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262. CHARACTER STUDY: KATHERINE PIERCE IN 2X01.
At first, I was going to do my top Katherine moments, but as I was collecting caps, I realised I would be here for an age and I would be taking caps and creating picspams of almost every scene Katherine’s ever been in, especially in Season 2. So, for my entry in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
lands_of_magic’s character study challenge, I want to babble about why I love Katherine Pierce and weave this into the way she was introduced to us on the show in 2x01.
Character: Katherine Pierce
Canon: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Who is Katherine?
Katherine Pierce is one of my favourite characters for a multitude of reasons, and one of those reasons that I feel speaks to the core of her character is her resilience. She has grit to her that I feel has come from her need to survive. She’s a chameleon and a fast learner—and she’s someone who has achieved everything by herself.
She’s a woman of the 1400s who was born into status and had that status ripped out from her when she fell in love with a man we unfortunately never get to learn anything about. When she falls pregnant and has a baby out of wedlock, she’s not only traumatised by never getting to hold her baby and have that one-to-one connection she ends up craving for her entire immortal life, she’s also shunned by her father, disowned, and evicted from Bulgaria to England at 17 years of age. Katerina Petrova has to learn how to adapt to the English culture in order to fit in and survive.
And adapt she does.
She is a woman who has had nothing handed to her on a silver platter. Since being rejected from her family, she has never been given a platter at all. Katherine has had to fight tooth and nail for everything she has ever acquired—and she has had to step on a few people to do so.
She goes up against one of the most formidable characters the TVD narrative has ever described. Klaus Mikaelson is revered. He is the utmost powerful character in the universe. He is described as astute, quick-witted, and intelligent. And yet, he is outwitted by a girl who had been ostracised by her own society and thrust into a world she doesn’t know at all. The icing on the cake is that this 500-year-old immortal vampire is outwitted by a human girl of only approximately 19 years of age.
Katherine honestly doesn’t get the credit she deserves for surviving Klaus all on her lonesome.
Understanding Katherine’s place in the narrative’s world requires an understanding of her antagonism and survival of Klaus, especially because her introduction in 2x01: The Return is because of her reaction to Klaus.
The one thing that Klaus Mikaelson should have done (other than his homework) was understand that Katerina Petrova may appear as a naive girl—and she was, of course; there are clear displays of her naivete as she falls prey to Klaus’ charms and believes he and his brother take her under their wings out of the goodness of their hearts—she is a girl who flourishes in a challenge, especially when her safety is threatened.
The great thing about Klaus and Katherine is their similarities and differences. As they are presented to us as two of the universe’s biggest antagonists (and the narrative tries at times to demonstrate how they are similar without actually going into the fascinating nuts and bolts of those very reasons, reasons that are because of Klaus repeating an abusive familial cycle), they are so intricately intertwined. You cannot have Katherine without Klaus nor can you have Klaus without Katherine.
They both seek to belong. They both want to be loved for who they are. They have both been demeaned and disowned by their fathers. They’re both cunning and willing to put themselves first and sacrifice what they care for to achieve their goals. But where they’re similar, they differ greatly, and this is where I believe Katherine has the upper hand as the show’s most complex and smartest character and as the scariest villain.
Where Klaus is arrogant, Katherine is confident. Where Klaus is emotionally volatile and driven, Katherine, while also emotionally volatile and driven, is able to keep a cooler head. Klaus can see the next five steps in front of him, but Katherine can see 10. Where Klaus relies on the goodwill of his brother Elijah, Katherine has no one to turn to. Klaus is dependent on his siblings’ affection and love and becomes blinded by their alleged betrayals while Katherine gets close to people but doesn’t allow their perceived betrayals to overwhelm her. She cuts her losses, even if they are close friends; Klaus doesn’t.
Katherine is capable of sacrifice because she has had to sacrifice. Her entire character to Klaus Mikaelson is a sacrificial lamb.
Katherine is the only person in the TVD universe who has outsmarted Klaus Mikaelson, and she has done so for 500 years. Not even his own family was able to outwit him. Not even his own father who hunted him for centuries was able to even come close to Katherine in terms of understanding Klaus and being one, if not 20, steps ahead of him.
Katerina Petrova grew hard because she learned quickly that she had to. She is a product of her experiences, which is something I believe the show’s narrative forgot multiple times as it blamed her for her trauma. (Season 2 is a fantastic season as it does begin to unpack her trauma. Unfortunately, the seasons thereafter are steep in misogyny, the whore/Madonna complex, and victim-blaming when it comes to Katherine.) Somehow—and regrettably we never learn more about her time in 1492 England with the Mikaelsons—she learns of how she is destined to die at the hands of Klaus to free him of some curse that will unleash his werewolf side. And so she prioritises herself; she manipulates, she socially networks, and she runs.
And she loses 500 years of her life running from a big bad wolf.
Katherine is a victim as much as she is a survivor.
2x01: Why The Return is One of TVD’s Best Episodes
We first meet Katherine in the present in 1x22: Founder’s Day at the episode’s most pivotal scene. The stakes grow incredibly high and what we had known for several episodes throughout the season—that when Elena Gilbert is on the screen, it’s Elena Gilbert—is turned on its head in the last two minutes of the show.
And it’s all because of Katherine.
What we have come to grow confident in and know is no more. It presents such a fascinating narrative format and lifts the stakes because now we have to ask ourselves "Is this really Elena? Or is it Katherine?"
Elena Gilbert is our protagonist who is a descendant of Katherine Pierce. Elena is also her doppelgänger. The reason why Katherine’s reveal at the end of 1x22 is such a pivotal and jaw-dropping moment (and it’s one even 10 years later and after I’ve watched the episode too many times to count) is that we have only ever seen Katherine in flashbacks in 1864. There was no way—absolutely no way—Katherine Pierce would be gracing our doorsteps in 2010 and we’d be meeting her. It never felt like a possibility all throughout Season 1.
Posing as Elena.
Katherine poses as Elena and kisses Damon—a pivotal moment for that ship, which I won’t speak of as it’s one entirely different meta altogether—and she has a heart-to-heart with John Gilbert, who is Elena’s biological father, before she cuts off his fingers (and thus severing him from the protection of his ring which would resurrect him if he was killed by a supernatural being ala Katherine) and stabs him. She leaves him for dead. It’s such a chilling moment and the crux of Katherine’s character: she is unpredictable, a chameleon, and when she strikes she strikes hard.
I love watching this sequence over and over because I love studying the mannerisms which Katherine embodies to portray Elena. She’s demure. She’s gentle. Even her voice is quieter.
![](https://i.ibb.co/BcV4S0L/kat-spam04.png"")
Katherine’s big reveal.
So why don’t I focus on 1x22: Founder’s Day instead? Because Katherine’s screen time is a teaser to her big introduction in 2x01: The Return. The premiere episode of Season 2 is even in reference to her. Katherine is such a big character who no one at the end of 1x22 is even aware is back in town (save for John Gilbert and his sad fingers).
It’s thrilling to know from the episode title that the audience knows what the characters slowly discover over the episode: Katherine’s back.
Stefan sees Katherine for the first time in 150 years.
I need to preface that I am a big Stefan/Katherine (Steferine) shipper and that this episode is so very coded in Steferine to me.
Stefan is the only person who recognises Katherine posing as Elena as Katherine. This is a testament to his character: he pays attention to people. It’s also a great piece on how Stefan has studied Katherine and remembers her playfulness and the signs of sharpness and cunning she displayed 150 years ago, and how much he loves Elena who is his girlfriend at the time. (It’s also a great opening for a fantastic meta on how Stefan and Damon are two opposing forces in the Stefan/Elena/Damon triangle and how Stefan is and always will be the better match for her.)
To me, the return of Katherine is so fascinating for Stefan because Stefan is a character who very much perpetuates this romanticism of nostalgia through reminiscing about the past through his collection of journals. The fact that we are introduced to him in 1x01: Pilot looking fondly and sadly down at a portrait of Katherine that’s tucked away in one of his journals (a photograph he keeps until its destruction and then continuity error of suddenly not being burnt) is so very telling that despite what Stefan says throughout Season 2, he is not over Katherine. His character is built on romance; Stefan is a romantic character. He does not give up on the past; he lives in it over and over. Despite the beauty of Stefan/Elena, their relationship is coded in Steferine because of Stefan’s past history with Katherine and the way he’s so intricately tethered to her. (He literally takes interest in Elena because of Katherine.)
Katherine returns with a bang. Even with her staple curls and chic black femme fatale attire and look (contrasted to Elena’s straight hair, plain makeup, and more casual and cool girl outfits and Converse shoes), Katherine is able to embody the very essence of Elena so expertly that not even Elena’s childhood friends can recognise that she’s not Elena. Despite her hair being curly, despite her black attire, despite her heeled boots, they accept her as Elena and grant her permission into their lives and, in the case of Tyler Lockwood, into his family home.
Katherine plays with Bonnie.
The only other person who becomes aware of Katherine is Bonnie Bennett and that’s due to her magic. If she wasn’t a witch who could sense supernatural beings via touch, I doubt Bonnie would have clued in that the woman she was speaking to wasn’t Elena without being exposed to her a handful more times.
Bonnie tries to intimidate Katherine and depower her, but what we learn in this sequence is that Katherine is old. She’s able to shrug off Bonnie’s magic. It was established in Season 1 that older vampires were infinitely stronger and needed to be taken down by more powerful forces. Katherine only continues to perpetuate this and it’s very much established at this point that she is an old vampire—older than Stefan and Damon who are around, if not older than, 150. We don’t know Katherine’s age at this point, so her remaining unaffected by Bonnie raises the stakes even higher than they were before.
Katherine toys with Bonnie and pokes fun at her. I’d dare say that this is the moment where Bonnie begins to grow as a witch and become a resourceful magical practitioner. She has to become stronger than 500-year-old vampires like Katherine.
Katherine and Stefan have a tit for tat.
The only character willing to go toe to toe with Katherine is Stefan Salvatore. He tries to get the upper hand, but the issue he faces is the fact that Katherine has approximately 300 years of experience on him. She easily dominates the conversation. They flirt, he openly shrugs off their relationship in 1864 and denies his feelings (a very sharp contrast to his willingness to admit to Elena that he once loved Katherine), and Katherine tries to earn some of his favour.
It also doesn’t help that Katherine holds all the cards. Stefan wants to know why she’s back. Why now? Why after all of this time? He also wants to understand her motivations and choices about the past. While Katherine has her own questions, she knows the answers because all the answers point back to her. Stefan’s in denial about how important Katherine is to him—she is, after all, the very reason why he’s even in Elena’s life. I find it really interesting how Stefan tries to dominate the conversation and dangle a carrot in front of Katherine, but the only carrot he can dangle is his rejection of her.
I think Katherine entertained this conversation with Stefan as she was enamoured by him—he was the first person to ever show her compassion, especially after she had experienced ostracisation and rejection at such a young age and objectification at the hands of Klaus—and I think a part of her couldn’t help but dance with him. Stefan is the only character who sees Katherine as a fully rounded person. It’s prevalent throughout his experiences with her in Season 2 that he’s attracted to her and can’t help but gravitate towards her, and it’s especially obvious in Season 5 (which is a season of dubious characterisation, but one that has heartfelt human moments between the pairing nonetheless). He will always be her Achilles heel (a smaller one in comparison to her daughter).
It’s also very clear that Katherine wants the Salvatores to be distracted by her obsession with him. (I think she also wants Stefan distracted in particular because he is a sharp observer and someone who has studied Katherine well. He knows her and he wants to know and understand her. This accumulates into a fantastic exchange between Katherine and Stefan in 2x07: Masquerade where he begins to break Katherine’s walls as he openly tries to understand her as a person.) I do truly believe Katherine planted these seeds in the hopes of leading them down the garden path and distracting them from her bigger plans, which eventuates into 2x21: The Sun Also Rises.
Stabbity stab.
It’s when Stefan says that he hates Katherine that she quotes her most famous line—"Love, hate. Such a fine line."—and stabs him. This is the only moment throughout their entire conversation where Katherine reacts unpredictably and emotionally. Prior to Stefan’s declaration, she was practically playing with her food.
Katherine is a romantic at heart. Remember when I said I believe Stefan is one, too? When you put two romantics together who are both jaded in their own ways, you get Steferine.
Stefan refuses to open himself up to Katherine because she hurt him in 1864. Katherine refuses to let Stefan all the way in—she doesn’t trust him, not completely, despite him being the only character in our main protagonist circle that she shows throughout the season she does trust and is willing to work with—because she has been rejected and betrayed one too many times. Katherine embodies "Fool me once, shame on you" while I think Stefan embodies "Fool me twice, shame on me". He’s willing to give people chances. Katherine isn’t.
Damon unsuccessfully tries to gain the upper hand.
When we see Katherine again, it’s with Damon. She taunts him a little. He’s hopelessly in love with the idea of her. The great difference between Damon and Stefan is that Damon isn’t willing to perceive Katherine as a whole entity like Stefan is. To him, she exists on a pedestal. In 1864, she represented his freedom from beneath his father’s oppressive and abusive thumb. When Katherine came to Mystic Falls 150 years ago, she had in her hand the key to Damon living life on his own terms. He wanted to be a vampire not to be solely with Katherine, but to live the way he wanted to and to attain power over his father.
Damon’s infatuation with Katherine (and, in my opinion, Elena) is all about power. He chased after Katherine because Stefan refused to. He wanted what Stefan had: his father’s approval and the affections of a beautiful girl. Damon’s entire world revolves around what Stefan has and what he, Damon, lacks. Damon refuses to see Katherine as a well-rounded being. All he sees is this woman he chased after for 150 years who owes him her affection in return.
You can see the moment where his heart breaks.
Katherine remains guarded while she flirts with Damon. She enables the situation to go further and almost lead to sex, but it’s Damon’s sentimentality and his need to be loved—to have acceptance, something he didn’t have as a child nor young man from his father—that stops the situation from escalating and he opens himself up. It’s a beautifully vulnerable moment for Damon and it’s one that’s so heartbreaking to witness when you understand this man has dislodged all of his walls for this woman. (This moment is Damon at his best.)
And Katherine rejects him. She utters another infamous line: "It’s always going to be Stefan."
The one thing you need to understand about Damon is that he has always been compared to Stefan and seen as inferior. He’s not the perfect son like Stefan is. He’s not the perfect lover, not like Stefan is. Stefan is the good, flawless one where people turn their gazes away from his flaws while Damon is perceived as the bad, flawed one where people refuse to turn their gazes to his good qualities. (It doesn’t help that Damon acts out and perpetuates this perception.)
Katherine’s final rejection of him causes Damon to spiral. The narrative and the characters unfairly put the onus of Damon’s subsequent actions on Katherine. It’s "Katherine makes Damon crazy" not "Damon is crazy about Katherine". The narrative unfairly expresses its misogyny in its gaslighting of Katherine for the actions of a man who is more than capable of making his own decisions.
But the one thing I love about this exchange is that Katherine’s expression goes from frustrated and guarded to openly vulnerable with Damon. I personally believe she understands what she’s doing. She’s pushing Damon away. She has to. In order for her to achieve the goal that’s brought her back to Mystic Falls, she needs Damon, who is unpredictable and very, very emotionally volatile, to be far away from her so she can succeed. So, she responds cruelly and twists the knife into his heart.
Katherine isn’t heartless. She’s intelligent—emotionally and socially. She uses Damon’s insecurities about Stefan and wields them against him as a weapon. She incidentally or purposefully (I like to believe it’s intentional considering how Katherine has openly admitted to studying Elena) nourished his own insecurities and projections onto Elena (who is the Salavatores’ second chance with a more palatable version of Katherine) and twists the knife. And you can tell that she understands she is breaking his heart and it breaks hers. Katherine’s a romantic, but she is a survivor. No one comes before her. Nothing comes before her survival, not even love, which is the very thing she craves.
"Game on."
The stakes continue to get higher and higher and it accumulates in a very powerful and striking moment between Katherine and a helpless, recovering human Caroline. Caroline was in a car accident and was fed Damon’s blood to ensure any life-threatening injuries healed. The way vampirism works in TVD is that you need to have vampire blood in your system and die.
So, what do you think Katherine does?
Caroline mistakes her for Elena and when Katherine corrects her, Caroline is understandably confused. Katherine says "I want you to give the Salvatores a message for me." "What message?" Caroline asks in frustration. "Game on." She then suffocates Caroline with a pillow and begins her transition as a vampire.
This very moment cements the fact that Katherine is a villain our protagonists have never gone up against before. She’s an opportunist and she’s a strategist. Did she know Caroline was going to be hurt? No. But she took that as her opportunity to pull a new player onto the chessboard so she could achieve her endgame. She is disarming and unpredictable and ruthless. But all of her decisions and actions are intentionally done. Katherine has a big game plan and she’s only just begun moving her pieces on the chessboard.
In Conclusion.
One of my favourite things about Katherine is that she was once a pawn on the chessboard who was perceived as weak and easily malleable. But she manoeuvred her way to the other side and survived each blow and turned herself into the most powerful piece on the board: the queen.
2x01: The Return is one of my favourite Katherine episodes because it’s packed with so many rich layers. What we see on the surface is a manipulative flirt who torments the Salvatores and Elena Gilbert. What we see beneath the surface is a woman who is looking to plant her seeds of distraction and deceit and a survivor who has come back to her past and is facing it. She weathers the insults and the walls the boys she used to know erect between them.
Katherine does something that the Salvatores fail to do: she sees through the bullshit of the past and thrives in the messiness of it. Stefan came back to Mystic Falls for Katherine and found Elena. Damon came back to Mystic Falls to mess with Stefan because he cannot break out of his cycle of making his entire existence orbit around his little brother. The boys repeat the past while Katherine seeks to break it, and this episode is the origin of the audience being able to see this mission of Katherine’s commence.
The writing, the acting, the production and the story that unfolds from this point on are also incredibly enjoyable, too. Katherine enhances the season so much. She is such a great character and so wild and unpredictable on-screen. Even after watching this show many, many times, Season 2 is always the peak of television for me because of its twists, narrative choices and character dynamics… and, of course, because of Katherine.
She is formidable, intelligent, cunning and so, so dangerous. And that makes her a fantastic antagonist. But what makes her a thrilling antihero is her moments of vulnerability. Katherine has a very human longing: she wants to be accepted and loved. And the reason why she chases after Stefan is that he gave her a slip of it when, after 300 years, she was treated as an object, derided and degraded.
Katherine is TVD’s best-developed character. I love her journey in Season 2 in particular. She is unapologetically herself and regardless of how the narrative frames her actions, she owns her shit and she is more than justified in going up against our protagonists. She is so thrilling to watch and a multilayered character. I admire her for her strength. She perseveres, no matter what, and does so true to her own character. Even when she can turn off her emotions and not feel a thing, Katherine refuses to because her emotions are the one thing no one can take from her.
Kai Parker describes Katherine succinctly in Season 8: "The myth. The legend. The baddest bitch of all." And that she is.
Sig tags.
lands_of_magic’s character study challenge, I want to babble about why I love Katherine Pierce and weave this into the way she was introduced to us on the show in 2x01.Character: Katherine Pierce
Canon: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Who is Katherine?
Katherine Pierce is one of my favourite characters for a multitude of reasons, and one of those reasons that I feel speaks to the core of her character is her resilience. She has grit to her that I feel has come from her need to survive. She’s a chameleon and a fast learner—and she’s someone who has achieved everything by herself.
She’s a woman of the 1400s who was born into status and had that status ripped out from her when she fell in love with a man we unfortunately never get to learn anything about. When she falls pregnant and has a baby out of wedlock, she’s not only traumatised by never getting to hold her baby and have that one-to-one connection she ends up craving for her entire immortal life, she’s also shunned by her father, disowned, and evicted from Bulgaria to England at 17 years of age. Katerina Petrova has to learn how to adapt to the English culture in order to fit in and survive.
And adapt she does.
She is a woman who has had nothing handed to her on a silver platter. Since being rejected from her family, she has never been given a platter at all. Katherine has had to fight tooth and nail for everything she has ever acquired—and she has had to step on a few people to do so.
She goes up against one of the most formidable characters the TVD narrative has ever described. Klaus Mikaelson is revered. He is the utmost powerful character in the universe. He is described as astute, quick-witted, and intelligent. And yet, he is outwitted by a girl who had been ostracised by her own society and thrust into a world she doesn’t know at all. The icing on the cake is that this 500-year-old immortal vampire is outwitted by a human girl of only approximately 19 years of age.
Katherine honestly doesn’t get the credit she deserves for surviving Klaus all on her lonesome.
Understanding Katherine’s place in the narrative’s world requires an understanding of her antagonism and survival of Klaus, especially because her introduction in 2x01: The Return is because of her reaction to Klaus.
The one thing that Klaus Mikaelson should have done (other than his homework) was understand that Katerina Petrova may appear as a naive girl—and she was, of course; there are clear displays of her naivete as she falls prey to Klaus’ charms and believes he and his brother take her under their wings out of the goodness of their hearts—she is a girl who flourishes in a challenge, especially when her safety is threatened.
The great thing about Klaus and Katherine is their similarities and differences. As they are presented to us as two of the universe’s biggest antagonists (and the narrative tries at times to demonstrate how they are similar without actually going into the fascinating nuts and bolts of those very reasons, reasons that are because of Klaus repeating an abusive familial cycle), they are so intricately intertwined. You cannot have Katherine without Klaus nor can you have Klaus without Katherine.
They both seek to belong. They both want to be loved for who they are. They have both been demeaned and disowned by their fathers. They’re both cunning and willing to put themselves first and sacrifice what they care for to achieve their goals. But where they’re similar, they differ greatly, and this is where I believe Katherine has the upper hand as the show’s most complex and smartest character and as the scariest villain.
Where Klaus is arrogant, Katherine is confident. Where Klaus is emotionally volatile and driven, Katherine, while also emotionally volatile and driven, is able to keep a cooler head. Klaus can see the next five steps in front of him, but Katherine can see 10. Where Klaus relies on the goodwill of his brother Elijah, Katherine has no one to turn to. Klaus is dependent on his siblings’ affection and love and becomes blinded by their alleged betrayals while Katherine gets close to people but doesn’t allow their perceived betrayals to overwhelm her. She cuts her losses, even if they are close friends; Klaus doesn’t.
Katherine is capable of sacrifice because she has had to sacrifice. Her entire character to Klaus Mikaelson is a sacrificial lamb.
Katherine is the only person in the TVD universe who has outsmarted Klaus Mikaelson, and she has done so for 500 years. Not even his own family was able to outwit him. Not even his own father who hunted him for centuries was able to even come close to Katherine in terms of understanding Klaus and being one, if not 20, steps ahead of him.
Katerina Petrova grew hard because she learned quickly that she had to. She is a product of her experiences, which is something I believe the show’s narrative forgot multiple times as it blamed her for her trauma. (Season 2 is a fantastic season as it does begin to unpack her trauma. Unfortunately, the seasons thereafter are steep in misogyny, the whore/Madonna complex, and victim-blaming when it comes to Katherine.) Somehow—and regrettably we never learn more about her time in 1492 England with the Mikaelsons—she learns of how she is destined to die at the hands of Klaus to free him of some curse that will unleash his werewolf side. And so she prioritises herself; she manipulates, she socially networks, and she runs.
And she loses 500 years of her life running from a big bad wolf.
Katherine is a victim as much as she is a survivor.
2x01: Why The Return is One of TVD’s Best Episodes
We first meet Katherine in the present in 1x22: Founder’s Day at the episode’s most pivotal scene. The stakes grow incredibly high and what we had known for several episodes throughout the season—that when Elena Gilbert is on the screen, it’s Elena Gilbert—is turned on its head in the last two minutes of the show.
And it’s all because of Katherine.
What we have come to grow confident in and know is no more. It presents such a fascinating narrative format and lifts the stakes because now we have to ask ourselves "Is this really Elena? Or is it Katherine?"
Elena Gilbert is our protagonist who is a descendant of Katherine Pierce. Elena is also her doppelgänger. The reason why Katherine’s reveal at the end of 1x22 is such a pivotal and jaw-dropping moment (and it’s one even 10 years later and after I’ve watched the episode too many times to count) is that we have only ever seen Katherine in flashbacks in 1864. There was no way—absolutely no way—Katherine Pierce would be gracing our doorsteps in 2010 and we’d be meeting her. It never felt like a possibility all throughout Season 1.
Posing as Elena.
Katherine poses as Elena and kisses Damon—a pivotal moment for that ship, which I won’t speak of as it’s one entirely different meta altogether—and she has a heart-to-heart with John Gilbert, who is Elena’s biological father, before she cuts off his fingers (and thus severing him from the protection of his ring which would resurrect him if he was killed by a supernatural being ala Katherine) and stabs him. She leaves him for dead. It’s such a chilling moment and the crux of Katherine’s character: she is unpredictable, a chameleon, and when she strikes she strikes hard.
I love watching this sequence over and over because I love studying the mannerisms which Katherine embodies to portray Elena. She’s demure. She’s gentle. Even her voice is quieter.
Katherine’s big reveal.
So why don’t I focus on 1x22: Founder’s Day instead? Because Katherine’s screen time is a teaser to her big introduction in 2x01: The Return. The premiere episode of Season 2 is even in reference to her. Katherine is such a big character who no one at the end of 1x22 is even aware is back in town (save for John Gilbert and his sad fingers).
It’s thrilling to know from the episode title that the audience knows what the characters slowly discover over the episode: Katherine’s back.
Stefan sees Katherine for the first time in 150 years.
I need to preface that I am a big Stefan/Katherine (Steferine) shipper and that this episode is so very coded in Steferine to me.
Stefan is the only person who recognises Katherine posing as Elena as Katherine. This is a testament to his character: he pays attention to people. It’s also a great piece on how Stefan has studied Katherine and remembers her playfulness and the signs of sharpness and cunning she displayed 150 years ago, and how much he loves Elena who is his girlfriend at the time. (It’s also a great opening for a fantastic meta on how Stefan and Damon are two opposing forces in the Stefan/Elena/Damon triangle and how Stefan is and always will be the better match for her.)
To me, the return of Katherine is so fascinating for Stefan because Stefan is a character who very much perpetuates this romanticism of nostalgia through reminiscing about the past through his collection of journals. The fact that we are introduced to him in 1x01: Pilot looking fondly and sadly down at a portrait of Katherine that’s tucked away in one of his journals (a photograph he keeps until its destruction and then continuity error of suddenly not being burnt) is so very telling that despite what Stefan says throughout Season 2, he is not over Katherine. His character is built on romance; Stefan is a romantic character. He does not give up on the past; he lives in it over and over. Despite the beauty of Stefan/Elena, their relationship is coded in Steferine because of Stefan’s past history with Katherine and the way he’s so intricately tethered to her. (He literally takes interest in Elena because of Katherine.)
Katherine returns with a bang. Even with her staple curls and chic black femme fatale attire and look (contrasted to Elena’s straight hair, plain makeup, and more casual and cool girl outfits and Converse shoes), Katherine is able to embody the very essence of Elena so expertly that not even Elena’s childhood friends can recognise that she’s not Elena. Despite her hair being curly, despite her black attire, despite her heeled boots, they accept her as Elena and grant her permission into their lives and, in the case of Tyler Lockwood, into his family home.
Katherine plays with Bonnie.
The only other person who becomes aware of Katherine is Bonnie Bennett and that’s due to her magic. If she wasn’t a witch who could sense supernatural beings via touch, I doubt Bonnie would have clued in that the woman she was speaking to wasn’t Elena without being exposed to her a handful more times.
Bonnie tries to intimidate Katherine and depower her, but what we learn in this sequence is that Katherine is old. She’s able to shrug off Bonnie’s magic. It was established in Season 1 that older vampires were infinitely stronger and needed to be taken down by more powerful forces. Katherine only continues to perpetuate this and it’s very much established at this point that she is an old vampire—older than Stefan and Damon who are around, if not older than, 150. We don’t know Katherine’s age at this point, so her remaining unaffected by Bonnie raises the stakes even higher than they were before.
Katherine toys with Bonnie and pokes fun at her. I’d dare say that this is the moment where Bonnie begins to grow as a witch and become a resourceful magical practitioner. She has to become stronger than 500-year-old vampires like Katherine.
Katherine and Stefan have a tit for tat.
The only character willing to go toe to toe with Katherine is Stefan Salvatore. He tries to get the upper hand, but the issue he faces is the fact that Katherine has approximately 300 years of experience on him. She easily dominates the conversation. They flirt, he openly shrugs off their relationship in 1864 and denies his feelings (a very sharp contrast to his willingness to admit to Elena that he once loved Katherine), and Katherine tries to earn some of his favour.
It also doesn’t help that Katherine holds all the cards. Stefan wants to know why she’s back. Why now? Why after all of this time? He also wants to understand her motivations and choices about the past. While Katherine has her own questions, she knows the answers because all the answers point back to her. Stefan’s in denial about how important Katherine is to him—she is, after all, the very reason why he’s even in Elena’s life. I find it really interesting how Stefan tries to dominate the conversation and dangle a carrot in front of Katherine, but the only carrot he can dangle is his rejection of her.
I think Katherine entertained this conversation with Stefan as she was enamoured by him—he was the first person to ever show her compassion, especially after she had experienced ostracisation and rejection at such a young age and objectification at the hands of Klaus—and I think a part of her couldn’t help but dance with him. Stefan is the only character who sees Katherine as a fully rounded person. It’s prevalent throughout his experiences with her in Season 2 that he’s attracted to her and can’t help but gravitate towards her, and it’s especially obvious in Season 5 (which is a season of dubious characterisation, but one that has heartfelt human moments between the pairing nonetheless). He will always be her Achilles heel (a smaller one in comparison to her daughter).
It’s also very clear that Katherine wants the Salvatores to be distracted by her obsession with him. (I think she also wants Stefan distracted in particular because he is a sharp observer and someone who has studied Katherine well. He knows her and he wants to know and understand her. This accumulates into a fantastic exchange between Katherine and Stefan in 2x07: Masquerade where he begins to break Katherine’s walls as he openly tries to understand her as a person.) I do truly believe Katherine planted these seeds in the hopes of leading them down the garden path and distracting them from her bigger plans, which eventuates into 2x21: The Sun Also Rises.
Stabbity stab.
It’s when Stefan says that he hates Katherine that she quotes her most famous line—"Love, hate. Such a fine line."—and stabs him. This is the only moment throughout their entire conversation where Katherine reacts unpredictably and emotionally. Prior to Stefan’s declaration, she was practically playing with her food.
Katherine is a romantic at heart. Remember when I said I believe Stefan is one, too? When you put two romantics together who are both jaded in their own ways, you get Steferine.
Stefan refuses to open himself up to Katherine because she hurt him in 1864. Katherine refuses to let Stefan all the way in—she doesn’t trust him, not completely, despite him being the only character in our main protagonist circle that she shows throughout the season she does trust and is willing to work with—because she has been rejected and betrayed one too many times. Katherine embodies "Fool me once, shame on you" while I think Stefan embodies "Fool me twice, shame on me". He’s willing to give people chances. Katherine isn’t.
Damon unsuccessfully tries to gain the upper hand.
When we see Katherine again, it’s with Damon. She taunts him a little. He’s hopelessly in love with the idea of her. The great difference between Damon and Stefan is that Damon isn’t willing to perceive Katherine as a whole entity like Stefan is. To him, she exists on a pedestal. In 1864, she represented his freedom from beneath his father’s oppressive and abusive thumb. When Katherine came to Mystic Falls 150 years ago, she had in her hand the key to Damon living life on his own terms. He wanted to be a vampire not to be solely with Katherine, but to live the way he wanted to and to attain power over his father.
Damon’s infatuation with Katherine (and, in my opinion, Elena) is all about power. He chased after Katherine because Stefan refused to. He wanted what Stefan had: his father’s approval and the affections of a beautiful girl. Damon’s entire world revolves around what Stefan has and what he, Damon, lacks. Damon refuses to see Katherine as a well-rounded being. All he sees is this woman he chased after for 150 years who owes him her affection in return.
You can see the moment where his heart breaks.
Katherine remains guarded while she flirts with Damon. She enables the situation to go further and almost lead to sex, but it’s Damon’s sentimentality and his need to be loved—to have acceptance, something he didn’t have as a child nor young man from his father—that stops the situation from escalating and he opens himself up. It’s a beautifully vulnerable moment for Damon and it’s one that’s so heartbreaking to witness when you understand this man has dislodged all of his walls for this woman. (This moment is Damon at his best.)
And Katherine rejects him. She utters another infamous line: "It’s always going to be Stefan."
The one thing you need to understand about Damon is that he has always been compared to Stefan and seen as inferior. He’s not the perfect son like Stefan is. He’s not the perfect lover, not like Stefan is. Stefan is the good, flawless one where people turn their gazes away from his flaws while Damon is perceived as the bad, flawed one where people refuse to turn their gazes to his good qualities. (It doesn’t help that Damon acts out and perpetuates this perception.)
Katherine’s final rejection of him causes Damon to spiral. The narrative and the characters unfairly put the onus of Damon’s subsequent actions on Katherine. It’s "Katherine makes Damon crazy" not "Damon is crazy about Katherine". The narrative unfairly expresses its misogyny in its gaslighting of Katherine for the actions of a man who is more than capable of making his own decisions.
But the one thing I love about this exchange is that Katherine’s expression goes from frustrated and guarded to openly vulnerable with Damon. I personally believe she understands what she’s doing. She’s pushing Damon away. She has to. In order for her to achieve the goal that’s brought her back to Mystic Falls, she needs Damon, who is unpredictable and very, very emotionally volatile, to be far away from her so she can succeed. So, she responds cruelly and twists the knife into his heart.
Katherine isn’t heartless. She’s intelligent—emotionally and socially. She uses Damon’s insecurities about Stefan and wields them against him as a weapon. She incidentally or purposefully (I like to believe it’s intentional considering how Katherine has openly admitted to studying Elena) nourished his own insecurities and projections onto Elena (who is the Salavatores’ second chance with a more palatable version of Katherine) and twists the knife. And you can tell that she understands she is breaking his heart and it breaks hers. Katherine’s a romantic, but she is a survivor. No one comes before her. Nothing comes before her survival, not even love, which is the very thing she craves.
"Game on."
The stakes continue to get higher and higher and it accumulates in a very powerful and striking moment between Katherine and a helpless, recovering human Caroline. Caroline was in a car accident and was fed Damon’s blood to ensure any life-threatening injuries healed. The way vampirism works in TVD is that you need to have vampire blood in your system and die.
So, what do you think Katherine does?
Caroline mistakes her for Elena and when Katherine corrects her, Caroline is understandably confused. Katherine says "I want you to give the Salvatores a message for me." "What message?" Caroline asks in frustration. "Game on." She then suffocates Caroline with a pillow and begins her transition as a vampire.
This very moment cements the fact that Katherine is a villain our protagonists have never gone up against before. She’s an opportunist and she’s a strategist. Did she know Caroline was going to be hurt? No. But she took that as her opportunity to pull a new player onto the chessboard so she could achieve her endgame. She is disarming and unpredictable and ruthless. But all of her decisions and actions are intentionally done. Katherine has a big game plan and she’s only just begun moving her pieces on the chessboard.
In Conclusion.
One of my favourite things about Katherine is that she was once a pawn on the chessboard who was perceived as weak and easily malleable. But she manoeuvred her way to the other side and survived each blow and turned herself into the most powerful piece on the board: the queen.
2x01: The Return is one of my favourite Katherine episodes because it’s packed with so many rich layers. What we see on the surface is a manipulative flirt who torments the Salvatores and Elena Gilbert. What we see beneath the surface is a woman who is looking to plant her seeds of distraction and deceit and a survivor who has come back to her past and is facing it. She weathers the insults and the walls the boys she used to know erect between them.
Katherine does something that the Salvatores fail to do: she sees through the bullshit of the past and thrives in the messiness of it. Stefan came back to Mystic Falls for Katherine and found Elena. Damon came back to Mystic Falls to mess with Stefan because he cannot break out of his cycle of making his entire existence orbit around his little brother. The boys repeat the past while Katherine seeks to break it, and this episode is the origin of the audience being able to see this mission of Katherine’s commence.
The writing, the acting, the production and the story that unfolds from this point on are also incredibly enjoyable, too. Katherine enhances the season so much. She is such a great character and so wild and unpredictable on-screen. Even after watching this show many, many times, Season 2 is always the peak of television for me because of its twists, narrative choices and character dynamics… and, of course, because of Katherine.
She is formidable, intelligent, cunning and so, so dangerous. And that makes her a fantastic antagonist. But what makes her a thrilling antihero is her moments of vulnerability. Katherine has a very human longing: she wants to be accepted and loved. And the reason why she chases after Stefan is that he gave her a slip of it when, after 300 years, she was treated as an object, derided and degraded.
Katherine is TVD’s best-developed character. I love her journey in Season 2 in particular. She is unapologetically herself and regardless of how the narrative frames her actions, she owns her shit and she is more than justified in going up against our protagonists. She is so thrilling to watch and a multilayered character. I admire her for her strength. She perseveres, no matter what, and does so true to her own character. Even when she can turn off her emotions and not feel a thing, Katherine refuses to because her emotions are the one thing no one can take from her.
Kai Parker describes Katherine succinctly in Season 8: "The myth. The legend. The baddest bitch of all." And that she is.
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