Elena ended up with Damon at the end of The Vampire Diaries, after Stefan sacrificed himself to save the entire town of Mystic Falls.
Elena Gilbert was at the center of almost everything that happened in the The Vampire Diaries’s eight seasons. Moreover, her relationships with the Salvatore brothers often drove the plot.
However, by the end of the series, Elena ultimately ended up with Damon and the couple shared a very happy life together in the future.
About Elena Gilbert
In a show like The Vampire Diaries, supernatural beings, decade-long feuds, evil doppelgängers and mystical conspiracies are nothing out of the ordinary.
Yet, Elena Gilbert (played by Nina Dobrev on the show), the show’s relatively normal “girl next door” protagonist, always managed to stand out.
And, even though Elena seemed fairly naïve and oblivious in the show’s first season, she had faced and conquered everything from love to loss by the time the series finale aired in 2017.
Who Elena ended up with on The Vampire Diaries
Although The Vampire Diaries’s main story expanded throughout the show’s eight seasons, Elena and her complicated relationships with the Salvatore brothers had always remained central to the storyline.
When the show was just starting out, it seemed like Elena and Stefan Salvatore were true soulmates who would fight to be together no matter what.
However, as the story progressed throughout the seasons, Elena and Stefan’s relationship fell apart and she eventually struck up a relationship with his brother, Damon Salvatore.
This gave way to one of the most complicated love-triangles in the history of television.
So complicated, in fact, that many fans are still wondering which of the Salvatore brothers she ended up with in the series’ finale episode “I Was Feeling Epic”, which aired in 2017.
Given all that had happened over the course of the show’s television run, this episode certainly had a lot to wrap up.
But, in the last few moments, Stefan sacrificed himself in order to save his brother, Elena (who had returned to the show especially for this final episode) and the rest of Mystic Falls.
At this point in the show, it seemed like both Elena and Stefan had moved on from their former romance and Stefan’s sacrifice (with a little assistance from Bonnie of course) meant that Elena and Damon could be together.
A later peak into the future revealed that Elena returned to Mystic Falls after completing her medical training, and ultimately led a very long and happy life with Damon by her side.
Elena almost ended up with Stefan
The Vampire Diaries finale was emotional for many different reasons. But what some fans may not know is that the show almost ended entirely differently.
The co-creators of The Vampire Diaries, Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson explained in a 2017 interview with Deadline, that they actually had plans to have Elena and Stefan end up together, but that Dobrev’s departure in season six meant that there was not enough time to explore the possibility of this couple getting back together before the season 8 finale.
And, of course, this would have meant that Damon would be the Salvatore brother that died in the show’s final episode.
Why did Nina Dobrev leave The Vampire Diaries in season 6?
Dobrev, who had played the roles of both Elena Gilbert and her evil twin, Katherine Pierce for six years, officially announced that she would be leaving the show in an Instagram post in 2015.
In this post, Dobrev explained that while she intended to stay on until the end of the sixth season, she simply needed to “move on to the next chapter” of her life.
And given that Dobrev had signed a six-year contract when she signed on to play the role of Elena originally, her early departure from the series was not wholly unexpected.
Elena’s life after The Vampire Diaries finale
Usually, when a show like The Vampire Diaries comes to an end after eight seasons, fans are left to their own devices when it comes to speculating about where the characters would have been years down the line.
However, in The Vampire Diaries’s case, the spin-offs that came from the show can sometimes provide some much-needed, tangible insight into what happened to some of the original show’s characters.
For instance, the “The Tale of Two Wolves” episode from the fifth season of the spin-off, The Originals, established that Elena had gone on to establish her own medical practice in Mystic Falls and a 2021 episode of Legacies featured Elena and Damon’s daughter, Stefanie.
This confirmed that Elena and Damon stayed together after The Vampire Diaries finale episode.
