In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Julie Plec, the showrunner for The Vampire Diaries and Originals discussed how she goes about crafting what she hopes will be the perfect season finale for her shows.

This is especially going to be difficult this year, as she will be saying good bye to the lead actress of The Vampire Diaries, Nina Dobrev. Plec states that the crew usually has the season finale in mind before the season begins shooting.

Thus, all of the episodes in the season are crafted to lead up to the season finale, rather than writing the episodes and then attempting to piece them together for the perfect finale.

She also said that the hardest time to balance the story is between the 17^th and 21^st episode, because you can get too close to the finale without having tied up the story properly, or you may be too far from the finale without enough story left to tell.

She also said that it is important to find the balance of a show and its rhythm in the first season.

She cited the second season of The Vampire Diaries as especially trying because the network ordered an extra episode halfway through the year, and they had to reorganize everything or come up with a backup plan.

In order to prepare for this season's finale, Plec said that she had a backup plan, because it wasn't confirmed at the beginning of the season whether or not Dobrev would be leaving the show.

She adds that she and Dobrev came together and decided that the finale must be respectful to the fans.