It has been years since the finale aired, and The Vampire Diaries still holds a fairly strong fanbase who have been hooked on the supernatural storylines, the romances, and the characters. Immortal vampires are at the crux of this serie,s and even if they can live forever, if they aren’t murdered, the vampires that appear in the show are of various ages. Some only turned during the timeline of the show, like the main character Elena (Nina Dobrev). Others have seen eras rise and fall, dating all the way back to the Original vampire family. As Elena and her friends are thrown into the paranormal world, courtesy of Stephen (Paul Wesley) and Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder), she encounters vampires who have witnessed and endured through all sorts of human milestones. So, let’s take a trip through history and discover the oldest vampires in The Vampire Diaries universe.
10
Trevor
550 years old
Trevor (Trent Ford) entered The Vampire Diaries in Season 2, alongside his best friend Rose Marie (Lauren Cohan), and they were brief antagonists who shared a long history with the Salvatore brothers’ arch-nemesis, Katherine Pierce, or Katerina Petrova (also played by Gilbert). He fell in love with her but was betrayed as she used him to evade Klaus Mikaelson (Joseph Morgan). This led to a life on the run for Trevor and Rose Marie, as the Originals were hunting them down for hiding Katherine from them.
The two best friends were from England in the 1450s, and after Rose Marie turned in 1972, she also turned Trevor, cementing their immortal life together. However, not long after, in 1792, did their paths cross with Katherine’s, thus they spent most of their long lives on the run. Trevor eventually met his demise at the hands of another Original’s brother, so even though he spent 550 years on earth, they were long, restless years of looking over his shoulder in paranoia.
9
Rose Marie
560 years old
Although they were turned at practically the same time, Rose Marie was ten years older than Trevor at the time of getting bitten. She was turned by Mary Porter, a character who doesn’t appear in The Vampire Diaries but has a pretty strong bearing on it, and one of these ways is through Rose Marie. Like Trevor, she lived most of her life on the run, but in the show, while Trevor was killed for his disloyalty, Rose Marie was pardoned.
As such, she spent the last days of her long life on Damon and Elena’s side, having a fling with the former and hiding yet another Petrova doppelgänger from Klaus’ ritual. During this, she was bitten by a werewolf, which is fatal to vampires, leading to a painful, wretched death that included a killing spree through a high school. Rose Marie may have lived most of her life in the shadows, but she goes out with a frenzied bang, leaving a memorable impact on the show.
8
Mary Porter
570 years old
Mary Porter may have only appeared as a corpse in The Vampire Diaries, but she still had a decent impact on the show. In Season 3, Elena and Damon are searching for which of the Original’s sireline the latter had hailed from, and on this quest, they reach Mary’s house. However, upon arrival, they find Mary staked to a wall and Kol Mikaelson (Nathaniel Buzolic), her killer, waiting in the shadows to ambush them.
We would later find out that Mary was one of the first vampires that Klaus turned, and had even earned the morbid nickname of an “Original groupie.” This easily earns her a special place in the show’s lore, even if we don’t know the details of her long life. We can also assume she was a fairly strong vampire, having been able to live for so long, only to be killed by an Original, who were the most powerful vampires in TVD.
7
Sage
Over 900 years old
Barring the vampires in the spin-off The Originals, Sage (Cassidy Freeman) is the oldest vampire in The Vampire Diaries after the Original family. She was the first vampire in Finn Mikaelson’s (Caspar Zafer) sireline, turned because Finn couldn’t bear the thought of eternity without his lover. However, shortly after she was turned, Finn was daggered (not fully dead, but immobilized), leaving her with an eternity alone instead, making this one of the most tragic star-crossed love stories in the franchise.
Living for over 900 years, Sage has seen many human eras rise and fall, but one of the most prominent and relevant phases of her life was when she met Damon in 1912. She was a professional boxer who taught Damon to find pleasure in feeding. While this paints a hedonistic, cold picture of her, when she enters the show in Season 3, she is ecstatic to find out she can save Finn, and they are happily re-united. However, soon after, Finn is staked by Matt Donovan (Zach Roerig), and this leads to Sage’s death as Finn’s bloodline is broken, once again stealing their eternity away from them.
6
Rebekah Mikaelson
Over 1000 years old
The general rule is that the older you are as a vampire, the stronger you are, and the Original family had some of the strongest vampires in the franchise. Even though the entire family was turned at the same time, they were different ages, and each of them remained at that age for eternity. The family were born Vikings in the Middle Ages, and upon the death of one of the children, the patriarch Mikael (Sebastian Roche) begged his wife, who was a witch, to cast a spell of immortality to protect everyone. In doing so, there also came a price: the need to feed on blood, bringing forth what we now know as vampires.
The youngest in the family is Rebekah Mikaelson (Claire Holt), who is extremely loyal to her family, particularly Klaus, and is particularly skilled in mind compulsion, but craves a mundane human lifestyle. Throughout her centuries-old life, her pursuit of normalcy was represented by her desire to find relationships and settle down, which was sometimes to her detriment. Her stint in the original show ends with her playful break-up with Matt, but in The Originals, we find out Rebekah does achieve her lifelong dream, as Klaus gives her the Cure, and she spends the rest of her days as a human.
5
Kol Mikaelson
Over 1000 years old
The next Original vampire is Kol, the youngest brother in the family and the most unpredictable. He considered himself the black sheep of the family growing up and often struggled with this distance, lashing out in violent ways. It made him dangerous, vindictive, and cocky, but it was all really a vampiric cry for attention. Like his other siblings, he has a contentious relationship with Klaus as the latter would constantly dagger and un-dagger each member of the family.
When Kol is revived in The Vampire Diaries, he is a wily and ferocious antagonist, but is eventually killed by Elena’s brother, Jeremy Gilbert (Steven McQueen). He is seen again in Season 5 when Matt gains access to the Other Side, where he warns Matt that something is amiss. However, when the ethereal realm collapses, we do not know whether he survives until The Originals, where Kol is killed and resurrected multiple times, but eventually has the same fate as Rebekah, ending his long, tumultuous life with peace and a marriage.
4
Klaus Mikaelson
Over 1000 years old
Klaus is the second-youngest son of the Original family, though he was born out of an affair between his witch mother and a werewolf, making him Mikael’s stepson and the receiver of his abuse. It also meant that when he turned into a vampire, he was the Original Hybrid, a status that makes him far more powerful than any of his family members. However, he learns that his werewolf side has been repressed and spends a lot of his time in The Vampire Diaries trying to break that curse, which involves a Petrova doppelgänger, to sire his own line of vampire-werewolf hybrids.
Unbeknownst to his siblings, he killed his mother and blamed it on Mikael, leading to the children running away during the Middle Ages and incurring his father’s wrath. However, throughout their lives, Klaus maintained very stringent control over his siblings and was often heinous to other vampires, making countless enemies throughout his life. In The Vampire Diaries, he eventually breaks the curse and sires his hybrid pack, but they are eventually all killed off, even by Klaus himself. While this was the driving force for Klaus most of his life, he found another goal—his newfound family—which ultimately led him to sacrifice himself at the end of his long, vicious life.
3
Elijah Mikaelson
Over 1000 years old
Unlike his siblings, the second-oldest son of the Original family, Elijah Mikaelson (Daniel Gillies), tries to maintain an appearance of civility and an honor code, despite the many atrocities he has committed to survive. He was also the first vampire to “turn off” their humanity. After he turned, he accidentally killed his beloved in a bloody frenzy, and his mother encouraged him to lock his emotions behind a “red door.” But by the time he enters the series, his humanity is back on, though he is far more controlled and reserved in his emotions than his siblings.
He is introduced to the show as essentially Klaus’ right-hand man, helping him break the curse without quite knowing what will happen. However, he eventually switches sides and becomes an invaluable ally to the Mystic Falls gang for a few seasons. After that first instance of feeling nothing, Elijah spent his life trying to lead an honorable existence, all the way to his final breaths in The Originals, where he sacrifices himself alongside Klaus for the greater good.
2
Finn Mikaelson
Over 1000 years old
While Elijah was in pursuit of honor, Finn was considered the most moral of his siblings, mainly because he hated being a vampire. He was ashamed of his bloodlust, and Klaus cites this as a reason for daggering him throughout his life. Finn was also the most obedient to his mother, spending most of his brief stint in The Vampire Diaries defending her beliefs and following her orders.
However, Finn eventually dies at the hands of Matt and firmly exits the flagship show. Like Kol, he is resurrected in The Original but is eventually killed off again. Among the Mikaelson siblings, Finn may have existed for over a thousand years, but he lived the shortest life, spending most of it immobilized or on the Other Side. And the time he did spend roaming the earth was filled with self-loathing.
1
Mikael
Over 1000 years old
There is a common misconception that Silas (also played by Wesley) is the father of the vampire race, but he was actually the first immortal being from Ancient Greece who created a doppelgänger bloodline to preserve his immortality. As such, he is an ancestor (albeit an important one) of the Salvatore brothers, whereas it is Mikael, the patriarch of the Original family, who is the true father of the vampire race. And thus, the oldest vampire in the entire Vampire Diaries universe. But he was also the oldest vampire hunter.
Klaus was already a reminder of his wife’s infidelity, which caused Mikael to abuse him, but after Klaus blamed his wife’s death on him and disappeared with the other siblings, Mikael dedicated his life to being a vampire hunter while being a vampire himself. He trained himself to survive on only vampires’ blood and was a formidable foe when he entered the series. Like some of his children, he had to be killed multiple times throughout the franchise before he remained dead, but his life was driven by the obsessive, fearsome, and vengeful purpose of eradicating the vampire race.