(More literal: the Mikaelson clan’s dismay when Marcel was dating Klaus' blonde sister Rebekah. It’s not necessarily literal-Marcel's past as a slave features minimally on the show, evoked in mostly small, subtle ways-but after countless betrayals, Marcel has realized he'll never really be accepted as a member of the aristocratic, selfish Mikaelson clan. At the start of Season 4, which began last week, he has his adoptive father chained up in a dungeon, and is telling anyone who'll listen that Klaus is his 'trophy.' The relationship between Klaus and Marcel, fraught with guilt and paternalism, functions at times like a parable of race in America.

Fatherly? Nope.īy now, though, Marcel is also a vampire-and he’s even more powerful than Klaus. Klaus is one of the thousand-year-old Original vampires who sired all those who came after him he rescued Marcel from slavery some 200 years ago, and then raised Marcel as his own-but never treated him as such. But Hey, So Does 2016 ArrowĪt the core of all this political intrigue is the relationship between antihero Klaus Mikaelson (Joseph Morgan) and his adoptive son, Marcel Girard (Charles Michael Davis).

Bet political show