CWKai (Christopher Wood), we may love you as a villain on The Vampire Diaries, but we kind of—no, we really—hate you right now.
How dare you interrupt that long-awaited Delena mistletoe scene?! The abomination of a witch had just siphoned all the magic from the Traveler spell that held together the anti-magic border around Mystic Falls, and just when Damon (Ian Somerhalder) was about to meet Elena (Nina Dobrev) under the mistletoe at his front door, Kai cloaked her in magic and knocked her out, denying us all a passionate and epic kiss!
We had so many feelings about this major midseason finale that we got The Vampire Diaries boss Caroline Dries on the phone immediately after it aired to have her break it all down for us, and to drop scoop on what's coming next when the show returns in January!
E! Online: I'm freaking out about so much that just went down. There's no more magic border! Did you always plan on that not being a permanent spell?
Caroline Dries: We wanted it to be impactful so we didn't want to get rid of it right away. But we also knew that we were cutting a lot of characters off from sets we own and it made production very hard from a storytelling standpoint. Also, Mystic Falls represents the core of our show for our characters so the drive to come home again was a symbolic mission for them in the first half of the season. It all worked out that Kai could siphon up that spell. It was the perfect way of getting rid of it.
It was perfect! Because now not only is he a villain, he's a supercharged, supervillain! I'm excited to see what he does next.
His one vulnerability was that he didn't have his own access to magic. Now he's got it coming out of his ears!
Is that going to be a permanent source of magic for him or is it on a timer of sorts and it's going to run out at some point?
There is a timer. He charges up like a battery and then it runs out like a really cheap, junky battery. It's not a permanent solution for him but the consequences of that will certainly be in effect in episode 11 when we come back from our break.
What can you tease about his plan for Elena now that he's captured her?
He has a chip on his shoulder for Elena and Damon, but especially Damon having been stranded by him in the prison world. So he feels like getting at Damon via Elena is the perfect revenge. But he also has a more pointed reason for having her that he's trying to—well, I won't give that away! But having sucked up all that magic from Mystic Falls has repercussions even for him. He needs Elena's help with that.
Now let me rage for a minute: that Delena mistletoe scene. We were so close to a kiss! But you took it away! I literally threw my water bottle across the room.
Good! We wanted to end it with a cliffhanger and while we're all ready for Delena to be back and work things out, we also wanted to give the episode a big twist. That's how that came about. I know it was probably maddening for a lot of people since the mistletoe was highly promo-ed.
I have to say, as much as I was looking forward to finally seeing them have that big epic romantic moment, that was very clever how you played that.
Thank you! I would rather evoke someone throwing a water bottle than someone being like, "Awww, that's what I expected!"
So please tell me there is hope for Delena when the show returns?
I can tease that we will finally see them come face-to-face soon and we'll continue to watch their relationship evolve. Their separation won't last forever. You just have to have patience.
Now let's talk about that heartbreaking reveal, where we found out that Sheriff Forbes (Marguerite MacIntyre) has a brain tumor. Ouch, my heart. What are we going to see from that storyline going forward?
We're going to see a human suffer a very human illness for the first time on this show. It's the first time someone hasn't been taken out by something supernatural. It's going to be a challenge and Caroline [Candice Accola] is going to try to fix it and save her mom from dying and it's not going to go great.
For our show, ironically it's the most interesting thing to play out. The show has so much to do with death and this is a new way of looking at death, where it's not something we can control or stop or have an easy fix for.
When did you come up with this storyline?
At the beginning of the season, as we realized that Caroline has become one of the main characters of the show, we wanted to give her a meaty story. I get a lot of hate tweets about giving Caroline a story that doesn't revolve around her love interests. We really do want to give her a juicy storyline and her coping with the illness of her one living family member left is a very human story we can tell while also having a lot of vampire-y stuff going on in the background. It felt very real and important to us.
The Vampire Diaries returns Thursday, Jan. 22 at 8 p.m. on the CW.