I am trying to be a bit careful with posting spoilers, but we are a spoiler-friendly website so if you haven’t seen the season finale yet, don’t continue reading!

E! Online sat down with executive producer Julie Plec to talk about the shocking season finale and what’s coming next;

Holy s–t, Stefan is a doppelgänger, Silas’ doppelgänger to be exact! When did you make the decision to bring in another doppelgänger and why Stefan?
Last year after we wrapped season three, some of the writers and I stayed on for an extra five weeks talking about story for season four. We knew that we wanted to give Stefan and give Paul Wesley specifically an opportunity to sort of spread his wings a bit more. He did such a good job playing Ripper Stefan, so we wanted to play a long-foiled plan into motion that we weren’t sure if we’d get to it before the end of the season or not; we always had it in our back pocket to reveal it right around the time it felt right. The way it played out we chose not to reveal it until the last beat of the last episode basically teeing up what season five would be.

We can only imagine how excited Paul Wesley was when he found out about this twist.
Yes, Paul loves to play the bad buy and unfortunately for him, Stefan, more often than not, is a true-blue hero. Obviously, he had this wonderful arc as the Ripper and he’s plagued by his own demons, but when all’s said and done he’s still very much the straight man. Getting the opportunity to dig into this and really stretch and exercise his muscles as an actor I think just made him really happy; it’s exciting for him as an actor to play with a new character.

So will we learn more about the Salvatore family history in season five, maybe about the brothers’ mother?
We’ve just gotten started talking about season five, but one of the things we’re talking about is definitely learning more about the history of the Salvatore family. I would say that at this point the things we don’t know yet are fair game.

As for the other brother, he didn’t get to be a doppelgänger, but he did get the girl! So what’s next for Damon and Elena?
Next for them as a couple is a long-distance relationship as Elena heads off to her new life at college and Damon sticks behind In Mystic Falls to hold down the fort. We get to see them happy, believe it or not, for a little while before of course circumstances and other supernatural influence comes in to drive an obstacle in their path. There’s something that we rarely get to do on TVD, is see a couple enjoy being a couple and we’re definitely going to have our fun with Elena and Damon, who have taken so much time to find their way to each other really and truly. So we’re going to be able to enjoy that for a while.

Katherine being the one to take the cure was also a huge shocker and we heard you originally planned on giving it to another character. Can you say who it was and why the switch?
Interestingly enough, when Kevin [Williamson] and I, back in season zero, when we first launched the series and started talking about knowing that one day we’d make Elena a vampire and with that move would come the realization that there was a cure; I think in the back of our heads we always intended to heal Elena. But the instant that we actually made the decision to move forward with Elena the first thing we realized was she would of course be the one person we couldn’t cure because it was just too easy.

Read more: E! Online

Damon & Elena Finally Find Happiness
Believe it or not, Julie says we’ll actually get to see Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and Elena (Nina Dobrev) “happy” for a little while in season five. Yes, you read that right: happy!

“We’re definitely going to have our fun with Elena and Damon, who have taken so much time to find their way to each other really and truly,” she promises. “We’re going to be able to enjoy that for a while.”

Sadly, it won’t take long for “circumstances and other supernatural influences” to drive a wdge between them, but hopefully they’ll be able to overcome whatever’s thrown their way. Someone in this town deserves a happy ending!

Katherine’s Fresh Start
Katherine (Nina Dobrev) received the ultimate punishment when Elena literally forced the cure down her throat, as Julie says she’s “the one person on the planet who would hate to be a vampire more than anything.”

And for good reason! Now that she’s vulnerable, she’ll have to watch her back for enemies — and you’d better believe she’s got a target on her back.

“Not only is she on the verge of getting her ass kicked every single episode, she’s going to need protection,” Julie says. “And who better to seek out for protection than the brothers Salvatore who have been so good at caring on and off for her over the centuries?”

Stefan & Bonnie Face New Struggles
Two major question marks at the end of season four were Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Bonnie (Kat Graham), and Julie’s got big plans for both.

In a nutshell, we should expect crazy things from Silas, as he impersonates his “shadow self” in Mystic Falls.

“His mission has been singular from the beginning, which is he wants to take the cure and die and get rid of the other side so he can pass on and be reunited with his one true love,” Julie says. “However, the cure’s off the table, the other side’s off the table, so he’s going to have a pretty enormous plan B for how to deal with that.”

As for Bonnie, the witch-turned-ghost will be a regular in season five, but she’ll struggle to find a way to have a “physical relationship” with Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen).

Source: Hollywoodlife

How long before everyone finds out that Stefan is really Silas?
Plec: Truth be told, I don’t think it’ll be too long. I think that there’s more fun to be played with people learning quickly, but independently of the other so there’s a lot of good bait-and-switch Katherine-style stuff that could happen early in the season. And people that know Stefan well will be able to catch on pretty quickly I would hope.

Can we expect double Paul Wesley scenes?
Plec: Part of the fun of having an actor play two roles are those opportunities to put them face to face, but they’re difficult to shoot and they take a lot of time and the stuff we do even with Katherine and Elena we do so sparingly. So we’ll definitely see it, but of course Stefan will be on his own journey presumably at the bottom of the [lake] floor so we’ll see when and who gets him out of that mess.

How did Paul feel about the character arc?
Plec: He’s definitely excited. He’s such a good actor, he loves to work and he loves to give everything he has to the role and people who do long-term television series will always jump on the opportunity to spread their wings a little bit.

Can you confirm that Elena was herself and not Silas when she said she was in love with Damon?
Plec: Well put it this way, if it wasn’t Elena, then that means Stefan/Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder made out. I think a lot of fans would’ve been happy.

Will Katherine try to have people turn her back into a vampire?
Plec: Well, given the rules of how one becomes a vampire on our show — which is if you inject vampire blood and then you die with it in your system —that’s a pretty big risk to take. If it doesn’t work then she’s just dead and I think the one thing she’s constantly going to weigh is, “How much do I hate being human? Am I willing to risk actually dying forever in order to get my vampirism back?”

Can you imagine a time Elena and Katherine could ever find common ground?
Plec: You know I actually think that if they ever sat down and had a bottle of wine and a bag of chips they’d probably realize they have a lot more in common than they think. But they have a lot of hate and bitterness and altogether bad blood there so it might take a couple of bags of chips and a case of wine.

Will Elena still struggle with vampire urges in college?
Plec: Well I think the bigger issue for her will be protecting her secret. In Mystic Falls we’ve seen it’s hard enough to keep your secret of who you are and what you are and now she’s going out into a whole new location and a new life and living a double life as a human student and a secret vampire. There are going to be some struggles attached to that.

Is it possible that Elena and Damon could be happy together next season?
Plec: I think there’s never not going to be a moment where they’re engaged in some kind of conflict because their relationship even as friends and enemies had a volatility that is frustrating and sexy at the same time. So the question is how long can we keep them happy in spite of the things that come up that put them at odds with each other and that will be part of the journey next season is seeing if these two can really make it as a couple

How long before everyone finds out Bonnie is a ghost?
Plec: I think she was pretty clear about Jeremy wanting to keep her secret so I guess we’ll see how long he’s willing to do that.

What will her role be next season?
Plec: The predicament for Bonnie is that she’s on the other side so she can pop in and see what’s up and who’s doing what. With her relationship with Jeremy she’ll have information that nobody could access, but she doesn’t have the actual ability to do magic or interact with another human so there’s an impotence attached to that that I think will be frustrating for her not to mention the emotional distance of not being able to be right there with your friends even though she’s there they don’t know that she is. So she’s going to struggle a bit in the beginning and that’ll either strengthen or hurt her budding relationship with Jeremy which already has so many obstacles attached to it.

How will Jeremy struggle being human again?
Plec: Jeremy will not have a very easy time of it. His first big hurdle is his cover story for being suddenly alive. So he’ll struggle a bit with the return to the normal world.

Where will Matt and Rebekah be when we pick up?
Plec: We’ll definitely see them when we start up next season. As far as I know they may even still be in Europe when we find them.

In your mind, will Matt ever be turned?
Plec: Truth be told that character has a special place in my heart and all of our hearts because he is, as Rebekah said, so beautifully human, and so I don’t want to mess with that any time soon.

Will there be a time jump next season?
Plec: Definitely our intention is to pick up the beginning of the season as everyone is making their preparations to go to college or whatever it is they’re going to do.

Will Tyler be back in the fold full time next season?
Plec: We’ll definitely see Tyler (Michael Trevino) again and I think the biggest question is where’s he been what’s he been doing how has it changed his life and can he step right back into the Mystic Falls world or to college easily and what will that mean for his relationship with Caroline.

With Klaus telling Caroline he wants to be her final love, does that mean there’s opportunity for them to actually get to that place?
Plec: “You never know” I think is the answer. Right now the biggest hurdle, other than a spin-off separating them, is that he’s done some really vile things and I don’t think Caroline’s in any hurry to jump into bed with someone like that so murderous and violent and manipulative and cruel. And he did, after all, murder her boyfriend’s mother. So I think she definitely has a draw to him and a connection with him that she’s not even necessarily confident is a good thing. His hurdle will be to get her to finally come around, and he goes on his own redemption journey moving forward: Will he become the kind of man she can one day look at the way she looks at Tyler.

Source: TV Guide

Do NOT read if you haven’t seen the season finale yet!

Julie Plec sat down with TV Line to talk about Silas’ agenda, Tyler’s future and ‘Delena’s’ challenges;

TVLINE | What’s Silas’ agenda as Stefan? Is he going to be sticking around town for some purpose?
I can’t say whether he’ll be sticking around town, although I can say that he’ll definitely be coming back to town when we get back into the next season. His agenda has always been to cure himself, to get rid of the other side so that he could then die and pass over and find peace. That will remain his agenda. The question is: How will he go about it? Everything he meant to do this year blew up in his face.

TVLINE | Can he really fool everyone into thinking he’s Stefan?
He’s going to give it a good college try. He is, after all, psychic, as well. So he can get inside people’s heads and make them think whatever he wants. It’s not like we’re going to play an entire season of The Parent Trap. [Laughs] But there will be some funny times right at the beginning of the season.

TVLINE | Speaking of, why Damon? What were you hoping to get to explore in Elena choosing Damon?
Damon’s a character who’s been driven by feeling like he’s not worthy of love. Now that he’s on the receiving end of that love, what will that mean for him? And where will he have to make changes in him, in his behavior? Or will he still be, “I am who I am. You love me for who I am. I’m not going to change for you”? It’ll be a fun dynamic to see him either trying to exercise restraint or not being able to exercise restraint in the name of love of this girl, especially as he’s got a new houseguest. He’s [living] with Jeremy Gilbert as Elena goes off to college.

TVLINE | It seemed like Caroline and Tyler are poised for a reunion. Will Michael Trevino be back next season as a regular?
Michael Trevino is still under contract. When he’ll return, we can’t say yet. He is going to have the opportunity to return to Caroline’s life in Mystic Falls. The question is, will he want to take it, given everything he’s been through since he’s been gone, which will be fun for us to learn — like what kind of life he’s been leading on the run.

Read more: TV Line

Whoa, whoa whoa! What a big bang! The fourth season of The Vampire Diaries ended with a HUGE Salvatore secret. Executive Producer Julie Plec sat down with Zap2it to discuss last night’s epic season finale. Do NOT continue reading if you haven’t seen the season finale yet!;

1. Silas has a doppelganger — and it’s Stefan. Yes, the Petrova women aren’t the only ones with the doppelganger enchantment in their blood. All of the convoluted twists regarding the legend of Silas, his goals, and his abilities came together. Thanks to a loophole, Silas came back to life, revealing that the immortality spell itself had a loophole: doppelgangers. Silas and Stefan share the same face. Stefan is Silas’ doppelganger, and now he’s trapped in a safe at the bottom of an ocean.

This is a storyline that has been in the works for about a year. “Last year, when Season 3 was over, we kept a small group of writers and we stayed for five weeks, to try to break the broad strokes of Season 4. Last year, right around this time, we came up with the doppelgänger pitch,” executive producer Julie Plec tells us.

There were some complications to introducing another doppelgänger character. In Season 2 and early in Season 3, when Nina Dobrev was playing both Katherine and Elena regularly, she grew worn out, physically. Some of the decision-makers behind “The Vampire Diaries” were concerned that playing two characters could take a similar toll on Paul Wesley.

“We had to convince a lot of different people of how it could work and what could make it work,” Julie says. “So that we didn’t end up in a similar situation as with Katherine and Elena, where we exhausted Nina to the point of being unable to get out of her bed, because we accidentally overworked her so much. Creatively, everybody was very excited about the Silas doppelganger, it was just a matter of how long it took us to cement it, knowing that’s fundamentally what we’re going to do.”

At the moment, Paul’s not concerned about working too hard — he’s just excited to face a new challenge on the show. “He is so happy,” Julie laughs. “Playing the straight man hero is not always the most exciting job for an actor, and Stefan, of all our heroes, is the straightest on the show. We get to go deeper into his ripper side sometimes, but for Paul, those moments are tvd-423-graduation-bonnie-kat-graham.jpgjust pocket moments of opportunity to dig deeply into his craft, and a lot of other times he feels like he’s just grooming his hero hair. So obviously, he’s very enthusiastic about this, and has been supportive of it all along. He’s been dying for something; to be a jerk, to be evil, to be the bad guy, to be able to stretch his muscles.”

And in Season 5, he definitely will.

2. The resurrection of Jeremy Gilbert: “Vampire Diaries” fans are used to characters dying — and occasionally, they pop back up later, whether it’s as a vampire or as a ghost. Still, we were (pleasantly!) surprised to learn that Jeremy was coming back from the grave permanently, particularly because his goodbye episode was so heart-wrenching. Didn’t the writers worry that resurrecting him would dull the impact of his beautiful, memorable send-off?

“It’s something that we talked about a lot,” Julie says. “Our intention, originally, was to say goodbye [to Jeremy] permanently. But then a lot of questions came up about the power of this girl losing her only living relative. It was so important to her journey at that moment. The global, eternally reaching tragedy attached to that is really sad, and really depressing.”

Though Jeremy had to die in order to push Elena into the next phase of her life as a vampire, the writers quickly realized that it’d be impossible to bring her back from that dark, desperately tragic point in her life unless they revived Jeremy. Without him, Elena was looking down a long, black tunnel of depression — and that wouldn’t make for a particularly lively Season 5.

“We argued a lot, in the writer’s room — could we successfully bring this character back in a way that wouldn’t feel cheap? Ultimately, I think that the way that it plays out, it does feel like the natural gift at the end of the season for this character that has been through so much,” she explains.

Now Elena has a chance at some happiness in Season 5. “[Getting Jeremy back] resets her, in a way, where she can now get on with her life and live like the Elena that we know,” Julie says. She is cautious, because she knows that some viewers might not be pleased with the loophole Jeremy steps through to return to the land of the living. “Critically, you can look at something and go, ‘Well, that’s a take-back, it’s not fair,’ but emotionally, I think, it’s a positive. We might get hammered for it. We’ll see. I’m hoping people will be so glad to see our Elena pull her life back together, they’ll accept it.”

3. Bonnie will still factor in to the storylines. Jeremy didn’t exactly get a free ride back to the land of the living. Bonnie sacrificed herself in order to bring him back for Elena, and now she’s trapped beyond the veil — invisible to everyone, except for Jeremy.

It’s certainly a tragic loss, but don’t worry, Bonnie fans. Kat Graham will still be a big part of the show. “Here’s what I’ll say about Bonnie: I haven’t personally seen ‘Being Human,’ but I do know that they have a ghost character that operates pretty successfully on that show,” Julie says. “This is not the last we’ve seen of Bonnie. If anything, she will be right there in the middle of story next season, just with a few new complications.”

4. Delena goodness! By giving Jeremy his life back, Bonnie essentially gave Elena her life back, too. Unencumbered by the sire bond, her grief, or a gaping hole where her humanity should be, Elena finally got to evaluate her love life with a clear head — and she chose to be with Damon. “In death, you’re the one that made me feel most alive,” Elena told him. Cue the mouth touching! Now, with her vampire boyfriend at her side, she might just be able to enjoy college.

It’s been a rough few years for Damon when it comes to his love life — but Julie tells us it’s finally time for him to have some legitimate joy in his life. “Yes. Absolutely,” she says. “We’re going to get to see Damon trying to be a good boyfriend, and while it’s not going to be easy, he’s going to try like hell to make it work, and they’re going to have a real opportunity for happiness.”

5. And what about Katherine? This season, we’ve seen a much more vulnerable side of Miss Katerina Petrova. She spent most of the year on the run. When she finally opened up and fell for Elijah, he rejected her in favor of a new beginning with his family. And then, in a moment of weakness, she allowed Elena to get the upper hand in a major showdown in the high school hallways. Elena, driven by very human emotions, shoved the cure down Katherine’s throat. The thing that Katherine fears most is mortality. Elena gave it to her.

Just don’t expect Katherine to go all Elena on us now that she doesn’t have to drink blood to stay alive. “As a human, she’s still very, very bad,” Julie laughs. “If anything, she feels silly for letting herself get vulnerable, and she’s taking out that frustration of her own vulnerability on Elena. If Elena goes after her, Katherine’s still ready to kick that puppy.”

Bon Jovi “You Give Love A Bad Name”
Delta Rae “Dance In The Graveyards”
Olivia Broadfield “Gone”
Cary Brothers “Belong”
Liz Lawrence “When I Was Younger”
S. Carey “In The Stream”

E! Online sat down with both Nina Dobrev and Ian Somerhalder at The CW Upfronts to talk about the big season finale and redemption;

Attention Emmy voters, it’s time for you to recognize the brilliance that Nina Dobrev has been serving up on The Vampire Diaries this season!
Seriously, the girl acted her face off in the episode where Elena’s brother Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) died on the CW hit, and we couldn’t help but gush all over her tear-inducing performance when we caught up with Dobrev on the red carpet at the CW’s upfront presentation in New York City. And guess what? We weren’t the only ones sobbing!

“The experience of reading that script for the first time in our read-through, I’ve never gone through that in my entire life,” she tells us. “I literally started sobbing uncontrollably as I was reading it.”

While Dobrev wouldn’t spill on which brother Elena chooses (duh!), she does reveal it’s not an easy decision.
“It’s like any relationship. There’s a different connection you have with different people, and I think that Elena had a certain connection with Stefan that was very profound and with Damon it was more excitable,” she says. “Between the two of them, unfortunately, they’re the perfect man, so it’s hard. Maybe she needs to go out and explore other things and discover herself.
“Damon’s grown a lot. It’s about the push and the pull of him really wanting her to be this creature, because her feelings ultimately changed for Stefan, which was very good for Damon, but in all actuality even Damon knows it’s not right; what happened to this young, beautiful woman and watching her deteriorate and fall apart, it’s heartbreaking to see,” Somerhalder previews what fans can expect from Elena’s choice between the two brothers in the finale. “By virtue of that, there’s redemption in some ways.”

Read more + don’t forget the VIDEOS: E! Online

It’s that time of the year again! The cast and crew of The Vampire Diaries come together to celebrate and discuss their season finale’s on The CW Upfronts that took place on May, 16th.

The Vampire Diaries
Celebified/Wetpaint took the time to talk to Joseph Morgan, Daniel Gillies and Arielle Kebbel about the spectacular season finale. Click here to watch it on Youtube or watch the embed below.

The Originals
Danielle Campbell took the time to talk about the spinoff The Originals. Danielle Campbell plays Davina. Click here to watch the interview.
Phoebe Tonkin sat down with TV Fanatic to talk about The Originals. Click here to watch the interview.

Photos:

More photos here

Click here to watch it on Youtube, or watch the embed below