Like most characters in The CW’s The Vampire Diaries, Jeremy Gilbert (Steven R. McQueen) is surrounded by tragedy. Before the events of the show, he and his adoptive sister, Elena (Nina Dobrev), struggle to get past the death of their parents.
But this is Mystic Falls, and the bad times keep on rolling. Even though he is often relegated to Elena’s younger brother, he is just as traumatized as anyone else — maybe even more so. After the death of his parents, the one person he connects to is the town’s black sheep, Vicki (Kayla Ewell). And just when the two have entered into a relationship, she dies after becoming a vampire. But no matter how much he suffers and how much Elena brainwashes him, he is the one Gilbert who actually develops as a person. Down the line, he becomes a formidable vampire hunter who devotes his life to the greater good. Arguably the better character, Jeremy leaves The Vampire Diaries for good in season 6. But does he go the way most characters do in Mystic Falls?
When does Jeremy die?
Dying is a rite of passage in the small Virginia town. Stefan (Paul Wesley), Damon (Ian Somerhalder), Caroline (Candace King), and Bonnie (Kat Graham) all die in the series, but that only scratch the surface of how many characters meet a gruesome end. Just like the rest, Jeremy joins this club in season 4. During the desperate hunt to find a cure for vampirism, Jeremy joins the team on a remote island. He and practically the entire cast of characters want the cure for Elena, who has turned into a vampire. No matter how many vampire tutors she gets, Elena is inept at adapting to her new situation, so all her friends risk their lives for one of the rarest compounds known to man. As a newly christened vampire hunter, Jeremy also supports her bid to become human again.
But while he and Bonnie discover the cure in the grips of a 1000-year-old immortal, they are too late. Elena’s doppelgänger, Katherine Pierce, arrives just in time to steal the cure and drain Jeremy dry. Funnily enough, this is technically not the first time he has died in the series. During the earlier seasons, Jeremy inherits the magical Gilbert ring, which protects him from supernatural deaths. This means being killed at any vampire’s hand, witchcraft, or similar means that he will simply wake up hours later, none the wiser.
Damon proves this earlier in the series when he snaps Jeremy’s neck in a fit of rage. However, when it comes to his search for the cure, the ring is useless to him. He had since taken on the mantle of being a vampire hunter, so the ring couldn’t protect him anymore. The Gilbert ring was later given to Matt (Zach Roerig), the only remaining human in the group.
Jeremy’s death still doesn’t stick
Jeremy Gilbert dies officially in season 4, but in Mystic Falls, not everything is certain. Though he passes on to the afterlife, his death is so traumatic that everyone is seemingly affected. Elena turns off her humanity to deal with the loss, and Bonnie never stops hoping she can revive him with magic. At the end of the season, Bonnie finds a way, even though the circumstances remain dire. On one particular day, the veil between Mystic Falls and the supernatural purgatory known as the Other Side is thin. Ghosts walk among the living, and Elena and her friends can see all the people they have lost.
Jeremy returns to have one last day with his family, but Bonnie finds a way to make it last. With a brutal amount of magic, Bonnie casts a spell to make Jeremy return to the land of the living. But in the world of witchcraft, there needs to be balance. Resurrecting Jeremy meant that Bonnie would have to take his place. Her death doesn’t last for long either, as is the Mystic Falls way. Jeremy returns to life and goes back to being a high schooler by day and a vampire hunter by night. He lives throughout the rest of the series but leaves in season 6 before Dobrev’s departure from the show.