The Vampire Diaries season 6, episode 17 just premiered! Let’s find out how Damon reacted to seeing his mother again.

Mamma’s the key.

Caroline is cleaning up at the Skull Bar after Stefan and she had a fun emotionless night, and Enzo shows up only to find out she used Sarah as leverage against Stefan and his humanity is now off.

At home, Stefan goes to get some weapons and Damon attempts to incapacitate him with vervain but Stefan catches him before he does and breaks Damon’s arm, leaving the house with the weapons for some reason. Damon starts beating up all the furniture as an outlet for his rage, and Elena shows up wondering why. He’s really upset because he doesn’t want Stefan to turn into a ripper, and all of this on top of his mama drama.

Damon tells Elena all about his mother’s prison world and her being a vampire, and she comes up with the idea to use her as Stefan’s emotional trigger to turn his humanity on. Damon doesn’t want to unleash another ripper out on the world, but Elena convinces him to talk to Bonnie to help them. However, Bonnie doesn’t want to help if it means working with Kai, so Damon has to do some convincing. It doesn’t take much convincing before Bonnie is in a diner with Kai trying to convince him to give her the ascendant to the 1903 prison world.

Kai does have the ascendant, and he has one catch: He’ll go if Bonnie goes. Because Caroline’s humanity is on the line she agrees, but only because of that.

Surprise Guests

Meanwhile, Caroline is auditioning for a musical at the school. She waits for the director to tell her how it is, only Stefan beheaded him. He turns up to tell her that he envies her elaborate system that keeps her in check while her humanity is off, but thinks she should relax some more. Additionally, as revenge for making him turn off his humanity he’s going to be making a scene and killing people until Caroline breaks and joins in on the fun, and he’s making it his mission to break her.

Caroline wants Stefan to go the away so he doesn’t cause more trouble for her, but he just won’t leave. He traps her and tries to kill her but she ends up stabbing him in the chest instead. They end up in a gigantic fight but then a student that’s still in school for spring break gets caught in the crossfire, and Stefan attempts to kill her.

Meanwhile Elena, Damon, Bonnie and Kai use the ascendant to travel to the 1903 prison world. The first thing that happens is that Kai and Bonnie separate to find the 1903 version of the ascendant so they can get back, and Elena and Damon go to find Mama Salvatore. They do end up finding her in her house, and she’s shocked to find him there. They end up bonding over tea where Lily explains how she gets caught and how she faked her death.

They tell Lily what’s wrong with Stefan and how she can be the key to bring him back, and she agrees to help so she says she’ll have to tell the others. What others? Well apparently there are a handful of other vampires trapped with her in 1903, but they’re all desiccated.

Trapped Again

Lily explains that the six other people who are desiccated are her friends and they sacrificed their rations of blood for her, so she learned how to control her bloodlust for them hoping that one day the blood she has left can be used to bring them back. She wants to save them and bring them with her but Damon refuses, and forces her to leave the 1903 prison world without them, and without Kai.

Why did they leave without Kai? Because Bonnie was never looking for the ascendant, and only took him out to the middle of nowhere so she can murder him. Unfortunately for her he gets away before she can deliver the killing blow, but he is indeed stuck in 1903.

In 2015 Enzo shows up to ask Alaric and asks for his help to get Stefan and Caroline to the cellar so there isn’t any other drama. Alaric is gun shy at first but then agrees to help him. They go hunting for Stefan and Caroline, who’ve just almost killed a student and went to go hide. Caroline and Stefan end up incapacitating them and Stefan gets a hold of the student and starts feeding on her, forcing Caroline to give in and also feed. They end up having really hot killer vampire sex.

Time to Cure

Enzo shows up at Sarah’s room at the hospital, and he says it was a mistake bringing her into his life. It turns out that Alaric’s talk convinced him to stop being an evil prick. However he does end up calling her Sarah Salvatore, which turns her on to the real information of who her family is. Meanwhile, Jo talks to Alaric while healing him and tells him to stop being reckless until their kid is 18.

Mama Salvatore is back in present day, and Damon keeps her at the Salvatore house. While there she explains that she fled them because when she visited Stefan all she could do was smell his blood and hear his heartbeat, so she left for their safety. She asks Damon when they’re going to be going back to the prison world to save her friends, and he says as soon as Stefan has his humanity. Speaking of which, Kai finds the desiccated vampires and ends up being grabbed by one because he went way too close.

Bonnie goes to Damon to thank him for his help, and he explains that his mother still wants to go back to 1903. He says he isn’t going to go back, and so to thank him Bonnie gives him a gift: The cure to vampirism! She found the version of it from 1994, and knew that he wanted it for Elena, so it’s his decision on what to do with it.

Next week on ‘The Vampire Diaries’