‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 6: A return date reminder with Paul Wesley, Nina Dobrev

Just in case you forgot for some reason, “The Vampire Diaries” season 6 returns with new episodes to The CW on Thursday, January 22. Obviously, the network really wants you to remember that. They would not have made the new poster for the show otherwise.

This image comes via SpoilerTV, and it features the show’s stars in Paul Wesley, Nina Dobrev, and Ian Somerhalder. If you were wondering if this is a new image of the cast members, it’s not. This is part of a photo shoot that was done before the season began, and has just been re-purposed for the sake of promoting the show again.

Does “The Vampire Diaries” need all the help that it can get right now? We would not go that far, but it is at least mired in some of its lowest ratings of the entire series right now. We attribute some of that to viewer fatigue, but also a season that has left many characters all over the map. Bonnie has been separated from everyone, Damon was dead for at least the first handful of episodes, and Caroline has her own problems to deal with. While there is seemingly a good villain on the show this year in Kai, he’s not really getting the attention that he deserves due to the way in which the story is structured.

Luckily, much of this is going to change in the second half of the season, given that characters are starting to come together, and Kai is now running amok in the present. The interesting facet about him as a villain, at least to us, is that he is a full-fledged creation of circumstance. Had Damon and Bonnie not been so desperate to return to the present, his evil would have never been unleashed on anyone else.

Filming will resume for “The Vampire Diaries” early next year, and to see some of the other latest news on the show, head over to the link here. Also, sign up today to get some further updates on everything we cover via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: The CW.)