The Vampire Diaries star Nina Dobrev has announced tonight that she won’t be returning for the show’s seventh season. The actress revealed the news via her Instagram account, where she posted the following message:
Dearest TVD Family,
I’ve just spent the most beautiful weekend on Lake Lanier in Georgia with my own TVD Family, the cast and crew of The Vampire Diaries. I want to be the first to tell you that it wasn’t just a holiday celebration, it was a goodbye party. I always knew I wanted Elena’s story to be a six season adventure, and within those six years I got the journey of a lifetime. I was a human, a vampire, a doppelganger, a crazy immortal, a doppelganger pretending to be human, a human pretending to be a doppelganger. I got kidnapped, killed, resurrected, tortured, cursed, body-snatched, was dead and undead, and there’s still so much more to come before the season finale in May. Elena fell in love not once, but twice, with two epic soulmates, and I myself made some of the best friends I’ll ever know and built an extended family I will love forever.
There’s more to come before we wrap this up, and I promise you’ll get to hear all about my experiences over the next month as we approach the season finale (I have given an exclusive interview for the June issue of SELF Magazine that I am excited for you to see!), but until then I invite you to hop on the roller coaster ride that is Elena Gilbert’s life and join me as I celebrate her and prepare to say goodbye to her — and to my work family — as I move on to the next chapter of my life. I want to share this goodbye with all of you (this weekend’s pictures were just the beginning). You, the wonderful fandom who gave more love, support and passion than anyone could have ever imagined seven years ago, when a young Degrassi girl from Canada showed up in LA to audition for ‘that Twilight TV show.’ I love you all. Fasten your seatbelts. If you think you know what’s coming, you don’t.
Love, Nina
While Warner Bros. was able to lock in two of the show’s other leads, Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley, Dobrev chose to leave once her original contract was up, which will be at the end of the sixth season. There’s no telling how the show will continue now that its central character is gone, or how they will wrap up her storyline, but it will certainly be interesting to see how things play out from here. One thing is for sure, and that’s that some major changes are coming down the pipeline for TVD.
Showrunner Julie Plec commented on Dobrev’s departure tonight as well, saying the following:
“Saying goodbye to Nina is both bittersweet and beautiful. After six-plus years together, the entire cast and crew of The Vampire Diaries has reached a level of closeness that I don’t think any of us ever expected.
“Nina is excited to spread her wings, get some rest, travel the world and also take it by storm, and we support her a thousand-fold. We will miss Nina and the four hundred characters she played, but we look forward to the insane and exciting challenge of continuing to tell stories of our Salvatore Brothers and our much-loved and gifted ensemble.”
Tell us, are you sad to see Nina Dobrev leaving The Vampire Diaries? How do you think they’ll continue on without her? Sound off below!