Well, shoot! How is this going to work? There have been rumblings of a cast shakeup on The Vampire Diaries for a few months now, but we can’t imagine anyone expected this. Nina Dobrev, a.k.a. Elena Gilbert, Katherine Pearce, and Amara, is leaving The CW’s hit supernatural show at the end of season 6. Though Dobrev just announced the decision on her Instagram, rumors of her going away party leaked online earlier today.

Dearest TVD Family, I’ve just spent the most beautiful weekend on Lake Lanier in Georgia with my own TVD Family, the cast and crew of The Vampire Diaries. I want to be the first to tell you that it wasn’t just a holiday celebration, it was a goodbye party. I always knew I wanted Elena’s story to be a six season adventure, and within those six years I got the journey of a lifetime. I was a human, a vampire, a doppelganger, a crazy immortal, a doppelganger pretending to be human, a human pretending to be a doppelganger. I got kidnapped, killed, resurrected, tortured, cursed, body-snatched, was dead and undead, and there’s still so much more to come before the season finale in May. Elena fell in love not once, but twice, with two epic soulmates, and I myself made some of the best friends I’ll ever know and built an extended family I will love forever. There’s more to come before we wrap this up, and I promise you’ll get to hear all about my experiences over the next month as we approach the season finale (I have given an exclusive interview for the June issue of SELF Magazine that I am excited for you to see!), but until then I invite you to hop on the roller coaster ride that is Elena Gilbert’s life and join me as I celebrate her and prepare to say goodbye to her — and to my work family — as I move on to the next chapter of my life. I want to share this goodbye with all of you (this weekend’s pictures were just the beginning). You, the wonderful fandom who gave more love, support and passion than anyone could have ever imagined seven years ago, when a young Degrassi girl from Canada showed up in LA to audition for ‘that Twilight TV show.’ 😉 I love you all. Fasten your seatbelts. If you think you know what’s coming, you don’t. Love, Nina

A photo posted by Nina Dobrev (@ninadobrev) on Apr 6, 2015 at 5:01pm PDT

Again, we have to ask: can the series survive without Elena? Granted, she can be one of the more frustrating characters on the show sometimes (Even her BFF Caroline thinks so! Sure, she shut off her humanity, but that’s neither here nor there…), but the titular vampire diaries are half hers, after all. She’s also part of the epic love triangle between the smoldering Salvatore bros Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Damon (Ian Somerhalder). If Elena either moves on with her life (perhaps by taking the cure?) or is killed somehow, will all the other series regulars stick around? While I firmly believe the show can continue without her, especially if they leave the love triangle behind and dive back into some of the mythologies that made The Vampire Diaries so interesting in the first place, many fans have a huge investment in the character and that romantic storyline.

It makes sense that Dobrev would leave the series eventually–like she said, she’s had just about every character arc an actress on a well-written supernatural show could ask for–now we just need to figure out what that means for the show. And if we can get one more appearance from Elena’s conniving doppelgänger, Katherine Pearce, well, that would be just swell.*

Are you upset that Nina Dobrev is leaving The Vampire Diaries or do you think it’s the shakeup that the series needs? Let us know in the comments below! (Be nice, please.)

*Yes I know Julie Plec stated that Katherine has gone to that scary dark place forever but a girl can dream, right?