I understand that some people don ' t change and it ' s realistic . And I would have enjoyed it if the whole season was not revolving around Damon ' s redemption again . Not changing a character is ok but having the last season solely focussed on it after you have fed the story for the last 7 years is crappy writing . It ' s like they have run out of ideas . Even the execution is not that great . Best example of it would be Tyler ' s death . The whole purpose of it was to show that Damon might be beyond redemption . But his death scene was just meh . Tyler was missing the whole last season and even before that he was just not that much connected to the fans after his breakup with Caroline . He didn ' t get much character development and fans didn ' t much care about him . So killing him seemed like an easy way to tell the fans that Damon has gone off the rails . The fact that he just came back to the show for 5 mins and died didn ' t even give him time to try to reconnect with the fans . It lacked any emotional punch like the death of Alaric or Jeremy or Damon had . Damon ' s redemption story would work if it wasn ' t the sole focus of the season after having it as a major arc for multiple season .