In what was an eye-opening episode of The Vampire Diaries last week, Elena (Nina Dobrev) learned some of the history behind the Augustine vampires, including the fact that her boyfriend Damon (Ian Somerhalder) was locked up and tortured for five years. While his anger upon escaping was certainly reasonable, Damon revealed his revenge was to kill every generation of Whitmores, with the exception of one person per family, which also happened to include Aaron (Shaun Sipos)'s parents and aunt. In the final moments of the hour, Damon found himself alone in the cell while Elena was trapped in the lab alongside Damon's former cellmate, Enzo (Michael Malarkey), who had been presumed dead.
Will Elena forgive Damon for his past — that is if she escapes Dr. Maxfield (Rick Cosnett)? What secrets will she learn about her own backstory in the process? And back at Casa Salvatore, will Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Katherine (Dobrev) continue to rekindle their past? And how does Caroline feel about this? We checked in with executive producer Caroline Dries who answered our burning questions heading into the show's midseason finale.
Elena learned some pretty heavy stuff about Damon. Will that cause irreparable damage for the couple?
Caroline Dries: Yeah. Elena found out that even during the beginnings of their relationship he was killing people. Weirdly, you can kind of justify what he was doing like, OK, he was tortured and had organs removed for five years, but, for Elena, can you imagine what that would be like for your boyfriend to have this whole other identity you had no idea about? That will have lasting effects. But as we saw at the end of last week's episode,Elena isn't in a position to be questioning Damon because here she is on this operating table about to go under what he went under so she has her own drama to deal with.
Through the flashbacks in the finale, will she find she knows more about her father's past than she realized?
Dries: She's kind of putting it together and it will emerge as, "Oh, I thought that was one thing and looking through it in a different lens my childhood was actually different than I lived it." We get to learn more about [Gilbert] Grayson's backstory.
Will the experiments that Wes does on Elena have lasting effects on her like it did Damon?
Dries: It actually strangely has the opposite effect on her and as she starts to learn more about why Augustine exists, she has a surprising take-away from it. That's going to cause some friction between Damon and her.
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I imagine Enzo is pretty mad at Damon right now.
Dries: Enzo has stayed at Augustine for all these decades so whatever Damon went through, he went through tenfold. So Enzo certainly has a chip on his shoulder. But at the same time, he has no friends so Damon is sort of his only friend. But as Damon is trying to recover from the memory of Augustine and realizing Enzo is in his life again, Enzo becomes the devil on Damon's shoulder and is the voice of temptation. So he does become a bit of a villain.
Moving onto Katherine and Stefan, people seem to love them together.
Dries: I'm so pro-Stefan and Katherine too and I think it's because they have such deep dark history. I mean she really put him through the ringer and yet there is something about Stefan that softens Katherine. So to see a little shade of vulnerability with her, even just a peek, it feels like you're getting so much satisfaction out of it. He's her Achilles heel and that's what I like about the relationship. And they have such great chemistry between them.
Will everyone find out about them?
Dries: [In the next episode we'll see] who's going to find out and how and what the fallout is. Damon will find out, but we're not going to see Elena's reaction until future episodes.
What about Caroline and Stefan? Could something more develop between them?
Dries: They are such close friends and we'll see that friendship mature and that relationship will get more screen time. For Caroline, that's her best friend's ex-boyfriend so can she even go there? It won't be a smooth sailing journey for them if we go down that road.
Will the doppelganger prophecy be re-addressed?
Dries: Since Silas and Amara died we put that chapter of mythology to sleep for a little while; towards the end of the season we'll get back to that. Episode 10 is a good finale in that it wraps up the mystery we started in the premiere with the Augustine vampire and who killed Megan.
Finally, since Matt returns in this episode, will he and Nadia hook up again?
Dries: They are going to work together and there are going to be some sparks there, but because Nadia is Katherine's daughter, nothing is as it seems on the surface so she has a pretty clear agenda that Matt isn't necessarily cool with. But the subtext between them is that they have a thing for each other and the tragedy is that Nadia is a villain so things will never work out.
