‘Vampire Diaries’ Season 7 Premiere Date Revealed; When Will Stefan And Caroline Return?

Don’t worry, “Vampire Diaries” fans. Damon and Stefan Salvatore are only gone for the summer. “The Vampire Diaries” Season 7 will rise from the dead in October, the CW has announced.

The supernatural drama will remain in its Thursday at 8 p.m. EDT timeslot, but it will no longer be followed by “Reign.” The “TVD” spinoff, “The Originals,” will air afterwards. Fans can expect new episodes to start on Thursday, Oct. 8.

“The Vampire Diaries” Season 7 will bring plenty of changes. The Season 6 finale featured Elena’s (Nina Dobrev) exit, which means the show will no longer focus on her love triangle with Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and Stefan (Paul Wesley). So how will the show work without its main character?

“This season the triangle of Elena may be off in the ether,” executive producer Kevin Williamson said at ATX Television Festival earlier this month. “But guess what? There is a lot of story to tell. A lot of great, emotional, tear jerking, epic, scary and thrilling story to tell … I think.”

Executive producer Julie Plec added that Season 7 will focus on Caroline (Candice Accola), who never really had the best luck. “At the end of the pilot, she says, ‘Why doesn’t anybody ever pick me?'" Plec explained. “You realize, here’s a girl who’s trying so hard to matter and she’s over trying, she’s overcompensating. What you’ve done in a TV series is you’ve set up a girl, that by the end of her run as a character, she will be the one that gets picked first.”

That likely means that her love story with Stefan will get more screen time. When viewers last saw the couple, Caroline said she wasn’t ready to be in a relationship with him. However, Stefan declared his love and said he’d wait for her. It sounds like fans can look forward to watching Stefan win Caroline over when “TVD” returns.

Of course, viewers can also anticipate darker stories too. Damon won’t handle Elena’s absence too well. “The story is just going to change form and I think that we get to go back to this really awesome dark, edgy, volatile [story]—all the s--- that we all love,” Somerhalder told Entertainment Weekly in May.

“The Vampire Diaries” Season 7 will premiere Thursday, Oct. 8, at 8 p.m. EDT on the CW. Do you think that’s too long to wait? What are you watching to get through the hiatus? Sound off in the comments section below!