes and clucked our tongues and shook our heads at Damon’s logic and yet finally have him be the guy that’s like, ‘hey, I’m right, you all know I’m right. You all are living in fantasyland’ and start understanding that Damon’s reality is really the most rational reality at this point.

TVF: And that love triangle that’s still alive, but are there some unexpected turns coming up?
JP: This is all I can say without getting myself into terrible amounts of trouble across the board. I think that people watching and paying attention to the seeds we’ve been sowing to probably chart the course of the next big turn that this triangle is going to have.

TVF: Phoebe Tonkin showed up last week as Hayley. How is she going to get in the way of Caroline, Tyler and maybe even Klaus?
JP: Hayley’s presence is going to have a lot of surprises attached to it and why she’s there [and] what her relationship with Tyler is. What she thinks about all of this and ultimately, the part she plays in a bigger game that’s brewing between Tyler and Klaus as we move forward, it’s towards closer to the middle of the season. So, we’ve just scratched the surface with her and there’s a lot of surprises attached to her as we move forward.

TVF: Jeremy seems to be on a nice journey now that he’s possibly a hunter. What’s coming up for him?
JP: Big, big, big stuff is afoot for our young Jeremy Gilbert. This season maybe the biggest storyline he’s ever had and we just introduced the beginning of it with this appearance of the vampire hunter calling Jeremy a "potential." It has miles to go from there.

TVF: I love that Matt’s had a nice piece of things in these first episodes. Is he going to get more involved in things moving forward?
JP: Yes. Matt’s back on, he’s just going to continue to be human and continue to always be there right in the middle of things and now Rebekah, of course, has her sights set on him, which is never going to end well. And he’s determined to add value to our group and to his own life and don’t think we’re going to see Matt getting pushed around much. I think he’s going to be a good friend. He’s going to be a good fighter and he’s going to be a good support system for everybody.

TVF: Klaus is now protecting Connor at least for the moment, so we're guessing that will be important this week, right?
JP: This episode that airs Thursday, Klaus sort of fills in the holes of the story that we don’t know yet. About this tattoo that Jeremy saw, the centuries-long mystery that surrounds it and it’s got some impact and a few... I would say it’s got triple whammies!

TVF: Bonnie wasn’t in this past episode, but are we going to see her soon?
JP: Absolutely. Episode 4 is kind of the beginning of Bonnie’s journey for the season. She meets a new mentor, who’s very intriguing and interesting and there is a handsome professor by the name of Shane, played by David Alpay, who’s terrific. And it’s just the beginning of a really, really tumultuous, dramatic and emotional year where Bonnie is really going to learn a lot about herself and what she’s capable of and a lot of great things for her.

TVF: And her daddy’s coming right?

JP: Her daddy’s coming. We haven’t seen the last of her mama. We’ve got some small romantic roads to travel. We’ve got some great witchcraft stuff that is always lurking. Is she going to tap back into that dark magic or stay on the side of good? There’s all kinds of things coming down the pipeline for her. It’s going to be a good year.

TVF: I’m always up for a Katherine sighting so might we have one in season four? I think she’d love to see where Elena is these days!
JP: All I will say is that we have not seen the last of Lady Katherine.

Spoiler From TV Line - 1st November 2012

Any chance that vampire Elena will go head to head with Katherine on The Vampire Diaries? That would be awesome!

And showrunner Julie Plec can only agree. "I think it would be a tragic missed opportunity if we didn't get to see that," she shares with TV Line. Alas, that's all she was willing to say on the hot topic. If the face-off of fierce femmes does not come to fruition this season, it won't be any time terribly soon. But you gotta figure it'll be more than worth the wait.

Julie Plec Interview With WetPaint - Season 4

What will we see from Bonnie (Kat Graham)?

Bonnie is definitely in a position where her actions in the finale and the actions that she will have to take in the premiere will put her in a very dark place that she will be standing on the precipice of whether to let herself fall into it or step back from the ledge. And when she makes that decision in the first episode, then we’ll see what she's going through the rest of the season.

Is there an overreaching arc of evil this season?
There is an overreaching arc of evil, and this year, we're doing something a little different in that we don't know or say who that is right away. The mystery is who is this evil because clearly it's something or somebody, and we don't know who it is. And so that's a question we'll be asking a lot in the first few episodes as we build up to our first kind of reveal of the season's bad guy.

Do you want to play with Katherine (Nina Dobrev) and Elena (Nina Dobrev) as vampires?
I can't wait for the day when Katherine feels like she has to come back to town and comes face‑to‑face with vampire Elena. I can't say. I don't know when that will be. If it will be early or later, but it's going to be great when it does happen.

And our resident human, Matt (Zach Roerig)?
Matt has a lot to earn in his life and his mind. He got to live and Elena died. Why? What makes him so worth it? Now, we, as an audience, know why we love our Matt Donovan, but he needs to prove that to himself what makes him so worthy in this group of extraordinary people. How he can be extraordinary in his own right, even though he, himself, is just ordinary.

What happens with Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen)?
Jeremy is now the man of the house, for reals, and yet Elena as the fiercest protector of them all is not going to be so quick as to just hand over the reins of authority or big sisterhood. So he's going to be trying to find his way and his place. The thing that we shouldn't forget is that he's got this legacy in his family of vampire hunters, and we have a new vampire hunter coming to town. So, yes. I'm sure there will be some interplay that happens between the new hunter and our Gilbert family legacy.

Will Meredith (Torrey DeVitto) struggle with the decision she made?
Meredith has a big choice to make. She just found herself kind of plopped right in the center of this whole supernatural universe. Does she want to stay in it, or does she want to get out? Does she want to be Damon's new drinking buddy, or does she want to keep her distance? What is her future? So we'll see her asking herself that question too early on.