The Vampire Diaries has never had a dull episode; in fact, some episodes would be so chock-a-block with gory action and bloody events that the fans would get whiplash. But there was no end to big shocks as some characters weren’t the best decision-makers and some were too selfless and self-sabotaging.
Take Stefan Salvatore for instance. He would jump at every chance to martyr himself and was almost too much of an idealist for a vampire. In his quest to keep everyone around him safe, he made some spectacularly bad decisions. As did Elena, Damon and Rage monster Klaus. So which were the worst life choices on the show?
Elena’s Deal With Elijah
At this point in season 2, it didn’t make any sense for Elena to trust any of the Mikaelson brothers because she had only known them for a few days. Klaus was clearly the baddie back then and when Elijah requested Elena to come to an arrangement that will help him catch Klaus, Elena should have refused him at once. Elijah makes a deal with Elena which states that she has to keep herself safely away from Klaus (so that Elijah can later use her as bait to kill Klaus) and in return, Elijah will protect her friends and also free Stefan who was trapped in a tomb. Getting into a deal with an Original vampire was clearly a bad idea for a human, especially since Elena was somehow a doppelganger, which still makes no sense, and was clearly very sought after by them for selfish reasons and Elijah only wanted to use her.
Stefan’s Decision To Join Klaus
Stefan decided to resume his Ripper alter-ego so he could save Damon who was bitten by a Tyler, a werewolf. Klaus demonstrates to Stefan that the cure for a werewolf bite is the blood of a hybrid and since Klaus was a hybrid, he could heal Damon by giving him some of his blood. Klaus tells Stefan he will give him a vial of his blood if Stefan becomes a ripper again and joins forces with him.
Stefan agrees to this but this was a potential suicide pact because not only did it require Stefan to shut off his humanity but took him to a path of self-sabotage. Stefan wasn’t an original so he wasn’t as immune to all the dangers that Klaus could presumably dodge because of his origins.
Elena’s Decision To Shut Off her Humanity
The TVD fandom has often found the whole ‘shutting of one’s humanity’ thing quite vague; what are the logistics of this? How exactly does it work? Like many other supernatural occurrences, this needs some in-depth explanation but the one thing that’s very obvious is that it makes a person really remorseless and icy, since they can’t feel anything and they tend to venture on a murky path and lose their sense of ethics.
After Jeremy’s death, Damon tells Elena to shut off her emotions to be able to deal with the pain. This makes Elena even crueler and malevolent than Katherine and this move seems like a really bad one considering the damage she caused and also because it was somewhat unnecessary. Granted she had been through too much grief for one lifetime, but there were better ways to deal with her trauma.
Elena’s Decision To Play Games With Elijah
After Stefan learns that Elijah was planning to sacrifice Elena, he tells her that she’s behaving like a martyr. Soon after the Salvatores try to kill Elijah but he comes back to life and reaches the lakehouse to confront Elena. Though he tells Elena that the deal is off, Elena does not believe him and threatens to kill herself and become a vampire so that she will no longer be of any use to him.
Elijah calls out her bluff but to prove her point Elena stabs herself and when Elijah tries to heal her, she tricks him and stabs him with the dagger, killing him once again. This attempt on his life was a bad decision on so many levels because killing the entire episode explored how difficult it was to kill an original vampire. And if she had failed in fatally injuring Elijah, chances are that he would kill her out of revenge.
Stefan And Elena’s Decision To Jump Into The Vervain Well
Broadly speaking, it’s never a good idea to jump into well willy-nilly, and it’s definitely a no-no in a monster-infested town like Mystic Falls where every other turn has a new kind of supernatural being. Bonnie, Stefan and Elena think that the moonstone is hidden under the well near the Lockwood estate, Stefan jumps in only to realize that the water is laced with vervain and gets burnt. Elena helps him come up and drops down herself, and though she finds the moonstone, she gets attacked by snakes. So, clearly, the well was set up like a dangerous treasure box to hurt those who find it; and there had to be more functional ways of dealing with the situation.
Elena’s Decision To Date Both Salvatore Brothers
Though she had developed a connection with both Stefan and Damon, Elena was pretty nasty about how she went from one brother to the other. She began seeing Damon almost immediately after she broke things off with Stefan.
And though Elena and Damon had a foundation of friendship that wasn’t exactly a secret to Stefan. Moreover, Damon and Stefan share a really intricate history and Elena had been the cause of their riff for months since Stefan knew how he felt about Elena, so she really could have handled things better.
Every Time Klaus Made Things Difficult For His Family
Klaus had a lot of rage against his family members and while he had made them suffer for years, and had famously locked them in coffins after daggering each of them. And once can understand Klaus’ animosity towards his father who was clearly evil and hated Klaus, but Klaus could have made things much simpler for himself if he had his sister Rebekkah and Elijah on his side, because despite their differences they clearly cared about him. When it came to his family Klaus had a default setting and that’s hate; though things changed significantly after Haley became pregnant with Klaus’ child, Klaus’ issues against his brother and sister were quite childish and ill-founded and only made things trickier for him.
Klaus’ Decision To Kill His Mother
Klaus kills his mother in the 10th century because he blames her for suppressing his werewolf side; but it’s not that Esther didn’t love Klaus, she was simply persuaded by her husband Mikael to subdue this supernatural side in Klaus. Klaus kills her out of rage and blames it on Mikael. But this was a wrong move because Esther held many secrets about Klaus’ origins since he was the first hybrid.
Plus, Esther was a powerful witch and Klaus overlooked the fact that she can be revived sometime in the future through witchcraft, which is exactly what happens. Esther comes back to Mystic Falls in Season 3 and hatches a plot to kill all her children.
Not Giving Elena Human Blood
Elena’s transition into a vampire was anything but smooth; she was not responding well to animal blood and could barely keep it down. She needed blood from the veins so Damon gave her his own blood but she threw up that as well. It was obvious that she needed human blood, and since it was possible to get access to human blood without killing, why not just give the newborn vampire what she needs? Stefan urged Damon to not feed her human blood since he wanted her to follow the same vampirism rules they follow but neither of them started out with animal blood, so it’s unfair to make Elena suffer for days and keep her in pain when they could have easily introduced the switch in her diet gradually.
Underestimating The Originals
Before they were introduced on the show, the Salvatore brothers refused to take the Originals seriously in spite of being thoroughly aware of their history. Even when Rose warns them and Elena that Klaus is after her and Elena wants to believe her, Damon and Stefan downplay the dangers. “Look, I've never even met anyone who's laid eyes on him. I mean, we're talking centuries of truth mixed with fiction. I mean, we don't know what's real. For all we know, he could just be some sort of stupid bedtime story,” Stefan tells Elena. Though he was doing it so Elena wouldn’t be scared for her life, it would have been smarter to treat the family as a danger right from the start and to make use of the heads up that they got.