‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 7 premiere reaction: Show boss on frequent flash-forwards, mystery woman

The seventh season of “The Vampire Diaries” started up on The CW Thursday night, and it was very clearly a different world for many of our characters … especially when you jump forward three years. The flash-forwards throughout the episode confirmed that Damon had decided to lock himself in a coffin until Elena woke up (i.e. when Bonnie died), and when Stefan did wake him, it was clear that a woman was attacking them.

Who is she? At the moment, nobody is saying definitely, but executive producer Julie Plec makes it very clear to The Hollywood Reporter that this narrative device is something that you are going to see the show revisit often throughout the season:

“We are going to spend this season catching up to the three years from now. These flash-forwards are a lot of fun, because they give you little pieces of mystery, and it’s going to leave you wondering what the big story is. How did these people get to where they are? There should be a flash-forward in almost every — if not every — episode this season.”

Aside from who is after Stefan and Damon, of course you have to wonder just where Caroline, Bonnie (in the present Damon’s friend), Alaric, and many of the other important characters are. What could cause Damon to think that it is better for him to just go away rather than try to cultivate these relationships? If we had to construct a theory right now, our guess is that he ultimately believes that it is a better move for him to go off in hiding than do anything to jeopardize any of their lives. He may not think that he can function well without him.

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