I Catch Up With 'The Vampire Diaries' (SPOILERS)

Today I watched (well, listened to) the TVD episodes currently available on Hulu, which were the last 5 episodes of Season 6. I hadn't watched the show since perhaps the middle of Season 5, when Katherine (presumably) died. These were the new developments to me:

- Alaric Salzman is not dead anymore. He has a fiancee named Jo; she used to belong to a witch coven, but she's no longer any kind of supernatural being. She's pregnant - with twins. They're getting married.

- Tyler and Caroline aren't together anymore and haven't been for a while. Her mother died. She shut off her humanity and manipulated Stefan into turning his off as well. Stefan and Caroline have something of a relationship.

- Tyler and Matt are training to be police officers. Somehow Tyler is not a werewolf anymore, although he'll become one again if he kills someone. (He used to be a vampire/werewolf hybrid like Klaus, right? Is he still a vampire? I'm unclear on the finer points.)

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- Damon and Stefan's mother is a vampire, but they only found this out recently. She was stuck in a temporal prison that kept her trapped in 1903. Her companions there were six very dangerous vampires who have some of the powers of witches, even though witch/vampire hybrids are normally against the rules of TVD worldbuilding.

- Damon has the cure for vampirism. He gave it to Elena and she became human again. Damon was more reluctant to give up his immortality. Damon and Elena are still in/back in a relationship.

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In the penultimate episode of the season, a bad vamp/witch (they are called The Heretics) named Kai has attacked the wedding, killing the bride and her unborn babies. (So sad!) Human!Elena is injured and in some kind of a coma.

The season 6 finale has Tyler triggering his werewolf curse, so any vampire he bites will be poisoned and die. It turns out Elena's coma is a spell cast by Kai. He has some kind of grudge against Bonnie, so he magically links Bonnie's life to Elena's. As long as Bonnie is alive, Elena will remain asleep. Tyler bites Kai, but Heretics are not killed by werewolf bites. Damon has the opportunity to let Bonnie die by doing nothing, but instead he kills Kai and saves her. So now Elena is in a coma for the rest of Bonnie's life. Elena's friends place her in a coffin; the Salvatore brothers will guard her until Bonnie dies. The episode almost ends with Stefan declaring his love for Caroline as, inside Elena's mind, Damon and Elena dance.

Then there's a short flash forward to a future in which cop!Matt is patrolling the seemingly-deserted town of Mystic Falls, watched over by a solitary Damon.

Season 7 is most likely to be the final TVD season, and it's already been established that Nina Dobrev will not be returning. Further, Michael Trevino will not return in the role of Tyler Lockwood.

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I'm not nearly as interested in this series as I once was, but still, it was nice to get a little caught up.