The seeds for a love triangle were plated on The Vampire Diaries last week.

As Elena bonded with Damon and viewers were treated to his softer side (with the exception of that one little murder), the show officially put fans on alert: Stefan has competition for Elena's affections.

Where might this story go from here? Producer Julie Plec and series cast members spoke to E! News about that very topic...

Plec, on show similarities: "The fans take the Damon, Elena and Stefan love triangle very seriously. It reminds me of when I worked on Dawson's Creek and we would honestly get into verbal brawls about whether Joey should be with Dawson or Pacey... We know that the show's true love right now is Stefan and Elena - but then you have Damon, and he is like the show's Pacey, so we can't count him out."

Paul Wesley on upcoming developments: "We are going to see more of the Salvatore backstory, and that will answer a lot of questions as to why things are the way they are."

Nina Dobrev on what's next for her: "There is a huge Katherine episode coming out in hopefully a few weeks. And I have so much fun playing Katherine because she's so unlike myself. She's so conniving and narcissistic, and it's always fun as an actress to get to do the polar opposite and be someone you're not and get it all out."

That's down the line, though. As the photo above indicates, The Vampire Diaries sort of travel back to the 1950s on Thursday's new episode, "Unpleasantville."

Matt Richenthal is the Editor in Chief of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.