Damon Salvatore had many great character moments on The Vampire Diaries. The beloved vampire had his whole journey on the show that took him from a villainous character to one of the most endearing ones on the show due to his romantic relationship with Elena.
But the actor playing him, Ian Somerhalder always loved the character’s darker shades and was all too happy when the show gave him a chance to play the character in the original way again in the show’s seventh season.
Ian Somerhalder on Damon’s return to his darker roots
With Elena’s long slumber in the seventh season of the hit vampire drama, the makers of the show had an opportunity to bring back some of the old characteristics of Damon’s character back into focus as he had a chance to be a little more darker again.
When the show started, Damon Salvatore was the dark horse of the show with a very villainous tone to his character, but over the seasons as the character got more involved with Elena and got into a romantic relationship with her, he was relegated to being the customary boyfriend character and started to lose some of his darker traits.
“The story is just going to change form and I think that we get to go back to this really awesome dark, edgy, volatile story—all the s–t that we all love.” Somerhalder had said of the character going back to his original villainy.
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Ian Somerhalder on the post-apocalyptic Mystic Falls
With the various directions the makers decided to take the show in its sixth season, The Vampire Diaries found itself with a chance to initiate a soft reboot of the entire show and have the characters be in a very interesting phase of their individual journey.
With Elena out of the equation for a while, the character that was most impacted by her had a chance to be brought back and flourish on his own terms and that was the initial season’s darker take on Damon Salvatore. “Elena told him some things that allow him to move on,” Ian Somerhalder had said, adding, “He’s a 170-year-old man with an endless amount of wisdom.” This proved the show’s ability to reinvent itself and surprise the audience in an interesting way.
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