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The Vampire Diaries season 8, episode 16 (series finale) recap: I Was Feeling Epic

This week on The Vampire Diaries, the series concluded its eight season run. So, who survived the final battle with Katherine Pierce? Who ended up being the big death that was promised? And did anyone get a happy end?

Warning! Major spoilers ahead. If you have not watched the episode yet, this is the perfect time to go watch, and then come back to read this recap.

The final hour of The Vampire Diaries picks up exactly where last week's episode left off. After finding her magic just in time to save Josie and Lizzie, Bonnie collapsed and her heart stops.

As Stefan starts CPR and Caroline tries feeding her vampire blood, Bonnie is reunited with Elena. While this is a happy moment for the two, Elena is upset her best friend won't get to live a long, happy life. And this is when Enzo also makes an appearance to tell Bonnie that it's not her time yet. Bonnie then wakes up.

While Stefan is bringing Bonnie back from the dead, Damon is tasked with stopping Vicki from burning Mystic Falls with hellfire. He throws her from the clock tower and breaks her neck. But seeing as Vicki is already dead, she just keeps coming back. And seeing as this is her ticket out of hell, nothing will stop her. Not even an emotional appeal from big brother Matt.

So now it's time to start preparing for the worst. Sheriff Matt starts the town's evacuation plan, calling in yet another gas leak. And Stefan and Damon return home to start preparing for their showdown with Katherine.

When they get home, they're shocked to find that Elena's coffin is open. Thinking that Bonnie's heart stopping was enough to break the curse, Damon calls for Elena, and she appears. But wait, it it's way too early in the episode for any happiness. As the two embrace, Damon quickly realizes this is really Katherine.

Demanding answers, Katherine Pierce starts sharing her story of how she came to rule hell, in the shortest way possible. She's Katherine Pierce. From the moment she arrived in hell, she had Cade doing her bidding. That's why the devil took such an interest in the Salvatore brothers. But the one thing Katherine isn't sharing is where she hid Elena's body. So, Stefan and Damon stab Katherine with the weapon that was created from her bones last week.

With Vicki ringing the bell every five minutes, the Salvatore brothers have 40 minutes to search all of Mystic Falls for Elena. Luckily, they're not alone. Caroline stays behind to help. But she promises to get out of town before the hellfire comes so Lizzie and Josie don't have to grow up without their mother.

Stefan finds Elena at the high school, but her body is magically locked inside the boiler room. A special final gift from Kai Parker. Realizing that his brother is never going to leave Elena behind even if it means getting killed by hellfire, Stefan needs to stay in the doomed Mystic Falls with Damon to try and convince him to leave town. But Caroline needs to be with her family, and can't risk spending any longer in Mystic Falls. So the two newlyweds share an emotional moment before they part ways, and Caroline joins Alaric and the twins at The Armory.

However, all hope for Mystic Falls is not lost because The Vampire Diaries is finally bringing super witch Bonnie back into the game. After a conversation with Alaric, Bonnie comes up with a plan to save Mystic Falls. Use the hellfire from the bell to destroy Katherine and hell, keeping it away from the town by directing the flames into the tunnels under the town.

Despite nearly dying at the beginning of the episode from using her magic to save the twins, Bonnie thinks she has enough power to make this happen. But she's going to need some help. As Damon learned from a graveyard chat with Katherine, the magic knife sends her to hell, but doesn't keep her their long.

So for this plan to work, someone will need to stay with Katherine, in the path of the hellfire to keep sending her to hell. And seeing as this is The Vampire Diaries, it naturally has to be one of the Salvatore brothers who sacrifices themselves.

Damon leads Katherine to the tomb under the church, where she was supposed to be trapped in 1864, and the reason Damon returned to Mystic Falls in the pilot. Soon, Stefan joins them to get into fight with Damon over who will sacrifice themselves. Stefan argues that now that he's mortal, he's doomed to die anyway, and this is a good way to go out in a final act of redemption. But Damon wants his brother to enjoy his human life, so he compels Stefan to get to safety and be with Caroline.

At The Armory Bonnie beginnings chanting and asking Grams for help, Vicki rings the bell for the final time. Hellfire shoots out of the clock tower, but instead of destroying the town, it goes back inside and into the tunnels. It goes right by Damon and straight to Bonnie. She holds it off, but it appears to be too much for her to handle. Soon, Enzo is by her side to say she can do it. And then Grams and the rest of the Bennett line of witches arrives to help complete the spell. The hellfire goes back down into the tunnels.

Case closed: the big death in the finale will be Damon's. Well, not so fast. It turns out Stefan was on vervain. Instead, he returns to the tomb, this time with a syringe full of his blood, with the cure in it. Now without the cure, Stefan is rapidly aging and about to die anyway, so he stabs Damon with the cure syringe and pushes his brother to safety. Stefan sends Katherine to hell one final time as the hellfire kills both of them.

This leads to the scene from the very first finale teaser trailer. Elena is standing in the high school staring at the trophy case. Past The Vampire Diaries dialogue plays before Stefan arrives. He's there to say goodbye to a still asleep Elena. He tells her about everything that has just happened and about giving Damon the cure.

Stefan walks out into the bright white light and is greeted by a familiar face. Lexi is waiting outside the school next to Stefan's red car. His first line to his best friend is "I was feeling epic," not only the title of the finale, but what Lexi told Stefan when she came to visit way back in season 1.

Leave your comments below on what you thought about the finale and if you were expecting that ending.