Finale Forecast: How should ‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 7 set up the future?

At this point in the run of “The Vampire Diaries,” we are clearly in the twilight years of the show. Maybe season 8 won’t end up being the last as it was once suspected, but even if it continues on beyond that, there is probably only so much more story that needs to be told.

So where could we see the story wrap up once we get around to the end of the road this season? That is something that we can discuss a little bit more accurately in this latest edition of our Finale Forecast article series.

What could happen – We’ll probably see the conclusion one way or another of the Rayna story, given that she has been set up mostly as just a recurring character for the second half of this season. We need to find a way to get most of our vampire characters roughly on the same page again, and to along with that, you also need to figure out a way to get Caroline back into the fold. We’re not saying that she and Stefan are back together necessarily, but she does need to get back into this show somehow. The same does Alaric, if he is going to continue to be a part of the show. We just don’t have a clear idea what the show is really doing with this character at present.

What should happen – The biggest thing that we really want to see are some extremely intense sequences that stir up the mythology in a big way, and we don’t just mean by pairing characters up. We want to see Damon and Stefan finally come together as brothers and stay that way, rather than continue to brood and go through problems. Meanwhile, we want Bonnie to recover and come into her own as one of the most powerful people on the show. More than anything, we want to see stakes that extend beyond just a small corner of the world, and the beginnings of something epic that could take us all the way to the end of the show.