Nina Dobrev said farewell to The Vampire Diaries a year ago, but apparently that's not the last you'll see of her character Elena.

She ~sort of~ appeared in last night's season seven finale. You didn't actually see her, but when the mysterious villain of the vault enticed Damon with Elena's voice, that was new material that Nina had recorded just for this episode. The producers of the show told Nina they could string together the voiceover using material from previous episodes, but they offered her the opportunity to record it in person on set.

"I reached out and said, 'We can either cobble it together from a bunch of episodes, or you can come in and see everybody and do ADR,'" executive producer Julie Plec told TV Line. "She chose to do it in person, which was great, because it was a nice little personal Nina visit."

Fans were so happy to have her back.

Even though Nina isn't a series regular anymore, she has plans to return for the series finale!

"It's what she and I kind of agreed on when she decided to move on, and it's what I've got in my head," Julie continued. "Obviously things can change throughout time, if the show goes on longer than we expect it to, or if we all collectively decide it would be fun to bring her back earlier, and she wanted to. But in my opinion, she was very clear about what she wanted the next step in her life to be, and she's doing a great job of achieving that. So I'm sticking with my side of the plan, which is to bring her back at the very end."

The end of the show will be a truly bittersweet moment — we'll be sad, of course, to no longer have our weekly dose of vampire drama, but watching Nina play Elena one last time will be pure bliss.

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