The Vampire Diaries: Julie Plec on the Finale and Spin-off Potential

(Annette Brown / The CW)

The Vampire Diaries TV series finale, “I Was Feeling Epic,” aired this past Friday night on The CW. Although it certainly provided closure for fans, showrunner Julie Plec is open to the possibility of another spin-off of the long-running supernatural drama. While she’s not actively working on anything, she has ideas.

The Vampire Diaries stars Paul Wesley, Ian Somerhalder, Nina Dobrev, Kat Graham, Candice King, Zach Roerig, Matthew Davis, and Michael Malarkey. The show’s first spin-off is The Originals TV show on The CW, starring Joseph Morgan, Daniel Gillies, Phoebe Tonkin, Charles Michael Davis, Danielle Campbell, Leah Pipes, and Yusuf Gatewood. Season four premieres on March 17th at 8:00pm.

(Bob Mahoney / The CW)

Deadline‘s Dominic Patten, noting all the little openings in the series finale, asked Plec and Kevin Williamson if The Vampire Diaries was truly over. While Williamson said, “The Vampire Diaries is over,” both he and Plec then expanded on that. Here is more:

DEADLINE: That sounds so definitive to almost be coy…

PLEC: No. I’m not trying to be coy about a spin-off. I do not have a spin-off in the works but yes I have spin-off ideas in my brain.

Here’s the problem with more of this show — I think Ian and Paul have said it best recently that no one is going to find them credible in about another six months as eternally youthful vampires. So, any spin-off ideas probably involving those two probably are pipe dreams, but certainly, I’m constantly looking and layering in ideas for where to take this genre universe and this franchise, so it’s not out the question that I would explore other ways to keep the universe alive. But certainly I’m not purposely trying to tell people that there’s a Damon Salvatore spin-off coming because there is not.

WILLIAMSON: Look, Caroline and Alaric opening up the school for special children is one avenue we could go down for potential storyline for its own series – maybe. I’ve always wanted Klaus and Caroline to have another moment, another storyline, another some sort of future. So, we opened up that world to sort of suggest that they did, when it was Klaus that donated all the money to start the school. But nothing is in the works.

PLEC: I don’t see any reboot or spin-off opportunities right now. I think the point of the finale was to say goodbye.

That being said, it is during that window where the timeline would line up with what’s happening in The Originals, and so I think that certainly there’s an opportunity, not yet planned, but an opportunity to bring some of those stories forward over into what’s happening in the land of the Original family.

DEADLINE: So, will we see some seeds bloom when The Originals returns for its fourth season March 17?

PLEC: (laughs) There are seeds planted to bloom inside The Originals should opportunity present itself. There are seeds planted for a new version of a show that tells a different story than the story that’s been told so far with different people. There’s lots of opportunity, and now it’s all a matter of which roads we should go down.

DEADLINE: Now, would those new ones be based on the characters from the original books or would that be something entirely new?

PLEC: Oh, it would be something that springs out of The Vampire Diaries television universe that we’ve created.

Do you have any Vampire Diaries TV show spin-off ideas in your brain? What would you like to see next in this TV series franchise? Sound off, in the comments.