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‘The Originals’: Julie Plec On How Scheduling Delay Affects Season 4 Timeline

By Taylor Rios
Published on: 17:48 PST, Jul 19, 2016

Warning: Possible spoilers for The Originals Season 4 are below.

The Originals Season 4 will not air until early 2017. The news was shocking and disappointing to fans. As viewers know, The CW series used to air around the same time as The Vampire Diaries, and sometimes there would be crossovers. With TVD returning in just a few months, but The Originals being benched for a while, will this affect the storyline? It turns out that it will and executive producer Julie Plec explains why, how, and what fans can expect.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, The CW network released its fall 2016 schedule. Fans were stunned and confused when The Originals was not seen in the lineup. This led to some viewers speculating that the show had been canceled. However, the show was renewed for Season 4 and the network president gave an explanation why The Originals, along with other popular shows such as The 100, were benched until 2017.

“We have a very strong schedule,” Mark Pedowitz said in a conference call, according to TVLine. “We still believe quite a bit in The Originals. We only have 10 hours, so we made a choice to [hold it] to further boost our schedule at midseason.”

Moving forward, there have not been many spoilers for The Originals Season 4 since the finale aired. However, executive producer Julie Plec gave a little hint as to how the scheduling delay will affect the storyline next season. For many shows, it would not make a difference, but it turns out that the show being benched gives writers a bit of wiggle room.

“When they [The CW] shifted the air date [of The Originals], it actually gave us the freedom, weirdly, to shift the timeline in our favor,” Julie Plec told TVLine, “so that we could have more time pass in The Originals between seasons than The Vampire Diaries. So we get to add an extra couple years on to our time lapse between seasons. It’s actually a good thing. It’s positive to not have to worry about being side by side.”

There have been rumors that The Originals and The Vampire Diaries may have more crossovers. With the shows airing at different times, it is assumed that filming schedules are also being affected. So, this would mean that it would free up room for actors to appear on both shows. For an example of this, Candice King said there was not time for Klaus Mikaelson (Joseph Morgan) and Caroline Forbes to become a couple. The actress explained that they (both the actors and the characters) are never in the same place at once and never see each other.

“They weren’t even together!” Candice King told TVLine in a separate interview. “I have not seen Joseph [Morgan] in so long… Everyone else has worked with him, and all we’ve done is a phone call. It’s just hilarious in the social media world… I think it’s going to be more interesting for them to never be in the same room… It would never work, ever.”

Even though a delay in The Originals Season 4 is frustrating, fans should look at the positive aspect in all of this. A few more months before airing means that there is more time to film. Fans pay attention to tiny details, and if these are not addressed properly and in ways that make sense, fan backlash can occur. The show has already begun rolling their cameras, which Design & Trend reported. Hopefully, the script and filming will make viewers satisfied with the wait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-mx5-UO_zk

What do you think of what Julie Plec had to say about The Originals being delayed until 2017? Does this change any theories on the storyline that you previously had? What do you think is going to happen with Klaus Mikaelson and the rest of the characters when the show returns to The CW network?

[Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images for Samsung]

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