Even in season 6, The Vampire Diaries still has its twists: Was anyone dying to see Ivy again? No, but surprise: Enzo fed her his blood, so she's a hungry vampire. Kai is a serial killer, who murdered many of his "siblings" in the Gemini coven. He has no magic himself, but he can consume it from others temporarily, so unless Damon and Bonnie agree to take him back with them, he'll kill them both. Damon killed Zach Salvatore's girlfriend on May 10, 1994, along with the people at their eclipse party, which sparked the return of the Founders Council. The girlfriend's unborn daughter survived and is Sarah. And oh, Stefan tells Elena about Alaric wiping her memory of good Damon. Let's start with Damon.
We learn that back in 1994, Damon showed up at Nephew Uncle Zach's doorstep after not seeing Stefan for nearly 50 years and claimed he wanted to go straight and narrow. Stefan, who knew that Damon had sent Lexi flowers to apologize for leaving her to burn on a rooftop 17 years earlier, reluctantly let him back into his life. He thought Damon was living on squirrel blood until he saw bite marks on the wrist of Zach's pregnant girlfriend Gail. Turns out Damon had weened Zach and Gail off their vervain and didn't consider feeding on his relative AND A PREGNANT LADY bad since he was keeping it all inside the house.
Stefan had snapped his neck and taken him to a shed where he could take his day ring, give him time to cool off, and berate him for always ruining his life. Damon, who just missed his brother and wanted him to go off on a road trip with him, snapped. That's when he killed the people at the party, including Gail (though thank god Liz Forbes, who Damon flirted with, must've had to go home early to her "high maintenance" toddler, Caroline). He promised Stefan an eternity of misery—resentment for Stefan turning him into a vampire so he wouldn't be alone, but then not wanting to be the kind of vamp Damon became and leaving him alone. Stefan was able to compel Zach to forget about Gail and the deaths, but he couldn't hide the body count. Damon and Stefan both left town. Damon was happy to kill Zach when he returned because then he wouldn't be reminded of what he'd done every time he looked at him. (That was well-played, writers.)
Is it convenient that Damon happened to commit this terrible crime on the day of the eclipse, which is what the coven had harnessed the power of, using a mystical relic called an Ascendent, to banish Kai? Yes. But you have to let them move the plot along. In the present day, after Kai mentions the relic was last with his family in Oregon, Bonnie remembers the newspaper she's been staring at every day has a story about a family murder in that state. Creepy Kai tells them yes, he hanged two off a stairwell railing, stabbed one with a hunting knife in the abdomen, drowned one in the pool, and let one survive (he only cut out her spleen). The Gemini coven created this place for him—it's his hell.
This presents a moral quandary: Kai wants to return so he can finish the job and kill the rest of his coven. Bonnie doesn't want to bring back a serial killer, so she doesn't want to do the spell. Damon, she realizes, has been making Gail's favorite, pancakes, every day to punish himself—he feels remorse, which makes him different from Kai. Suddenly, after all these years, she sees there's hope for Damon. (It could be that plaid shirt that's unbuttoned to just the right spot. That's even hotter than the henleys and V-necks.) He wants to get back for Stefan (but in a good way). He suggests they learn what Kai knows, then ditch him. But Kai, the master of creeping, overhears Damon and reveals that while he has no magic himself, he can temporarily take it from others. Either they take him with them, or he'll steal Bonnie's magic and kill both her and Damon. Bring Kai back and kill him on our side, guys. We need a Big Bad, and a human serial killer with succubus-esque qualities is different.
NEXT: Road trip
