Just call The Vampire Diaries' fourth season the season of no pine and hot vampire sex!
We caught up with Ian and costar Nina Dobrev at Comic-Con to discuss what's ahead for one of TV's hottest non-couples (hey, they technically haven't dated yet!) and Damon's new attitude in season four.
Sorry, Delena fans, but don't expect Damon to keep making moon eyes at Elena. Can you blame the guy? She did choose his brother in the finale.
"She chose Stefan (Paul Wesley), so I'm sure there's some hot vamp sex there," Ian jokes. "When she gets tired of Stefan, who knows? Maybe she'll come to Damon?" (We bet that statement just launched a thousand Tumblr posts.)
"[Damon]'s not going to be pining. This is the season of no pine...Seasons two and three, he did everything they wanted him to do. He tried to be the person they wanted him to be. Guess what? None of it worked," Ian says.
"He's basically saying now, 'This is who I am. Like it or not, for lack of better words—there's no studio executives around, right?—go f--k yourself. Seriously, if you don't like who I am, you have no business being in my face so get out of it.' This year he has this sense of self-worth and saying, 'You know what? I've been around a long time and you guys are a bunch of morons. This is me.'"
The return of season-one Damon?! We can probably speak for every fan when we say: "Another person jumping for joy over the reemergence of Damon's bad boy side? Wheee!"
"He's basically eaten it for two years—or I should say I have?—and I'm excited to go back to that guy, which is the guy that I love playing. There's a certain honesty to Damon."
As for Elena, who never wanted to be a vampire? Well, she'll pretty much be the same old Elena, as Nina tells us, "I still play Elena as Elena. The only difference is that she has different dietary decisions. It's like being gluten-free or on blood, but she's still Elena. She's just going to have a different approach to things."
After Elena learns what she's become, "She's going to be grieving her life...She's going to be devastated; all she wanted was a normal life," Nina explains. "They were on their way to leave town and to leave that life behind. She had no idea vampire blood was in her system."
While Damon will be pretty upset with Stefan for choosing to save Matt ("He's pissed," Ian exclaims), Nina says Elena will harbor no ill will toward her brooding beau.
"She was in the same position when her parents died and Stefan saved her. Although she was grateful to him, she didn't want that to happen again. She wanted to sacrifice herself for the people she loved. She had enough of all this. Of course, she's going to be incredibly thankful that he had enough respect for her and cared enough to respect her wishes."
The Vampire Diaries returns Thursday, Oct. 11, at 8 p.m. on the CW.
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Ganesh Kartikeya
