A Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls - By Red Page 0,12

another, she dropped any idea of going after the guy herself and jumped fully into wingman—or wingwoman, as the case may be—mode. She facilitated getting the two love-birds together. It wasn’t until Bonnie started to get psychic feelings about Stefan’s past that her acceptance of him started to waver. When she found out what Stefan really is—and then when his brother Damon’s insistence on opening a tomb full of bloodthirsty vampires inadvertently caused the death of her grandmother—Bonnie knew that she could no longer just go along with whatever Elena wanted. Bonnie is a fiercely loyal friend, but her loyalty will only stretch so far when it conflicts with her ideas of right and wrong.

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Damon and the other vampires posed a serious danger to Bonnie’s friends and family. And since Bonnie is one of the few people in Mystic Falls with the power to take them on, she couldn’t just stand by and let them overrun her town—

no matter how many fuzzy feelings her best friend, Elena, may have toward certain members of their species . . . leading Bonnie to ultimately betray the best friend she’s been so loyal to all her life.

Betrayer or Hero?

I don’t know about you, but I was completely shocked when Bonnie revealed that she lied to Elena about removing the spell from Johnathan Gilbert’s device—but honestly, I should have seen it coming. Based on Bonnie’s belief system, her strength as an independent character, and her desire for everyone she loves to, as Katerina Graham explained in an interview with MTV’s Hollywood Crush, “be okay, to be safe . . . [and for nothing] bad to happen to her friends and family,” I should have known that Bonnie wouldn’t have dis-abled the only device she knew of that could possibly help destroy vampires—even if her best friend asked her to.

Because Bonnie isn’t your typical Sidekick character who will do anything for the main character with unwavering faith, she couldn’t go against what she knew to be right. But what really shocked me was that Bonnie didn’t just refuse to remove the spell. No, the surprising part of this twist was that Bonnie was willing to lie to her best friend, Elena, and 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 29

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the Salvatore brothers—to go through the motions of removing the spell, so Damon would be willing to hand the supposedly inert device over to Uncle John—in order to do what in her mind was the right thing.

Watching this development in Bonnie’s character sent all sorts of questions through my writer brain. Was this lie the beginning of a downward spiral for Bonnie? Was this the first clue that the evolution of her character may take her to much darker places, and may make her willing to do much worse things, in the name of doing what she believes to be right?

What’s interesting to note with the result of this step in Bonnie’s evolution is that once again the writers of The Vampire Diaries were subverting the typical best friend tropes, this time twisting the typical result of the “best friend betrayal.” I kept expecting Bonnie’s lie to blow up in her face—and so did Bonnie, considering how she told Caroline that she knew Elena would never ever forgive her for what she’d done—but ultimately Bonnie’s decision to lie about breaking the hex actually resulted in the town being saved from the tomb vampires. Uncle John was able to use the active device to incapacitate and destroy the mob of vengeful vampires before they massacred the Founding Families at the town’s Founders Day fireworks celebration. In Bonnie’s mind, and I’m sure in the minds of any inhabitants of Mystic Falls who actually knew the truth, she really did do the right thing. Although her decision put someone her best friend cared about (Damon) in danger (trapped in a fiery basement), with Bonnie’s eventual help, that person was rescued in time. The narrative 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 30

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