How to Watch The Vampire Diaries in Order (Including The Originals & Legacies) (2024)

The Vampire Diaries is a supernatural teen drama series that remains popular today. Until now, fans still talk about who Elena Gilbert, or other characters in the show, should have ended up with. The success of the series led to two spin-offs – The Originals and Legacies. So, how to watch all The Vampire Diaries shows in order?

The main series, The Vampire Diaries, has eight seasons. The Originals, which focuses on the Original vampire family, ran for five seasons. Legacies follows young supernatural beings at the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted.

Here’s how to watch all the Vampire Diaries shows in order:

The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, and Legacies in Order

Here’s how to watch The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, and Legacies in order:

• The Vampire DiariesSeasons 1 - 5 (2009 – 2014)
• The Originals Season 1 (2013 – 2014)
• The Vampire Diaries Season 6 (2014 – 2015)
• The Originals Season 2 (2014 – 2015)
• The Vampire Diaries Season 7 (2015 – 2016)
• The Originals Season 3 (2015 – 2016)
• The Vampire Diaries Season 8 (2016 – 2017)
• The Originals Seasons 4 – 5 (2017 – 2018)
• Legacies Seasons 1 – 4 (2018 – 2022)

It’s important to note that The Originals was released when The Vampire Diaries was still ongoing. Some seasons of The Originals aired at the same time as The Vampire Diaries, and so there are episodes that overlap with the ones in the main series. There are also some crossovers.

To be specific, The Originals Seasons 1 – 3 and The Vampire Diaries Seasons 5 – 7 aired at the same time, so watching them in the true chronological order would require you to alternate between episodes.

But the viewing order above is one that wouldn’t confuse you when watching all these shows. It’s also just best to binge-watch seasons, rather than alternate between episodes.

Thankfully, there won’t be any more confusion after The Vampire Diaries Season 8, which is the series finale of the original show. You can then finish the last two seasons of The Originals, and then proceed to Legacies, which takes place two years after the events of The Originals.

Do You Need to Watch The Vampire Diaries Before The Originals?

It is highly recommended that you watch The Vampire Diaries before The Originals. The spin-off has a different story, but if you watch the main series first then you would already understand how magic and all the supernatural stuff works in The Vampire Diaries universe. And as mentioned earlier, there are some crossovers.

But if you are among those who are interested in The Originals only, you can still watch the series alone without watching The Vampire Diaries. Some would even say that The Originals can be enjoyed as a standalone and is actually better than the main series.

You would just miss out on things. Characters in The Originals were introduced in The Vampire Diaries. In fact, The Originals’ main character Klaus Mikaelson was a main character in The Vampire Diaries first before he got his own show.

So, you would have a background of these characters if you watch The Vampire Diaries first. But if you're not interested in watching all seasons of The Vampire Diaries, you could just watch Episode 20 of Season 4, titled “The Originals”, which is a back-door pilot focused on the Mikaelson family.

Do You Need to Watch The Vampire Diaries and The Originals Before Legacies?

As with The Originals, you could watch The Vampire Diaries to gain knowledge about how things work in The Vampire Diaries universe. But storywise, it isn’t necessary. It’s best, however, to watch The Originals before Legacies.

Legacies follows teenager Hope Mikaelson, Klaus Mikaelson and Hayley Marshall’s daughter. The Originals shows Hope when she was younger, so watching the series first will give you a background about the character.

However, if you don’t want to watch the entire The Originals series, you could watch Season 5 only, which introduces teenager Hope. Characters from The Originals and The Vampire Diaries also appear in Legacies.

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