Netflix's newest supernatural drama First Kill has been out less than a week, but fans are already begging for more. The show follows Legacy vampire Juliette and monster hunter Calliope as they face off against forces from both their worlds to stay together. They are the epitome of forbidden love, and audiences are hooked.
When fans think of vampire romance series, though, it's hard not to compare First Kill to The Vampire Diaries and its properties. First Kill certainly does not have the CGI budget that TVD does, but it does a lot of other things better than The Vampire Diaries could ever hope to. It seems written in the stars that as The Vampire Diaries leaves television for the first time in thirteen years, a new vampire show is on the rise.
Realistic Teenagers
Aside from season 1 Caroline, few of the characters in The Vampire Diaries felt like realistic teenagers, in looks or behavior. This can be excused with Stefan and Damon, both of whom have over a century of life behind them, but the Mystic Falls teenagers move way too easily from worrying about school to facing apocalyptic threats.
First Kill deserves praise for its casting of Sarah Catherine Hook (27), Imani Lewis (23), and Jonas Dylan Allen (21), all of whom look like actual teenagers. On top of that, the trio struggle with their overbearing parents, act on their impulses, and generally struggle to know what to do in any given situation. In other words, they feel authentically sixteen.
Diverse Representation
The most obvious difference between The Vampire Diaries and First Kill is the way the two handle diverse characters. First Kill centers its queer leads, and builds extensive backstory into its black characters. The Vampire Diaries, on the other hand, has frequently been criticized for handling LGBT and POC characters poorly, with their POC characters suffering more than their white friends and nearly every LGBT character dying tragically.
Where The Vampire Diaries feels like its representation is to check boxes, the characters in First Kill feel properly fleshed out. V. E. Schwab says this was intentional, as she wanted to build a space for a story focused on "two queer girls [where] it's not about them being queer," explicitly in "spaces that didn't always love me" (i.e. the paranormal romance genre).
First Love
The Vampire Diaries did a great job portraying the power of first love with Elena, but that was frequently undermined by the fact that Stefan only took an interest in her to begin with because of her similarity to Katherine. Many fans still prefer Stelena to Delena, but both ships struggled to show tender intimacy instead of fated love and transferred lust.
While there's certainly an argument to be made that Juliette and Calliope have some fated love of their own, they also have the quiet, sweet moments that feel authentic to real first love, from Juliette's awkward party invitation to the two quoting Romeo and Juliet to each other. It's clear that neither ever felt this way about someone before, and the fact that they get so caught up in each other feels earned.
Highlighting Parents and Families
Parents don't tend to last long on The Vampire Diaries, with few playing significant roles in their children's lives and none surviving the finale. In that universe, parents primarily function as pawns to be killed off at the right time. The show, like many teen dramas, doesn't know how to tell interesting stories about teenagers when there are capable adults around.
First Kill, on the other hand, perfectly uses parents and families are major forces in their children's lives. Though they are frequent roadblocks to Cal and Jules's happiness, there is no doubt that the girls love their parents and are loved in return. Audiences would be hard-pressed to find any TV mom who is fiercer in the protection of her children than Talia Burns, and the Fairmont parents are hardly negligent themselves.
Societal Reactions To Repeated Deaths
In The Vampire Diaries, the town of Mystic Falls feels remarkably nonchalant about mysterious deaths, with hundreds of deaths happening in the span of eight and a half years. While the Town Council investigated the "animal attacks" in the early seasons, by the end most citizens seemed to just accept the mass loss of life around them.
In comparison to the sheer apathy of the Mystic Falls population, First Kill feels much more realistic. Three deaths in a short span of time attract attention, and the police and parents are looking for a way to stop it. The decision to make monsters a known entity in the world helps with this, but it largely comes down to building a world beyond the main characters.
Knowledge About Monsters
When The Vampire Diaries began, vampires and witches were the only known creatures out there, with a rare few werewolves. Over the years, that worldbuilding gradually expanded before Legacies opened the floodgates to any number of monsters. Looking back, the characters often seem ignorant for thinking they were the only supernatural creatures out there.
The uncertainty about monsters makes more sense in First Kill, where everyone knows a little bit about monsters, but specific details are known only by hunters and monsters themselves. This background helps establish why Cal would know so much more about monster varieties than Jules, while Jules knows more specific details about her fellow Legacies.
Monster Hunting Groups
There were several vampire hunters in The Vampire Diaries, but few actually interacted with each other. There were individuals who had suffered at vampires' hands, like Alaric, along with the Brotherhood of Five and Rayna Cruz, all of whom had their own distinct motivations and methods.
First Kill avoids potential inconsistencies by introducing the Hunter's Guild, an organization that sends hunters on assignments, controls their training, and oversees potential problems. While it is suggested that rogue hunters exist, most seem to be part of the Guild since it supplies them with structure and .
Family Betrayals
While Damon promised Stefan "an eternity of misery," he didn't exactly follow through on that threat. The brothers may have been rivals, but Damon and Stefan also had one of the best family dynamics in the show. A better example of family betrayal was Caroline's father torturing her, which was absolutely gut-wrenching, but even that was limited to a handful of episodes.
Even giving The Vampire Diaries its due, though, it just doesn't hold a candle to the Burns family tearing itself apart after Theo turned. And that's not even mentioning the repeated betrayals between Juliette, Elinor, and Oliver. The stakes just feel higher in First Kill, because watching how much family mattered to all of them for the first six and a half episodes makes the last two so much more powerful.
Complex Lead Characters
Even The Vampire Diaries' biggest fans will it that Elena isn't a great main character, with Caroline and Bonnie deserving the role for their complex storylines and agency. Elena is at the heart of the love triangle and is frequently targeted by villains for being the doppelganger, but she's mostly ive in both those situations.
Juliette and Calliope don't have that problem. There are many forces beyond their control, but they actively make choices to try to stay with each other. And neither is a paragon of morality, either, with Jules's betrayal of Elinor and Cal's determination to kill Juliette from the start proving that both are far more complex than Elena ever was.
Embracing The Camp
The paranormal genre has never claimed to be high culture, but The Vampire Diaries tended to take itself seriously most of the time, with escalating tensions and serious moral quandaries. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it meant that when it did delve into the more playful elements of the genre, they came across as cheesy, rather than enjoyably campy.
First Kill goes the other way entirely, feeling like a blend of campy B-rated movies and fan fiction tropes. While that's certainly not everybody's preference, it makes the show feel more lively in its playful moments. Sebastian literally eats his mother-in-law to stop her meddling and it kind of works, because that's the tone the show has embraced, a tone which historically is embraced by the queer community.