Although Damon has turned to fun and frivolity in the past to get over an emotionally difficult situation, this time around, something is different.
"Any time you go through a break up or you decide to do something like that, it gives you an excuse to go and do a bunch of bad stuff, and I think -- and I never thought I'd say this, but I think the man is evolving a little bit, which may be boring as sh** for the audience," Ian said. "I don't know, an evolved Damon Salvatore may not be any good."
Ian credits the time Damon spent with Bonnie in the 1994 purgatory/Kai's hell for some of the change.
"I honestly think it has a great deal to do with Bonnie. He really has a soft spot for Bonnie and I personally love Katerina Graham," Ian said of his co-star.
Sharing an acting coach with Kat has meant that the two co-stars have been able to discuss the material more often, allowing them to add special details into the recent Damon/Bonnie scenes.
"It's just this really cool layering of what's really going on and we sort of know our inner work and we share it with one another, so there's just a lot of really cool kind of secret communication happening that's a lot of fun and unfortunately, Bonnie and Damon are ripped apart really early," he said.
But, recently finding a sign that Bonnie is still alive (the teddy bear) has inspired Damon to find a way to get her back.
"[He's] putting his energy into what he thinks he needs to do because he genuinely, genuinely, genuinely feels for Bonnie," Ian said.
Expect to see new sides of Damon as he gets the gang together to bring Bonnie home.
"He's hell bent on getting her back and I think what's cool about that is to watch him because again, he's fiercely loyal and he's a very motivated when he wants to be and sort of to watch that shift of him just being selfish - 'I need this, I need that, I want this, I want that' -- it's different. It's different this time," Ian said. "He's really trying to do the right thing."
