Wow. We thought that the season one finale of "The Vampire Diaries" was as crazy as it gets…but it just got crazier. We start off where we left off—in Elena's (Nina Dobrev) kitchen where Katherine chops off Uncle John's (David Anders) fingers to avail him of his protective ring. She then stabs him in the stomach and disappears. After stumbling upon her bloody uncle, Elena runs upstairs to check on Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen), who is disappointed to realize he did not successfully become a vampire after drinking Anna’s blood. Elena goes to the hospital to check on John and Caroline, while Stefan (Paul Wesley) is left to "babysit" Jeremy.
At the hospital, Damon (Ian Somerhalder), Elena and Bonnie (Katerina Graham) run into each other, and Bonnie suggests feeding Damon's blood to Caroline (Candice Accola) to help her heal. When he proposes a truce, she replies, "No. You'll do it anyway…for Elena." Ooh, juicy! Damon pulls Elena aside to talk about "what happened tonight" (a.k.a. his oh-so-steamy lip lock with Katherine), and she's totally perplexed. When Aunt Jenna (Sara Canning) arrives and relays another conversation that Elena doesn't remember—because Jenna was actually talking to Katherine—Damon puts it all together and sets off to find Stefan.
Back at the house, Stefan is keeping an eye on Jeremy when Elena walks in—or is it Katherine? They're about to kiss when he realizes, yup, she’s a vampire. After Stefan hurls her across the room, K saucily replies, "At least I fooled one of you," and disappears just as Damon and Elena arrive. The three stooges debate what to do next, and Damon points out that since Katherine didn’t kill Elena, she obviously has a plan and wants her alive. When Stefan finds out that Damon thought he kissed Elena, he gets nearly homicidal. Of course Elena calms them down, but you get the feeling this is so not over.
At the hospital, Bonnie cries tears of joy when she realizes Caroline is awake and recovering (and watching "Jersey Shore"—love it!). Meanwhile, major hottie alert! At the Lockwood's, Mason Lockwood (Taylor Kinney), a.k.a. Mayor Lockwood’s younger brother and Tyler’s uncle, shows up. He definitely seems like a bad boy ready to break some hearts. Later on, he hints to Tyler (Michael Trevino) that he's also a werewolf, saying he too suffers from the "Lockwood Curse." (They don't call it a "curse" for nothin'!)
Stefan and Elena visit John in the hospital to get some answers about Katherine's return. Instead of obliging, he tells them to get out, claiming he doesn’t know anything. Once Elena leaves the room, Stefan forces John to drink his blood and threatens to kill him—thus turning him into a vampire—if he doesn't leave Mystic Falls within 24 hours.
Which brings us back to the Lockwood's again. Whew! Elena (or is it Katherine?) shakes hands with Tyler and walks into the house with no problem. Snarky grin? Check. Curly hair? Check. Yup, that's Katherine. Bonnie uses her witch powers to give Damon a killer migraine. So badass, girl! She thinks Katherine is Elena until she touches her arm and realizes it's not. Katherine's able to overcome Bonnie's headache spell, and Stefan (of course!) steps in just in time to save Bonnie from Katherine's wrath. Katherine flirtatiously suggests a walk in the woods to "talk" and confesses (truthfully?) that she came back for him. When he tells her that he never loved her, she furiously stabs him with a pole. And you thought your ex was bad!
At the Salvatore mansion, Katherine pounces on a half-drunk Damon. They kiss and get ready to get it on, until Katherine admits that she never loved Damon (what a mood killer!). "It was always Stefan," she says. This leaves Damon with the worst puppy dog face we've ever seen. Damon then creeps into Elena's bedroom and tries to kiss her, but practically repeating Katherine’s line verbatim, she tells him, "It's always going to be Stefan." As retaliation, he snaps Jeremy's neck, apparently killing him. Luckily, Jeremy is wearing the special ring, passed on to him from John, and he comes back to life before the end of the episode. Phew!
The episode closes at the hospital, where Katherine goes to visit Caroline and asks her to give a message to the Salvatore brothers: "Game on." Before strutting off into the night, she suffocates poor Caroline, which leaves us to assume she'll wake up as a vampire since she still has Damon's blood in her system.
Are you glad that Jeremy’s not a vampire? Do you hope Katherine sticks around? Do you believe her confession that she always loved Stefan, not Damon? Will Caroline become a vampire?
** Hollywood Crush Twitter