The Vampire Diaries Season Finale Review: “Home” (Season 5, Episode 22)

The Vampire Diaries put its money where its mouth is on tonight’s season finale. There’s been rumors circulating for years now that one of the Salvatore brothers would meet their demise, and until a week ago, it was pretty easy to simply brush them off. That is, until fans watched helplessly as Stefan (Paul Wesley), one of the three main characters on the show, had his heart literally ripped out at the eleventh hour.

There’s always been a delicate balancing act performed by Stefan and Damon (Ian Somerhalder) that hovered somewhere near the periphery. The brothers were clearly established in contrast to the one another. The generalization being that while Stefan is playing the hero, it’s assumed that Damon is in bad boy mode, and alternatively, when Stefan goes off the rails into ripper territory, Damon realizes that he indeed has a conscious.

This had faded to a lesser degree as the show developed. The Salvatore brothers have fallen into a familiar pattern of filling whatever role circumstances require, leaving their chosen method of doing so as the most substantial evidence of their differences – Stefan tends to find the moral high ground while Damon consistently takes the ‘by any means necessary’ stance. However, the overall argument, despite actual facts to the contrary (e.g. the all-inclusive list of victims that Stefan kept in his Chicago apartment), remains that Stefan is forever cloaked in a halo and Damon dances with the devil.

Elena’s (Nina Dobrev) change in romantic partner did little to sway the vote within the realm of the show, damage done and all, even though fans of The Vampire Diaries run the gamut. With Stefan and Caroline (Candice Accola) beginning to look extra friendly, hopes that Damon and Elena would finally settle into some semblance of a normal relationship – one that wasn’t overshadowed by the realization that Stefan was locked in a safe at the bottom of a lake – were firing at full-force.  However, the situation got a little sticky when Stefan involuntarily took up residence on the other side.

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