THE VAMPIRE DIARIES’: PAUL WESLEY DISHES ON STEFAN’S FUTURE

In the last new episode of The Vampire Diaries, Stefan (Paul Wesley) told Damon it was time they break their cycle of loving the same woman. To that end, Stefan said his plan is to 1.) Help Damon shove the cure down Elena’s throat and 2.) Get her out of his life so he can find a new one for himself. That last bit sounds pretty good to Wesley as he looks ahead to season 5. “I think that Stefan should go off and explore another town,” he tells EW. “I think Stefan is really interesting when he separates from the pack and explores his own demons. I think it’s time for him to maybe go off, and then come back later to Mystic Falls and see how that impacts the relationships that he has with Elena and Damon. I could just be saying that selfishly because I’d love a different storyline, but I also think just objectively it would be good for the show.”

Executive producer Julie Plec confirms that someone will take the cure in the May 16 season finale, which Wesley would love to see be one of the core TVD players. “I like to think [next season] will maybe get a little less hectic and go back to some of the less complex days of just building character,” he says. “Maybe one of us ends up being a human, and we see how we all have to deal with that on a much more grounded level.” Plec also says that we will get an answer to whether the love Elena expressed for Damon is real. Is Wesley ready for that? “God, yes,” he says with a laugh. “I can’t imagine Elena ever definitively saying, ‘Oh, I’m not in love with you; it’s just Stefan,’ because then I think, where does the show go from there? But her intense feelings for Damon during the sire bond — I can’t imagine that they were true 110 percent. I’m curious myself what’s going to happen.”
After sharing a dance in the April 18 prom episode, Stefan will continue to ask himself for the rest of the season whether, if Elena were to want to come back to him, he’d say yes. “That’s not to say that it’s Who will she choose? all over again,” Plec says. “But there is the question of, where does her heart really lie? What is the truth? And what direction is the next phase of this love triangle going to go in?” The answer could be love square.

Even though Rebekah (Claire Holt) would leave Mystic Falls for New Orleans if the Originals spin-off gets picked up for The CW’s fall schedule, there’s still Candice Accola’s Caroline, who even No Humanity Elena has started shipping with Stefan. (She’s on Stefan’s dance card at the prom, too.) “I do think that when an audience vocalizes their like or dislike for something, it usually has an impact — in general, but specifically for this show,” Wesley says. “The audience is very loyal. We don’t necessarily give them what they want, but I notice that we definitely take things into consideration and toy with them, keep them on the hook,” he adds, laughing again. Plec doesn’t exactly rule it out: “All I’ll say on the matter is I’ve been shipping them since episode 2 of season 2, when Stefan took her in the bathroom and told her she is going to be okay. So if I’M shipping them,” Plec says, laughing herself, “then maybe one day it’s a road that we can travel down.”