Does Damon Salvatore Become Human Again?

This guy is older than the entire United States. He was centuries old when the Declaration of Independence was signed. I wonder if he was here for the Revolution – probably not, he’d have been back in Europe. The show really missed out on exploring this guy’s historical perspective on America, past the founding of Mystic Falls. There’s so much narrative potential in this old, old guy and the show only slightly tapped into it.

I’m trying to figure out what scene this would be from and I think it would be at the end of the season, after they defeated Katherine for good. There wouldn’t be a flash of light or any sort of dramatic change for Stefan to acknowledge that he was back to being human. He would have that moment of realization with Damon at the Salvatore house. Stefan would look at his hands and feel his heart beating. He would know. He would say ‘It’s done’ or something along those lines. The rest of that scene would be pretty quiet and I think it would be really powerful because, after all that supernatural craziness, Stefan is just returning to being human. It’s so simple and grounded and that’s what makes it so powerful. The scene wouldn’t need any special effects. It would just be a really well performed and quiet scene.

Sunlight, cheap perfume, and cinematic mischief — that's how 'Salvatore' lands for me. The song reads like a sun-drenched postcard from an imaginary Italy: lemons, a beach, a white car, whispered names. On the surface it's playful and flirtatious, an old-school fantasy of romance that feels lifted from a 1960s European film. But Lana layers this with her usual slow-burn melancholy and irony, so the sweetness is always tinged with something brittle. I hear the name 'Salvatore' both literally and symbolically. Literally it's the romantic lead in the little movie she paints: a lover, a playmate, someone who tours you around Capri and feeds you lemons. Symbolically, 'Salvatore' means "savior," and that double entendre gives the lyrics more muscle — he's both the one who rescues and the one who complicates salvation. Lana often writes about wanting to be saved while simultaneously glamorizing the chaos that needs saving; this song is a flirtation with that contradiction. Musically and lyrically, the track feels like a role played for effect: breathy vocals, vintage references, and a wink at decadence. For me it’s less a literal story and more a mood piece — a snapshot of longing, performative romance, and the small cruelty of romantic myths. I walk away thinking about how beautifully she packages longing, and I hum the chorus long after the record stops.

You can find out the answer to this question by watching the whole series, but that would take about 8 seasons to watch. I don’t have that kind of time. The answer to this question is yes, Alaric Saltzman dies in Season 8 of The Vampire Diaries. But to really understand Alaric’s death, you have to understand his whole journey throughout the series. His relationship with Caroline Forbes, his fight with Klaus, his attempt to be a good leader to the werewolves, and his never-ending struggle to have control of his life are all things that need to be explored in order to fully understand the end of Alaric Saltzman. His death is just the period at the end of a very long, messy sentence.

I'll try making up a scenario for Damon Darling. He has a hit webcomic with 500,000 monthly viewers on Webtoon. It pays a very low CPM for ads but he’s got a great model for his Fast Passes, and his 2,000 Patreon subscribers at $5/month each bring in $10,000 per month. He sells some merch too, and he managed to score a print volume deal with a publisher. Using $150k to $200k as an estimate for his current yearly income before heaping on taxes, then bulldozing through the host of expenses associated with his lifestyle (which hopefully has changed given the increase in income over the past few years and all), he should find himself to be in the low hundreds of thousands of net worth by the end of 2025. But again, this is all a house of cards, made of several variables. Take one away and the whole thing collapses. Why do I always come back to this? Oh yes, because real finance experts do not speculate on the annual income of webcomic creators.

Formal answer: Season 2, Episode 19. The impact of Klaus's first appearance is that before him the biggest ‘bad guys’ were people (Katherine, the Tomb Vampires etc) that were threatening in terms of causing damage but were in some way contained. What Klaus revealed was that there was something so much greater, something that was Threatening on an existental level, something that was not limited to the town of Mystic Falls and its citizens, but something that involved centuries old curses and threatened the very nature and existence of supernatural species. His first scene (showing him calmly discussing the ritualistic slaughter of a werewolf) immediately established that the way things were before had been ‘background’ to his larger-than-life existence and that the rules of that prior Game had all been about to change in an instant.

27! It's funny, 27 feels so young and yet so old all at once. I re-watched Good Will Hunting recently and the movie still holds up so well. Matt Damon has such a boyish quality about him and I think in particular his scenes as a janitor are so endearing. I think his age contrasted so nicely with Robin Williams' world-weary character and really I don't think the two of them would have worked had Matt Damon been any older. The final scene with Will driving off to Skylar is just so much 20-something hope and promise and longing.

Rebekah is best in her journey to freedom. From her sassy and vengeful character with a secret desire to begin from her first appearance, to her growth in her last appearance, she fights for her autonomy. Whether she is to kill back Klaus or to choose mortality for her, she is not letting anyone tell her what to do. Her costumes are also worthy of an award. From her vintage dresses to her leather jacket, she looks amazing in everything she wears. Her costumes make her even more relatable and her fashion makes her even more unique. Her breakdown from Marcel’s rejection and her journey to start writing her own story is also very relatable. By the end of her journey, Rebekah has earned her humanity, literally and figuratively.

One should not underestimate the sheer amount of output this man is producing. While typical authors could only dream of publishing one book every two years, ‘Eclipse of the Divine’ was pumped out on a 5-chapter-per-week schedule throughout the entire first run. And that is a mountain of IP to license. The entire story, the universe, the characters, the locations, the magical artifacts, it’s all just waiting to be plundered for content in guidebooks, comic books, video games and to be plastered on t-shirts, mugs and other merchandise. And all of this has a far greater valuation than the single book which initially prompted the publisher’s interest. A publisher might license the rights to a guidebook, or a game studio might license the setting for a mobile RPG, and in each case they would have access to dozens of characters, hundreds of locations and scores of magical artifacts to include or to use as basis for their own creativity. The creator’s massive output of writing also keeps a massive fandom engaged in spending, in many cases 24/7/365. Every author has “down years,” where for one reason or another, interest in their work wanes. But not this creator. The constant stream of work from main story chapters, side stories, even chapters from the alternate POV of a minor character in a story—all of this keeps the readers engaged and powers the many revenue streams to pay the creator’s growing wealth. The strategy is, to be frank, merciless. But if you can sustain it, the wealth creation is nothing short of incredible, translating creative output directly into multiple parallel revenue streams a week at a time.

This event is also a turning point for Damon. Although he has done some terrible things in the past, his guilt over Jenna’s death is clearly evident. He turned her to save her and her death had a profound effect on him. In trying to protect Elena and Jeremy from a similar fate, his failure with Jenna affects his decisions in subsequent episodes. It’s one of the few times his quick-fix solution has had disastrous and irreversible consequences for someone the audience cares about. You get to see him struggle with this in subsequent episodes. But, he’s not made instantly a good guy. Instead you get to see more of the bad boy with a guilt complex persona. The first time Damon harms someone that the audience cares about in a very permanent way (as opposed to some random victim) is compelling and really adds to the complexity of his character as well as the complexity of his eventual redemption.