So we agree, this ‘The Vampire Diaries’ character had the worst luck on the show?
The Vampire Diaries is not a show you survive as a human, unless you’re Matt Donovan. But of course, you can always oscillate between being human and being a supernatural entity of sorts. Just ask Elena’s brother, Jeremy Gilbert (Steven R. McQueen).
Who is Jeremy Gilbert in The Vampire Diaries?
As Damon Salvatore likes to call him, Li’l Gilbert, or as TVD fangirls like to call him, Julie Plec’s great gift to womankind, Jeremy Gilbert is Elena Gilbert’s younger brother. In The CW series, he is played by Steven R. McQueen. Fans of the show will recall that while Elena and Jeremy are siblings when the series begins, it is revealed in a later season that they are actually cousins. Their deceased parents, Miranda and Grayson Gilbert had adopted Elena, whose biological parents were Grayson’s younger brother John Gilbert, and Alaric Saltzman’s wife Isobel, who was a descendent of Katherine Pierce.
After Elena’s accident that caused the death of their parents, Jeremy becomes a troubled kid, who loses interest in academics and art (something he is great at) and gets into drugs. He is obsessed with Vicky Donovan, and when she dies after being turned into a vampire by Damon Salvatore in TVD season 1, Jeremy is compelled by Damon (at Elena’s request) to forget her death. After that, Jeremy is transformed into a good kid who stops using drugs and is more focused on his schoolwork. As Damon later explains the change, he took Jeremy’s suffering away with his compulsion, and that returned him to the good kid he was before his parents’ death.
Jeremy’s luck with love interests is kind of mirrored in his professor and surrogate guardian Alaric Saltzman’s, in that the women they love kind of end up dying! After Vicky, Jeremy moves on to date Anna, who was a vampire since even before Damon and Stefan turned. After Anna’s death, he begins dating Bonnie Bennett, his sister’s best friend and a powerful witch. But unfortunately, Bonnie too temporarily dies.
Is Jeremy Gilbert human or supernatural?
Ah, if only this answer was less complicated! Jeremy’s love interests are only the tip of the iceberg of his messy life and multiple resurrections after death. Jeremy starts off the series as a human, but soon enough the supernatural catches on. Jeremy has had his neck snapped by Damon during a fit of rage, but because he is wearing the Gilbert ring, he is brought back to life. But he isn’t always so lucky.
In season 2, after being mistakenly shot by Sheriff Forbes and brought back from the dead by Bonnie, he becomes a medium, i.e. he is able to see dead supernatural beings who are in the veil, a price to pay for the magic that resurrected him. In fact, his infatuation with seeing his ex-girlfriend Anna wrecks his relationship with his then-girlfriend Bonnie.
In season 4, when the vampire hunter Connor Jordan of the Brotherhood of the Five is killed by Elena, it activates Jeremy Gilbert as one of the Five, an ancient vampire-killing brotherhood of hunters. After killing vampires, including the Original vampire Kol Mikaelson, and thereby ending his entire sire line of vampires, the Hunter’s mark tattoo on his body is completed, revealing a map to the entombed first vampire Silas, and the cure to vampirism that’s buried with him on an island in Nova Scotia. It is on this island, when Jeremy, Bonnie, Elena, and the others, led by Professor Atticus Shane, are searching for the cure that Katherine feeds Jeremy to Silas, who sucks him dry and snaps his neck, killing him.
It is this death of Jeremy, which cannot be reversed despite him wearing the Gilbert ring, that sends Elena off the edge, as she loses her last biological family and what she believes is her last link to her humanity. She flips off her humanity switch and burns her childhood home with Jeremy’s body in it.
Jeremy is once again brought back to life by Bonnie, even though it almost kills her. His medium powers return as he spends the first half of season 5 lying to everyone about Bonnie being alive. They manage to bring Bonnie back as an anchor to the Other Side, however, at the end of season 5, after all the Travelers are blown up by Damon and Elena, and the Other Side disappears, Bonnie and Damon are stuck in prison world.
Bonnie’s death once again brings Jeremy’s life to full circle—he gets his hunter strength back, but he’s on self-destructive behavior like he was in season 1. Except, instead of drugs, it’s women and alcohol and video games at the Lockwood mansion this time, where he is living with Matt and Tyler. Eventually, he does move into the Salvatore mansion, and for some time even shares it with the Salvatore brothers when the Travelers’ anti-magic perimeter is lifted.
In season 6 episode 13 “The Day I Tried To Live,” Jeremy, with the help of Kai Parker, is able to astral project into the prison world where Bonnie is stuck. He finds her when she’s about to kill herself, and despite not having any corporeal presence in that world, manages to save her with sheer force of will. Once he’s back in the real world, Elena encourages him to move on with his life, since they do not know when and how Bonnie will be back, and this prompts Jeremy to apply to an arts program far away from Mystic Falls.
The Vampire Diaries season 6 episode 14, “Stay,” is the last time we see Jeremy Gilbert until the series finale “I Was Feeling Epic.” In “Stay,” Jeremy gets a fond farewell from his family and friends, including smoking a joint that was a going-away present from Damon with Elena in the stoner’s pit at their school. But before he can leave town, an encounter with Enzo leaves him hurt. Enzo is only using him as leverage against Matt, and so he lets him go.
When Elena finds Jeremy at the Salvatore House, she urges him to go ahead with his plan and leave for art school. Alaric offers to drop him to the airport, but instead, he takes him to a bus stop and hands him a bag full of weapons. Turns out, Jeremy isn’t going to art school, but is going to hone his vampire hunter skills, with Alaric promising to feed him leads. His first lead is about a bunch of “animal attacks” near Santa Fe.
Does Jeremy die in The Vampire Diaries?
Jeremy Gilbert returns to Mystic Falls in The Vampire Diaries series finale once Elena wakes up from the sleep spell that Kai Parker put her in. It is revealed in the montage at the end of the finale that Jeremy joins the Salvatore Boarding School opened by Alaric and Caroline as a teacher.
We know that Jeremy is very much alive in the TVD universe and even makes an appearance in the spin-off series Legacies, in season 1 episode 3, “We’re Being Punked, Pedro.” It is revealed in the episode that he is “a hunter who works for Alaric sometimes.”
Do we agree that in TVD world, dying is actually a much more peaceful fate? In that sense, poor Jeremy just had the most rotten luck!
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
