FEBRUARY 24/MARCH 3, 2017 EW.COM 57Showrunner Julie Plec with Matt Davis, who plays AlaricAnd those goodbyes are starting now.
With less than two weeks left shooting the
finale, Plec just announced the first “series
wrap” on Michael Trevino, whose Tyler is
one of many returning faces in the finale. He
and Plec exchangeI love yous and one last
hug before she returns to her director’s chair,
and he heads to wardrobe to quite literally
step out of Tyler’s shoes for the last time.
“It’s this very interesting melancholy,”
Paul Wesley says of the feeling on set. “I did
Stefan’s final scene with Elena. It was
strangely emotional for me.” Wesley pauses
as if coming to terms with what he’s about to
say in this very instant. “You’re saying good-
bye to this time and this moment.The two of us are never going to be playing
these characters ever again, and these were
really important characters in television
for eight years.”
They’ve been important characters both
on television and in the personal lives of
everyone involved. All the cast members,
when asked about their time on the series,
share a similar sentiment: They grew up
here. It changed them, or in some cases,
healed them. “We all started this show,
almost all of us, in the midst of some sort of
life turmoil, whatever it may have been,”
says Roerig. “And somehow through these
eight years we’ve patched ourselves up and
are now ready to face the world again.”
His castmate Candice King (Caroline)
says, “[This show] changed my life. It’s hard
to summarize at this point what it means
because it kind of means everything.”SOON WE’LL ALL BE CRYING. SITTING ON
a plane, Wesley read the finale script for the
first time, and the actor, who admittedly
doesn’t get sentimental when it comes to the
show, teared up. He then took a photo of saidtear and sent it to Plec and Williamson as
proof, of both his ability to cry off screen and
the power of the ending they’d created.
However, it’s not the ending they origi-
nally came up with during the second
season. “The big finale episode that we had
always planned did not happen because the
show was successful and lasted eight years,”
Williamson says. For example, the original
ending involved ghosts, which no longer
exist now that the Other Side has been
destroyed. Plec adds: “While it was not a
journey with a straight line—it took many,
many forms along the way—the heart and
the sentiment, dating back six years ago
when he and I first thought we knew how
the series would end to the way it’s ending,
is pretty spot-on.”
Sitting on set, Plec starts singing “guess
who’s back” from Eminem’s “Without Me”
with one of the biggest returning cast mem-
bers. Nostalgia might be a bitch, but on this
set it’s also cause for celebration, and the
finale is filled with it. “I feel like I’ve watched
other shows where the series finale leaves
you unsatisfied, but we really do come to a
conclusion with all the characters and their
lives,” Dobrev says. “Julie and Kevin wrote a
really beautiful episode, with a lot of call-
backs to the pilot.”
Those callbacks come in many forms:
characters, lines, and even locations, all of
which factor into what Plec calls “our love-
letter goodbye to the series.” After five acts of
a “wild, epic season finale,” Plec says the final
15 minutes is where they really bid adieu. “It
could almost stand on its own as a little movie
with all the stuff we’re tying to accomplish,”
Plec says. “We’re so proud of it. It really did
give closure, for better or for worse.”
Walking away from the funeral scene,
Dobrev wipes away Elena’s tears. At this
point, you’d think Elena would be used to
goodbyes. But this one’s different: There will
be no more witchy high jinks, no more Other
Side. Bonnie Bennett’s no longer in the busi-
ness of bringing people back from the dead.
This goodbye, much like the show’s final
hour, is goodbye forever—which, for a vam-
pire, is forever-forever.X(PREVIOUS SPREAD AND THIS SP
READ) BOB MAHONEY/THE CW (4)