Note: Do not read on if you have not seen Season 3, Episode 22 (the season finale) of The CW's "The Vampire Diaries," entitled, "The Departed."
I know that I've said this before in relation to "The Vampire Diaries" -- and it's going to sound extremely cliche, but I just need to say it one more time -- OH MY GOD.
I should have known the finale was going to leave me speechless. (I don't even know how I'm writing this recap.) While I was watching, I felt like I was being pulled in so many different emotional directions, until the final 10 minutes, when I was pretty much devastated. There wasn't just a death; there were multiple deaths.
When Matt accidentally drove his truck off Wickery Bridge -- with Elena in his passenger's seat -- I knew that everything was going to change. Trapped under water, Elena sacrifices her life to save Matt's, just as her father had sacrificed his life to save Elena the night Stefan rescued her from her family's submerged car. Elena's "death" brought us full circle from the beginning, the night Stefan saved her and she lost her parents.
The way the writers weaved the two scenes together was both beautifully done and brutally heartbreaking. Jeremy's reaction, upon realizing his sister's fate, is equally as painful.
But did you really think Elena was going to die? At the end of last week's episode, she fell to the ground after suffering a head injury. It turns out that she had internal bleeding in her head, and Dr. Fell needed to use her stash of vampire blood to save her.
When Elena died, she had the vampire blood in her system, meaning that Elena is now a vampire. She opened her eyes just as the screen fades to black, leaving us hanging until Season 4.