It has been almost eight years since The Vampire Diaries ended its eight-season run on The CW, giving fans not only the complicated love triangle between Elena Gilbert and the Salvatore Brothers Stefan and Damon, but also a whole universe of characters some of which would go on to have their own, spinoff series, The Originals its follow up, Legacies. Among those characters is perhaps the very best one introduced in the entire franchise: Klaus Mikaelson.
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Portrayed by Joseph Morgan, Klaus was first introduced in Season 2 of The Vampire Diaries and is quickly established as a major villain in the series. However, the vampire-werewolf hybrid — and one of the Original vampires — turns out to be a much more sympathetic character. Viewers learn about his emotional vulnerabilities coming from a lifetime of rejection and trauma stemming from his origin and while he’s still a monster more often than not, he’s not one without the possibility of redemption. And fans loved it. But while Klaus quickly became the bad guy that fans loved to cheer for so much, he got his own show, he almost never got the chance to be everyone’s favorite bad guy. Season 3 of The Vampire Diaries was, originally, heading towards a confrontation that would have killed Klaus.
What Happened in Season 3 of The Vampire Diaries?
Season 3 of The Vampire Diaries sees Klaus fully embrace his villain arc, doing some pretty awful things in Mystic Falls. He’s a major threat to everyone — be they human, vampire, or werewolf. He’s such a threat that Elena and her friends find themselves trying to figure out how they can destroy him once and for all, learning that he and his sister Rebekah, are running from their father Mikael. Over the season, Elena and Company learn that there are ways to disable an Original vampire and the plan to end Klaus was on.
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Ultimately, the good guys do end up defeating Klaus but can’t kill him because they discover that killing an Original vampire would kill every vampire in their bloodline — including Elena, Stefan, Damon, and Caroline because they were in Klaus’s general line. Because of this, Klaus is saved from death by Bonnie and in Season 4, Klaus is no longer the big bad.
Why Didn’t Klaus Die?
Series co-creator Julie Plec has previously explained that Klaus was originally meant to just be the evil big bad of Season 3 and that the “intention was, that after a long, arduous year of trying to vanquish and defeat the villain, our heroes would prevail, and he would be no more.” But instead of going down that road, the character of Klaus was just too good, thanks to the performance by Morgan.
“But when you have actors like [Morgan] who are that good, making such a distinct mark in the roles that they are playing, you have to let your storytelling evolve and wrap around that a little bit,” Plec told TVLine in 2012. “We collectively decided around the middle of Season 3 that we weren’t done with Klaus — or Joseph.”
A strong performance – and the character being a fan favorite – ultimately saved Klaus from his original intended fate and it’s good that it did. It’s hard to imagine The Vampire Diaries without Klaus after a point, especially considering that his story arc would eventually see a budding romance between the Original Vampire and Caroline that remains a fan favorite to this day.
Klaus Did Ultimately Meet the Final Death — But On His Own Terms
Klaus ended up surviving Season 3 and eventually moves to New Orleans in The Originals. That series ran for five seasons and sees Klaus try to reclaim the city, dealing with a brewing war between vampires, werewolves, and witches, lots of family drama, and even the birth of Klaus’s daughter, the tribrid, Hope. There are even Nazi vampires at one point. In the series finale, however, Klaus chooses to sacrifice himself for his daughter, taking the Hollow — the dark spirit of one of the most powerful witches in all of history — into himself and choosing to end his life, saying goodbye to everyone he loves and then meeting his final fate when he and his brother, Elijah, stake one another with white oak stakes, dying on the streets of New Orleans. It’s later revealed in the series finale of Legacies that Klaus has finally found Peace. Feels like a fitting end for a character that started as a villain but ended as a hero and entertained us all for season after season along the way.
The Vampire Diaries is now streaming on Peacock and Max. The Originals is available on Amazon Prime Video. Legacies is streaming on Netflix.
