Welcome to Julie’s Diary! Every week during the season, Vampire Diaries showrunner Julie Plec will add an entry to her diary. From answering burning questions to giving behind-the-scenes stories and more, this is a place for fans to hear directly from Plec about the episode they just watched.

Thursday’s episode, “Best Served Cold,” was written by my partner in crime, the ever-clever Caroline Dries, and directed by Darren Genet (who is also one of the show’s much-loved cinematographers). It’s one of my favorites of the season because all the seeds we’ve been planting are really starting to sprout. When Nina [Dobrev] decided to leave the show at the end of last season, we lost a central element of the series: the love triangle. In Lily and Julian, we built a terrific substitution: a hate triangle. Anger at their mother and rage against Julian have really brought Stefan and Damon together, and disagreements about how to manage this pair of enemies will also be the thing that threatens to drive the brothers apart. It contains not one, but two of my favorite scenes of the season.