Image Credit: Justin Stephens/The CW

Last week, news broke that the CW was actively developing a Vampire Diaries spinoff with showrunner Julie Plec that would center on Klaus (Joseph Morgan) — working title The Originals — and that the April 25 episode of TVD would serve as a backdoor pilot. Though she doesn’t want to say too much about a show with a fate unknown, EW was able to get a few teases from her.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The idea of doing a spinoff has been around for a while. Why was the time right to pull the trigger?

JULIE PLEC: It’s actually something that we’ve been talking about for two years, that we contemplated trying to get off its feet last year, but there was just too much work to do in too little time. So that gave us an opportunity this year to spend a lot more time putting it together — seeing if, obviously, our actors had any interest whatsoever continuing the life of these characters [Laughs] and if there was a story to tell. It all came together in a way that we finally felt would not detract from our most important baby right now, The Vampire Diaries, and would give us a chance to expand the universe with characters that we’ve had another year to get to know.

What can you tease about the April 25 episode?

The idea is that a turn of events in Mystic Falls sends Klaus to New Orleans to solve a mystery. He gets word that some people are making a move against him that might concern him. So he heads to New Orleans to try to figure who’s plotting against him and what they’re up to. And in unfolding that mystery, it takes him back to a town that several hundred years ago, he was actually one of the original settlers of and helped build. He reacquaints himself with a vampire that he actually turned back in the day, Marcel, who has created a whole set of rules and a whole society for the supernatural community that he’s in charge of — sort of tipping his hat to Klaus and saying, “You taught me everything I know.” So Klaus’ protegé is now the big king of the supernatural community in New Orleans and Klaus is stepping back into that.  READ FULL STORY »