Damon is drinking again when his phone rings and it’s Katherine. She says she knows where Klaus and Stefan are. And where they are is in Chicago. The show flashes back to prohibition days and Stefan is in his full Ripper form, killing with abandon.

Elena rolls over in bed and onto a body dressed in black. Wonder who that is? Yep, it’s Damon and she jerks upright, pushing away from him. He tells her he’s there to bring Stefan home so if she wants to go with him, she better start packing.

Caroline is still chained to a chair, calling for her father. Bill asks her how she is able to walk in the sunlight and she shows him the ring. He takes it off her finger and he shows her how he is going to ‘fix’ her as he shows her blood and when she responds to it, he flips open a blind and lets the sunlight burn her. A little aversion therapy for the vampire.

Elena and Damon are driving to Chicago and Damon tries to get her to read Stefan’s vampire diary from his prohibition days. Stefan and Klaus meet Gloria at their old hangout, she’s a powerful witch who says she needs Rebecca to understand why the hybrid creation spell did not work. Stefan finds a photo of him and Klaus from the ‘old days’. He has no memory of it.

Daddy continues to torture Caroline as Tyler makes his way to the sheriff’s house. Bill says that eventually the thought of human blood will cause her to repress her vampire instincts and stay human…yeah…right.

Klaus and Stefan met in Prohibition days when Stefan made a move on Klaus’ sister, Rebecca. It flashes back to present day where the two of them enter an old warehouse full of coffins. Klaus opens one on them and there is Rebecca. Klaus pulls a knife out of her chest and he waits for her to wake up.

Flashback to the past again and Klaus is chatting with Stefan and Rebecca. To Klaus, Stefan is not a pure vampire and not good enough for his sister. Then Stefan does a gross demonstration where he makes a man drink his wife’s blood. Klaus is very impressed by Stefan’s cruelty.

Elena is reading Stefan’s diary when Klaus and Stefan arrive. Klaus opens the door to the closet where Elena is hiding to show Stefan the list of names of the ones he killed as the Ripper. Stefan and Elena come face to face and they stare at each other. He backs out of the closet and they leave without Klaus having a clue that she was there.

Damon and Elena are planning to meet up with Klaus and Stefan at the bar that night. Damon says he’ll handle Klaus and Elena has got to be ready to handle Stefan.

Bill is telling Caroline she must try her best to avoid the vampire urge or he will kill her. The sheriff arrives and points a gun at Bill while telling Tyler to let Caroline out. He lets her go and carries her out.

Stefan wants to know why, if he and Klaus were such good friends in the old days, why Klaus is such a bastard to him now – so much so that he killed his girlfriend in front of him? And they flash back to the prohibition bar where Stefan is dancing with Rebecca and they are raided by the police shooting wooden bullets. Rebecca says “it’s him” and Klaus grabs her and they run away. Klaus wipes Stefan’s memory of the two vampires. That’s when Stefan figures out that Klaus is actually running from someone.

Damon goes into the bar and gets Stefan outside to come outside. Elena talks to Stefan while Damon goes in and taunts Klaus. Gloria stops Klaus from killing Damon, telling them to take it outside.

Stefan walks up to Elena and asks her what she wants. She asks him to come home and they hug. She raises a vervain syringe but he catches on and grabs her arm. He tells her I don’t want to come home – it’s done. He’s quite convincing and she looks like she finally believes him.

Caroline is at home, drinking blood and trying to recover. Tyler and Caroline snuggle up together in bed and she starts crying over the fact that her dad hates her so much.

Klaus goes to check on Rebecca and he sees a drained security guard. Looks like that vampire woke up after all. Klaus restores Stefan’s memories and his love for Rebecca comes to him. Klaus tells her that she is here to help Gloria contact the original witch and find out what’s wrong with his hybrid spell. But Rebecca doesn’t have her necklace which is apparently what she needs to do the contact spell. Stefan gave that to Elena quite a while ago.

Lastly, there’s a final flashback to the twenties bar after the police raid and it’s Katherine in full flapper dress. She sees Stefan as he picks up Rebecca’s necklace from the floor. Flash back to the present and Katherine is in Chicago. She is surely up to no good.

Jeremy is seeing the ghost of Vickie; Elena knows that Stefan is killing humans; and Mrs. Lockwood shoots Caroline with a vervain dart. So begins episode 2 of the Vampire Diaries as Elena confronts Damon about why he is avoiding her. She lets him know that Stefan called her but Damon dismisses her assertions that Stefan is still reachable on some level.

Elena wakes Alaric up from his latest drinking binge demanding that he tell her everything he knows. She insists the Stefan is hanging on to his humanity and she will not give up on him. Alaric tells her that Stefan and Klaus are tracking werewolves and they’ve ended up in the mountains of Tennessee.

Klaus and Stefan are carrying their unconscious werewolf victim, Ray, through the woods when they come upon Ray’s pack. All the pack member’s are very leery of the two vampires. Ray looks dead but he suddenly comes to life. Klaus is transitioning him into a wolf/vampire hybrid and he plans to turn them all into his own personal army.

Tyler comes down from his bedroom after the night with Caroline, looking happy and relaxed. Mrs. Lockwood put vervain into the coffee to test Tyler. He passes the test and heads out for the day. She calls a man named Bill to help her out with her vampire captive, Caroline.

Elena meets with Tyler to learn about werewolves and he tells her of a gathering place in the mountains of Tennessee. He tastes the coffee Matt brought him and comments on it’s nasty taste. Matt says it’s the vervain, the sheriff has him slip it into the restaurant’s coffee. Tyler’s shocked – “is this what vervain tastes like?” – then you see the realization of what his mother did that morning come over him.

Elena and Alaric are hiking in the mountains, trying to locate the pack. She walks over to the water when something zings up behind her and she’s suddenly sailing through the air and into the middle of the river. Damon is smugly leaning against a tree watching her splash around.

Damon demands that Elena get out of the water and go home. She refuses so he goes down and joins her, asking her how she plans to help Stefan in the middle of a werewolf pack on a full moon. Damon reminds Elena that Klaus thinks she’s dead and that’s the only thing keeping her safe. She begs him to help her and he finally says okay, but they have to be out of there before the full moon – unless she wants to “relive the whole deathbed kissy thing” – and she repeats, “I promise” as they stand in the water staring at each other.

Klaus and Stefan are busily torturing the werewolf pack and Stefan disdains Klaus’ plan to create an army of hybrid slaves, especially since there is no war to fight. They are proceeding to turn everyone in that pack when Ray races off into the woods. Stefan is sent after him and during the chase, his vampire hearing picks up the sound of Damon and Elena sniping at each other.

Tyler confronts his mother on her little trick with the vervain. She calls Caroline a monster and Tyler shows her just what a monster is when he takes her down to his werewolf hole and makes her watch him turn. She now says she won’t let Caroline be hurt but it might be too late.

Ray stumbles up to the trio and attacks Damon who is barely able to take him down. They tie Ray up and the three of them run as Ray starts to turn into a werewolf in broad daylight. Damon and Ray fight it out in the woods when Stefan kills Ray to save his brother. He tells Damon to take Elena home and keep her there this time – Stefan is never coming home.

Matt goes to Jeremy’s house with a six-pack and some of Vickie’s personal items. Vickie appears and tells Jeremy that she can come back. Just then, a window breaks out and Anna shows up, telling Jeremy not to trust anything that Vickie says.

Stefan shows back up at the pack camp carrying Ray and finds everyone dead, they all went rabid or bled out. Klaus is insanely mad and starts listing all the things he did to make this work – he broke the curse, killed a werewolf, killed a vampire, killed the doppelganger…and here he hesitates and Stefan looks concerned. Did Klaus just figure out that Elena might not be dead?

Elena comes out of the bath and Damon’s in her bedroom. He tells her that he was wrong – he thought Stefan was gone but he now knows he was wrong, Stefan can be saved. He tells her he will help her bring him back. She confesses that she was worried about Damon, she does not want him to get hurt. He gives her a very self-satisfied smile then tells he wants her to be sure and remember the things she felt while Stefan was gone as he holds her face for a long moment.

Caroline wakes up in a cell, chained to a chair, and Bill enters. Caroline says “Daddy?”. Wow, this guy’s her dad?! And yet he still plans to kill her…or will he?

Elena is turning eighteen as her search for Stefan continues. Remember, last season ended with Damon having a werewolf bite but Stefan gave himself to Klaus (the vampire/werewold hybrid) in order to save his brother. Klaus thinks he killed Elena, the doppelganger, so Damon wants to keep her hidden and safe. Now, season three opens with Klaus stopping at a house where two young women live, looking for Ray Sutton, a werewolf. Once they get the info they need, Stefan proceeds to rip their throats out. Klaus is pleased at how well his new protégé kills.

Damon is sitting in the tub, wanting more champagne while his reporter girlfriend tells him to get it himself. So, he walks naked to find more champagne and then Elena comes in so Damon greets her naked, covered in bubbles. She throws him a cover and tells him about an animal attack in Memphis, that it could be Stephen and Klaus.

Caroline and Tyler are helping Elena prepare for her party. Tyler is bringing a date to the birthday party and Caroline hassles him about it to which he replies “I am horny all the time now”. She’s like “tell me about it, I feel like I’m going to explode” and Tyler is quite intrigued. But, Caroline sends him on his way.

Elena feels that Stefan is still alive and she will find him. She is tracking “animal attacks” in the hope of locating Stefan. Alaric joins Damon to go visit the latest lead and they find the two murdered girls, sitting on a sofa. Damon knows its Stefan because he used to be called the Ripper – he rips the bodies apart and then, in a fit of remorse, he puts them back together again like they are still alive. Damon proceeds to burn down the house and cover their tracks.

Klaus finds Ray in a bar and he wants him to sell out his pack but Ray is absolutely steadfast in keeping his pack’s location hidden but that’s no problem because Stefan brought wolfsbane. They proceed to torture him for several hours. Klaus is pissed that Damon keeps trailing them so Stefan says he’ll take care of it. Stefan kills Damon’s girlfriend, Andi, and he tells him to back off and quit tracking them.

Damon watches Elena try on her birthday dress and he gives her the gift of her missing necklace. There’s a lot of emotion there between these two as he puts the necklace on her. He’s trying to be cavalier but you can tell he genuinely cares about her.

Elena goes down to her birthday party and it’s much larger than Caroline promised – there must be over a hundred people there – but Elena tries to immerse herself in the festivities. Jeremy and Matt are in a side room smoking some weed and Jeremy tells him that ever since he died and Bonnie used magic to bring him back, he’s been seeing ghosts. Matt hears Jeremy say Vickie and he wants to know what’s going on – is Jeremy seeing his dead sister?

Caroline and Tyler have a confrontation over him dating and he tells her that he’s just waiting for a signal from her which she gives by giving him a big kiss on the mouth. Then they go off to have wild vampire/werewolf sex.

Elena found Damon’s hidden closet of Klaus articles and she is angry that he’s been keeping this from her. She confronts him and he tells her they weren’t Klaus’ victims, they are Stefan’s victims and she’s got to realize that Stefan is gone and he’s not coming back. He’s in real pain from the death of Andi.

Stefan leaves the bar to go stand out in the parking lot, looking sick and lost. He slowly pulls out his phone and dials a number. When Elena picks it up, Stefan doesn’t say anything but she knows it’s him. She tells him that it will be okay and to hold onto the fact that she loves him. Stefan is shown standing alone in the parking lot with a look of utter desolation on his face.

This episode ends with Caroline sneaking out of Tyler’s room after their night of intense sex and she’s met by his mother. Caroline looks shamefaced and she tries to sneak out, grabbing her purse which burns her hand. This is what Mrs. Lockwood was looking for and she darts her in the back. It ends with Caroline passed out on the floor…it looks like the game might be up for Caroline.