The Vampire Diaries is off to an amazing start to its second season. Any concerns (not from this TV Chick) of a sophomore season slump have been wiped away. There are crazy doppelganger hijinx, proving that Nina Dobrev really can do no wrong, and of course some incredibly sexy vampires and werewolves (I’m looking at you Uncle Mason!) One of the characters that has really come into her own this season is Bonnie. Her witch powers are developing and she isn’t afraid to take on the vampires to protect her loved ones. I recently had the chance to chat with Katerina Graham at New York Comic Con, and she talked about Bonnie’s powers, her motivations and maybe even a possible love interest.

One thing we learned from the panel is that Bonnie’s powers continue to grow. What can you tease about where she’s going to go in the next few episodes?
They develop and there’s a positive to it and a negative to it. So you’ll be able to see both sides of that instead of just kind of this already evolved witch whose evolution kind of came out of nowhere. The five episodes kind of placed her evolution when she was with her family from last season. You get to see her dealing with her growth for the first time, really, which I think is important to see. So the good and the bad, you’ll get to see.

How much does she blame herself for Caroline turning?
I think enough to really make her want to help her and do what she can to make Caroline’s situation better. But at the end of the day, I stand by Bonnie, and her [thinking] “If these vampires hadn’t come to town, my grandma would still be here.” And people think Bonnie makes these decisions knowing the end of the episode — these are characters that have no idea what’s going to happen from the actions that they do. And I think that if Bonnie knew that Caroline was going to become a vampire, I don’t think she would have pressured Damon to give her the blood. But she didn’t know. She had no idea Katherine was going to go in there and do that. She had no idea that Tyler Lockwood was going to get into an accident and crash the car and Caroline would be in the hospital. These characters — people forget that they have no idea what’s going to happen if they do certain actions. So I think she feels — obviously as guilty as you can when you know you made a mistake — but at the same time — she made a mistake but she’s spending more time trying to figure out how do we fix this? How do we make this better?

What motivates Bonnie this season?
Well I think one of the things that motivates Bonnie is compassion. And I think that she’s definitely the most — besides Damon although Damon’s getting a lot more compassion — she’s a very misunderstood character of Mystic Falls. I think she’s probably the most misunderstood character on the show. So, compassion. She really loves Elena. She loves her, [she’s] her best friend. Losing her grandmother — I don’t know how many people are close with their grandmother — but when you don’t have a mother and you only have your grandmother, she becomes your mother figure in your life. So when that got taken away from her, she kind of — loses a lot of that tolerance. I would.

Bonnie is coming across as very powerful right now, especially in that scene with Damon. And Damon sort of let’s her have that power, whereas he might have killed someone else. Are we going to see that backfire?
I think that however that looks, Damon had to protect her because he made a promise. And even in the episode of History Repeating, he mentions to Bonnie at the parking lot of the school that he wants to protect her, believe it or not. And I think it’s important to pay attention to that. But I think they’re going to go at it — again. But I also think that she’s doing what she came to do. She wouldn’t let him know that she’s weak in any way, even if she was weak, she’s not going to let Damon know that she’s got any weaknesses, because he’ll use it against her. People forget that he tried to kill her. He went for her throat, while she was being possessed. He took me out, or tried to, and vice versa. We’re going to keep going at it.

In more ways than one?
In more ways than — hey!! (laughs)

There are a lot of Bonnie and Damon fans out there…
Yeah, and Julie [Plec] has a great line that she wrote in one of the episodes for Katherine and Stefan where Stefan was like “But I hate you!” and Katherine was like “Well that sounds like the beginning of a love story, not the end of one.” So we’ll see. I know the fans really, really love it. So maybe eventually. We’ll see. I love doing scenes with Ian, though. He’s so fun and creative.

Will Bonnie ever get a love interest?
Yeah.

But Bonnie does tackle Mason in an upcoming episode. She sort of does a vampire mind meld on him. How does that relationship come about?
Well basically, you guys have to watch the episode to see how much Mason was involved and what he does. But if Bonnie’s taking him down, it’s got to be for some reason. He did something wrong. I can’t say what he did.

How important is the fan reaction to the show?
Oh, I live by the fans. They know that though. A lot of them in there probably know me. We’ve probably all gone to dinner. I’m really close with them. I scour the forums and blogs and obsess over what they say.

One thing I wondered about Bonnie — has she come into her powers on her own? Or was there something with the grandma passing — did the powers pass on to her? Or did she learn them from someone we haven’t met yet?
That’s a great question. That’s kind of in the Bonnie development thing that’s probably in line with the other developing things. We’ll see. That’s a Kevin question. I’m just the actor. But I definitely think a lot of Bonnie’s stuff is instinctual. She can feel things, that’s just a part of who she is, and it comes from a very organic place right now.