10 Things that don’t make sense in The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries is a teen supernatural drama series. I finished all 8 seasons and enjoyed it. However there are some questionable incidents which did not align with the in-universe logic. They could be plot holes, inconsistencies or simple misunderstandings by me. Followings are the things I did not understand in The Vampire Diaries series.

How did Alaric Saltzman become human again because of the travelers’ curse?

Alaric Saltzman was the only vampire in the TVD series who got cured from vampirism without drinking The Cure for Immortality. He got cured under bizarre circumstances. Alaric Saltzman crossed the border of the Purification Spell and fell while experiencing his cause of human death which was The White Oak Stake through his heart. His girlfriend Dr. Josette “Jo” Laughlin was able to revive him using her medical expertise. And he was revived as a human. But how?

All vampires including The Originals are technically dead men walking. All of them were reanimated by Esther Mikaelson’s modified immortality spell. Her spell flows through The Originals to their respective sire lines. Since vampires are already dead, when The Travelers’ Curse stripped away the Esther’s magic vampires become corpses. When Alaric and Jo were inside the magic free zone Jo could not use her traditional witch powers to save Alaric. She did not use some mysterious power to stop Alaric from dying either. Jo herself admitted that she saved Alaric solely by using her medical expertise. But how did she heal an already dead man is still a mystery to me. Show writers brushed aside the whole ordeal by attributing the miraculous cure to Jo’s extraordinary medical knowledge.

Alaric Saltzman wasn’t a regular vampire. He was not sired by another vampire. Esther herself created him as an enhanced original vampire. Rules apply bit differently for original vampires. Esther make them near perfect immortals. She used powerful binding agents for her immortality spell. For her family she used The White Oak Tree and For Alaric she used Elena’s doppelganger blood. They only die when someone exploit a loophole in the immortality spell. The Original Family can be killed from stakes of The White Oak Tree and Alaric dies when Elena dies. Also it seems that original vampires generate vampirism magic within themselves. That’s why in The Originals TV series witches could use original vampires in sacrificial magic rituals as unlimited energy sources without killing them. Magical barrier did not strip away Tyler Lockwood’s werewolf curse or Jo’s witch magic or the magic of daylight rings or Kai’s magic siphoning power. So it seems The Magic Purification Spell does not take away innate magical properties from a person or an object. It just disables them within the boundary.

So I feel like at most Alaric should have only desiccated until remove from the premises. It seems like the show writers dismissed his Enhanced Original Vampire state and killed him off as a pesky little vampire on the expense of Elena – Damon compulsion drama.

What exactly is a Prison World?

Prison worlds are an unique imprisonment or an isolation method of Gemini Witch Coven. But what is actually a prison world? Is it a different dimension or a parallel world or a spiritual plane or a time loop? A prison world stuck on a weird time loop. The cosmic event which the Gemini Witches drew power from to create the prison world keep repeating daily on the prison world. But the environment on the Earth itself or the prisoners in the world do not reset end of the day. Prisoners can explore the world, consume food, move object and keep their memories. Since The Heretics ran out of available blood supplies and started to desiccate, it is safe to assume that prison worlds do not replenish its food sources and there are no animals to hunt. So what happen when prisoners run out of stocked foods and whatever they could gather from the nature? Since they cannot die, are they going to suffer perpetual hunger forever?

Prison Worlds are snapshots of the real world when they were created. So except any living creatures everything else are identical to the real world. Even magical objects have their duplicate versions in the prison worlds.  People who have access to a prison world can explore it, find objects and bring them back to the real world. So why nobody thought to research and locate powerful magical objects, spells, grimoires and go into a prison world to get copies of them. It is much easier to grab them from a prison world because there are no one to guard them. 

Tessa’s plan to separate Silas and Amara contradicts because she made Amara as the anchor.

Qetsiyah – Silas – Amara love triangle is the chronologically oldest love triangle in TVD and the starting point of many history altering fateful events and also the oldest grudge in the story. Qetsiyah and her betrothed Silas developed an immortality spell to live together forever. But instead Silas used the spell to make himself and his secret lover Amara immortal. After learning about this betrayal, infuriated Qetsiyah attacked Amara and hid her from Silas. Then she made The Other Side using Amara as its anchor. Then she made an antidote for the immortality and gave it to Silas and lied to him that she cured and killed Amara.

Qetsiyah then trapped Silas inside a tomb on an isolated island with The Cure. So Silas had two choices, he could either remain as an immortal and desiccate for eternity or take The Cure to become mortal and kill himself to end his suffering and pass onto The Other Side. Either way he could not get back with Amara. So he chose to bid his time as an immortal until he could find a way to destroy The Other Side and only then take The Cure and kill himself to freely pass onto afterlife to be with Amara. Qetsiyah took her revenge by separating Silas and Amara forever in this life and afterlife.

Unbeknown to Silas, Qetsiyah did not cure or kill Amara. Instead she used Amara as an anchor to create The Other Side. Qetsiyah’s decision to use Amara as the anchor does not make sense to me because it contradicts with her plan to separate them forever. When supernatural beings die they have to pass through The Anchor to enter The Other Side. The Anchor has the ability to exist on both plains and communicate with both the living and the dead. So if Silas had decided to take The Cure and become a mortal witch again, he would have eventually met Amara upon his death. On the other hand in his quest to destroy The Other Side Silas finally found immortal Amara. It’s too bad Amara had gone insane because of the ordeal of acting as The Anchor. Otherwise Silas and Amara could have lived forever as immortals as they originally planned.

Why did Markos leaving The Other Side caused it to collapse?

Number of Travelers sacrificed themselves to resurrect their leader Markos. When Markos left The Other Side it slowly began to crumble. It’s not like he was the first and only one to left The Other Side. Esther, Qetsiyah, Fin, Kol are few known witches to left The Other Side and some of them even resurrected multiple times. But when they resurrected The Other Side didn’t even budge. So what’s so special about Markos that an entire supernatural plain shattered when he walked out of it?

Travelers’ curse was doomed to fail.

There was a major oversight in Travelers’ Purification Spell plan. Most vital ingredient or the driving force of the Purification Spell was blood of the last remaining doppelganger couple. If the doppelganger couple was human then the plan would have worked flawlessly. But the last remaining doppelganger couple was Elena and Stefan who were vampires. Purification Spell could kill a vampire within minutes. So why did not Travelers take any safety measures to keep Elena and Stefan alive until The Purification Spell completely engulfs the world? Instead they casted the spell while Elena and Stefan was in the epicenter of the spell. Elena and Stefan were barely outrunning the spell until Stefan’s death stopped the spell from spreading. They could not have evaded the spell for too long. That plan was stupid as cutting a tree branch while sitting on that branch.  

Once extremely rare Daylight rings are now everywhere.

In the beginning of the show day walking vampires were extremely rare. Stefan and Damon managed to avoid suspicion for a long time while in Mystic Falls because even the Founders’ Council was not aware of the existence of Daylight Rings. Esther made first set of rings for The Originals. Apart from them very few people had access to the Daylight Ring spell. There were many old and knowledgeable vampires without access to Daylight Rings.

Yet in later seasons there were many random day walking vampires roaming around without any explanation. When Julian of the Heretics took over the Mystic Falls he brought in gangs of vampires there. Some of them were day walkers.

When the Phoenix Stone was destroyed by two Heretics, imprisoned vampire souls from the hellish dimension of the Phoenix Stone released back into the world. Those souls got into nearest corpses they could find. Some of those resurrected vampires were out in the sunlight without any issue. And if you watch closely, almost all of them had huge rings on their fingers.

Damon and his drinking buddies.

Humans, witches and werewolves generally hate and distrust vampires. Their loath for vampires is reasonable because there are no innocent or pure vampires. Every vampire will eventually get blood on their hands. There are some reliable, loyal vampires such as Caroline, Marcel and Josh (from The Originals). There are some vampires who could not control their hunger such as Stefan, Lily and Kol. Then there are the worst kind of vampires who fully embraced their vampire nature and inflict suffering upon people just because they can. Damon Salvatore belongs to the latter category.

Damon does not kill out of necessity, he uses kills as an outlet of his emotions. He kills whenever he got bored or angry or sad or upset. No one is safe around him except may be Elena. He even killed Elena’s little brother Jeremy. If you need any more evidence to realize about his serial killing nature look what he did to Whitmore Family. Damon Salvatore was a ruthless, merciless monster. He attacked and killed his nephew Zack’s pregnant girlfriend. Miraculously her fetus survived and delivered by doctors to be grow up as Sarah Nelson. Attacking and killing a pregnant woman and her unborn baby is a normal thing for Damon. He wasn’t even apologetic about his crimes.

So how could anyone knowingly befriend with such a monster. Damon considers Alaric Saltzman and Elizabeth Forbes as his friends. And Alaric and Damon consider as a best friend duo who occasionally meet to have a drink and chit-chat. Alaric fancy himself as a vampire hunter and Liz was the sheriff of Mystic Falls and a member of the Founder’s Council. Both Alaric and Liz should have done everything in their power to put down two of the most blood thirsty vampires like Salvatore brothers to save innocent lives. They both failed unsuspecting innocent humans by turning blind eye to Damon’s horrific crimes. Liz even laughed with Damon when Damon accepted responsibility for many unsolved murders of Mystic Falls. How could anyone befriend with a serial killer and disrespect his victims by laugh about those crimes? Damon is one of the worst vampires to befriend with in the TVD universe.
In my opinion John Gilbert and Bill Forbes showed proper attitude towards vampires.

Rayna Cruz, The Huntress and her 8 lives limitation.

Rayna Cruz was a magically enhanced vampire huntress. Every time someone killed her, her body burst into flames to resurrect her like a phoenix. And she had a nasty sword. She could mark vampires with her sword. She could track down any marked vampire to the worlds end. Her fallen victims’ souls got trapped inside the Phoenix Stone where each soul had to endure their own personal hell. She was hyped to be an unstoppable, un-killable terrifying enemy for even an original vampire. Her hopelessly terrifying nature reduced dramatically when it was revealed that she only had 8 times to resurrect. At the rate we saw she was exhausting most of her extra lives by going up against some normal vampires, it is a miracle she was still alive without dying for good.

Even though she got stronger with each resurrection, she got knocked down or killed many times by vampires. But there was not a permanent way to keep her dead. Even completely destroying her body could not prevent her from resurrecting. I was intrigued by her resilient nature up until they introduced a limit to resurrection power. When that happen I got confused because I thought she already died more than 8 times on screen. After that I could not suspend my disbelief to accept that she survived that long fighting and terrifying vampires.

Vikings have been living in America way before the Europeans officially discovered the continent.

Archeological evidences suggest that Vikings had visited North America nearly 500 years before Columbus discovered the American continent. But did they populate the continent? Have White People already been living in The USA in The Vampire Diaries universe since 1000 years ago?

Mystic Falls was founded in 1792 or 1860. It is possible two dates were not continuity error because Matt Donovan’s father, Peter Maxwell said that Maxwell ancestors came to Mystic Falls and started a successful blacksmith trade which attracted other people to the area. Then those late comers stablished the town and pretended like they discovered the place. But unbeknown to them there was an ancient establishment in Mystic Falls where The Mikaelson Family lived and became immortals.

Mikael was a true Viking. He even met and captured Esther and Dahlia on a raiding and pillaging mission. Later the Mikaelsons moved to Mystic Falls to live in a land where everyone were healthy and strong. That means actual Vikings had been living in modern day America long before Europeans officially discovered the continent. Also this was not an isolated incident. In flashback scenes it was clear that the entire village was populated with European descendants. Tatia, the first known doppelganger of Amara also lived in Mystic Falls. It doesn’t stop there. The people who said to be healthy and strong turned out to be werewolves. Originally Hollow cursed her fellow tribesmen and tribeswomen to be the first seven packs of werewolves. So in the beginning all of them were Native Americans. However judging by Klaus’s appearance and his biological father, Ansel’s appearance, some of these werewolves also seems to be European descendants. Ansel’s direct descendants are living in present time. Cary who had the Ansel’s Moonlight Ring is one of them.

Mikaelson family turned into vampires and moved a lot, so they did not left a mark on population. But werewolves could have been living in America even before 1000 years ago. Also werewolf packs survived and propagated throughout the history to have descendants in modern times too.

Does this mean the archeological history in The Vampire Diaries universe is different than real world history or writers just shrugged it off without thinking too much into it?

Confusing rules of the Compulsion ability

In Vampire Diaries Series vampires have an ability to magically compel humans. Original Vampires have the ability to compel both humans and vampires. However in action compulsion worked whichever way convenient to the plot. Because of that rules of compulsion are inconsistent and make hard to follow logically.

When Elijah got stabbed by the White Oak Ash Dagger his compulsion upon Katherine was lifted. Elijah said his temporary death caused his compulsions to wear off. Every member of the Original Vampires except Mikael got daggered at least one time onscreen (Klaus got daggered in The Originals Series). So every time they get daggered thousands of people and vampires should have broken free of their compulsions.

If Elijah’s temporary death nullified his compulsion upon Katharine then what happen when a vampire permanently die? There were countless onscreen vampire deaths throughout the series. Also deaths of the Original Vampires killed their entire sire lines. What happen to all those dead vampires’ compelled victims? Did they break free?

What about cured vampires who turn back to mortal humans? When Alaric turned back to human his compulsions did not wear off. But when Stefan turned back to human, people who were compelled by him started to break free of compulsions. Silas, Katharine, Elena and Damon all took The Cure and turned back to human similar to Stefan.

So logically there should be hundreds of thousands of people who were formerly compelled by vampires but suddenly remember everything because of the vampire who compelled them died or cured. At that point it is hard to keep the existence of vampires as a secret from the world.