‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 4 spoilers: Paul Wesley, Nina Dobrev’s new struggle

As you know already, next week’s all-new episode of “The Vampire Diaries” season 4 is going to be understandably geared around the Originals almost completely, as the show looks to gain the approval of fans so that the spin-off can officially launch in the fall. (Be sure to watch the epic trailer for the episode if you haven’t already.)

However, soon after that the series is going to return to a little bit of its roots: the love triangle between Stefan, Elena, and Damon. Both brothers clearly love her, and would do almost anything that they can to help her … including locking her up in a pretty horrible position in an effort to literally pull the humanity out of her. As we learned in “Pictures of You,” if there is one thing that could cause the emotions to be turned back on within her, it’s fear. We saw it briefly when she was worried about whether or not Bonnie was going to survive her attack, and the goal here is to obviously see it again.

Will this really work? One of the good things for Elena is that she will have someone at her side who knows what she is going through. Both Nina Dobrev and Paul Wesley have both played a number of scenes in the past where Stefan has been physically and emotionally tormented to get him out of his “ripper” phase, so this is going to be something that he is very familiar with. Thanks to this, we have to be reasonably optimistic that he is going to find a way to lend a helping hand here.

As for Damon, well, he’s not in the picture … and we’re sure that his methods are not going to be nearly as nurturing.  If you want to read our full review of the “Pictures of You” episode, you can do so just by visiting the story over at the link here.

Photo: The CW