The CWFinally! After all the sexual tension, tragedy and malicious curses that kept Caroline (Candice King) and Stefan (Paul Wesley) apart on The Vampire Diaries, they're now an official couple, free to live happily together, go on dates, have sexy times in her extra-long twin dorm bed, you know—all the fun stuff that being boyfriend and girlfriend entails.
Oh wait, just kidding. This is Mystic Falls (or, you know, just outside of the Heretic-occupied territory). Nobody gets to stay happy without any complications!
Just as the happy couple was about to have a normal date night, Stefan went on an adventure with his ex-girlfriend (and first love) to find the corpse of his mom, Lily's, vampire-witch boyfriend (a totes normal Thursday), where he learned some seriously traumatizing news.
We'd found out a few episodes prior, but said ex, Valerie (Elizabeth Blackmore), confessed not only why she abandoned him all those hundreds of years ago, but how she became a Heretic in the first place. She was on her way to meet Stefan and inform him that she was carrying his child when Lily's boyfriend, Julian, interrupted, killed the baby, and whisked her away. She was distraught at the loss of both the child and Stefan and tried to kill herself—but had vampire blood in her system.
Stefan, of course, was shocked and hurt, but was able to tell Valerie one thing for sure: He would've most certainly wanted the child.
"When she drops the bomb on Stefan's lap, it will basically shake him to his core and define the rest of the season for him," executive producer Caroline Dries confesses. "You know, with these characters like Stefan and Damon and Klaus and Elijah [of The Originals], they're just so rich, because they go back so many years."
Even now, seven years into TVD, we're still learning more about them. "We've seen so many episodes of them, we feel like we know them so well," Dries adds, "and then in episode five Stefan learns this huge news, and then in episode six, he kind of admits how this affects him even in the present day."
Stefan's decision to lie to Caroline will definitely come between him and his current-day love. "I think it will start to make her feel insecure about where she stands with him," Dries says. "Stefan will continue to struggle with how to be a good guy, to validate...his relationship with [Valerie] and their past together, and also feel like he's not leaving Caroline in the dust."
Oh, and speaking of couples, Dries dishes that the relationship bomb dropped at the beginning of the episode—that Bonnie and Enzo, of all people, are together in the future—will continue to be explored. "They have no reason to like each other so in present day, we've been telling their hate story. The whole point is that when you see them kiss in the future you're supposed to be like, wait, how did they get here? That's the whole point," she says about the big reveal. "Hopefully that creates enough intrigue to keep you guessing."
The Vampire Diaries airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.