The Vampire Diaries, season 4
23 episodes · 17 kept in The Essentials
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Season 4 recap Spoilers — open after watching
This recap reveals the events of season 4.
Elena in transition, a cure on the table, and a brotherhood of hunters whose deaths are not free.
Elena turns, and the show spends its first stretch honest about the cost: the hunger, the heightened everything, the sire bond to Damon that puts every feeling she has under suspicion - including the ones that end her relationship with Stefan and begin one with Damon in the same season.
The year's plot coupon is the cure - a single dose, buried with an ancient creature named Silas, mapped by a tattoo that only grows on a hunter of the Five as he kills vampires. Jeremy inherits the mark, which makes Elena's brother a loaded weapon in his own house. The hunt assembles the season's uneasy expedition - the brothers, Elena, Bonnie, Shane the professor with an agenda - to an island where everything goes wrong in order.
Silas rises. Jeremy does not come back from the island, and Elena, holding his body, turns her humanity off - the season's cruellest stretch, with the two brothers taking turns trying to switch her back on.
It ends at graduation: Bonnie dead on the other side holding the veil, and not telling anyone; the cure forced down Katherine's throat mid-fight; Stefan, revealed as Silas's doppelganger and locked in a safe at the bottom of a quarry - and Elena, sire bond burned away, choosing Damon anyway.
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