‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 4: Joseph Morgan, Phoebe Tonkin spin-off confirmed

Just in case you wanted to hear the news coming straight from the network itself, here you go: there will be an official spin-off to “The Vampire Diaries” in development this year, and it will carry with it the title of “The Originals.” Not only that, but the two primary stars for the show are going to be none other than Joseph Morgan and Phoebe Tonkin.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this news, which was confirmed by The CW programming head Mark Pedowitz during the TCA panel on Sunday, was just the fact that at one point last year, Morgan was actually going to be killed off on the show as producers looked to go in a new direction. Now, that direction leads to him being a TV star in his own right. Sadly, there is not much else known about this spin-off at the moment save for the fact that it will air first as a backdoor pilot during an upcoming “Vampire Diaries” season 4 episode later this year, and that it will feature a new character named Marcel who Klaus has some sort of history with dating back to New Orleans centuries ago.

What also remains interesting here is that there are few other shows that so willingly decide that they are going to actually give leading man status to someone who is at their core a villain. With Klaus as a lead, that means that the character will likely continue to be developed so that there is some humanity there; but as for how much, this is unclear. The same goes for what will happen between Klaus and Caroline, largely because we have a hard time seeing Candice Accola making the jump over from the flagship show considering the relationship between her and Tyler.

If you don’t want to get that far ahead of yourself so that you start salivating over this episode (which will probably air in April or May), you can just click here to watch a sneak peek for Sunday’s installment.

Photo: The CW