‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 4 premiere review: Elena gets to choose … again

Immediately after watching the season premiere of “The Vampire Diaries” Thursday night, we immediately had one reaction to it: whoa, this s–t was dark. It clearly was the most violent and most intense premiere of the show to date, and that slight inkling of hope that there was in past seasons was almost completely gone. After all, what is there to play for now? Elena is now a vampire, and there is no longer any thought of her living a normal life.

We will give credit tot he show for making a bold move here, as by the end of the episode, it was pretty clear that Elena was not going to be changing back. Meanwhile, it was also pretty clear that the rules of the game in the context of romance may also now been different. Even though Elena seems to now be completely and totally on Team Stefan, but she does now remember a certain confession from Damon … who spent most of this episode trying to kill Matt over him getting to live while the love of his life is now a vampire.

As Elena said herself at the end of the episode, though, everything is about to change. The council now knows who all of the vampires in town are (though we’re not sure it matters given the explosion at the end), Bonnie’s taking a trip to the dark side and taking her grandmother’s soul in the process, Klaus declared Rebekah “dead” to him after she destroyed the blood of his own dead relatives, and he also escaped Tyler’s body after only being there for one episode. Really, this was the most disappointing part of the hour given that we were looking forward to seeing a few weeks of craziness surrounding Klaus doing some pretty nasty things to Caroline while in her boyfriend’s body.

Overall, this was still a pretty great hour of TV, especially to start the season. We like that the new season started off with a game-changer, and we are not having to wait as long to see a story start to build.

What did you think about the season  premiere?