The Originals boss blogs finale, talks midseason pick-up for season 4 

Get behind-the-scenes insight each week during season 6

The Mikaelson family is extremely complicated, and who better to untangle that drama than Julie Plec?

showrunner will blog each week’s installment throughout the season exclusively for EW. From answering burning questions to giving behind-the-scenes stories and more, this is a place for fans to hear directly from Plec about the episode they just watched. 

Thank you for watching the Season 3 finale, “The Bloody Crown,” written by Beau DeMayo & Diane Ademu-John and directed by Matt Hastings.

This is my final diary entry of the season, and I wanted to say how nice it’s been sharing the experiences of the season with you. I’ve enjoyed using this forum to tell stories about how and why we do what we do, and to celebrate the people we do it with.

will be returning next year in midseason. Mid-season is one of those annoyingly aspecific designations that could mean any time between January and April. The network usually announces their winter schedule in November-ish. Stay tuned for news. In the meantime, this is a great opportunity for other people to get caught up with the series on Netflix. 

I don’t mind midseason in theory. I mind not having an airdate, and I mind that we’ll be done filming before we know if we’re picked up for another season, but other than that, a midseason order is a guarantee of higher quality. Why? Because you have TIME. Extra time to write because you’re not shooting 22. Extra time to think. Time to make sure each episode is excellent. Time to fix it if it isn’t. It’s a beautiful luxury that usually only cable shows get, and we’re all very excited to bring you a spectacular season 4.

As a final shout-out for the year, I need to give special thanks to Michael Narducci, who carried the heavy load of this season on his shoulders. Season 3 is a terrifying season, because it’s the season that either cements long-term success or the season that gets you canceled before you’ve made anyone any money. Getting a season 4 pick-up means you’ve done it. Your show will live on. Your studio bosses will eventually see a profit. You did not fail. Nardooch gave every piece of his heart and soul and mind and body to

For Baby Hope’s scene in the truck, the baby — after a whole day of being wide awake hanging with Phoebe [Tonkin] and crew while waiting to shoot her scene, promptly fell asleep for the final scene where she was supposed to do magic as Hayley drives away to end our season. Despite our best efforts to wake her up, she wasn’t having any of it until the very end. We ended up using a shot of her sleeping in the edit. Adorable kids.

The chambre location is a full-fledged Georgia farm owned by two later-years ex-boyfriends that housed llamas, roosters (which made a good deal of our audio useless at times), Scottish cows, and an entire lake of ducks at the peak of mating season — far from the peaceful serenity seen on screen, and far more awkward.

For the first time on our show, we used a drone to get aerial footage. The cast was excited to have a drone swooping overhead … until the drone operator gave us safety instructions about what to do if the drone “went rogue” — which is run for the nearest indoor shelter, FYI. We were assured that a rogue drone will simply “fly home” and you just had to avoid being in its path, but certain cast members (coughDanielcough) were not so sure we shouldn’t be watching for the first signs of the Rise of the Machines.

The trial sequences were shot with three cameras all the way through from when Marcel first interrogates Klaus until Klaus being tunde-bladed. It was like watching the trial play out in real time, unedited. Our actors and their impressive memories did an astounding job performing that very long and very dialogue-heavy scene two or three dozen times as cameras zoomed in and out for various sizes of coverage. Also, after destroying half the compound, the Mikaelson home will likely look a bit different the next go-around.

It’s amazing how much Blake and Charlie (the twins who play Hope) have grown under our very noses. Here is a photo of Blake … or is it Charlie, big enough for her own actress chair.

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