The Vampire Diaries: 15 Major Flaws Of The Show That Fans Chose To Ignore

The Vampire Diaries ran for eight whole seasons, and given the complex mythical rules and the intricate supernatural history involved, a few plotholes or errors are expected. For the most part, fans of the show had made their peace with the minor glitches in chronology, but there have been some flaws that escaped everyone’s attention.

For instance, vervain affects every original vampire differently, so is concentration a big deal vis-a-vis its effectiveness? Or are the non-hybrid Originals simply vastly different in their powers and strengths? What exactly was the broader significance of The Five? These are just a few other noteworthy flaws that fans simply overlooked.

Updated October 3, 2021 by Hilary Elizabeth: Throughout the eight-season run of The Vampire Diaries, there were quite a few plot holes and logic fails that attentive fans and viewers picked up on. So, this list has been expanded to include even more of the noticeable flaws in the mythology or internal consistency of the series. 

15 The Availability Of Daylight Rings

While The Vampire Diaries did stick with one of the most common pieces of vampire lore when it made its fanged folks burn in the sunlight, the series also came up with an easy workaround so that its characters could walk outside during daytime. Enchanted daylight rings (or it could really be any jewelry) allowed vampires to become daywalkers.

However, when the series first started this magical jewelry was supposedly quite rare. Apparently, the characters of TVD are the luckiest vampires alive, because nearly every single significant vampire character either has or procures a daylight ring throughout the show.

14 Was The Five Even Significant?

As the Originals had to be written out to make way for their spin-off, the fourth season introduced The Five; in fact, the showrunners spent a lot of time establishing the Brotherhood of the Five, which suggested that the band of vampire hunters are important to the broader narrative of the show.

Connor was particularly depicted as a major antagonist and a threat to the vampire population in Mystic Falls, only to be killed by Elena who was a newborn vampire, which is very weird. Plus, the entire arc around the brotherhood eventually only concerned itself with Silas, which felt wasteful.

13 The Originals Were Hardly The First Immortals

The Originals’ claim to fame as the first immortals is actually very questionable, as is eventually revealed during the course of TVD. They are the first vampire generation but are not the first immortals, technically speaking, and it’s strange that they keep using the reference even though they are well aware that it’s untrue.

Mikael, Finn, Elijah, Rebekah, Klaus, and Kol were only immortal unless stabbed with the White Oak Stake. Moreover, Silas had taken the immortality potion centuries before the Originals, making him the true first immortal.

12 The Inconsistent Logic Of The Cure

The show initially claimed that if a vampire takes the cure then they will lose their immortality. However, if any other vampire wanted a human life they would have to drain the person who drank the cure of all of their blood.

The 1994 version of the cure was discovered by Bonnie when she was searching for Silas’ Tombstone in Nova Scotia’s prison world, and she took it back to Earth. And when Elena has the 1994 cure coursing through her veins, Bonnie takes some of it and injects Stefan, which turns him back into a human although there was no draining involved. So, have the rules of the cure changed? If so, why is it never explained?

11 The Vervain Access

Vervain was introduced as a rare herb that can keep vampires from compelling humans and can also burn a vampire. The rarity of vervain was actually stressed repeatedly when it was first introduced.

Throughout the course of the show, however, almost everyone seemed to have quick and easy access to vervain and had even accumulated enough vervain to contaminate the town’s water supply. This major error was overlooked by fans as most viewers never questioned how Mystic Falls stumbled into an overabundance of vervain.

10 The Human Blood Bags Don’t Always Die

The vampire killings lost all discipline as the show progressed, and surprisingly not many viewers commented on how inconsistently people died because of vampire bites. While primary characters could survive even dangerous mid-vein bites on the neck, secondary characters would die even if a vampire simply bit their wrists or sucked lightly on their necks.

This mistake was also repeated quite a few times in The Originals and after a point, things got really predictable, so much so that the viewers immediately knew that if a minor character or an extra was shown being bitten by a vampire they were going to die.

9 Bleeding Arteries

This is actually a criticism that can be levied at nearly every vampire movie and TV series ever made, but The Vampire Diaries is, unfortunately, no exception. And that is the odd fact that so many people have vampires chomping into their necks, which results in little more than a trickle of flowing blood.

Anyone with any basic anatomical knowledge knows that a punctured carotid artery should be gushing like a fountain, not oozing like a normal cut.

8 The Inconsistency With The Founding Year

There have been quite a few signs in Mystic Falls, like the one in the cemetery which claims that the town was founded in 1792. However numerous characters have said on the show that the town was founded in 1860. “Mystic Falls was founded in 1860 when a Lockwood, a Forbes, a Fell, a Gilbert, and a Salvatore gathered to sign the township charter,” Caroline specifically tells Sybil.

Though Sybil explains that the town had already been inhabited by witches, history states that the town was founded in 1860 and not 1792. No one addresses the error in the signs and neither does anyone acknowledge this seventy-year discrepancy in the town’s history.

7 This ID Glitch

This error is rather sneaky so it’s not surprising that fans didn’t take note; viewers are so used to thinking of Mystic Falls as a fictional town that they often forget that according to the canon it’s supposed to be located in Virginia.

In every town in the state of Virginia, the IDs of people under 21 are supposed to be vertical, but when Vicki shows the Sheriff her ID it’s horizontal. Since Vicki is 18 years old, even if she was using a fake ID, it would obviously alert the sheriff.

6 This Embarrassing Art Error

In the season 1 episode titled “Children of the Damned”, Damon reminisces about Katherine in 1864. In one of the sequences a copy of Auguste Renoir’s painting, “Two Girls at the Piano” is seen hanging behind Katherine on a wall.

But this painting was only painted in 1892, a good 28 years after the flashback takes place. It’s surprising that eagle-eyed viewers, especially the ones who are enthusiastic about art, have not noticed this error. And it’s even more surprising that the show didn’t check its dates before including the painting in the show.

5 The Sleeping Beauty Cure

Clearly, when the writers came up with an excuse to write Elena Gilbert out of the show, they really wrote themselves into a corner by inventing the so-called “Sleeping Beauty curse”.

Kai Parker put a spell on Elena that would keep her in a magical coma as long as Bonnie remained alive, but the curse was finally broken in the series finale of The Vampire Diaries. Except there was never any explanation offered as to how Bonnie broke it or what loophole was found to bring Elena back from her slumber.

4 Why Couldn’t Rebekah Overpower Stefan?

In season 4, before Rebekah is neutralized she attempts to escape, but Stefan easily catches up to her and blocks her path. This is technically impossible since Rebekah is an Original and is supposed to be much faster than Stefan, and the show has repeatedly claimed that a vampire’s speed and strength increases with age.

Stefan manages to overpower Rebekah, which is also improbable considering she is supposed to be a lot stronger than Stefan and she should have escaped his grip easily.

3 The “Indestructible” Originals

When the Original family was first introduced into The Vampire Diaries, they were arguably the most powerful supernatural creatures on the planet. They were supposedly true immortals and had been alive for over a millennium.

However, their durability was apparently massively oversold, because, despite the fact that they had lived for centuries, nearly half of the Mikaelson family was wiped out in the course of a few months in Mystic Falls.

2 The Imbalanced Effects Of Vervain

In the season 4 episode titled “American Gothic”, a small portion of vervain manages to leave Rebekah completely unconscious for a long time. But it had been established already that Elijah could recover almost immediately from a large shot of vervain in season 2.

This is quite inconsistent since Rebekah and Elijah are both Originals, and the difference between their powers couldn’t have been this substantial. It seems like the internal logic of the show was forgotten for convenience.

1 Mystic Falls High School Security

Given that The Vampire Diaries is part supernatural thriller and part teen drama, it comes as no great shock that most of the characters in the show are all still in high school.

But what most students who attended school in the last half-century will be understandably baffled by is the fact that the MFHS pupils seem to have nonstop access to the building, and supernatural shenanigans can be afoot without anyone being the wiser. Considering that nearly every American school has tight security, this really makes no sense.

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