Remember last week, when we were grieving for Stefan [1]? Turns out we were mourning for the wrong Salvatore. On this week's season finale of The Vampire Diaries, things get even worse in terms of character deaths, with one that has us not believing it's real. Ready to dig in for the last good, bad, and bloody recap of the season? Let's go!

The Good

• Well, that's one explosive way to end a season! I give credit where credit is due for giving us an unexpected twist, but my praise ends there. DAMON IS DEAD? After all we went through last week already? How can Damon be dead? Ian Somerhalder [2] is the heart of this show! No. I am in the first stage of grief. Hard-core denial.
• So, let's talk about how we got here. Of course, we pick up after Stefan's "death" (that feels like so long ago), with Damon angrily confronting Bonnie about how she has to bring him back. Like Bonnie always does, she comes through, getting Elena and Caroline to blackmail Liv into helping (smart move killing the brother as an incentive). The witches put together a spell while Damon devises a concurrent plan to kill the travelers, which is essentially blowing them all up inside the Mystic Grill.
• Here's where this episode really starts messing with us: we know that Bonnie has all her ducks in a row for the spell and can essentially bring back any dead person, so I stopped worrying about people dying this week. Tyler dies, Liz eats it, Damon and Elena go out in a fiery blaze, and I felt nothing, thinking they were all coming back, since Bonnie was promising resurrections, Oprah style.
• Before Elena and Damon Thelma & Louise it up, we get some of the best Damon/Elena moments ever (and will ever, I guess). Finally, they drop the crap, and Elena begs Damon not to set off the explosion, because she sees a future with him, so he promises to come back to her.
• Gotta give it up for Lexi and Alaric! Lexi is always a delight, especially since she takes this Other Side opportunity to lecture Stefan about his obvious connection with Caroline. But in the end, she chooses to make sure Stefan can come back, and she gets rid of Markos before he can pass back through Bonnie. Sigh. And Alaric is back! Believe it [3].
• But we can't celebrate Alaric. Because he makes it back and not Damon — Luke shuts off Liv before he can get through. Again, I wasn't worried through this whole sequence, because in no universe does it make sense that this show could kill Damon. And yet, after a tearful goodbye with Elena, he and Bonnie hold hands, and it all goes blank for them.

The Bad

• The worst: everything about Damon dying.
• I had a heart attack thinking Silas was actually going to come back for real when he shows up to assist Bonnie in the ritual. Thankfully, Bonnie lets him fly into a death tornado before letting him back in the land of the living. Snap!
• The other crappy thing about this finale? Nothing happened between Caroline and Stefan! One mention by Lexi and then nothing.

The Bloody

• I ask you: if you wanted to see if you could heal easily, would you just grab a rock and scrape it down your palm? That's what Tyler does, and there has to be an easier way. Oh, but BTW, I guess it is important that Tyler is no longer a hybrid.

So, how are you feeling? Do you believe Damon is really gone? I'll be spending the Summer hating everything.