Entertainment Weekly
When The Originals was first pitched as a Vampire Diaries spin-off, it was to be the story of Klaus Mikaelson’s redemption, with Elijah being the most reluctant to give up on his brother. So when a promo for the season 2 finale showed Elijah uttering the line, “We’re beyond redemption,” it seemed that the Mikaelsons had lost their way.
Yet when fans watched the season 2 finale, that same line was missing. For Daniel Gillies, cutting the scene meant cutting one of his favorite moments of the series.
“That scene was to me one of the most enlightening scenes about the people [and] the show,”
The scene, which Gillies acknowledged was cut for time, was re-worked by Originals writer Diane Ademu-John and Gillies himself, and featured an exchange between Elijah and his recently returned mother, Esther. “It was four or five lines,” Gillies said. “It was very heavily written in the beginning, and then myself and the very, very talented Diane Ademu-John decided that we should pair it down. So together we created this very simplified version of the scene, this exchange between the mother and [Elijah] before NiKlaus throws open the doors and says ‘Mother!’ It was beautiful.”