How Did Jeremy Gilbert'S Relationships Shape His Character Arc?

Later scenes always felt like the fallout of everything that came before: Jeremy behaving with a cautious, almost resigned maturity that was clearly purchased with pain. If you reverse-engineer his arc, you can see a pattern — losses force introspection, mentorship offers tools, romantic ties break trust but also open emotional range, and friendships tether him to humanity. He doesn’t flip from boy to hero in an instant; instead, relationships keep nudging him. On a personal note, I appreciated how the writers didn’t erase his trauma with a tidy victory lap. Instead, they let him carry memories of Vicki and Anna, the steady influence of friends, and the complicated guidance from older figures into decisions that feel earned. That slow accretion of influence makes his quieter moments — when he actually chooses to stand with the group or walk away — land with more weight. It’s a mature kind of storytelling that still makes me ache.

I get emotional thinking about Jeremy because his arc is essentially spliced together by relationships. Each loss rewired him: grief made him volatile, mentorship made him resourceful, and friendship made him compassionate. Romantic relationships exposed his vulnerability and how easily he could be hurt, while his sister’s presence clipped his worst impulses with a constant, if sometimes suffocating, love. The result is a character who’s shaped less by a single event and more by an accumulation of people — each one adding a scar, lesson, or rare comfort.

I talk about Jeremy like he’s a friend because his growth is so relationship-driven. If you map it, romance teaches him limits and loss, friends teach him loyalty and boundaries, and the older, protective figures give him skills and moral complication. His bonds make him both impulsive and heroic at different times — impulsive when grief or love blinds him, heroic when loyalty or guilt pushes him forward. I also love the nuance: sometimes relationships are toxic, sometimes protective, and sometimes painfully ambiguous. That ambiguity is why his arc feels lived-in, not scripted, and why I keep coming back to his scenes when rewatching.

I still think about how much of Jeremy’s identity was written through other people. He wasn’t just a side character who reacted — he absorbed trauma and lessons from almost everyone around him. Elena’s sisterly protection made him stubbornly self-sacrificing, even when that meant making terrible choices. Watching him try to reconcile his anger after loss with the need to protect others felt heartbreaking and real.

Romantic stuff shaped him too: heartbreak with Vicki and the complicated bond with Anna layered his sense of trust and mourning. And the mentorship-type relationships — not naming titles, but the older figures who tried to steer him — pushed him toward a path he didn’t choose by instinct, sometimes toward hunting, sometimes away from violence. Friendship saved him as often as romance scarred him. Bonnie’s friendship, especially, forced him to confront how much he could ask of people and what he owed them in return. All those ties converge into a guy who’s learned to carry a lot, sometimes too quietly.

Watching Jeremy grow in 'The Vampire Diaries' always felt like reading someone’s messy, beautiful coming-of-age story through the lens of supernatural chaos. I saw him start as a kid trying to hold his family together, then get dragged into loss after loss. His relationship with Vicki pushed him into the harshest early lessons — betrayal, grief, and the way romantic pain can make you reckless. That trauma didn’t just vanish; it echoed into how he trusted people later.

Then there’s Anna and the more complicated, bittersweet attachments that taught him empathy for the undead and a weird kind of maturity about mortality. Friendships mattered too: the steadiness of people like Matt and Alaric gave him grounding, while his bond with Bonnie exposed him to loyalty, sacrifice, and sometimes the unfairness of being tied to someone else's power. Damon and Stefan represented two equally dangerous but different influences — temptation versus protection — and Jeremy’s choices often reflected whichever voice was louder in his life at the moment. By the time he becomes more purposeful, the relationships have reshaped him into someone who’s scarred but responsible, less reactive, and more willing to carry weight for others. It’s messy, but I love that his arc isn’t about being fixed — it’s about learning to live with what his relationships cost him and what they gave him.