The Vampire Diaries, season 3
22 episodes · 19 kept in The Essentials
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Season 3 recap Spoilers — open after watching
This recap reveals the events of season 3.
Stefan's ripper summer, the Original family at full strength, and a hunter who cannot be killed.
Klaus drags Stefan through the South leaving bodies in freezers, trying to rebuild his hybrid army and failing - the sired hybrids die in transition, and the reason traces back to Mystic Falls: the doppelganger is alive. The chase comes home, and with it the whole Original family - daggered siblings in coffins, a mother thought dead for a thousand years, and flashbacks that reset the show's history to the tenth century.
The family reunion is the season's centrepiece: Esther, the witch who made her children vampires, returns with a plan to unmake them all at once, using Elena's blood and a bloodline spell. It fails, but it surfaces the season's governing rule - kill an Original and every vampire descended from them dies too. Suddenly nobody can afford to kill Klaus without knowing whose line they are on.
Alaric, guardian and hunter, is remade by Esther into the anti-vampire: an Original- strength killer with Elena's life as his off-switch. The season's endgame runs his rampage against the ticking of Elena's own story - a return to the bridge where her parents died, Matt driving, Rebekah in the road.
Elena drowns with vampire blood in her system. The finale's last minute is her waking up.
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