Check out these interviews with Julie Plec from TV Guide, TV Line & EW. She sheds light on the season finale, previews season 5 and answers questions you all may have! Don’t read any further if you haven’t watched the episode yet!

Via TV Guide:

How long before everyone finds out that Stefan is really Silas?
Plec: Truth be told, I don’t think it’ll be too long. I think that there’s more fun to be played with people learning quickly, but independently of the other so there’s a lot of good bait-and-switch Katherine-style stuff that could happen early in the season. And people that know Stefan well will be able to catch on pretty quickly I would hope.

Can we expect double Paul Wesley scenes?
Plec: Part of the fun of having an actor play two roles are those opportunities to put them face to face, but they’re difficult to shoot and they take a lot of time and the stuff we do even with Katherine and Elena we do so sparingly. So we’ll definitely see it, but of course Stefan will be on his own journey presumably at the bottom of the [lake] floor so we’ll see when and who gets him out of that mess.

Read more from the interview over at TV Guide.

Via TV Line:

TVLINE | Speaking of, why Damon? What were you hoping to get to explore in Elena choosing Damon?
Damon’s a character who’s been driven by feeling like he’s not worthy of love. Now that he’s on the receiving end of that love, what will that mean for him? And where will he have to make changes in him, in his behavior? Or will he still be, “I am who I am. You love me for who I am. I’m not going to change for you”? It’ll be a fun dynamic to see him either trying to exercise restraint or not being able to exercise restraint in the name of love of this girl, especially as he’s got a new houseguest. He’s [living] with Jeremy Gilbert as Elena goes off to college.

Read more over at TVLine!

Via EW:

Did you start the season knowing that you were going to end it with Bonnie dying?
Interestingly enough, that was a pitch that was on the table for the finale last year. For us, it’s always been a question of how much we want to show of the other side. And is there an entire world that we can play over there, or do we really want to keep everything grounded in a real world universe. Having Jeremy able to see ghosts and now Bonnie over on the other side, it felt like an exciting complication to a budding romantic relationship that we were looking forward to playing in that. And also relieving ourselves of the burden — as Kevin [Williamson] calls it, the witch storytelling burden — which is that when you have a witch, they should be able to fix all the problems, but if they could fix all the problems, then you’re not telling the story. But if they can’t fix the problems, then they’re really bad witches. [Laughs] So it’s a nice relief from that for a while.

How much will we see of Kat Graham next season?
She will be a regular. She will be around. If anything, we’ll see as much if not more of her. And it gives us a great way to develop more stories for her outside of just her being the witch that comes in and tries to save the day. I’m excited about the opportunity to tell a romantic relationship between two people who can’t physically be together. Talk about your hurdles.

Read more over at EW.