Bonnie Bennett and the beyond: An exploration of one representation of the afterlife in The Vampire Diaries

Abstract

The contemporary vampire story is an apt place to explore immortality, the afterlife and other dimensions in general. Additionally, there are numerous parallels between the vampire story and the Christian story. The vampire’s ‘maker’, for example, can be compared to God, also known as ‘maker’, and a vampire’s immortality offers a relevant parallel to the Christian idea of immortality in the afterlife. The CW network series The Vampire Diaries (2009–17) houses various narratives offering such comparisons, especially with regards to alternative dimensions (‘worlds’) that can potentially be construed as commentary on the afterlife. Interestingly, though, I believe that the most compelling narrative in this regard involves the witch Bonnie Bennett and not an actual vampire. Also interestingly, Bonnie often seems to hold more power than the vampires, even though she is not necessarily immortal (she is, however, considered a supernatural being). She perpetually saves her friends throughout the series, regularly willing to sacrifice her life for theirs and actually dies in Season 4 in effort to bring Jeremy Gilbert back to life. She embodies the New Testament verse in the book of John that states, ‘[g]reater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’. Despite that she is dead, she lives in a concurrent dimension, and only Jeremy is aware of her and can hear her. She is with him in the present. I posit that the storyline pertaining to Bonnie’s character and her death in Seasons 4 and 5 in particular offers a possible and even compelling read on the biblical description of heaven and the afterlife – and God on the whole – per Judeo-Christian scripture and scriptural interpretation.