'The Vampire Diaries' season 8 spoilers, plot news: EP teases new villain's identity, Nina Dobrev to return?

The CW's long-running supernatural drama "The Vampire Diaries" ended its seventh season recently, and it will be a while before fans see their favorite series return to TV screens.

Elena (Nina Dobrev) surprised viewers in the season 7 finale when her voice was heard after being absent on the show for quite some time now. Fans saw the last of Elena during the season 6 finale wherein Kai (Chris Wood) found a connection between the lives of Elena and Bonnie (Kat Graham). This means that Elena remains in a deep slumber until Bonnie dies. Currently, Elena is inside the Salvatore tomb until she rises up again.

Executive producer Julie Plec recently caught up with TV Line wherein she mentioned the possibility of Dobrev returning to the series, but she is still keeping her plans to bring her back in the yet-to-be-determined series finale. "It's what she and I kind of agreed on when she decided to move on, and it's what I've got in my head," Plec explained. "Obviously, things can change throughout time, if the show goes on longer than we expect it to, or if we all collectively decide it would be fun to bring her back earlier, and she wanted to. But in my opinion, she was very clear about what she wanted the next step in her life to be, and she's doing a great job of achieving that. So I'm sticking with my side of the plan, which is to bring her back at the very end."

As for the show's new big bad, Plec won't give anything away but she confirmed that a new form of darkness will cause trouble in season 8. The EP also stated how interesting it is to keep the villain's identity until the show returns which they have never done in the previous seasons. "What could it be that's been around for thousands of years?" Plec spoke to Yahoo! TV. "We didn't see it, but it has some creepy ass monster hands, and it has the ability to get inside your head and strip away everything good about you. There's a nice mystery taking us into next season about what exactly this creature is."

The network has yet to announce an official premiere date for "The Vampire Diaries" season 8.