“The Vampire Diaries” and a Love That Consumes You

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but The Vampire Diaries has the best love triangle I’ve ever seen that wasn’t penned by William Shakespeare.

In most television shows I’ve watched, I haven’t cared very much for love triangles. They’re often dragged out far too long and far past the point of viewer interest (Jack/Kate/Sawyer on LOST), or they involve resurrecting a years-old relationship when the characters have clearly moved on to new people (Angel/Buffy/Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer), or they’re thrown in to stall time (Ted/Robin/Barney on How I Met Your Mother, Quinn/Finn/Rachel AND Finn/Rachel/Jesse on Glee), or one person is so clearly a better choice than the other that the viewer starts to lose respect for the character caught in the middle (Pacey/Joey/Dawson on Dawson’s Creek).

But there’s nothing I don’t love about the triangle on The Vampire Diaries. I love that Elena has unique, different, constantly evolving relationships with Stefan and Damon. I love that, after three years, her inability to choose between the two brothers feels realistic and true to character, not simply a stalling tactic. I love that Stefan and Damon love her both in spite of and because of the fact that she looks exactly like Katherine. I love that Nina Dobrev, Paul Wesley, and Ian Somerhalder manage to create completely different kinds of chemistry whether they’re playing Stefan and Elena, Stefan and Katherine, Damon and Katherine, Damon and Elena, Flashback!Stefan and Damon, and Present!Stefan and Damon. I love that Stefan and Damon take turns playing the roles of the good brother and bad brother, further complicating Elena’s feelings and their relationship with each other. I love that the relationship between Stefan and Damon is as important, if not more important, than their feelings for Elena, and that they know deep down that they would be completely lost without each other, but are too messed up and stubborn to admit it. I love that this fan-made music video exists:

I love so many things about this complicated, messed-up triangle on The Vampire Diaries, and the articles about tonight’s season finale all indicated that Elena would finally choose between the Salvatore brothers – not once and for all, but for now. Even as a Stefan/Elena fan, I was preparing myself for her to (temporarily) choose Damon. I thought that Elena, missing stability and normalcy and aching for a time where her life was simpler, would choose the brother who had become her support system for the past season, whom she could rely on when Stefan was unpredictable and struggling with addiction.

Instead, Elena chose Stefan.

I should be satisfied with this result. Even though I can’t get enough of this never-ending triangle, I’ve always preferred Elena/Stefan to Elena/Damon, for obvious reasons; if I’m going to choose between a brother who says, “I’ll step back and encourage Elena to make her own decisions, regardless of whether or not I agree with her” and a brother who says, “I MUST PROTECT ELENA AT ALL COSTS especially because her ideas are sometimes stupid!,” I’m going with the brother who supports Elena’s choices. And yet, the end of this episode left me feeling unsettled and wary about the future of the Stefan/Elena/Damon triangle.

That unsettling feeling is largely due to the retcon of Damon having met Elena before Stefan did.

According to the season finale, Damon met Elena on that fateful night that killed her parents and almost killed her. He initially mistook her for Katherine, had a conversation with her, informed her that she was looking for a “love that would consume her,” and then compelled her to forget said conversation. A few hours later, Elena’s parents died and Stefan rescued Elena.

Earlier in the episode, Elena told Matt that she feels like Damon “consumes her” whenever she’s with him. When she talked to Damon on the phone, she told him that she was choosing Stefan, and that “maybe if I had met you first, things would be different.”

Then Elena was in a second car crash and suffered a hemorrhage because she insisted that Stefan rescue Matt before rescuing her. Meredith gave her vampire blood to save her life, and now Elena is awake, and will spend the first episode of season four in transition before becoming a vampire.

Elena becoming a vampire has very many implications for her character and for The Vampire Diaries as a whole, but for the purpose of this post, I want to focus on just one implication: the fact that she will now remember meeting Damon before she met Stefan.

And I don’t know how I feel about that.

First of all, I’m not sure how to interpret the writers’ intentions. I don’t know if we’re supposed to look at this retroactive continuity as foreshadowing or tragedy. Is this revelation about the first meeting of Damon and Elena meant to be a sign of a future true love relationship between the two? Or is it meant to be a sign of the ongoing tragedy that is the life of Damon Salvatore, where every woman he loves will always prefer his brother? Or will the result fall somewhere in between those two ideas?

Secondly, and more importantly, I have serious issues with the idea that Elena finds herself “consumed” by Damon. I have problems with the idea of “consuming” love in general – that overwhelming passion beyond the point of reason is a romantic ideal, or that becoming completely absorbed in another person is a sign of true love.

I have problems with that idea because I think it’s unhealthy; the last thing we should strive for is a Bella/Edward situation where they’re obsessed with each other to the point of neglecting themselves as individuals. But I also have problems with the “consuming love” idea because “consuming love” isn’t what I witnessed between Elena and Damon this past season.

What I saw transpire between Elena and Damon wasn’t a consuming passionate love – if anything, they both were consumed with thoughts of bringing Stefan back to the side of good. No, what I saw between Elena and Damon was a foundation of friendship and support. Elena, having lost five parental figures and the first man she truly loved, sought comfort in her first love’s brother, who proved to be reliable and supportive when she badly needed him. She didn’t fall for Damon because he was the bad boy who tempted her with consuming love. She fell for him because he was her friend.

Through Rose’s monologue in “Heart of Darkness” and Elena’s conversation with Matt in “The Departed,” I’m meant to believe that Stefan’s love is pure and Damon’s love is challenging, that Elena loves Stefan because he made her believe in life, and she has feelings for Damon because she feels “consumed” by him. But the story I watched for the past three years was much more complicated. In the story I watched, Stefan and Damon were assigned the “pure love” and “challenging love” roles in the very beginning, but constantly traded roles whenever Damon showed his good side and Stefan revealed more of his unsavory past. The more we learned about Damon and Stefan, the more the lines blurred between the “good brother” and “bad brother.”

I’m not sure what the writers intend for the love triangle in season four, but I hope they continue to explore the complications in the Stefan/Elena/Damon story instead of placing the brothers in the “pure love” and “consuming love” boxes. Limiting Stefan and Damon to their original roles would un-complicate this twisted, beautiful triangle, and do a disservice to both men and to Elena.

Of course, if this show were not on the WB and aiming for a teen audience, Elena wouldn’t have to choose between the Salvatores at all, and she’d be able to commit to both brothers in a polyamorous relationship. But because this is the WB, I suspect that Elena will have to choose. I can only hope that the choice will eventually involve Katherine coming back to make everything more complicated, because the biggest flaw in season three was too little Katherine Pierce.

Maybe the writers have a point with this “love that consumes you” theory, because I certainly feel consumed by my love for The Vampire Diaries.