Death & Afterlives · Era V, The Doppelgänger War
The Other Side Collapses
Two thousand years of accumulated damage — Silas, Qetsiyah, the Travelers, and one exhausted Bennett holding it up — and the purgatory disintegrates. A handful of the dead push back through into life. Most are simply unmade. Damon and Bonnie land in a prison world instead of nowhere.
Details
- This is the moment the franchise loses its resurrection button, and it is why Hell has to be invented two seasons later.
- Everyone who does not make it through is gone in a way nothing in this world usually is.
- Some of the dead come back through Bonnie as she holds the doorway: Alaric, Enzo, Stefan and others make it. Lexi does not.
- Grams uses the last of her power to push Bonnie and Damon somewhere rather than let them be unmade — which is how they land in 1994.
- After this, death in the franchise is close to permanent, and the show's whole tone shifts.