When a show has a title like The Vampire Diaries, you’d expect audiences to get a healthy heaping of two things: supernatural shenanigans and weird romance. Certainly, any given episode has plenty of both, but that’s not what we’re here to tell you about.
Instead, we decided to take a look back at the entire series with one special question in mind: which scenes are perfect when we need to just cry? Not any kind of pretty crying, but the kind that leaves you emotionally wrecked on every level?
If you’re still with us, that means you’re ready to get the waterworks flowing. Beware spoilers from here on out, and you may want some tissues handy as we explore the addest scenes from The Vampire Diaries!
Damon and Elena break our hearts
If you watch enough of the show, then you’ll experience Damon and Elena making you cry on quite a few occasions. The one that always gets us, though, is Damon being brutally honest about what he does and doesn’t deserve.
In this gut-wrenching scene, Damon tells Elena how much he loves her, but he then goes a step further and admits that he simply isn’t worthy of her love. That already had the waterworks going for us, but the fact that he then made her forget this earnest confession left us ugly crying for a good, long time.
The shocking death of Enzo
Part of what made The Vampire Diaries special is that deaths rarely felt cheap. Mostly, they took us on the same emotional journey as the characters, and this is something that will leave you weeping when you witness the shocking death of Enzo.
Thanks to the difficulties they had growing up, Bonnie and Enzo formed a strange bond which their traumas only strengthened. That friendship ended in tragedy when Stefan decided to not just murder Enzo but to do it in front of Bonnie. Her sadness is palpable and we find ourselves weeping right alongside her in a scene that destroys us every time.
Elena can’t hear Damon’s soulful pleas
Eventually, the writers learned an easy secret to making us weep: having Damon confess his deep love to Elena in increasingly tragic ways. In this scene, he is trapped on the Other Side, and the woman he loves is pleading with him not to leave her.
Here’s the part that just twists a knife in your guts, though: she can’t hear anything Damon is saying. Despite this, he begins pouring out his soul, telling her how she’s the greatest thing that has happened in a vampiric life that stretches back for the better part of two centuries. By the time he gets to the part where he admits he isn’t afraid to die because her love has perfectly fulfilled his long life, you may need to clear out the rest of your evening for some sobbing.
The letter that always makes us cry
Sometimes, these scenes feel like machines built for the express purpose of making us cry. The best example of this may be Jenna and John’s funeral scene. Funeral scenes are naturally sad, of course, but this used a letter from John to Elena to really hammer some hard emotions into those of us watching.
In the letter, John heartbreakingly acknowledges how he failed Elena as a parent: she was “an extraordinary child” and he was only “an ordinary parent.” In the letter, he goes on to say he is “haunted” by how things went between them and that he should have listened to her “side of things” more. Trust us: as “Skinny Love” starts playing, you won’t struggle to start crying…you may, however, struggle to ever stop!
A lasting memory and a lasting sob from us
Part of the joy of watching our favorite shows is that we see ourselves in our favorite characters. That’s a good thing, of course: the deeper we relate to the characters we’re watching, the easier it is to root for them. However, one scene in the show absolutely wrecks those with big hearts, every single time.
The scene involves Caroline and her mom. In it, Caroline gives her mother a sweet memory of dear old mum teaching Caroline how to ride a bicycle. Honestly, we were already starting to tear up with the family flashback, but the dialogue–including a young Caroline begging her mother to not let go–gets us every time.
Blunt talk about death
Certain scenes in this show are easier to appreciate when you’ve experienced certain tragedies on your own. That includes a scene where Damon bluntly tells Caroline about what to expect following her mother’s death.
She understandably felt like the immediate days after her mother’s death were the worst days in her life. Rather than offer a crying shoulder, Damon offered the harsh truth that being surrounded by concerned friends and family right after her mom’s death is the easy part. By contrast, having to eventually deal with a home that is perfectly quiet because someone you loved died is the hardest thing of all.
It’s a sad scene no matter who you are. But for those who lost loved ones before their time, this scene is likely to stick with you forever.