The Vampire Diaries was the soapy, supernatural, romance drama series of choice for teens throughout the 2010s. Following the new girl to Mystic Falls, Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), The Vampire Diaries tracks her love life caught between two vampire brothers: Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Damon (Ian Somerhalder). Over the course of eight seasons, the show introduces other vampires, werecreatures, witches, and more as the romance pool expands and the friend group grows. In the midst of personal drama, the characters also save the world on occasion.
A young woman arrives in a quaint small town and finds love is basically the plot of every Hallmark Channel original movie ever made. Without the trappings of the supernatural, The Vampire Diaries, at its heart, is comparable to what's on Hallmark. This means the core characters all have a Hallmark archetype that would fit in well on the channel.
Elena Gilbert As World Weary Woman
The romantic pairings in a large majority of Hallmark Channel original movies can be divided into two categories: Big City Businessman and the Sweet Hometown Girl or the World Weary Woman and the Sweet Hometown Guy. While there are variations, usually around royalty, these tend to be the character types. Elena Gilbert of The Vampire Diaries falls into the female lead category, specifically the World Weary version.
The World Weary female lead comes to the small town due to family reasons, business, or both with no belief in Christmas or love and finds it over the course of the movie. After witnessing her parents' death, Elena arrives at the start of the series very disconnected from the world before finding her belief in love with her two potential pairings.
Stefan Salvatore As Sweet Hometown Guy
At the start of the series, Stefan has settled into life in Mystic Falls when Elena arrives in town. He knows the local culture and acts as one of Elena's love interests. Since Stefan and Damon need to be opposite of each other in of character, then he best fits the Sweet Hometown Guy type.
In Hallmark media, the Sweet Hometown Guy owns and operates either a farm or a small diner. He's very involved in his hometown life and brings a bit of comfort to the World Weary female lead, who he almost always ends up with. This character also tends to wear a brown leather jacket, flannel, or cozy sweaters.
Damon Salvatore As Big City Businessman
In The Vampire Diaries, the Salvatore brothers are very much opposites of each other. With Stefan's Hallmark character type as the Hometown Guy, then Damon is the Big City Businessman. Interestingly enough, there are two versions of this character type that appear in Hallmark Movies, which also reflects Damon's character development in The Vampire Diaries. One is antagonistic, usually paired with the World Weary female lead at the start of the movie before getting dumped, and wants his girlfriend to give up on the small town and come back to the big city.
When the Big City Businessman is used as a romantic male lead in a Hallmark Channel movie, he tends to be dissatisfied with his life in some way. It takes going to a small town and falling for a Sweet Hometown Girl, who owns a bridal shop or a small bakery, to find renewed interest in life. In The Vampire Diaries, Damon grew from an antagonist into his own romantic male lead potential, eventually ending up with Elena.
Caroline Forbes As Sweet Hometown Girl
While Elena's love triangle between the Salvatore brothers did take center stage for a lot of The Vampire Diaries, one of the second female leads in the series, especially in of romance, is Caroline Forbes (Candice King). In fact, she winds up marrying Stefan at the end of the show. That's a sort of interesting inversion of the Hallmark Channel archetype Caroline falls into: Sweet Hometown Girl.
The Sweet Hometown Girl is a beloved member of the small community where she lives. She tends to either be a local figure of some note or own a popular small business. Typically, she ends up with the Big City Businessman, after teaching him how to love.
Bonnie Bennett As The Best Friend
One of the most powerful characters in The Vampire Diaries, Bonnie's (Kat Graham) romance plots tend to take a backseat to others. Unfortunately, her roles in both a Hallmark Channel movie and The Vampire Diaries remain pretty much the same: The Best Friend. While The Best Friend may have a secondary plot within a Hallmark movie, maybe even a romance of their own, they aren't the focus of the story, even if they are the more interesting character.
While Bonnie may be an uber-powerful witch in the universe of The Vampire Diaries, it's likely she would take on a less supernatural but still similar Best Friend part in a Hallmark Channel movie.
Enzo St. John As Best Friend's Boyfriend/The Guy Friend
Enzo St. John (Michael Malarkey) inhabits two roles looking at the various Hallmark movie archetypes. The first role ties to Bonnie, which is the Best Friend's Boyfriend. The Best Friend and her Boyfriend tend to be together at the start of the story, usually to offer wisdom to either female lead. Sometimes, there is a subplot where the Boyfriend becomes the love interest to the Best Friend, but that tends to be rarer than starting the story already a couple. Either way, the impact on the plot isn't that huge overall.
The other role that Enzo would fill is that of The Guy Friend. This secondary role tends to be a friend of the male lead, and he usually encourages them to go after their love interest. The Guy Friend either is in a relationship or stays single throughout the Hallmark movie.
Alaric Saltzman As The Wise Old Person
In most Hallmark movies, there's an older character who mentors the protagonist (usually the Big City Businessman or World Weary woman) by welcoming them to the area and serving as a dispenser of wisdom to the younger generation. Also, usually in Christmas movies, this person may or may not be Santa or magic in some way. Over the course of the series, Alaric does offer advice and wisdom, but he really comes into his mentorship role in the spinoff Legacies.
In The Vampire Diaries, Alaric is a teacher and does get turned into a vampire briefly. He even fits into the whole "may or may not be magical" clause for this type of Hallmark character.