Even though she later left the show and only came back for the final episode, Elena Gilbert, played by the Canadian-Bulgarian actress Nina Dobrev, was an integral part of The Vampire Diaries. Elena was the person who set the story in motion when she started dating the vampire Stefan Salvatore and then fell for his older brother Damon, all the while fighting various kinds of supernatural threats that endangered not only Elena herself but also her friends and family.
Despite the fact that many fans didn't like her, there's no denying that without Elena, there'd be no show. But even though the show is now over, there are still some unanswered questions left about its main protagonist, Elena Gilbert.
Why Did She Fall For Damon?
Damon and Elena were an enchanting couple with genuine chemistry flowing between them (perhaps because their actors, Ian Somerhalder and Nina Dobrev, dated for a while). Elena first thought Damon was nothing but evil, but she eventually took mercy on him and the two became friends.
But since Damon killed her brother and did various awful things to her and Stefan, it still begs the question of how exactly could have Elena forgiven him for all this and even fall in love with him?
Why Didn't She Want To Become A Vampire?
Elena didn't want to become a vampire, and it looked like she would rather die than the ranks of the bloodsuckers in the second season. While her moral integrity is to be applauded, it doesn't really make much sense. After all, almost any type of existence is better than simply dying.
Granted, drinking blood can be annoying, but vampires have a lot of perks that at least partially make up for it (the not aging thing, for example).
How Could She Have Graduated?
Even though her life was filled with supernatural threats, Elena still managed to make her dreams come true - she graduated and became a doctor, just like she always wanted, because her desire was to help people.
While that's all good for her, the fact is that Elena shouldn't have been able to do all of this so easily. She barely spent any time in school at all and the audience rarely saw her study. So unless she was a hidden genius (which she wasn't... no offense, Elena) she shouldn't have been able to even graduate, let alone work as a doctor later on.
Did She Hate Caroline At Times?
Elena and Caroline had a complicated relationship, to put it mildly. They were supposed to be good friends, but they very often didn't act that way.
First, Caroline was jealous of Elena because of the fact everybody liked her, and Stefan dated her and not Caroline. Then, in a later season, Elena tried to kill Caroline, something they barely talked about afterward. For the so-called friends, they sure had a lot of bad blood (pun intended) between them.
Why Is She So Hypocritical Sometimes?
Elena is supposed to be pure of heart, one of the kindest characters in the show. Damon repeatedly says that she brings out the light in anybody she's close to or something along the lines. But Elena can actually be quite hypocritical too at times, which doesn't correspond with what other people think of her or how they perceive her.
She actually looked disappointed when Silas failed to kill Katherine after Damon forcefully fed her to the powerful vampire, to name just one example.
How Could She Have Been So Strong?
This issue is most likely due to the inconsistency in writing since it doesn't happen only with Elena, but also with Caroline who also becomes a vampire. The show clearly states that the older vampire is, the stronger she or he becomes, and humans are nowhere as strong as vampires.
By this logic, Elena never should have been able to stake Rebekah, who's over a thousand-years-old, and help to kill not one, but two original vampires. Yet that's exactly what she does.
What Did She See In Stefan?
Before she got together with Damon, Elena dated Stefan first. And while these two were certainly a handsome couple, they didn't have a lot in common character-wise.
Before her parents' death, Elena was a cheerful person who liked to have fun, and some aspects of her old personality return after she somewhat deals with the tragedy in her life. Stefan, on the other hand, is much more pessimistic, and he likes to brood and see things in the negative light, which doesn't fit well with Elena's personality.
Why Wasn't She Writing Her Diary Anymore?
There's probably a reason why Elena stopped writing her diary after the first episode or so. The creators of the show simply wanted to focus on more action parts of the story.
But regardless of that, the show was still called The Vampire Diaries, so one could reasonably expect the trend of Elena writing her diary would stick around a little bit longer. Perhaps she was simply too busy for it, considering all the supernatural disasters that befell her?
Why Doesn't She Have Any Hobbies?
Throughout the eight seasons of the show, it's sometimes very difficult to overlook that Elena doesn't do anything not related to her relationship with Stefan or Damon or with any threat that she and her friends are facing at the moment. That makes it look like she has no hobbies at all, which doesn't make sense for such a young person, or any person really.
But while other new vampires manage to keep the balance between their hobbies and other things, Elena doesn't, and the closest she gets to it is when she actually turns off her emotions as a vampire.
Why Doesn't She Just Leave Mystic Falls?
Yes, this once again depends on the show. If Elena, The Vampire Diaries' main heroine, left her home right in the first or second season, there'd be no story left to tell. That said, Elena would probably do much better, at least health-wise, had she not stayed in Mystic Falls.
Tragedy often befalls people who live in the town, and especially once Jeremy dies Elena could have easily left, since she had no surviving family there and it would have been safer for her to be as far away from Mystic Falls as possible.