What To Expect From Season 4 Of 'The Vampire Diaries'

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

As most "Vampire Diaries" fans know, season 3 of the hit CW show ended with a huge shocker. Turn back now if you (somehow) have not caught the season finale yet!

During the season 3 finale, Elena (Nina Dobrev) and Matt (Zach Roerig) had the misfortune of getting on Rebekah's (Claire Holt) bad side, resulting in a pretty horrific crash over Mystic Falls Wickery Bridge. Elena's parents met their death when their car drove off the bridge a couple years earlier, with only Elena surviving due to Stefan's (Paul Wesley) heroic actions. The second time driving off the bridge wouldn't end well for Elena though, when she demanded that Stefan save Matt before her.

As viewers watched Elena drown, they were hit with a shocker within the last couple of seconds of the finale. Elena had unknowingly been treated with vampire blood prior to her death...and it was still in her system. As Elena gasped with new (eternal) life, season 3 of the "Vampire Diaries" came to a close.

Fans of the show still have to wait a couple months for season four to air, but lucky for us executive producer Julie Plec is a chatty Kathy!

Most of the Mystic Falls gang, except Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen), are seniors, but with Elena getting a new set of fangs, it looks like a lot more changes will be happening than graduation.

"Every character is growing up and graduating, so to speak, and setting up the future of their grown-up worlds outside of Mystic Falls...Or Maybe Not," Plec revealed to TV Line.

Viewers should definitely expect season 4 to be a year of transition.

"How do you go to high school as a new vampire? How do you fall in or out of love? How does it change who you are and what you feel?" asks Plec. For the executive producer, the changes in season 4 will be very similar to season 1, in that Stefan went through what Elena will be going through when he returned to Mystic Falls. "Now we get to watch our heroine go through all of that."

As for Rebekah, Plec says we get to see the Original mean girl go through a transition herself, having to deal with the consequences of being the one that killed Elena and almost killed Matt.

"As we get into the second half of their senior year, here's Rebekah, still in Mystic Falls, heading back to school, completely ostracized from the community of people that she knows because of what she did to Elena and Matt," Perez Hilton reported that Plec spilled. "She's completely loathed by the one guy [Matt] that she had a crush on, and also by her past love [Stefan]...Once she gets over the hump of being "World's Most Hated" in the yearbook, how will she live?"

Fans can be guaranteed to witness some serious drama from all characters due to the season finale shenanigans, but as Plec puts it, Elena is going to be "front and center."