Annette Brown/The CWBreathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
Excuse us if we sound like SNL's Stefon for a moment, but tonight's episode of The Vampire Diaries had everything. A twist exit! A heartbreaking death! A super hot kiss! Elena (Nina Dobrev) getting stoned!
No, seriously, Elena smoked a joint with her younger brother Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) to bond with him before he left Mystic Falls for "art school." It. Was. Hilarious. There were so many french fries involved.
But why the quotes around "art school?" Warning: major spoilers below!
Turns out Little Gilbert was lying to everyone except Alaric (Matt Davis) about heading off to art school, because he's actually planning on traveling the country hunting down vampires based on leads Alaric sends him.
"It was either draw or kill some stuff," McQueen told a small group of reporters after an advance screening of the episode, "Stay." "And I would rather kill some stuff."
So why the twist ending, when fans previously thought Jeremy was leaving town (and the show) to have a normal life?
"The biggest point that we wanted to make was that when you come out of Mystic Falls, there is no such thing as a normal life," executive producer Julie Plec said. "As Elena said, ‘Smoking a joint with my little brother is the most normal thing I've ever done.' Jeremy went through so much and he needed a purpose. Elena thought that was, ‘Get out, be normal at art school, you'll be fine.' But Jeremy's secret is, ‘I'm forever changed and I'm going to use this change for the powers of good.'"
And that's what led to Jeremy and Alaric's lie about "art school."
"Of course Elena would never go for it because she's trying to be the protective big sister but Alaric gets it," Plec said. "It's going to be Alaric's little secret for a while. Oh, he's going to be in trouble if Elena ever finds out…"
All the showrunners were happy with how they chose to send Jeremy (and McQueen) off.
"Him being an artist would almost feel like he's settling," executive producer Caroline Dries said. "It felt like this was his destiny. That's what he's good at."
But "Stay" ended up being about way more than just Jeremy's exit. Drumroll please..."Steroline" finally kissed! And oh, was that one hot kiss. Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Caroline's (Candice Accola) friendship is officially something more. Or is it?
"You'll have to wait and see," Plec teased. "That's the thing, what's the first conversation you have after your first kiss? And right now something pretty dramatic has happened, so the next episode is about judging what and when and how that first conversation is going to go."
That "pretty dramatic" thing? Sheriff Forbes' (Marguerite MacIntyre) death. Although we all knew it was coming, since her cancer had progressed too far for treatment, the speed at which it arrived was shocking and heartbreaking and altogether destroyed us...and Caroline...and, surprisingly, Damon (Ian Somerhalder).
"The two people carrying the most weight in the next episode are Caroline, obviously, and Damon," Plec said. "When all is said and done, Liz was like a surrogate mother and a best friend to him. In the next episode, he has been tasked with the burden of writing a eulogy, to stand in front of the entire town and honor his friend. But he's got a line where he's like, ‘This is ridiculous. It's making me be a nice person, and I'm not a nice person. Liz is laughing at me from beyond the grave.'"
The simple act of writing her eulogy will symbolize a greater struggle within himself that fans will recognize.
"He's struggling with 'Hero Damon' as always," Plec said. "He wants to do right by his friend, he wants to fix a mistake he made in the past in regards to his mother [and missing his mother's final moments], but it's putting him outside his comfort zone in a way that's really messing with his head."
But Caroline and Damon won't be the only ones affected by the Sheriff's death.
"Her death is definitely going to put a lot of people on new paths and make certain choices about who they're going to be and what kind of person they want to be and what they want to do with their lives," Plec teased. "Next week's episode, we like to hit on the ordinary business of dying and death. There is so much emotion attached to it and there are so many logistics attached to it from planning the funeral to picking out flower arrangements. We've enjoyed exploring that. It's surprisingly emotional and we wanted to make sure we captured all those moments."
MacIntyre will be back for next week's episode, and prepare for all the tears, because it's Liz's funeral. And there's an open casket scene. We're already crying again.
"You'll see me next week," MacIntyre, who is a writer on The Originals (so she's still in the family!), said. "The hardest thing for me has been that everyone knew [my death] was coming so for weeks beforehand, everyone's been very emotional with me. I'm like, ‘Dudes, I'm fine!' Especially Ian, weirdly. When we had the first table read, the one where I first had some trouble, he was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I got this and I got that, but by the way, you get well, right?' And I was like, ‘Um, no.' And he was like, ‘What?!' And then from then on, he's been very clingy!"
The Vampire Diaries airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on the CW.