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Give The Vampire Diaries credit for saying goodbye to a main character in a most unusual and unexpected way.

On The Vampire Diaries Season 6 Episode 22, the show killed off Elena Gilbert. Kind of. Sort of. Except not at all, by the actual definition and stuff.

See, Elena wasn’t actually felled by shards of glass last week. She wasn’t on her death bed as the result of any physical injury.

Instead, she was suffering from a spell cast upon her by an all-powerful Kai, who showed up as a Heretic after drinking Lily’s blood.

Because he wanted to torture Bonnie as much as possible, Kai linked her life to that of Elena. The latter would remain asleep for as long as the former lived.

What would Damon therefore do? Would he actually kill Bonnie in order to awaken Elena? Or would he wait who-knows-how-many decades before seeing his one true love again?

Damon was actually faced with this decision directly at one point.

But instead of letting Bonnie die at the hands of Kai, he pretend to flee the scene as a distraction… and then snuck up from behind and tore Kai’s head off.

So he’s very much dead, and Elena will remain in that state for years to come.

The bulk of the finale was spent via beautifully sentimental moments in which various characters took Elena inside their minds and said goodbye.

(Oh, and Tyler turned werewolf after Liv, who was going to die anyway, told him to kill her; in his vision farewell to Elena, she told him to leave town.)

(Also, Lily did reunite with her Heretic friends in present day after all.)

Matt, Alaric and Bonnie will likely never see Elena again. But Caroline, Stefan and Damon at least know they will live forever and that there will be Elena-shaped light at the end of this tunnel. Eventually.

Still, 60 odd years is a long time to wait.

So we were treated to a lovely dance number between Damon and Elena and then it appeared as if a major flash forward occurred to conclude the finale.

We saw Matt driving around as a cop, so he is far beyond basic training now. And then we saw Damon atop the clocktower, looking around… angry, depressed, unsure what to do next.

What did everyone else think of how TVD wrote out Nina Dobrev? Sort of the best of both words, right?

It would have been easy to kill her off, but we’ve been through so much with this key character. And it would have been too easy to just compel her to leave Mystic Falls.

Instead, she’s alive… only not. Go watch The Vampire Diaries online to relive every last emotion and sound off now: What did you think, people?!?!?!?!?

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