Doppelgänger

STATUS

Extinct (Elena dies in a flash-forward)

RELATED SPECIES

Humans

Immortals

Vampires

Witches

DISTINCTION

Mystical, naturally occurring humans born physically identical to the first two Immortals.

Doppelgängers, also known as Shadow Selves or Mortal Shadow Selves, were a supernatural occurrence that were created by Nature. After Silas and Amara became true immortals by consuming Qetsiyah's immortality elixir, they violated the natural law that all living things must die. Nature found a balance by creating mortal shadow selves that could die. For this reason, doppelgängers have existed for as long as immortals, having been born and died in the place of Silas and Amara.

There are only two doppelgänger "lines" that rippled throughout history, colloquially known as the Salvatore and Petrova doppelgängers. Stefan Salvatore and Tom Avery are Silas' doppelgängers while Tatia, Katerina Petrova and Elena Gilbert are Amara's.

With Elena's death in I Was Feeling Epic, doppelgängers are extinct.

Creation

Qetsiyah, one of the most powerful witches of all time and member of very gifted people called the Travelers, created a spell for immortality with the intention that she and her true love, Silas, would drink it together at their wedding. However, Silas stole the immortality elixir and used it on himself and his true love, and Qetsiyah's handmaiden, Amara. When they drank the immortality elixir, they violated the natural law that all living things must die, so Nature found a balance by creating mortal shadow selves of Silas and Amara that could die in their place.

According to Qetsiyah, many identical versions of Silas and Amara have been born over the centuries, finding each other time and time again as though drawn together by destiny. However, it was later revealed by Markos that he had cast the spell on the two respective lines of doppelgängers to draw them together so they could eventually break the curse on their people by harvesting the blood of the sole remaining doppelgängers of each line.

History

Over two thousand years ago in

ancient Greece

, a young witch named Silas was engaged to be married to Qetsiyah. Together, they were the most powerful members of a gifted people called the Travelers. Silas told Qetsiyah that he wanted their love to last forever, even beyond death, and he convinced her to create a spell that would make them immortal. On the night that their wedding ceremony was to take place, Silas absconded with the elixir Qetsiyah had created, and as Qetsiyah watched the plant life around her wither before her eyes, she realized that not only had Silas taken the elixir and left her at the altar, he had also given her portion to someone else. She sought out Silas and found him in the wilderness with another woman – her handmaiden, Amara.

Silas returned to their hiding place to find Qetsiyah crouching over the chalice that had held the elixir they were to drink at their wedding. He cautiously inquired after Qetsiyah's purpose for being there, so she explained that, to follow up her first gift of the immortality elixir, she had brought a second gift: the Cure for immortality. Silas was dumbfounded, hardly believing her, but she insisted that it worked, as she had already used it on another immortal. Filled with dread, Silas ran into the tent he had shared with Amara, only to find blood soaked into every surface, as though someone had been brutally slaughtered there. Qetsiyah followed him into the tent and lifted a bloody human heart out of the chalice, admitting that she had slit Amara's throat before ripping her heart out. She then gave him an offer to take the cure and spend the rest of his human life with Qetsiyah, an offer that Silas refused.

In retribution for betraying her, Qetsiyah used Amara's petrified immortal body to create the Anchor to her supernatural purgatory ,known as the Other Side. She then lured Silas to an island off of what is now Nova Scotia, Canada, where she trapped him inside a tomb and gave him a choice: he could take the cure and eventually die a mortal death (which would then cause him to pass on to the Other Side, where he would be trapped with her for eternity in the afterlife) or he could stay immortal and starve into petrification for the rest of his immortal life. Silas ultimately chose the latter and desiccated for the next two thousand years while the cure was left untouched.

Tatia was a descendant of Amara and was her first known shadow-self. She lived in the New World in what eventually became Mystic Falls, Virginia, in the late 10th and early 11th centuries as a contemporary of the Mikaelson Family. Even though she had already had a child by another man, a Viking warrior who had died in battle, both Elijah and Klaus fell in love with her and fought each other for her affections. Tatia ended up choosing Elijah over Klaus in the autumn of 1001 AD. Shortly afterward, their mother, the powerful witch Esther, came to Tatia to ask her for some of her blood to use in a spell, presumably because she knew Tatia was a doppelgänger due to her plan to use a modified version of Qetsiyah's immortality spell to turn her husband Mikael and her five surviving children into immortal creatures after the death of her youngest son. Using Tatia's blood she crafted a spell that turned her family into the Original vampires. This eventually lead to the revelation of Esther's infidelity after Klaus made his first human kill and triggered his werewolf gene. Tatia later found out of the monster that Elijah became and he inadvertently lashed out and killed her due to his uncontrolled blood-lust when she injured her hand. Esther would eventually use her blood once more to cast the Hybrid Curse on Klaus to make his werewolf side dormant in a futile attempt to make up for her sins to her husband and the Spirits of Nature for disrupting the balance.

Powers and Abilities

Blood: Doppelgängers, being mystical and recurrent, are sources of great magical power.

The blood of a doppelgänger can be used to link supernatural beings with the help of magic conducted by any witch.

Their blood can also be used to bind an extremely powerful curse or spell or to use as a power source in spells that require more magic than the witch in question possesses on their own.

For some spells, the blood must come from a human doppelgänger. For other spells, the blood of a doppelgänger can still be used even if they've been turned into a vampire, as seen in Death and the Maiden when Qetsiyah used Elena's blood (along with Katherine and Amara's blood) to transfer the Anchor from Amara to Bonnie. There are certain spells and uses that require the doppelgänger to be "pure" and human, however, like the undoing of the Hybrid Curse and the siring of hybrids.

The blood of the last two "living" doppelgängers can be used to reverse spells cast using non-traditional forms of magic, especially Spirit Magic (e.g. turning a vampire back into a (dead) human, undoing the spell that bound the Other Side, reversing the spells cast on daylight rings for vampires, removing a triggered gene in those cursed with lycanthropy, etc).

Weaknesses

Magic: Doppelgängers are still susceptible to the powers of witchcraft. Given the right spells, casting a spell on one doppelgänger will affect that of another.

Mortality: Despite their mystical occurrence, doppelgängers share similar weaknesses as humans (e.g. age, decapitation, disease, heart-failure, suffocation, etc.).

First Known Doppelgängers

Tatia was born during the 10th century A.D. in the area where Mystic Falls was to be formed. She was a contemporary of the Mikaelson Family around the early 10th century. During the Middle Ages, Tatia had a child with an unknown man; later in time, she met Elijah and Niklaus Mikaelson, both of whom fell in love with her (especially Klaus, according to Elijah). Esther, the mother of Elijah and Niklaus and also the Original witch, used Tatia's blood in the spell or ritual to create the Original vampires, as part of the wine laced with blood in which Mikael had given his children. Her blood was also part of the spell Esther used to bind Klaus' werewolf side, which resulted in Klaus' werewolf gene being dormant. Deceased.

Loopholes

Doppelgängers are for most intents and purposes humans; however, they are a supernatural occurrence. In some ways they are considered a supernatural species while in others they are human.

Death by a doppelgänger counts as a supernatural death. A person wearing a Gilbert Ring will come back to life if killed by a human doppelgänger. This was proven when Elena killed Alaric in Bringing Out The Dead and he resurrected.

The Gilbert rings do not protect supernatural creatures and is theorized to not to work on a doppelgänger. This has never been confirmed.

Human doppelgängers, however, can be compelled by vampires like any regular human. Elena was compelled multiple times prior to Stefan giving her a necklace that contained vervain.

Despite being "supernatural," or at the very least mystical, human doppelgängers cannot be siphoned. For example, Kai attempted to siphon magic from Stefan's vampirism, however unknown to him, he had already been cured. Despite being a doppelgänger, having potent blood used as binding agents in spells, at having the mystical cure within him, Kai was unable to siphon any magic from him.

Trivia

Silas and Amara are colloquially, yet wrongly called "doppelgängers" themselves. They are however the progenitors of the doppelgängers.

The true number of doppelgängers is never addressed and known information seems contradictory based on what is stated in canon or by the executive producers and actors.

In Original Sin, Qetsiyah states "Century after century, I watched versions of Stefan and Elena find each other, like magnets, always the same story—conquering all, falling in love. You didn't think your brother was Silas' first shadow? Destiny has been trying to get the doppelgängers together forever." Despite this statement, in Death and the Maiden Qetsiyah states "Well, if it isn't the face that launched a thousand doppelgängers." It would seem that the two statements were meant to be literal and hyperbolic, respectively.

Klaus presumed that at least in regards to the Petrova doppelgängers, they only appeared every half-millennium. Seemingly this is perhaps it took him that long to find one after losing Katherine. This would mean, for example, there would be Amara, the progenitor, (1st century BC), her first unnamed doppelgänger (5th century AD), Tatia, the second, (10th century AD), Katherine, the third, (15th century AD) and Elena, the fourth and final (20th century AD).

Julie Plec however calls Tatia the "first Petrova doppleganger" while Nina Dobrev states that "[Tatia]'s the original [...] and doesn't have all of this previous history of the doppelgangers preceding her". Michael Narducci goes on to state that" Tatia, the woman who came before that long line of lookalike doppelgangers. Tatia did have a husband prior to her relationship in the past with Elijah. He died in battle, and through that marriage with the man who died, she had a child. That child would have begat the Petrova line, and then after generations and generations, bloop, there would be another doppelgänger, and then after generations and generations, there would be Elena."

Since Tom Avery was born in the 20th century chances are is that he was meant for Elena, had she not met Stefan. If the prophecy held truth, then that means that Stefan may have never been meant to meet neither Katherine or Elena, nor fall in love with them. This is perhaps a direct result of their respective vampirism altering their lifespans during the century in which they were born.