3 Debates 'TVD' Writers Should've Had

Not everything was always so set in 1,000-year-old stone for The Vampire Diaries and its characters. Just in time for the show's 100th episode, which will air Thursday on The CW at 8 p.m., its executive producers Julie Plec and Caroline Dries opened up about some things that almost weren't. The CW's first vampire drama has been unpredictable and full of twists since day one and its set to go through even more big changes following tonight's episode — but what if your favorite storyline ended up differently or never existed at all? Plec and Dries clued EW.com in to the seven biggest debates from the TVD writers' room that could've made for a very different show.

The Vampire Diaries television show was conceived out of a young adult series by the same name but — much like Gossip Girl fans learned when that television adaptation aired in 2007 on the network — just because it's written in a book, doesn't mean it's going to show up on screen. So when Plec, Dries and the rest of the show's writers sat down to map out the series, they had to make crucial decisions about when to stick to the novels, when to walk away, and how best to aggregate that content for television. Thus, leading them to these seven biggest debates from the writers' room:

1. Will the show have flashbacks?
2. When will Elena become a vampire?
3. When will Stefan and Elena break up?
4. What can Damon do once he learns about the sire bond?
5. Should we bring Jeremy back?
6. Who should take the cure?
7. Do we bring Silas onto the show?

Pretty huge debates right? How would we have retained anything from the Salvatores' and Katherine's pasts if not for those notorious flashbacks? And did you know and Plec and fellow creator Kevin Williamson toyed with the idea of Elena NEVER transitioning into a vampire? Even the arguably most boring storyline of the series thusfar — Stefan as Silas' doppelgänger — almost didn't happen until someone made a joke about it being so. So we can definitely see where TVD's writers were coming from when they battled from all sides to figure out these series-altering questions, but we can think of a few questions that they missed. Or at least a few questions that should've been debated more than what Damon should do about the sire bond. (This might just be me thinking down to the bare bones, but he has two choices — to leave or to stay.)

Here's the three debates we think should've been more important:

Matt Donovan

We don't even need to pose a question because everything about Matt Donovan's existence is a question. Like, why is he still alive? And how has he made it this far? He's the only remaining human on the show and sure, he's a great friend to everyone and usually proves to be helpful but what the hell else does he do? Matt dated Elena before she fell for Stefan and then dated Caroline and Rebekah but half the time we see him behind the bar at the Mystic Grill and that's it. In season five the writers threw him a little bone when he ended up, unwillingly, attached to Katherine's daughter Nadia and the short-lived Travellers storyline and that's basically it. And everyone always has to worry about him getting hurt or dying and that's just unnecessarily stressful.

How many degrees of Doppelgänger Curse?

At the end of season four we learned that Stefan was Silas' doppelgänger and at the beginning of season five we found out that Katherine and Elena were both doppelgängers of Silas' true love, Amara, who also happened to be the world's first immortal. Amara is the starting point for the Petrova doppelgänger bloodline and Silas was the start of the Salvatore bloodline. Not so confusing but now we're up to multiple degrees of the doppelgänger curse that originally started with Elena and Katherine. We also were under the impression that the Petrova doppelgängers existence had something to do with being food for Klaus' hybrid army, which they did by acting as main components for breaking the Sun and Moon curse. And now we just learned that the doppelgängers are destined to fall in love — which really throws a wrench into Elena being so in love with Damon Salvatore when really, Stefan is her match.

So there's a little doppelgänger in every sub-plot of TVD. In its simplest form, the curse is supposed to be nature's way of keeping natural order, by created "shadow selves" of immortal beings that are meant to live and die. But all of the shadows that we've seen on the show have turned immortal at one point or another (this isn't including the ones that preceded Stefan), so how the hell is this even working? There's a lot going on with this so we think it needed a little more debate before introduction.

Should Bonnie come back? Should she die at all?

Bonnie died and hovered on the other side for the most of the beginning of season five where she communicated solely with Jeremy because he was the only one that could see her. When Amara died and ceased to be the physical anchor to the "Other Side", Bonnie took over and inhabited a physical body again. Which was cool, I guess — but now we have to watch Bonnie suffer and wail and scream every time a dead supernatural being's spirit passes through her to get to their final resting place.

Bonnie's been the best/worst for awhile now because she's so overwhelmingly heroic — and that same heroism is what caused her to die in the first place. When she tried to use Expression, again, to bring Jeremy back to life, she ended up killing herself in process. Plec asserted that Jeremy needed to come back to help Elena find herself again after losing her humanity — but then maybe Bonnie should've stayed dead. Now she's just back making out with Jeremy and constantly being in pain. Bonnie's fate just needed a little more thinking through because she's just an emotional liability now.

Images: The CW, fanpop