Getting long in the fangs? The Vampire Diaries head writer Julie Plec spoke to Variety at the Television Critics Association winter press tour on Monday, January 11, and said that the series' end could be sooner than fans would like. 

Plec, 43, admitted that the longevity of the vampire series, which is currently airing its seventh season, depends on how long stars Paul Wesley (Stefan) and Ian Somerhalder (Damon) want to stay with it.

"My end game needs to, in my opinion, emotionally run parallel with the end game of Paul and Ian — more so than the network and the studio," she said. "When those boys decide that they’re done telling stories — which could be tomorrow and could be a year from now or two years from now or whatever — I need to be done. I feel like I owe them that and I owe the show that. It’s a collective decision. Right now, they’re in the driver’s seat of that and we’ll see how much longer they feel like they want to be doing this."

That said, the producer said she and the show's other writers would have no problem continuing its story lines for many more seasons to come.

"Yeah, absolutely," Plec said on whether the series has gas left in the tank. "Every year we're like, ‘We'll never figure out what next year is going to be!’ And then we come up with an idea that's cooler. It gets harder and harder, so there will come a point where I’ll have to say I have zero ideas left, but right now, I still feel pretty inspired by it, so I’m just taking it one day at a time."

The showrunner added that while she misses Nina Dobrev (Elena) — whose character fell into a decades-long sleep at the end of the last season — it has been liberating to not focus the show strictly on the Elena-centric love triangle.

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"Yes, I miss her deeply and would take her back in an instant if she called and said, 'Hey, can I come back and play?'" she continued. "But purely from a creative point of view, it’s been a real new infusion of creative fun."

The Vampire Diaries returns on The CW on Friday, January 29, at 8 p.m. EST.

Tell Us: How much longer should The Vampire Diaries continue? 

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