It’s not often that showrunners get to publicly state the couples that they root for in their own show, but since it’s been seven years sinceThe Vampire Diariesended, former showrunner and writerJulie Plecdecided to weigh in on a fan discussion onX(former Twitter). The debate centered around the rerouting that screenwriters are forced to do when an actor decides to exit a series.
On the thread, a user commented that if yourooted for a couplethat was clearly supposed to be the endgame of a show but then it changes because one actor decides to leave, fans should get some form of financial compensation for the time invested in the ship. It’d be another common thread if Plec herself hadn’t commented on it with several side eyes and a gif showingThe Vampire Diariesstars Elena (Nina Dobrev) and Stefan (Paul Wesley) hugging.
In the TV Trope world, this would be considered a “Word of God,” meaning that the creator provides the ultimate answer thatfans have been debating for years. Plec’s gif confirms that the plan was to always reunite Stefan and Elena at some point. Narratively, it would make some sense considering that they hit it off since the beginning of the series. There’s a whole slate of fans who were not very happy with the information, though, since the “rival” ship Delena – Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and Elena – has a huge fanbase that considers their relationship a lot more compelling than Elena and Stefan’s.
In any case,Plec’s plans went downhillwhen Dobrev decided she’d exit the seriesby the end of Season 6. At the time, the actor stated that she saw Elena’s journey as complete, and wroteon an Instagram postthat she pretty much got to do everything that was possible to do in the series:
“I was a human, a vampire, a doppelganger, a crazy immortal, a doppelganger pretending to be human, a human pretending to be a doppelganger. I got kidnapped, killed, resurrected, tortured, cursed, body-snatched, was dead and undead.”
Dobrev indeed played a lot of characters in the CW series and we can’t pretend this didn’t take its toll on the actor’s physical and mental health.She did eventually return for the series finaletwo years later, but of course her absence hampered two years of events and character developments that Plec and her team might have in mind. At that time, thatmeant that Elena ended up with Damon, but now we know that this wasn’t the original plan at all.
