Vampire Diaries Post-Mortem: Discussing Tonight’s Character Death

They actually did it.

The rock of Mystic Falls, and the only grown-up worth keeping around for six seasons, Sheriff Liz Forbes (Marguerite MacIntyre), passed away in tonight’s episode, not from supernatural forces, but from cancer.

Of course, the actress is still alive, and she spoke with press after a screening on Wednesday – revealing that the initial reaction of many is that Caroline’s mother would get better.

“The hardest thing for me has been everybody knew it was coming, so for weeks beforehand, people have been very emotional with me,” she said. “In this way that I’m like ‘Dudes. I’m fine!’ Especially Ian, weirdly. When we did the table read when I first had trouble, after the table read, he’s like ‘Hey, by the way, you get well, right?’ and I was like ‘Um… no.’ And he was like ‘WHAT?’ And literally from then on, he’s been very clingy. As you can imagine, that’s a great thing,” she said.

“No one thought we’d actually kill her. Nina’s like ‘you’re not gonna really kill the sheriff, right?’ and I was like ‘yeah, we are’,” Julie Plec added, noting that it will make for a good story.

Forbes’ funeral will be in next week’s episode, directed by Julie Plec, and MacIntyre will be back for an open casket. Plec and MacIntyre are longtime friends, and it’ll give them one last chance to hang out in the Atlanta sets.

New episodes of The Vampire Diaries air Thursdays on The CW.