Julie Plec's Rule For Killing Off Characters

You Have to Tell Them First !

The Vampire Diaries and The Originals kills so many characters off that we’re not surprised that executive producer Julie Plec and her teams of writers have rules about how to go about doing it.

 Rule #1: You have to tell the actors first...

The casts and creatives teams behind TVD and its spinoff took the stage for back-to-back PaleyFest panels this past weekend. Amongst the topics of discussion: character deaths. According to Variety, Julie said: “We have a rule that if you’re killing off a series regular, you have to tell them first. If you’re killing off a person temporarily, you have to warn them before the script comes out.”

Apparently, guest stars don’t get the same treatment, but that might be because they already assume that they will be killed off. Julie also admitted that new characters to TVD and The Originals don’t usually last very long. Then again, the Mikaelsons were once new characters, and now they have their own spin-off!

We think these are good policies for the supernatural dramas that flirts with death so often it has come to mean something completely different from what it does on other shows -- i.e. just because a character dies in one episode, doesn’t mean they won’t be back in the next. We can see how it might get confusing for actors reading their scripts from week-to-week. Now, if only we as fans had the same courtesy: A “Don’t worry! Jeremy will only be dead for a few episodes, even if Elena has burned his body to a crisp along with all of his video games” disclaimer. Perhaps, that would ruin it a bit?