
The Vampire Diaries · Season 3, Episode 22
The Departed
First aired May 10, 2012
What it’s about
Jeremy takes Elena to the hospital where Meredith takes care of her. Elena dreams of simpler times when her parents, Grayson and Miranda, and Aunt Jenna were still alive and her biggest concern was her relationship with Matt. Stefan and Damon leave Mystic Falls together on a mission, but soon split up when Elena needs one of them. Elijah returns and asks for Klaus' body in return for luring Alaric away. Alaric convinces Jeremy and Matt to help him kill Klaus so Elena can live a happy life, but Jeremy tricks Alaric. Caroline and Tyler are forced to make a life-changing decision and flee from Mystic Falls at the urging of their parents. Stefan kisses Elena before going to deal with Alaric. Alaric surprises Damon at the storage locker where Klaus' body is stored. Alaric kills Klaus (who was revealed to have made Damon's, Stefan's, Caroline's, Abby's and Tyler's bloodline). Matt was taking Elena out of town and she decides to go back to say good-bye to Stefan, saying that he came into her life at the right moment, but maybe if she had met Damon first, it would have been different. Caroline says good-bye to Tyler as Rebekah and Elijah mourn Klaus. Bonnie made a secret deal to reincarnate Klaus in the body of Tyler so that her friends would not die, however no one else knows this, as they all believe that Klaus was lying about being the head of their bloodline. Elena and Matt get into a car crash (while this is happening Elena is having flashbacks to when she and her parents were dying in the car). It is then shown in a flash back that Damon and Elena met the night of the car crash involving Elena and her parents, where he tells her that she wants "a love that consumes you, you want passion, an adventure, and even a little danger." But after meeting her, Damon compelled her saying that "No one can know I'm in town yet." When Stefan comes to save her and Matt, she signals him to save Matt instead of her. Elena then drowns, which made Alaric go down with her. He then says goodbye to Jeremy in ghost form. At the end of the episode Dr. Fell reveals to Damon that Elena was not suffering from a concussion, but a bleeding in the brain and that she did what she had to do to save her, by giving her vampire blood. The episode ends with Elena waking up as a vampire.
Plot summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source
Season 3
All episodes of the season with summaries →
3x01The Birthday
3x02The Hybrid
3x03The End of the Affair
3x04Disturbing Behavior
3x05The Reckoning
3x06Smells Like Teen Spirit
3x07Ghost World
3x08Ordinary People
3x09Homecoming
3x10The New Deal
3x11Our Town
3x12The Ties That Bind
3x13Bringing Out the Dead
3x14Dangerous Liaisons
3x15All My Children
3x161912
3x17Break on Through
3x18The Murder of One
3x19Heart of Darkness
3x20Do Not Go Gentle
3x21Before Sunset
3x22The DepartedEpisode data and images: TVMaze (texts CC BY-SA 4.0, images belong to the series’ rights holders).