Vampire Diaries EP Talks Damon's Lily Spiral, a Bonnie/Nora Pairing and plus 

, what better way is there to bond with your kin than by uniting to destroy your dead mother’s murderous lover?

Vampire Diaries Sneak Peek: Damon and Stefan Stumble Upon a Merry Massacre

That’s where Stefan and Damon find themselves in Thursday’s fall finale (The CW, 8/7c), which executive producer Caroline Dries promises to be full of new possibilities — and new heartbreak.

Below, Dries discusses the fallout from Lily’s suicide, a surprising — and bewitching! — new pairing and when we can expect Stefan and Caroline’s relationship to begin its great-and-terrible unraveling.

TVLINE | Lily’s death was pretty gut-wrenching. What went into your decision to kill her off? And why now?

We thought of Lily as our first-chapter villain, the emotional catalyst for the first part of the season. She was the third point in the Stefan/Damon triangle; when we lost Elena, we replaced her with someone else they could fight over in a way. She was just trying to get both families together, and the culmination of that was when Julian made her choose. She finally realized her selfishness destroyed a lot of people by trying to have everything. We originally had her dying in this next episode, but I was just like, “No. This story has to end here.” Even though we love Annie [Wersching], it had to happen.

TVLINE | I imagine Enzo won’t handle Lily’s death all too well, especially after that big kiss.

Well, when last we saw Enzo, he was being thrown in the back of a van and kidnapped. We don’t see him in the finale, so we won’t catch up with him until after the break.

TVLINE | And what’s next for the heretics, now that their “mother” is gone and they’re stuck with an evil “father”?

In addition to being their emotional compass, Lily also kept them on a tight leash. The heretics dissipate a little bit and go their own way, which is fun for us as storytellers, because now they can enter stories they wouldn’t have entered before. For example, in the winter finale, Nora and Bonnie get to have interactions. She’s tip-toeing out of the bell jar that Lily’s been keeping her in, and asking things like, “What’s college like?”

TVLINE | Speaking of Bonnie, she had a pretty crappy Christmas last year. Can we hope for something better in 2015?

] Yes, this year, Bonnie’s doing fundraising for Toys for Tots. She’s having a much different Christmas, where she’s helping children and being a normal college student. Nora eases her way into that storyline and stirs up Bonnie’s world a little bit. [Editor’s note: Remember when Kat Graham said she wants Bonnie to bisexual? Just saying!]

TVLINE | We’re in a unique — and unfortunate — position, knowing that Stefan and Caroline will eventually break up. When will we see their relationship start to unravel, or has it already started?

I don’t think we’ve seen it yet. We have a lot more story to tell with them. This episode doesn’t really focus on Stefan and Caroline as much as it focuses on Caroline, Alaric and their babies. The babies aren’t what ultimately break them up; it will be a confluence of many little things that lead to their demise.

TVLINE | Back to Lily for a minute, we saw that Damon eventually realizes the error of his goodbye. Will we see that start to eat him up in the present?

For sure. In this next episode, Stefan is continuing his drive to kill Julian, and he manages to recruit Damon. But as the brothers start working together, Stefan starts to wonder, “What’s going through your head, Damon? Are you starting to resent basically spitting on mom’s grave when you had 10 seconds to tell her anything?” Damon initially tries to blow that off, but as the episode climaxes, he realizes that it’s not going to go away. … He needs to go through something big in order to come to that emotional catharsis.

, what are your hopes for the fall finale (and beyond)?

Why bother with Nora and Bonnie though? We all know she gets with Enzo and Nora either dies or returns to Mary Louise sometimes TVD pays too much attention to love stories/triangles when we dont need them.

They love triangles and they say this show is not about ships

Nora it may be her present potential love interest while she get together with Enzo only to create more drama

I hope it’s not a new love triangle. The idea of this is just SO bad.

Lmao “The babies aren’t what ultimately break them up; it will be a confluence of many little things that lead to their demise.” lol their DEMISE!!! yeah but you there is always HOPE! thats quite the turnabout from this summer/fall with they are perfect, you root for them etc yeah its cause Stefan is the worst and you have no ideas how to fix him and he´s bringing Caroline down with him!!! oh and its the WORST thing EVER……

I dont get the point of all the Steroline buildup when they had to break them up & treat their relationship so horribly. This entire season, they’ve been treated like crap & FF shows caroline/alaric (which im still ?? about) & Im pretty sure Stefan/Valerie is happening so why did the writers go down the Steroline road? Just to ruin a functional friendship? Dont get me wrong, I absolutely loved the idea of them together & enjoyed season 6.. but while “Delena” still gets all these epic, romantic scenes, Steroline is being treated no better than some tertiary romance which just exists. Hopefully the FF makes some sense of all this but till then thoroughly disappointed with this SL.

I hated their build up tbh. I could have liked it if they hadn’t had 14 million people tell Stefan he should date her, whilst he was like “idk man” and then Liz had to die and he got a hard-on for her at the funeral. Its just kind of obvious that Caroline isn’t IT for Stefan, and I never thought they were written that way. I feel bad for Caroline, nobody has really ever put her first. Well, minus Klaus, but he isn’t around anymore.

Well I respect your opinion but I never really saw like that. Stefan has been horribly unlucky in love and for someone with that kind of track record to be reluctant in pursuing a relationship with his best friend who’s so important to him made perfect sense. And looking back on season 5, I mean it was pretty obvious that he had developed feelings, which everyone could see. Either way they spent wayyy too much time building this relationship for Caroline to not be it for him.. Stefan is honestly the only person who actually deserved Caroline but they’ve just messed it up this season so far.

Thanks for sharing such a nice thought, paragraph is good, thats why i have read it entirely

I can’t wait for Steroline to end and for both characters to get better sls. I’m really sad we haven’t got much of the Caroline/Bonnie friendship because both have been dealing with man pain instead.

Oh God, please let this Steroline break up be the real deal. PLEASE. I will never make fun of the show again, I will be good all year, etc. etc., as long as this is for good.

This interview makes tonight’s episode sound painful…in a bad way. Still not seeing any kind of epic Bonnie/Enzo romance either. Ugh. I want to see this show through to the end, but it is getting difficult. Lily was one of the last interesting characters left.

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