Not a new statement, but it needs to be restated for the reasons below.

You know when people come up with a defense that TVD doesn’t have a racial bias they bring up that every character is treated badly on the show and the first person they bring up in their reasoning is Matt. Matt has a lack of story lines and Matt has a lack of development and therefore the writers must be treating him unfairly. Wrong.

Now I could always bring up the fact that one straight white male being treated bad doesn’t really make a difference when there’s several other characters like him that are being treated fairly compared to every POC character being treated badly, but that doesn’t work here because Matt isn’t treated unfairly on the show, in fact he’s treated better than he should be.

Let’s start with him lacking story lines—he doesn’t. He has the exact amount of story lines a character of his stature should have. He’s human and there for the human perspective on vampires. There was never really much you could do with his character because he’s never needed outside of that. The other characters don’t call him only when they need something from him because they never need something from him. He has nothing to offer. But despite that he has screen time devoted to him and only him. His love life has a story line, his grief has a story line, his home life has a whole story line devoted to him, and his existential crises have story lines as well. Sure he’s missing from episodes but you aren’t missing key pieces from his story.

He has no development–oh but he does. He starts out as Elena’s ex-boyfriend who’s not quite over her to a guy who’s life is severely changed by the supernatural occurrences around him to the point of hatred. People may not have liked his development, but it’s there. You go through the things he’s going through such as grief about his sister, hatred towards his mother and hatred towards vampires for what they’ve done to his life. You go through his love life and how he views women (which I won’t get into). You go through the events in his life that change him. Again he’s missing from quite a few episodes, but you are not missing key details about him. You see all of his development on screen. He’s not missing for an entire chunk of it and comes back a new person. The only time that semi-happens is in season 7 in the flash forward but that gets explained in flashbacks and earlier in the season. 

Now compare that to Bonnie or even Tyler because while the character is white the actor isn’t and the show couldn’t even manage to treat him right.  

Bonnie is the resident witch. They only call on her and she only has screen time when she is needed. It takes three seasons for her to get mom and four for her to get a home and another parental figure that apparently was there the whole time. But even after that we don’t know much about it. You don’t go through grief, as in there’s never a story line that surrounds it. When her Grams dies she’s shoved off-screen for five episodes and comes back ready and with the ability to do more magic than when she left.When her mom is turned she again is shoved off-screen and then comes back with the ability to do more magic than when she left. When her father is killed in front of her the only time spent on that is her lighting a candle for her father. Her love life has little to no time spent on it and that wouldn’t mean much if it was any other show, but this one where shipping is currency. She has two love interests in the entire series and you never really see her spend much time with either of them as their own separate story line. You get more with Enzo, but not much beyond a flashback episode and then Bonnie is needed again. What are her interests? What’s her major in college? We are missing key pieces about her for the amount of development the show wanted and needed from her. She was a pertinent character as the witch who’s family had something to do with everything magic in Mystic Falls and rarely had screen time devoted to her or how she developed her abilities. A character of her stature should have had more story lines and development. Instead it was given to characters like Caroline who isn’t actually that pertinent to the plot. I love her character just as much as the next person, but she essentially fills the role of another vampire on a show filled with them. As I mentioned earlier Matt–he wasn’t pertinent to the plot until season 8 and that wasn’t even much, but he still had all the kinds of development and story lines Bonnie was missing.

Now onto Tyler. He was obviously treated better than Bonnie and was actually treated pretty good for the first few seasons. But like Bonnie he fills the spot of sole werewolf in the main cast (where Bonnie is sole witch) and does most of his character development off screen and only comes back when he’s needed. He learns the ins and outs of being a werewolf off-screen, he unsires himself from Klaus off screen, he unsires other hybrids from Klaus off screen. He only comes back when that story line comes to affect the Mystic Falls gang which isn’t quite to the scale of how they push Bonnie of screen only to come back super powerful for one moment when they need her and then weak when they don’t so they can push her around, but it’s a miniature version of it and these are the only two characters who have this kind of thing happen. Major developments with these characters are simply summarized in dialogue instead of shown. Now the obvious big difference, and why he’s treated better is we know a lot about his character, he is allowed to grieve onscreen to the point whole story lines have been devoted to him as well as his love life, but most of that we only get in relation to Caroline. We get little bits here and there about his interest and hobbies in season 1 and the beginning of season 2, but beyond that it’s Caroline–if she isn’t his girlfriend he’s treated like he doesn’t matter. He’s even pushed off screen all so Caroline and Klaus can flirt. And after his relationship with her is completely done he’s demoted back to background character like he was in season one. Here’s the thing again. He’s more pertinent to the plot than Caroline. She adds to the already overflowing vampire population, and he is the only werewolf in the mix and as The Originals proves werewolves have a place in and story line in a vampire show that add to the lore and plot. A baby vamp who by the middle of the season is in complete control doesn’t add much. I enjoyed her story lines, but as season 7 and even 8 prove there isn’t enough material for her to sustain her relevance. While Tyler definitely doesn’t rank as high as Bonnie in pertinence to the plot he ranks higher than Caroline and Matt and is treated as though he isn’t to the point that they killed him off as though he was just another extra.

Now the point I’m making is that telling me there isn’t racial biased when it comes to TVD just because Matt isn’t treated fairly is false, because he’s treated just fine. Sure he gets just as villainized by the show for going against the main three characters, but that’s not an issue with the writing or the framing of the show because everything you need to know about his side of the story is there. The issues with him are all within the fandom (which is partially true with Bonnie and Tyler as well). That’s what’s missing with Bonnie and Tyler. They are characters that are used and neglected within the narrative, Matt isn’t. Placing his treatment in the same league to theirs isn’t an accurate measure because his importance to the plot differs drastically. His importance to the plot VS his story lines and character development are exactly where they should be. Bonnie’s is not by a wide margin and neither is Tyler’s. When people ask why I don’t care that Matt’s treatment it’s because of this. Matt is a useless character who get’s the amount of screen time he should, if not more.