Where to watch The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017)

Trivia & production notes

• Kevin Williamson initially had little interest in developing The Vampire Diaries because he thought the premise was too similar to Twilight, but Julie Plec convinced him to read the books and he became intrigued by the small-town story beneath the surface.
• The pilot episode was filmed in Vancouver, but the rest of the series was shot in Covington, Georgia, which served as the fictional town of Mystic Falls and provided local tax incentives for production.
• A fire broke out in May 2012 at the Covington building that was used as the setting for Mystic Grill on the show.
• Kevin Williamson requested that the second season not receive an extra episode order, preferring to produce 22 high-quality episodes rather than 24.
• Nina Dobrev revealed in 2025 that despite being the show's main character, her salary was lower than those of co-stars Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley throughout the show's run, with equal pay only coming in the series finale.
• The series premiere on September 11, 2009 was the CW's biggest premiere at the time with 4.91 million viewers, reaching 5.7 million when DVR numbers were included.
• Critics were initially mixed on the pilot, with Entertainment Weekly giving it a B+ while the San Francisco Chronicle called it awful, but many reviewers felt the series improved significantly with each episode.
• The second season premiere had a much higher Metacritic score of 78 compared to the first season's 57, indicating a shift toward generally favorable reviews.
• A 2016 New York Times study found that The Vampire Diaries had the smallest amount of geographic variation in its fanbase among the 50 TV shows with the most Facebook Likes.
• The show was renewed for an eighth and final season consisting of 16 episodes, which aired from October 2016 to March 2017.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Vampire Diaries, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.