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Okay, so, I think it might be time for me to express all my feels regarding the season 3 finale of The Vampire Diaries. I’ve ranted a bit on Twitter, I’ve read numerous blog posts (all of which have reduced me to a big ugly sobbing mess on my lovely hardwood floor), and I’ve chatted to friends, trying hard to find the right words to explain just exactly how I feel about that last episode. And I think I’ve finally figured it out. How I feel right now is quite simply, betrayed, and here’s why:

I never intended to watch this show. I saw it advertised on television, and its entire premise did not interest me. Being a member of the slightly older generation, I have been a long-time fan of Buffy. I watched that show from the very first aired episode, so I thought myself spoiled for any future shows about vampires. When you’ve already experienced the best, why would anyone settle for mediocre, right? But then, my much younger brother told me that I had to watch the show. He had just had his mind blown by the season 1 finale, and was telling everyone he knew what a fantastic show this was. Now, to people who don’t know my brother, this might not seem very important. But my brother is perhaps the most apathetic person to have ever walked this earth. Seriously, the boy is 21, and I have seen him crack a smile maybe a dozen times. He doesn’t get angry, he doesn’t get excited, he doesn’t flat-out laugh his head off, and to this day I have never seen him cry, even as a child. So for him to express excitement over a TV show, it gave me pause. When I still expressed disinterest (I may have given him a lecture on the awesome that is everything Joss Whedon has ever created), he told me about a certain character. “You’ll love Damon,” he said to me. “In fact, I think he may even be able to rival your love for Spike.” (Met with an eye-roll.) So I thought about it. What could it hurt? I eventually thought. I had loved Spike with all my heart throughout my time spent with Buffy, and I missed having that connection with a current TV character. So I sat down, and watched the whole first season within a matter of days, and continued on to where TVD was at the time, which was the episode “Rose”.

And I got my wish. Like my brother predicted, I fell in love with the character of Damon Salvatore and everything that he entailed. My heart swelled at the thought of his redemption arc (it’s a personal favourite trope) and I looked forward to watching all the angst, heart-break, and eventual fluffy feelings this character would be sure to bring me. But something else happened that I did not expect. I have never been a ‘shipper before; I actually didn’t even know that was a word. I had adored the relationship of Spike/Buffy, but I will freely admit that the reason why was because I was quite simply a Spike ‘stan’, and so whatever he wanted, I wanted for him. So I was expecting to like the dynamic of Damon and Elena, was expecting to want for Damon what he wanted for himself, was expecting to feel an aching need to hug him when he didn’t get it. But what I hadn’t expected was to fall in love with the idea of their relationship, to want DE to get together not only for Damon’s happiness, but for Elena’s as well. It crept up on me slowly; at first I didn’t even recognise the feeling. And then they danced at the Miss Mystic Falls pageant, and they literally took my breath away. I watched as he metaphorically held her hand throughout Stefan’s detox; watched as she stood up to her biological father and went to rescue him; squealed like a six year old as they kissed on the porch, then screamed out loud when it was revealed to be Katherine. I sobbed as I watched with horror him snapping her brother’s neck, literally reached out to touch the screen to stroke Elena’s hair as she cried over it. And then came the last scene in “Rose”, and my heart crumbled in the best way possible. I could see the obvious narrative arc for these two characters unfolding before my eyes, and my chest ached with the beauty of it.

And so I experienced my first hiatus with this show. I was rabid, scouring the internet for any and all news I could get my hands on. I came across an interview with one of the writers of this show, a woman named Julie Plec. In this article, she had said, “it’s a show predicated on a girl coming back to life and her development of love for one brother who then, because of who she is, changes the life of the other brother.” It made so much sense to me, to say this sentence without revealing which brother was which. On the surface, as we see Elena falling in love with Stefan, it is easy to assume that Julie was referencing him as the first brother, and Damon as the second. But I was looking deeper than that; I had watched the way that Elena had come alive during her interactions with Damon, and I had seen the very deep-seated issues that Stefan has yet to deal with. The answer was obvious to me: Elena would eventually fall in love with Damon, but in the process, she would help Stefan learn to deal with all of his baggage, help him let go of the guilt that weighs on his mind and bring him to a happier place in himself. That’s the ultimate change a person can affect on someone’s life, right? The ability to find happiness within yourself?

It didn’t surprise me therefore, that while scrambling around on the internet, I came upon an entire forum of people who had seen the things that I had seen, and were feeling the way that I was feeling. Together, we discussed the show; its past, its present, and its future, and we were all convinced; this was the journey this show would ultimately take us on. But we weren’t delusional; we knew that it wasn’t going to be a smooth ride, we knew there were going to be more moments like when Damon snapped Jeremy’s neck, and we were prepared for that; in fact we preferred it. Endgame is all well and good, but the journey is what matters the most, and we all looked forward to riding both the highs and the lows of this relationship that had the potential to be so very special.

The end of season 2 rolled around, and we were all euphoric over the final episode. It was all going the way we had predicted it would. There were still some rough points (the forced blood-feeding, Elena needing time to forgive him), but we had been expecting those, so we commiserated together and consoled ourselves that season 3 would be the point where our side of the narrative would start. Stefan was going to be making his first steps towards his character growth; what better way could there be than to hit rock-bottom and have him pull himself back up? His personal character arc would be so melancholy to watch as he pulls himself back from over the edge only to find that the girl he loves has fallen in love with his brother. We got ready to watch DE get closer as they both mourned the man they love, and we were rewarded by the first half of season 3. We were disappointed that Stefan hadn’t been allowed to truly hit rock-bottom, because it gave his narrative a slightly hollow tone, but we remained confident that the overall series arc was still in play. Things don’t always turn out the exact way we expect, after all.

And then suddenly, it all stopped. Stefan came back from his all-too-brief sojourn in hell, and he was right back where he started. There was no character growth for him, and it left us confused. How can the narrative of these three characters move forward when one remains the same? We continued watching, with slightly more trepidation than we had before, worried that the story wouldn’t go the way it should. But it was the only viable way forward; any other option would mean character regression, or even worse, character assassination. Our concern grew as we watched Elena flip between brothers an episode at a time, trying to work out how the finale could possibly fix what seemed to be an irreparably broken narrative.

Some remained confident that it would all work out, that Elena would make a choice in the finale and decide that she needs to explore the other side of this triangle for a while. They knew it didn’t mean forever, knew that there would be many more bumps in the future, but still remained positive that the writers could turn it around. I wasn’t quite so positive. I had a feeling that Elena would choose to go back to Stefan. It made sense to me, because if Stefan’s character hadn’t gone through any changes, then the SE relationship would need more closure. I figured that she would choose to go back to Stefan in the finale, and then season 4 would be about Elena realising that she had made a mistake. It made sense to me that as the narrative had recently taken a sharp left turn, the best option would be to bring it back to where it had been previously, before going forward again.

So I sat down to watch the finale, aware that I would likely feel disappointment and sadness, but still some hope for the future, maybe in a look, or a gesture. I sat back and waited for the need to hug Damon to wash over me, while I looked at Elena with understanding pity. But I felt none of those things. Because this finale didn’t just bring the narrative back to where it had been before, like I had been expecting. Instead, it pressed the reset button, taking us all the way back to the very beginning. I watched with horror as Elena cruelly told Damon that she “cares about him” – for the millionth time – during a phone call, while he was dying all alone, so that she could rush back to have one final “epic” goodbye with Stefan. My jaw dropped to the ground as I watched the flashback, watching as they took away everything that had made the DE relationship special and unique. And then I watched with tears in my eyes as Elena died and began the transition process, taking away any future chance that the DE relationship could ever rebuild itself.

In that one episode, I lost everything with this show. Damon and Elena will now never have the chance to experience a relationship between human and vampire the way that Stefan and Elena have. There will be no love making, no blood sharing, no concern over their future together; all things that the SE relationship has already experienced. There will be no new narrative that will grip me from the very beginning, no more watching where these characters take us next, because they’ve already been there. I won’t be able to watch my as my favourite character goes along his redemption arc, because he’s already there. This triangle will now never be equal, because we now know that Damon wasn’t enough for Elena when she was human. This show, about a triangle between two vampires in love with a human girl is now irrevocably damaged. Maybe I put too much thought into a simple TV show. In fact, I’m almost certain that I did. But, I was coming from the perspective of watching Buffy for all those years, and I mistakenly placed the same amount of faith in the writers of TVD that I did with BtVS. Joss Whedon never let me down. But Julie Plec did. With this finale, she showed me that DE was never a viable option, and that her interview all those months ago wasn’t a clever play-on words that I had assumed. It was my own fault; I looked too deep when she was telling me quite plainly exactly what this show was about.

So this is why I feel betrayed. They wrote this beautiful narrative which drew so many people in, but they never had any intention of seeing it through. They purposefully wrote this amazing story and then ripped it away from me. I take some of the blame; I shouldn’t have looked as deeply as I did, but I didn’t invent it all. They wilfully deceived me. The story of Damon and Elena was all a lie, a poorly thought out ploy to get people to root for Stefan and Elena. But I won’t. I can’t. Their story has entrenched itself so deeply within my heart that I don’t think I will ever get it out. And I’m not sure I even want to. Although there is a big part of me that wants to learn from this experience, never let myself get emotionally involved with a show that isn’t written by Joss Whedon, and give my brother a good beating for ever introducing me to this mess, I can’t. I’ve met so many wonderful people by joining this fandom, and many of them have become close friends. I will always be grateful for that. But you know who I am grateful to? Not the writers, because they don’t deserve anything from me. I am grateful to the cast, who did their best with the material they were given. But most of all I am grateful to the character of Damon, who had the potential to become one of the greatest redeemed characters the world of fiction has ever known. He had the potential for toppling Spike from his number one spot in my personal favourite character list. My love for him will never fade, but I cannot continue to watch as the writers decimate everything that I love about him; my heart just couldn’t take it.

Goodbye Damon Salvatore. Goodbye Delena. You could have been so amazing, and I am absolutely devastated that the journey ended here. I will love you forever.