Bloodlines & Houses
Elena Gilbert
The last doppelgänger
Seventeen and newly orphaned when the series starts. Her biological parents are Isobel Flemming — later a vampire — and John Gilbert; she was raised by John's brother Grayson and his wife Miranda, both of whom drowned when their car went off Wickery Bridge. Stefan Salvatore pulled her unconscious from the water because Grayson refused to be saved first, then enrolled in her school because she has Katherine's face.
Her blood is the key to a thousand-year-old curse. She dies on Klaus's altar in 2010 and comes back; she dies with Damon's blood in her in 2012 and turns; she takes the cure in 2015 and is put to sleep by a spell binding her life to Bonnie's. She wakes in 2017, grows old with Damon, and dies of nothing supernatural whatsoever, which is the most radical thing the show ever does.
Details
- Her sire bond to Damon is the show's most uncomfortable idea and it does not pretend otherwise.
- John Gilbert traded his own life for hers through a Bennett spell — the one genuinely selfless thing he ever did.
- Amara, Tatia and Katherine all wear her face. Nina Dobrev plays all four across two thousand years.