Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Elena completes her transition from human to vampire, but she struggles with hunger and the loss of her old life. A new hunter, Connor Jordan, arrives in Mystic Falls, and his tattoo leads Klaus, Stefan and Damon toward the cure for vampirism. Jeremy becomes a Hunter himself as the group follows the map on his skin to an island where the immortal Silas is buried. The cure becomes the prize in a contest that strains Elena's relationships with both brothers.
Jeremy is killed on the island, and Damon uses Elena’s sire bond to make her shut off her humanity rather than face her grief. Bonnie's dangerous expression magic helps open Silas's tomb and later lowers the barrier between the living and the dead. With help from her friends, Elena eventually turns her emotions back on, while the cure’s single dose becomes the focus of competing plans. At graduation, Elena forces the cure down Katherine's throat, making the centuries-old vampire human. Bonnie uses the same supernatural crisis to bring Jeremy back, but the spell costs her life; her friends leave believing she is away with her mother.
Silas uses his ability to take other people's appearances to deceive the group, then reveals that he looks exactly like Stefan. After Bonnie's death releases him, Silas traps Stefan in a safe and drops him into a quarry, leaving the real Stefan hidden underwater as the others look ahead to summer. Klaus promises to stop pursuing Tyler, allowing him to return to Caroline, and Elena chooses Damon, while the brothers' apparent victory is shadowed by the disappearance of Stefan and Bonnie's secret death.