If it were up to Paul Wesley, The Vampire Diaries series finale would have looked totally different.
Wesley, who starred as broody vampire Stefan Salvatore on the CW drama, stopped by Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen and revealed his preferred alternate ending to the show. (Sorry, Damon fans, but you’re not going to like it.)
“I honestly think both brothers should have died,” he said. “And I feel good about [the ending] although I would have liked that we both died and that Elena—the girl at the end of the show—like, all her memory was wiped and went to live a normal life and forgot that we ever existed. I think that would have been nice.”
As loyal fans know, the season 8 ending saw Stefan sacrificing himself in order to kill Katherine Pierce and destroy hell. In doing so, he was able to find peace. Human Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder) and a human Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) both reunited with their families, with Elena hugging her parents on her front porch and Damon getting one last brother hug at the Salvatore mansion.
When asked how he prepared for the role of the blood-sucking heartthrob, Wesley, 37, joked about his character’s primping.
“Based on the chest photos, clearly a lot of working out,” he said. “A lot of tanning. A lot of shaving of my chest. … Well, I was playing a 17-year-old, so I kind of didn’t have a choice in the matter.”
“I took it very seriously, you know, I’m playing a 160-year-old guy and I had to, you know, be stoic,” he continued. “I just had to think about what it would be like to live on this Earth for 160 years and it just —deadpan expression.”
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Wesley said he was pleased that the writers decided to kill his character in the end.
“I was very happy that he died,” he said. “And I actually had requested that he died. He did a lot of bad things, and I felt like he deserved death.”
The Vampire Diaries ran on the CW from 2009-2017.
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Last year, the Wesley and Dobrev reunited when they ran into each other in New York City.
The actress shared a black and white selfie of herself and actor on Instagram, writing, “Excuse me sir, you look familiar. I feel like we’ve met before. Maybe in a past life?“
Dobrev shared the same photo in color on her Instagram Story with a few heart emojis.
