Here's how The Vampire Diaries was originally supposed to end

Nina Dobrev's early departure derailed those plans.


"Hello, brother."

Still bawling your eyes out after that Vampire Diaries series finale?

Stefan Salvatore sacrificed himself to save Mystic Falls and his brother Damon in the last ever episode of the show – but it could have been very, very different.

Showrunner Julie Plec has confirmed that this wasn't the original plan at all.

The original ending? Both Stefan AND Damon were supposed to bite it (so, no Delena reunion) – but those plans were scuppered when Nina Dobrev (Elena Gilbert) left at the end of season six.

"Back in season two, when Kevin [Williamson] and I... had fallen in love with this series and this story about two brothers who loved the same girl and the love triangle was kicking into high gear, we said to ourselves, 'When all is said and done, when this show is over, both brothers should die in the name of saving their girl and then be watching her like ghosts – because we had introduced the Other Side – as she went off into the sunset to live her life," she told Entertainment Weekly.

"Those brothers would be side-by-side watching her live. That was the thing that made us cry all the tears in season two."


But Dobrev's exit derailed that idea, because by that point of the story, it was very much all about Delena.

"I felt like we had to make a commitment to seeing Damon and Elena through to the end," Plec explained. "If Nina had never left, I would've loved to have been able to see if Stefan and Elena could've found their way back to each other."

And because the show was no longer really about that love triangle, the ending that Plec had in mind no longer worked.

"[It] became a show about the power of these brothers and their love for each other," she said. "And so there was no way in hell I was killing both of them and leaving neither of them with the happy ending. It just was never going to happen."

Interestingly, Stefan wasn't always going to be the one who died. The writers contemplated making Damon the casualty.

Plec said: "[We had] just as any discussions over killing Damon as we did over killing Stefan, and let me tell you, for a very long time, the pendulum swung the other way."