'Legacies' season 2: It's time Julie Plec retires the old vampire in love with high school student trope from her shows
Vampires have remained quite relevant in mainstream pop culture for more than a decade now, more so, the handsome vampire "boy" in high school story -- mainly because of the release of the 'Twilight' movies starting in 2008. While Edward Cullen and Bella's romance saga broke box office records, countless young adult novels and TV shows rode on that popularity. The biggest of those is of course, 'The Vampire Diaries' (TVD) based on L.J. Smith's 90s novel of the same name, developed by Julie Plec which premiered on The CW in 2009. TVD then resulted in the spinoffs 'The Originals' and now 'Legacies'. In season 2, a new character, Sebastian, played by Thomas Doherty, will be added as a love interest for the young witch, Lizzie Saltzman (who is still in high school). The problem? Sebastian is touted to be a "really old vampire".
This issue has been raised from the time 'Twilight' came out. A 100+ years old vampire romancing a teenage girl (Kristen Stewart) is highly questionable, especially if the vampire is as creepy as Edward Cullen. When TVD came out, the issue was raised again, first with Stefan (Paul Wesley) - who even though is physically a teenager, is more than a hundred years old - and then Damon (Ian Somerhalder) - which is not excusable since Damon was already an adult when he turned into a vampire.
But this is not a recent problem. There was Joss Whedon's 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' where Angel (David Boreanaz) and Spike (James Marsters) both, have relationships with high school student, Buffy,(Sarah Michelle Gellar) and the show often depicted graphic sexual scenes. A more disturbing moment, however, was in the 1994 movie, 'Interview With The Vampire', where the kiss between Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) and Louis (Brad Pitt) raised controversy. Dunst was 11 years old at the time of filming, with Pitt being 31.
Teen Vogue wrote about television's statutory rape problem, they considered shows like 'Pretty Little Liars' (Aria and Ezra) and 'Riverdale' (Archie and Ms. Grundy), but we think these vampire romances need to be added to the list. Yes, one can argue that physically these vampires are still teenagers, there is no way that they can argue these vampires have not matured mentally as well. When there is such a big age gap involved, and they have lived their lives for a considerably longer time than the teenage people they are pursuing, the power dynamics in their relationships are clearly tilted towards one side.
Plec's 'The Originals' mostly managed to avoid this, except for the romance between 16-year-old witch Davina (Danielle Campbell) and Klaus's brother Kol (Daniel Sharman and Nathaniel Buzolic). The first season on 'Legacies' managed to avoid this trope, with both Milton (Quincy Fouse) and Kaleb (Chris Lee) both being only recently-turned vampires. But with the introduction of Sebastian, who has been teased as being over 600 years old and "with old ideas about the way things work".
This is quite problematic, and this is without taking into account that Lizzie (Jenny Boyd)- whose love interest he is rumored to be - already has trouble coping with her mental illness and this, in turn, tilts the power dynamics scale further in favor of the old vampire. A good relationship that is healthy for every individual requires the power dynamics between them to be balanced, otherwise, the relationship will just end up being toxic. This was something the viewers clearly saw in Damon and Elena's (Nina Dobrev) relationship on TVD.
Perhaps it is time for Plec and everyone else to retire this trope, putting together two individuals who have had vastly different lives because of the number of years they have lived. Just because one is a vampire and is frozen in time as a teenager, the actual age difference does not merit that these two individuals are equal.