'The Vampire Diaries' Recap: Ranking the Twists of 'A Bird in a Gilded Cage'

Six seasons into a show, you need bold moves. The “A Bird in a Gilded Cage” episode of The Vampire Diaries was full of them. Let’s rank the twists on the level of excitement they instilled.

1.  Lily, Damon and Stefan’s mother, has desiccated friends. Hoping mother will be an emotional trigger for Stefan, Damon and Elena went with Bonnie and Kai to the 1903 prison world to retrieve Lily. How unexpected and delightfully creepy was the reveal that Lily had traveling companions, desiccated vampires who she claims are friends who gave up their blood rations for her? Needing to keep enough blood to wake them forced her to learn to control her bloodlust, she says. She didn’t want to return without them, because they’ve been her family for a century, but Damon made her. She thinks they’ll go back to get them; Damon’s lying to her when he says that will happen. Do we believe Lily’s story?

2.  Kai is stuck in the 1903 prison world with the desiccated vampires. Honestly, it’s hard to root for Bonnie when she wants to kill Kai — partly because he’s such a great character, who has some good in him now, but also because she’ll never be the same if she actually takes his life. So they left Kai in 1903, and he immediately stumbled onto the vamps. His curiosity got the best of him, he leaned in too close, and the vamp who’d managed to have a drop of blood earlier grabbed him. Where do they keep the food, Kai? You’re it. But will they drink from him, be revived, and we’ll see them all again? Or is that the end of Kai and the last we’ll see of him (until we find out if the pilot he’s been cast in gets picked up)?

3.  Enzo is just a lonely boy. He convinced Alaric to help him try to contain Stefan and Caroline because he wants Stefan to be able to feel the pain he’s going to put him through — and frankly, because we needed Alaric and Jo in this episode. Alaric made Enzo admit he’s really just a lonely guy who isn’t the kind of monster who wants to use Sarah Salvatore as a pawn. (Or was that just a line he told Sarah afterward?) Enzo even saved Alaric’s life when Stefan and Caroline knocked them out with a homemade bomb. It’s fitting that Enzo and Alaric, Damon’s two friends, would get some time together. (But Jo is right: Alaric needs to leave the vampire hunting to others for 18 years.)

Related: 'The Vampire Diaries' Recap: Best and Worst of 'The Downward Spiral'

4.  Stefan and Caroline slept together. On paper, this is the best of both worlds: Shippers get to see Caroline and Stefan have sex, but it doesn’t really count because they’re not truly themselves. But it’s like Enzo said last episode: It’s not as fun when Caroline’s not herself. What was fun: Stefan surprising Caroline at her musical audition by severing the head of the director, and the way he seduced Caroline by biting into that poor coed and making the sucking of blood look more like kissing than ever before. But the actual love scene (double backlit, if you count the vending machine) and the postcoital banter weren’t satisfying because it’s not them. Stefan spent all episode trying to get Caroline to break her schedule so he wouldn’t be the only one with regret when they get their humanity back — congrats! What’s their relationship look like when their switches get flipped? Will they be able to look at each other?

5. Bonnie brought back the cure from 1994. It’s a great twist in that I never saw it coming. But bad in that I never saw it coming because the cure era isn’t necessarily fans’ favorite of the series. And just when Damon and Elena are happy together, he’s presented with another moral dilemma: Does he give her the cure, as he’d talked about doing in the prison world, or does he not? Bonnie’s not pressuring him either way — because she knows she can’t judge him after what she just did to Kai, or because she wants to see if Damon is a changed man who lets Elena make the choice for herself?

The Vampire Diaries airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.