‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 4 spoilers: Ian Somerhalder’s Damon in New York

On Thursday, we told you a little bit about an upcoming episode of “The Vampire Diaries” season 4 that is going to feature Nina Dobrev and Ian Somerhalder’s characters of Elena and Damon looking to get away from all of the strife of Mystic Falls by taking off to New York City; and now, we have the first photo of this episode … but it is not exactly of Damon Salvatore having a good time.

Instead, this photo actually takes us back to a much earlier time in Damon’s life, and one that he was not necessarily the nicest guy in the world for anyone to hang out with. Just looking at the photo attached here is proof that he was in a darker part of his life back when he lived in New York during the 1970s, and that Lexi, long known as a protector for Stefan over many years, was forced into paying the price of some of his actions.

We don’t know how much this history is going to impact what Elena and Damon are up to on the show in the present, but we have to assume that their experience there is not fully positive. After all, why would we be flashing back to this earlier time in Damon’s life? The only possible explanation we can think of is that he is worried about what is happening to Elena without her humanity, and it causes him to look back on a time when he was very unhinged and did not care much about his surrounding world.

What do you think is going on in this photo? Of course, we still have always have much more “Vampire Diaries” scoop to check out, including the latest on Elena trying to deal with Jeremy’s death over at the link here.

Photo: The CW