A key part of The Vampire Diaries season 6 will be the characters “fundamentally” coming to terms with Damon and Bonnie being “gone forever,” executive producer Julie Plec said.
The season 5 finale dramatically ended with the characters appearing to die.
Plec won’t confirm the deaths of the two characters, but hastened to tell multiple media outlets that the actors who play them--Ian Somerhalder and Kat Graham--will be back on the show in some capacity.
“We will definitely see [them] on the show,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I mean, there’s a million different ways that you can do that. But as far as in what context — how, why, and where? — that’s part of the mystery.”
But “the most important thing” that Plec wanted to say about the upcoming season 6 is how the characters “fundamentally have to come to terms with the fact that Damon and Bonnie are gone forever, and have been doing so for quite some time when we return.
“Some are in denial, some are still searching for answers. ‘They’ve got to be somewhere. Where are they? We’ve got to rescue them.’ Some have given up completely. Each individual character’s reaction to the loss of these two people will be what informs the beginning of the sixth season,” she revealed.
“The way we look at it, season six is a beautiful and organic reset. The theme of the season is everybody gets to start over. That’s what we’re going to do,” she added to The Hollywood Reporter.
The revamped cast includes the re-elevation of Matt Davis (Alaric) and Michael Malarkey (Enzo) to series regulars.
“We’re trying to take the show away from the massive genre extravaganza where each season we try to top each other with the bigger, bad, more exciting mythologies and boil it back down to the beginning, which is tension, suspense, romance, psychological horror, simple horror, vampires living in secret, people discovering their secret and coming after them,” Plec said.
“Our heroes who have splintered off need to find their way back to each other emotionally and geographically as they fight to restore order to their home so they can actually return and not be scattered for good.”
Plec added about Bonnie and Damon.
“Did they find peace? Are we going to be left with Damon and [Bonnie] flashbacks and hallucinations and memories for the entirety of season six? Did they find their way somewhere else, and if so, where? I can you tell that the Other Side no longer exists, so they’re not there. There’s no more coming back from that. It’s going to be a big mystery about what happens and what our heroes can do about it, if anything.”
