Um…oh…erm…uhh…WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?? GAAAAHHH!!!!

Ahem. Sorry. Yes, even reviewers must take some time to have a general freak out.

Where do I begin? Did I see any of that coming? Well, sort of. These finales always involve some kind of death and it was Alaric I had in the death pool. I loved his ghostly goodbye to Jeremy more than the teary stuff we got a couple of weeks ago. Also, Klaus finding a way to skirt death is kind of the norm anymore, isn’t it?

The rest is mind blowingly awesome! I would have never called Bonnie being the one help out Klaus by transferring him into Tyler. She’s a witch that’s getting tired of being pushed around and it’s about time! Speaking of Tyler, Klaus’ body burned, right? Can a vampire go back to a badly burned body and heal it? Or is Klaus going to decide to stay in Tyler’s body and possibly get Caroline’s love that way? Oh the possibilities!

I FINALLY got my Elijah fix, and oh man was it beautiful. Despite all those years of agony and everything Klaus has done, he’s still loyal to his brother. It makes sense he would bargain with Elena, despite her lying to him before. He knows she’s reasonable, especially when it comes to protecting family. And the scene between Rebekah and Elijah when they believed Klaus was dead? Tender, emotionally crushing, and yes, I cried. Notice how there wasn’t a tear shed for Finn? Klaus does mean something to them despite his shortcomings.

Elijah and Rebekah had just one of the many tissue alert moments for me. There also was Caroline and Tyler, when Caroline grasped onto him at the cave weeping profusely over the news that Klaus had died and Tyler’s time was near. Too bad it wasn’t actually Tyler, but Klaus played it well. He does care for her. This takes love triangle to a whole new meaning when the two guys are in the same body.

Another tissue moment, poor Damon. It’s Katherine all over again. Elena chooses Stefan, and Damon only gets the truth out of her because it looked like both he and Stefan were going to die. She didn’t see his face, the total heartbreak. She only heard words trying to play it cool. We saw every minute of it though, and I’m crushed. I personally think Elena is making a mistake, but I guess her and Stefan are the epic romance. Just when things can’t worse for Damon, his bud Alaric kicks his ass then dies in his arms. I was screaming with him, “You can’t be dead!” Sure Damon was more worried this meant Elena was dead too and he was right, but losing two people he cares the most about like that? When is he going to get a break?

Please, did anyone think Elena’s death would stick? I should have called it, especially when they showed Alaric emptying Meredith’s vampire blood earlier, but it never occurred to me that her injures were more serious than anyone was believed when she collapsed and Meredith gave her vampire blood. Kudos to those of you that caught that early. Kudos to those that also said, why didn’t Elena unbuckle her seat belt and float up with Matt and Stefan? I guess that wouldn’t have been such a dramatic death then. Nina Dobrev wins the Emmy for underwater deaths!

Out of all the plot twists though, I most wept over Alaric visiting Jeremy for one last time to say goodbye, even though it didn’t dawn on Jeremy for a while that he was really seeing a ghost. It was sweet, understated, and the perfect goodbye to a character we have really grown to love the last three seasons. Alaric was never about the big drama. I’m gonna miss him.

Yes, I’ve been avoiding the elephant in the room. Holy crap, Elena’s gonna be a vampire??? I know it happened in the books, but this series has never been true to the books. This is totally changing the love triangle now. Here’s the lingering questions in my head:

Now that Elena has found her way to undead status, can she still be the doppleganger? I’m thinking not, which means Klaus has no more blood for his hybrids other than the pint or two he snagged from Elena last week. I hope that’s true, because Klaus wanting to make an army of hybrids is tiring. Learn to appreciate your freaking family, who for some reason still loves you. Stay in town, make a life for yourself.

Becoming a vampire will mean that Elena will remember meeting Damon first. Is that going to change things? Probably not. I do accept that she’ll never be able to let Stefan go. Now that she’s going to join them both for eternity though, that kind of puts a kink in the one of the brothers leaving plan, right? She should at this point just take Katherine’s advice and have both.

We’ll have all summer to play out in our minds how Elena will handle the decision to transition or die. As we know from everyone else, that just doesn’t go well. I can imagine though her and Caroline living on for eternity as vampire buds. They could be planning dances in high school forever (ugh, yes, I’m joking there). The ramifications are huge. Everything changes.

In other random thoughts, the underwater shots were so daring. I’m going to have to get the behind the scenes production stories on shooting those scenes, but what brilliant execution. They had to be impossible to do. Also major kudos to the editing team for perfectly weaving the then and now shots together, both the underwater ones and Elena’s flashbacks to the time before her parents died. They were seamless and had stunning emotional impact.

That’s a season everyone. Now, we get to ruminate over all that for 18 weeks or so. Good times.