Everything we know about Netflix’s ‘V Wars’ and its many former vampires
Vampires truly had a moment in the mid-2000s. They dominated books, movies, television; they sucked the life out of pop culture and reshaped it in its pale, undead image.
Then time passed, and the vampire went out of style, back into its coffin.
Much like the interim period between Dracula impaling the residents of Wallachia and trapping Jonathan Harker in his dreary castle, the vampire disappeared from public view. He became a footnote in history, a sad reflection of his glory days. The vampire became a punchline, mocked on SNL and turned into a truly horrible parody film with 2010’s Vampires Suck.
We tried to fill the toothmark-shaped hole in our lives with other monsters: werewolves never really caught on, and besides The Shape of Water (2017); nobody was really lusting after fish in the same way they were with Kate Beckinsale in Underworld (2003); the zombie craze staggered onto our screens en masse, but their mindless nature makes for uninteresting villains over the long haul.
Thank goodness Netflix is looking to change things up with V Wars.
Do we really need another show about vampires?
No, we do not need another show about undead pale people sucking the life force out of the rest of society. We really don’t, but we’re getting it anyway. V Wars is based on the comic by Jonathan Maberry in which a virus millions of years old is unleashed on humanity, turning those infected into vampires that are as unique as the person’s culture & DNA.
Ian Somerhalder (The Vampire Diaries) plays a human scientist doing his damndest to stop the spread of the outbreak, but faces a serious dilemma when his friend is transformed into a vampire. The resulting health outbreak fractures society, splitting the world between human and vampire factions, with Somerhalder one one side and his vampire friend on the other.
The societal split brings to mind the moral conflict of campy vampire series True Blood, in which the audience is meant to root for the vampires despite their predilection to eat and kill every human around.
Wait, the guy from The Vampire Diaries is in this?
Yes! Netflix realized if you’re doing a show about vampires, you need to head to the professionals. Somerhalder spent years honing his vampiric abilities as Damon Salvatore on The CW’s The Vampire Diaries.
And Somerhalder’s not the only vampire in the cast! V Wars also tapped Twilight’s Nikki Reed to play Rachel on the series. Although information about her character is limited, the trailer shows that Reed and Somerhalder appear to be close.
In other vampiric casting news, resident Smallville vampire Laura Vandervoort has been cast as Mila Dubov on V Wars.
Just how many former vampires?
Our greatest question for these former television vampires, obviously, is whether they will be putting the fake fangs back in as characters of V Wars, but other than the fact that Somerhalder will be portraying a living, breathing person, character details have been sparse.
Somerhalder is also a producer and director on V Wars; he stressed the series would cover different topics than The Vampire Diaries. In an interview with Schön!, Somerhalder said he rejected the series multiple times.
“It just didn’t seem like the right move to dial into another vampire show. Once I dove into the books and the comics, I realized the level of I.T. and science in the story. V Wars isn’t about supernaturals, it’s more about science and society, about relationships and love. It deals with the stuff that we’re all dealing with now: borders, racism, medicine, food, security.”
The combination of science, society, and vampires makes for a heady cocktail and we plan to tune in when it premieres on December 5th.
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