Was this always how you envisioned writing Elena off the show, knowing it was a possibility?
JP: I knew — and the writers pretended to agree with me whether they did or not — that there was no chance in hell we would kill Elena. Absolutely not. I think Nina, in her own way, would have liked to die because we do epic deaths on this show and it’s a great way to go out, but it just didn’t feel right. It would have felt really sour to kill Elena Gilbert, who, incidentally, has already died once. We also didn’t know how our characters could move forward with any kind of levity — Damon specifically — if that were to happen. So that was off the table.
So then it became, How do we make the exit feel permanent? Everyone comes back to life on this show. It sort of feels like any choice you make could be undone pretty quickly — so we didn’t want the audience to cling on to false hope that Elena would show up in Episode 3 of Season 7. We really had to come up with a scenario that felt as permanent as possible that didn’t kill her, that was emotional, and that would allow our characters to get on with their lives in such a way that there was still some hope for the future. We started talking about, what we call, a “Sleeping Beauty spell.” We started talking about it last summer when we were breaking the season in the event that Nina decided not to come back for Season 7. We had 10 different scenarios, one of which took us into Season 7. If she did agree to stay, we had a pitch where it could have lasted a whole half season — all the trials and tribulations the Salvatore brothers had to go through in order to break the sleeping spell only to get to the last one where it’s revealed they have to kill Bonnie Bennett. And then them realizing Elena would never let that happen and blah blah blah.
Any plan we had always revolved around this sleeping spell, but in January, when the news became final, this became our season finale. Everything led up to this. All year long I think we assumed the season would end on the cliffhanger from Episode 21 and then play the rest of it out over the course of Season 7, but it was like, Nope, we’re doing it all now. Which turned out great. It would have been fun to explore over next season, but I think it delivers really powerfully as it is now.
Stefan telling Caroline that he needed Damon more than he needed Elena seemed like kind of a major admission. Why was it important to have that particular moment in this episode?
JP: That was my most important scene in the finale. It’s so funny, everything I write now, I wonder, Who is going to yell at me about this? I knew I was going to get killed for that scene, but I didn’t care. I have said again and again and again that the most powerful love story on this show, the team I ‘ship the hardest, is Team Salvatore. Yes, I loved Stefan and Elena together. I really did. I thought they had a deeply powerful, beautiful relationship. And I also loved Damon and Elena together because I loved watching it build over time, and I love what it meant to Damon as a character to have that epic fairy tale that so many people connected to.
But when all is said and done, the story I love the most is the one between Stefan and Damon, and I do believe that is always the heart of the show. And for Stefan to have proper closure with Elena, for the audience to have proper closure with Elena and Stefan, for us as writers to have proper closure in reminding ourselves about the power of that a little bit… there were a lot of reasons for that scene. But, for me, that girl was allegedly the love of his life and he’s losing her too and wanting for Caroline to say, “Are you going to be OK?” And for him to say, “Yeah, I think I will be because I think she came into my life for a reason, and I think that reason is to remind me that my relationship with my brother is my constant.” For better or worse.
Speaking of epic finale moments, there is the scene where Damon says to Elena, “How do I prepare to spend 60 years without you?” Given that, can romance no longer be a part of his storyline on this show?
JP: There is a line in the script where Elena says to Damon, “I want you to be happy,” but there was a line that said, “You waited for Katherine [also played by Dobrev] and lived your life, so don’t stop your life while you wait for me.” But we cut it for time and because it was too far. Put it this way: Damon is not falling out of love anytime soon. He’s not going to look at another girl sideways anytime soon. And I think there’s a lot of fun to be had with Damon, the hottest vampire in town, being like, Ladies, back off. I’m a taken man. I think there’s as much fun to be had in him avoiding women as there is in him indulging in women. I think we’ll honor their pledge for the future.
Logistically, you’ve got Paul, Ian, Candice, Kat. You’ve got… I’m assuming Matt Davis will be back… Although, wait. I’m super mad about what you did to Jo (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe).
JP: Oh my god. I know, I know. It’s the worst. We were like, This is bad. This is terrible. When I pitched it to Matt Davis, he was like, That is so mean. That is awful. My best friend was like, You killed her babies?!? It’s bad and we know how rough it is, but it had to happen. … Ain’t no doubt about who your big bad of the season is when this episode ends.
Can we assume that this time jump or whatever we saw at the end of the finale was a result of the heretics?
JP: I think it’s a good assumption. It’s metaphorically, Where is everyone in their life without Elena Gilbert? And, literally, it’s, What has happened to this town in her absence? As we saw, the heretics made their appearance at the end of the episode, so if I were putting money on why Mystic Falls is suddenly abandoned, I would pin the blame on them.
Is that time jump where Season 7 will begin, or is it a flash-forward you’ll return to over the course of Season 7?
JP: It’s a flash-forward we are going to explain, return to, and, also, move beyond. Next season plays with time jumps a little bit. We’re going to have some fun with living in flash-forwards and also in the present.
Can you say how far in the future that particular time jump is?
JP: Um…no. Because we haven’t written it yet.
Is it years or months?
JP: That particular flash-forward I can’t explain because there’s a trick attached to it. But the flash-forwards for next season, we’re talking at least a couple of years in the future.
I guess that’s the benefit of having a cast of characters that aren’t supposed to age.
JP: Yeah, no kidding.
How are you feeling about the stories you’ve begun to break for next year?
JP: We feel great. We’ve got not just the first half of the season marked out, but we have sort of the big mythology for the full season and a launching point for Season 8. To have that already is really thrilling and it let us go on our very brief vacations with a little bit of clear heads and light hearts. I think that the beauty of this show is you have the Salvatore brothers who are so powerful, you have Caroline Forbes who is an epic character, and Bonnie Bennett, and Alaric Saltzman, and Matt Donovan, and Enzo… He needs a last name, I’m realizing. But there are a lot of stories to tell, a lot of relationship dynamics to play out, and a lot of mystery to build.
We’re very excited about the season, and I think the actors specifically are really jazzed that it’s going to be a season based in tension, suspense, some vampire drama, some folklore, some mystery, and not just built around a love triangle. That certainly started to wear out its welcome amongst the actors and the writers. There’s only so much of that you can write before you start to feel like you’re getting a little stale. Given the choice, I’m sure we’d all prefer to have Nina still on the show, but if there is an upside to this situation, it is the freedom to break away from that paradigm and spread our wings a little bit.
Have you begun to plan the end of The Vampire Diaries, or are you hoping there will be a 10th season and an 11th season and so on?
JP: I think that’s a loaded question because there are so many things attached to it. I’ve always said that as long as there are good stories to tell, this is a show that can continue because people love these characters and love the stories and we have a big crew-family that loves their jobs. As long as it feels fresh and not like a burden or a struggle, there’s no reason not to continue.
There are certainly many fans who would argue that there are a million reasons not to continue now that Elena’s gone, but that’s their opinion, and mine is different. If people stop watching because they don’t like the show without Elena, or they don’t like it without another character that may leave eventually, then we’ll all reassess, because I also don’t want to go out limping. Everyone is going to have their say about the creative strength of the show moving forward, but as long as we feel like what we’re doing is good and our bosses feel like we’re doing good work and the feedback we get from fans is that we’re doing good work, then there’s no reason to stop doing good work.
JP: I knew — and the writers pretended to agree with me whether they did or not — that there was no chance in hell we would kill Elena. Absolutely not. I think Nina, in her own way, would have liked to die because we do epic deaths on this show and it’s a great way to go out, but it just didn’t feel right. It would have felt really sour to kill Elena Gilbert, who, incidentally, has already died once. We also didn’t know how our characters could move forward with any kind of levity — Damon specifically — if that were to happen. So that was off the table.
So then it became, How do we make the exit feel permanent? Everyone comes back to life on this show. It sort of feels like any choice you make could be undone pretty quickly — so we didn’t want the audience to cling on to false hope that Elena would show up in Episode 3 of Season 7. We really had to come up with a scenario that felt as permanent as possible that didn’t kill her, that was emotional, and that would allow our characters to get on with their lives in such a way that there was still some hope for the future. We started talking about, what we call, a “Sleeping Beauty spell.” We started talking about it last summer when we were breaking the season in the event that Nina decided not to come back for Season 7. We had 10 different scenarios, one of which took us into Season 7. If she did agree to stay, we had a pitch where it could have lasted a whole half season — all the trials and tribulations the Salvatore brothers had to go through in order to break the sleeping spell only to get to the last one where it’s revealed they have to kill Bonnie Bennett. And then them realizing Elena would never let that happen and blah blah blah.
Any plan we had always revolved around this sleeping spell, but in January, when the news became final, this became our season finale. Everything led up to this. All year long I think we assumed the season would end on the cliffhanger from Episode 21 and then play the rest of it out over the course of Season 7, but it was like, Nope, we’re doing it all now. Which turned out great. It would have been fun to explore over next season, but I think it delivers really powerfully as it is now.
Stefan telling Caroline that he needed Damon more than he needed Elena seemed like kind of a major admission. Why was it important to have that particular moment in this episode?
JP: That was my most important scene in the finale. It’s so funny, everything I write now, I wonder, Who is going to yell at me about this? I knew I was going to get killed for that scene, but I didn’t care. I have said again and again and again that the most powerful love story on this show, the team I ‘ship the hardest, is Team Salvatore. Yes, I loved Stefan and Elena together. I really did. I thought they had a deeply powerful, beautiful relationship. And I also loved Damon and Elena together because I loved watching it build over time, and I love what it meant to Damon as a character to have that epic fairy tale that so many people connected to.
But when all is said and done, the story I love the most is the one between Stefan and Damon, and I do believe that is always the heart of the show. And for Stefan to have proper closure with Elena, for the audience to have proper closure with Elena and Stefan, for us as writers to have proper closure in reminding ourselves about the power of that a little bit… there were a lot of reasons for that scene. But, for me, that girl was allegedly the love of his life and he’s losing her too and wanting for Caroline to say, “Are you going to be OK?” And for him to say, “Yeah, I think I will be because I think she came into my life for a reason, and I think that reason is to remind me that my relationship with my brother is my constant.” For better or worse.
Speaking of epic finale moments, there is the scene where Damon says to Elena, “How do I prepare to spend 60 years without you?” Given that, can romance no longer be a part of his storyline on this show?
JP: There is a line in the script where Elena says to Damon, “I want you to be happy,” but there was a line that said, “You waited for Katherine [also played by Dobrev] and lived your life, so don’t stop your life while you wait for me.” But we cut it for time and because it was too far. Put it this way: Damon is not falling out of love anytime soon. He’s not going to look at another girl sideways anytime soon. And I think there’s a lot of fun to be had with Damon, the hottest vampire in town, being like, Ladies, back off. I’m a taken man. I think there’s as much fun to be had in him avoiding women as there is in him indulging in women. I think we’ll honor their pledge for the future.
Logistically, you’ve got Paul, Ian, Candice, Kat. You’ve got… I’m assuming Matt Davis will be back… Although, wait. I’m super mad about what you did to Jo (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe).
JP: Oh my god. I know, I know. It’s the worst. We were like, This is bad. This is terrible. When I pitched it to Matt Davis, he was like, That is so mean. That is awful. My best friend was like, You killed her babies?!? It’s bad and we know how rough it is, but it had to happen. … Ain’t no doubt about who your big bad of the season is when this episode ends.
Can we assume that this time jump or whatever we saw at the end of the finale was a result of the heretics?
JP: I think it’s a good assumption. It’s metaphorically, Where is everyone in their life without Elena Gilbert? And, literally, it’s, What has happened to this town in her absence? As we saw, the heretics made their appearance at the end of the episode, so if I were putting money on why Mystic Falls is suddenly abandoned, I would pin the blame on them.
Is that time jump where Season 7 will begin, or is it a flash-forward you’ll return to over the course of Season 7?
JP: It’s a flash-forward we are going to explain, return to, and, also, move beyond. Next season plays with time jumps a little bit. We’re going to have some fun with living in flash-forwards and also in the present.
Can you say how far in the future that particular time jump is?
JP: Um…no. Because we haven’t written it yet.
Is it years or months?
JP: That particular flash-forward I can’t explain because there’s a trick attached to it. But the flash-forwards for next season, we’re talking at least a couple of years in the future.
I guess that’s the benefit of having a cast of characters that aren’t supposed to age.
JP: Yeah, no kidding.
How are you feeling about the stories you’ve begun to break for next year?
JP: We feel great. We’ve got not just the first half of the season marked out, but we have sort of the big mythology for the full season and a launching point for Season 8. To have that already is really thrilling and it let us go on our very brief vacations with a little bit of clear heads and light hearts. I think that the beauty of this show is you have the Salvatore brothers who are so powerful, you have Caroline Forbes who is an epic character, and Bonnie Bennett, and Alaric Saltzman, and Matt Donovan, and Enzo… He needs a last name, I’m realizing. But there are a lot of stories to tell, a lot of relationship dynamics to play out, and a lot of mystery to build.
We’re very excited about the season, and I think the actors specifically are really jazzed that it’s going to be a season based in tension, suspense, some vampire drama, some folklore, some mystery, and not just built around a love triangle. That certainly started to wear out its welcome amongst the actors and the writers. There’s only so much of that you can write before you start to feel like you’re getting a little stale. Given the choice, I’m sure we’d all prefer to have Nina still on the show, but if there is an upside to this situation, it is the freedom to break away from that paradigm and spread our wings a little bit.
Have you begun to plan the end of The Vampire Diaries, or are you hoping there will be a 10th season and an 11th season and so on?
JP: I think that’s a loaded question because there are so many things attached to it. I’ve always said that as long as there are good stories to tell, this is a show that can continue because people love these characters and love the stories and we have a big crew-family that loves their jobs. As long as it feels fresh and not like a burden or a struggle, there’s no reason not to continue.
There are certainly many fans who would argue that there are a million reasons not to continue now that Elena’s gone, but that’s their opinion, and mine is different. If people stop watching because they don’t like the show without Elena, or they don’t like it without another character that may leave eventually, then we’ll all reassess, because I also don’t want to go out limping. Everyone is going to have their say about the creative strength of the show moving forward, but as long as we feel like what we’re doing is good and our bosses feel like we’re doing good work and the feedback we get from fans is that we’re doing good work, then there’s no reason to stop doing good work.
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