'The Originals' Team Talks Final Season, Candice King Cameo 

'The Originals' Team Talks Final Season, Candice King Cameo

'The Vampire Diaries' spinoff also showed a first look at teenage Hope at its final Comic-Con panel.

 began their farewell tour with a final appearance at

San Diego Comic-Con, two days after creator Julie Plec announced in a note to fans that the upcoming fifth season will be the series' last. Stars Joseph Morgan, Daniel Gillies, Charles Michael Davis, Phoebe Tonkin, Riley Voelkel, and Yusuf Gatewood joined Plec onstage in the Indigo Ballroom to say goodbye to the series, as well as reveal new details about the final episodes — including how Candice King's

character, Caroline, will appear in the season premiere. 

After a video looking back on the previous four seasons — and introducing new cast member Danielle Rose Russell as the teenage version of Morgan and Tonkin's characters' daughter, Hope (see a first look below) — the cast and Plec reflected on their experience on the show.

Plec remembered the time an unnamed actor from

asked, before the spinoff was created, why the Originals were getting so much screen time. "I said, 'Have you watched them act?'"

She takes from the series "a sense of pride that what started as something simple with no agenda for a spinoff is now five years deep" and has the potential to spawn more spinoffs. It took 45 minutes, but Davis was the first cast member to shed tears, getting emotional as he thought about the series' end. "I've grown with these guys and I prayed for this experience," he said.

While only the first few episodes of the final season have been written, Plec and the cast did tease a few notable tidbits from the upcoming final run. In the season four finale, the immortal Mikaelson family went their separate ways thanks to a curse that will cause devastation should they every be in the same room together again. But when the series picks up after a decade-long time jump, they'll have to reunite in some way.

"The big consequence, of course, is should these people spend time together? We're going to start to see exactly what does happen," she said. "It escalates."

As for King's appearance, Plec confirmed that there is potential for her to appear more than once. "Caroline is the headmistress of Klaus' daughter's school, so they are going to have an interaction at some point," she said. Because the character has known Klaus the longest, "she has a perspective for him and the way that he's living his life right now."

Morgan teased the unresolved romantic tension between their characters. "I suspected there might be something more to this story," he said. "There's always been... a feeling of something unresolved there."

Filming on the series will wrap around Christmas, and Morgan said he's excited about what is to come. "There's things to look forward to in the future — 

Get a first look at teenage Hope in the video below:

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