20 Most Iconic Elena Gilbert Moments

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1. Breaking down when Jeremy died (4.15)

Nina Dobrev is still owed an Emmy for this performance – and an Oscar, and every other screen award possible, while we’re at it. I have never, ever seen such a gut wrenching, heart shattering, guttural breakdown, and it makes me cry every single time I watch it, without fail.

No matter how many times I watch Elena’s breakdown after finally grasping that Jeremy is dead – the last of her family – I get chills. It’s an absolutely heart shattering performance, and it’s the tip of the iceberg for Elena. She’s fought through everything – deaths (including her own), her loved ones being used as pawns against her, some torture, some heartbreak. But it’s the death of her little brother that finally just…breaks her.

She rushes around the house, spraying lighter fluid and bourbon around the rooms to light the house up in flames, having a full meltdown that she can’t stay in a house of memories of every dead loved one she has anymore. It is real and raw, and I can’t help but feel that the heartbreak, sympathy and fear on everyone’s faces as they watch her was real – really Paul Wesley, Candice Accola and Ian Somerhalder. It’s the scene that has stuck with me, after everything – years and seasons later, that was the one that ruined me and has never left my head. I know it step for step, word for word, and it doesn’t get to me any less. Elena Gilbert feels everything – and this was the scene we saw that most, and felt it all with her.

What favorite Elena Gilbert moments did we forget, readers? Let us know in the comments below!

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