The following contains spoilers for Vampire Academy Season 1, Episodes 1-4, now streaming on Peacock.
Vampire Academy's opening features a voiceover by Rose- Hathaway and Lissa Dragomir that leads viewers into the show's world with critical information, including definitions of supernatural beings like the Moroi, Strigoi and Dhampir. This voiceover positions the best friends as the series' protagonists. Their speech and some of its visual context have similar beats to Stefan Salvatore's voiceover that plays in variations at the beginning of most episodes of The Vampire Diaries. However, the voiceovers' contrasts draw a bold line between the series.
Vampire media is likely to have similar broad strokes because it all comes from the same supernatural source. More often than not, a vampire television show's success depends on what it can add to the genre. The Vampire Diaries became one of the most entertaining supernatural teen dramas on TV because it established a compelling love triangle, engaging mythology and a narrative that wasn't afraid to take many twists and turns. Now SyFy's Reginald the Vampire is trying to poke fun at vampire tropes and Peacock's Vampire Academy wants to build an entire world for its vampires.
When The Vampire Diaries premiered in 2009, Stefan was established as the show's narrator. He even specifically said "And this is my story." That framing device became extremely relevant when Nina Dobrev left the show after its sixth season. Dobrev's departure dismantled the central love triangle and refocused the narrative on Stefan's relationship with his older brother Damon Salvatore. Before that, Stefan's voiceover had confirmed how significant romance was to the story.
Over an ominous scene in the episode's teaser, Stefan shared, "I shouldn't have come home. I know the risk, but I had no choice. I have to know her." The "her" in question was Elena, who was eventually revealed to be a doppelganger of Stefan's ex-girlfriend Katherine Pierce. It was the possibility of knowing someone on a deeper level that pulled Stefan home and back into a situation that proved to be dangerous. After the teaser, Stefan's voiceover concluded with the admission that he's lived in secret for over a century, "alone in the world. Until now."
While Stefan's dialogue and the visuals it played over confirmed that The Vampire Diaries existed within the human world, that's the first thing Rose dispels in Vampire Academy's opener. Everything that follows doesn't directly reference a specific romantic relationship. Instead, it focuses on the external forces that affect all the relationships, like societal roles of particular beings and, as Lissa states, the "rules no one's challenged in centuries. Until now." Both vampire shows use that inciting phrase very differently to launch their narratives, which is good because the superficial similarities between the shows are just that.
Stefan's use referenced how, even though he was a vampire, he would no longer exist in the human world's shadows. He vowed to no longer be alone. Alternatively, Lissa's promise of change stems from how she's not alone because she has Rose. Although it occurs in Richelle Mead's book series, it is intriguing that Lissa's "one night that changed everything" includes a car accident that killed her mother, father and brother. The car accident that Stefan saved Elena from was the one that killed her parents and changed her life. Nevertheless, those traumatic events impact the characters and the worlds in which they exist differently.
For Elena, it was the tip of the iceberg for everything from personal discoveries to her relationship with Stefan. For Lissa, it throws her deeper into Vampire Academy's world of politics, helping the series stand out in the teen genre. That proximity inspires Lissa to be louder about how she wants the world she lives in to be better. As Rose rises in the ranks as a Dhampir Guardian, she sees more of how corrupt the systems are in their world. Consequently, Rose and Lissa's "until now" is literally revolutionary. As Rose states in the shared voiceover, "The spark of revolution can come from anywhere. Even two unlikely friends."
The Vampire Diaries is streaming on HBO Max and Peacock. New episodes of Vampire Academy stream on Thursdays on Peacock.