Top 10 Characters of The Vampire Diaries Ranked

6. Katherine Pierce

Oh, Katherine Pierce. How I loved to hate her, and hated to love her. For one, the biggest shout out to Nina Dobrev for her brilliantly played doppelgangers, the best of which were, of course, Elena and Katherine. While Elena was good, true, kind and loyal, Katherine was manipulative, resourceful, conniving and a survivor. She looked out for herself, always, and couldn’t afford to care or look behind her – after all, she’d spent the majority of her centuries-long life on the run, looking out for number one.

And God, she was just so sassy and good at being bad, you couldn’t help but love watching her. She was almost always a step ahead, and did bad better than the other villains of the show – most of which were men (Klaus, Mikael, etc.). The small slivers of humanity we saw in her – her love for Stefan, her still saving Damon in season 2 despite claiming to never have loved him, her longing look at the Petrova family book and the flashbacks to her tragic past in Bulgaria – show that Katherine wasn’t always a villain. No one is born bad – life just hardens them and makes them that way.

She made me laugh, she made me angry, but when she died, I’ll admit, I was sad to see her go. Life was always a little more interesting with Katherine around.

Luckily, we got one last episode full of Katherine Pierce, for old time’s sake – but with the series over, I guess we have to accept that Katherine is once and for all, really and truly dead and gone. (We saw her death, we know it’s game over.) Rest in…well, not peace, but you know.