'Vampire Diaries' Fans Caused Ian Somerhalder's Character to Be Rewritten - Find Out How!

The fans have spoken!

The Vampire Diaries co-creators Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec looked back on the beloved series for an episode of EW’s Binge: The Vampire Diaries.

PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of Ian Somerhalder

During the episode, the creators revealed how fan input caused a change to Ian Somerhalder‘s Damon.

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The character, who started out as a villain in Season 1, became a fan favorite, which posed an issue.

“We can’t have a lovable villain. That’s great and that’s a fan-favorite character, but that doesn’t bring you real storytelling and real stakes,” explained Kevin.

“We had this magnificent villain who could do no wrong in the eyes of the audience and we thought, ‘Let’s give him something really wrong that is unforgivable so we can buy ourselves another year of Damon as the villain and Stefan as the hero,’” added Julie.

Therefore, they made sure to keep him extra bad by having him snap the neck of Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen), younger brother of Elena (Nina Dobrev) in Season 2.

Fans continued to love the character.

“They [were like], ‘Poor Damon, poor Damon, he’s so misunderstood! He just loves Elena so much.’ We were aghast. We were like, ‘What have we wrought? We have basically accidentally created the poster couple for toxic masculinity.’ The women loved him and we couldn’t understand it at all. That was a moment,” Julie went on to recall.

As a result, Katherine (also played by Nina Dobrev) took on the villain role, while Damon worked alongside Elena and Stefan (Paul Wesley) against all the villains who arrived in Mystic Falls. Damon went on to become Elena’s great love, and seemingly went on to live happily ever after with her in the series finale.

Nina Dobrev and Ian Somerhalder also dated from 2010 until 2013, and now, one of their The Vampire Diaries co-stars is speaking out about their split and how it impacted their working relationship.