‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 4 spoilers: Ian Somerhalder goes into the past

So does Elena Gilbert really have genuine feelings for Damon? At the end of Thursday night’s new episode of “The Vampire Diaries” season 4, there was some genuine ambiguity there. From one vantage point, it appeared as though Nina Dobrev’s character had just moved on from Stefan in the blind of an eye, and is now finally with the man that there has been lingering feelings there for ever since the first season. However, it also raised a valuable question: are these emotions genuine, or is she just acting this way because of a sire bond that has been placed upon her courtesy of drinking Damon’s blood?

Admittedly, there are still parts of the possible revelation concerning Ian Somerhalder and Dobrev’s characters that we find problematic, mostly in that we have not really seen this sort of issue develop with anyone other than Tyler and Klaus, and it did not make them want to do any of the things that Elena is doing. While Stefan can wonder all we want during next week’s episode “We’ll Always Have Bourbon Street,” it does not really mask the fact that those feelings for Damon would have had to have been there in Elena for Damon in order for this to really be happening at all.

As for elsewhere in this episode, we are going to head back in time to the days of World War II (as evidenced in the attached photo) in order to help try and figure out just why Damon and Stefan ended up reconciling as brothers to begin with. This should hopefully give us a better understanding of how much the two Salvatores care about each other, but if Damon has been in a similar sort of situation in the past.

What do you think is going to happen next week, and do you think that there really is some sort of secret sire bond present between Damon and Elena? If you want to go back read our full episode review, you can do so here.

Photo: The CW