When Does Elena Gilbert Become A Vampire In The Vampire Diaries?

This post contains spoilers for "The Vampire Diaries."

In season 3 of "The Vampire Diaries," Original vampire Elijah Mikaelson (Daniel Gillies) writes Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) a letter tinged with regret. "Your compassion is a gift, Elena. Carry it with you, as I will carry my regret," Elijah writes, appealing to Elena's humanity and her conscious choice to forgive/empathize. This is just one of many instances that highlight how crucial Elena's humanity is to "The Vampire Diaries", especially while she's surrounded by undead vampires with skewed, questionable moral compasses.

These supernatural beings are complex in their motivations as well, as both of her love interests — vampire brothers Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Damon (Ian Somerhalder) Salvatore — have disparate attitudes toward human lives and covet Elena for different reasons. Although Elena brings out the best (and worst) in the Salvatore siblings, she is also acutely aware of the mindless bloodlust that comes with vampirism and how tragic such an existence can be. So, when Elena becomes a vampire after an unexpected turn of events, the firm moral anchor of the show is completely dismantled. As vampirism heightens every discernible emotion, Elena's innate empathy battles with her newfound thirst for brutality, leading to a moral tussle that leaves her completely broken.

Unlike Bella Swan's persistent desire to sparkle under the sun in the "Twilight" saga, Elena never wanted to be a vampire, even after falling in love with their kind. Although Elena is initially presented as just another teenager navigating intense grief, it is soon revealed that she is a Petrova Doppelgänger, doomed to endlessly repeat past cycles of loss and trauma. This revelation ties in directly with her eventual vampirism, which becomes inevitable once we realize that she cannot outrun fate. With this in mind, let's take a look at when and how Elena becomes a vampire, and whether she can cope with this new stage of existence throughout the show.

A string of convoluted events occurs by the end of season 3 of "The Vampire Diaries," inadvertently leading to Elena's tragic death. Long story short, the Original hybrid Klaus Mikaelson (Joseph Morgan) targets Elena, as her blood is the key to creating a line of hybrids that will be subservient to him. While Klaus kidnaps Elena to drain all the blood out of her system, Tyler (Michael Trevino) saves her at the last moment, taking her to the hospital. After recuperating, Elena makes the difficult decision to return to Mystic Falls and stay with her friends (even if it means being in constant danger), prompting her friend Matt (Zach Roerig) to drive her back home. However, Rebekah (Claire Holt) deliberately causes the vehicle to crash, making the car swerve off Wickery Bridge and plunge into the water below.

Although a distraught Stefan arrives on time to save them, Elena urges him to save Matt first. He does, but by the time Stefan pulls Elena out of the water, she breathes her last. Unbeknownst to everyone involved, Elena had vampire blood in her system when she died, as Dr. Meredith Fell (Torrey DeVitto) had injected it into her system to save her from the fatal injuries inflicted by Klaus. There are several factors involved in this complex situation, but the gist of the matter is that the regenerative vampire blood in her bloodstream prevents her from truly dying, causing her to return as a vampire in season 4, episode 1, "Growing Pains."

What Elena undergoes in this episode is truly her worst nightmare. To complete her transformation, Elena must ingest human blood, but she tries her utmost to do this without taking a life. She undergoes every stage of grief while navigating heightened emotions, and is faced with the choice to either live with her choices or "turn off" her humanity and become a monster devoid of remorse. What occurs next is a life-altering decision that completely changes the show's status quo, with Elena's core personality gradually being erased by vicious, self-serving instincts.

Halfway through the show, we're introduced to The Cure, a highly coveted potion that can reverse immortality and vampirism, turning the user back into a mortal. An interesting conundrum is presented with this MacGuffin, as the existence of The Cure tempts even the most ruthless vampires to give humanity another chance. As it turns out, even Original vampires like Rebekah desperately desire to be human, as she craves a simpler existence that doesn't involve constant conflict and (literal) backstabbing, due to which she often spends decades inside a coffin. In the end, only a handful of people choose to ingest The Cure, including Elena and Damon, who decide to reject their immortal natures and grow old together.

Although Elena's decision to drink The Cure in Sseason 6 (after which Dobrev left the show) isn't unexpected or controversial, it is surprising that Damon, who had always embraced his bloodthirsty impulses without remorse, decides to become human. One could argue that falling in love with Elena changed something fundamental inside him, but seasons 4-6 paint the couple in a rather complicated light. After all, Damon and Elena mirror one another, bringing passion and toxicity into a relationship that feels awfully co-dependent, and that is unlikely to change after they embrace mortality. The show glosses over these nuances anyway, as their decision to be human together is wrapped in a neat "happily ever after" bow that isn't very interesting to begin with (even when they are mentioned several times in the short-lived spin-off series, "Legacies"). 

If you ask me, the true tragedy of Elena Gilbert lies in the fact that she was robbed of her innate compassion and thrust into an existence marked with grief and carnage without her consent. Although most vampiric transformations in the show are involuntary, Elena's humanity eroding in real-time changes her personality into something wholly unrecognizable. In the end, one cannot help but feel that Elijah's sincere words in his letter to Elena foreshadow the terrible cost of not holding on to compassion as tightly as she should've.