Ian Somerhalder, Paul Wesley have huge Vampire Diaries decision to make

The Vampire Diaries‘ showrunner Julie Plec revealed that the decision of when the show will end does not rest on her shoulders. 

Rather, Plec explained during an interview with Variety that the fate of the series will be up to its stars Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder.

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“My end game needs to, in my opinion, emotionally run parallel with the end game of Paul and Ian — more so than the network and the studio,” Plec said. “When those boys decide that they’re done telling stories — which could be tomorrow and could be a year from now or two years from now or whatever — I need to be done. I feel like I owe them that and I owe the show that. It’s a collective decision. Right now, they’re in the driver’s seat of that and we’ll see how much longer they feel like they want to be doing this.”

But Plec was sure to say that she had no problem continuing. When asked if there was still gas left in the tank of the show, Plec responded, “Yes, absolutely.”

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She added, “Every year we’re like, ‘We’ll never figure out what next year is going to be!’ And then we come up with an idea that’s cooler. It gets harder and harder, so there will come a point where I’ll have to say I have zero ideas left, but right now, I still feel pretty inspired by it, so I’m just taking it one day at a time.”

And Plec reiterated that just because Nina Dobrev, who played Elena for six seasons on the series, left the show, doesn’t mean the story has ended. In fact, Season 7 so far has proved that there’s still plenty of excitement to come for the brothers.

“Yes, I miss her deeply and would take her back in an instant if she called and said, ‘Hey, can I come back and play?'” Plec said. “But purely from a creative point of view, it’s been a real new infusion of creative fun.”

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The Vampire Diaries Season 7 returns on Jan. 29 on The CW.