Stefan and Elena’s love story would have ended very differently had Nina Dobrev remained on The Vampire Diaries.
Showrunner Julie Plec teased the original plan when she shared a post via X, which read, “Stans of ships that were going to be endgame if the actor didn’t leave the show should get some type of financial compensation.”
Plec, 51, added the eyes emoji alongside a gif of Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Elena (Dobrev).
The fictional couple were one half of an iconic love triangle that has fans divided to this day. The Vampire Diaries, which debuted in 2009, introduced viewers to the fictional town of Mystic Falls, Virginia, which was full of supernatural events. At the center of the series was Elena, who found herself caught between the Salvatore brothers, Stefan and Damon (Ian Somerhalder).
Elena initially found herself planning a life with Stefan. Her chemistry with Damon, however, proved too hard to deny after she became a vampire, and they subsequently acted on their feelings later in the series. Dobrev, 35, dated Somerhalder, 45, off screen while on the show from 2010 to 2013. They continued working together after their split, but Dobrev shocked fans when she announced her departure in 2015.
“I always knew I wanted Elena’s story to be a six season adventure, and within those six years I got the journey of a lifetime,” she wrote via Instagram at the time. “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, and there’s still so much more to come before the season finale in May.”
Dobrev weighed in on Elena’s intense feelings for the Salvatore brothers, adding, “Elena fell in love not once, but twice, with two epic soul mates, and I myself made some of the best friends I’ll ever know and built an extended family I will love forever. … I invite you to hop on the roller coaster ride that is Elena Gilbert’s life and join me as I celebrate her and prepare to say goodbye to her — and to my work family — as I move on to the next chapter of my life.”
The Vampire Diaries ran for two more seasons after Dobrev’s departure, during which her character was under a Sleeping Beauty-like curse. In the series finale, which aired in 2017, Dobrev reprised her role as fans finally got to see Elena wake up In a flash-forward, she wears wedding rings, indicating she married Damon after Stefan sacrificed his life to save his brother. They enter the afterlife holding hands.
Plec later discussed how the ending changed from Stelena to Delena endgame because of Dobrev’s absence.
“When Nina left, it felt like the show can’t be as much about protecting Elena’s happiness, although that’s important to us, but we want to protect the brothers’ happiness, we want them to get something out of this,” she shared on an episode of the “Binge: The Vampire Diaries Podcast” in August 2021. “Then it shifted to: We can’t kill both of them for her because that feels somehow like nobody got what they wanted. Let’s find a different way to give one of these brothers the happiness that they need and the other brother the closure that they need.”
Plec previously recalled pitching an idea where neither Salvatore brother made it out alive.
“Back in season 2, when Kevin and I were sitting in the mall and we 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,’” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2017. “Then they would be watching her like ghosts as she went off into the sunset to live her life and maybe marry Matt Donovan or maybe become a doctor, but that those brothers would be side-by-side watching her live.”
