‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 8, episode 8 preview: When will Paul Wesley, Ian Somerhalder return?

On Friday night, “The Vampire Diaries” is giving you the final episode of 2016, one that is going to be stuffed full of romance, drama, and of course holiday spirit. This marks the last time that you’re going to have in order to watch some of these characters celebrate the holiday, and with that in mind, we imagine that there will be a certain amount of emotion and nostalgia tied to it.

Now that we’ve said that, it’s time to raise another important question: When is the series featuring Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder coming back? The answer is “a little bit earlier than many of your other CW favorites.” The return date for now is set as Friday, January 13, and this is especially important when you remember precisely how many episodes that the show has left. If the series finale is going to air on March 10 as planned, then there will need to be a new episode every week starting on the 13th in order to make it work — provided that they don’t double-up somewhere.

As we get closer and closer to that date, we imagine that we’ll start to get even more of a sense as to what the endgame for this series will be, and what some of the writers have planned. While we’d like to assume that a Nina Dobrev return is in the cards, ultimately that has not been confirmed by anyone at The CW just yet. For the time being, we’ll just have to keep crossing our fingers and open that she is open to bringing Elena back in order to give the show a proper send-off.

Granted, beyond that, we imagine that opinions of what a proper send-off are will be greatly disputed. Some out there are probably going to be wishing for a happy, romantic end; meanwhile, both Wesley and Somerhalder have advocated for an ending that effectively sees the end of most of the supernatural world, given all of the pain and destruction they have brought to Mystic Falls and beyond since the beginning of the series.

Promo – Let’s just say that Damon and Stefan are beginning their mission for Cade, and it could get ugly given that Stefan’s now a ripper again for the next year or so.

Come back later tonight, as we’re going to have a full review of Friday’s “Vampire Diaries” episode over at the link here. (Photo: The CW.)