We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Legacies was one of the best if not the best new show of last season, and tonight it returned with a premiere that makes us think it’s gonna be one of our favorite shows of this season, too.
Season one ended with Hope (Danielle Rose Russell) making the ultimate sacrifice by jumping into the Malivore pit, knowing she’d be erased from existence. In fact she planned ahead by asking Alaric (Matthew Davis) to get rid of any evidence of her, knowing she had to do so in order to save the world, because her tri-brid blood is probably the only thing that could get rid of him/it.
Unfortunately the very fact that she was erased means her sacrifice didn’t actually defeat Malivore, but as we learned tonight, it did piss him off. Hope discovered that her tri-brid status was poisonous to Malivore, but to truly defeat him, she’ll have to fully activate all three parts of her, meaning she’ll have to die and rise again as a vampire/witch/werewolf.
That, as we can imagine and as showrunner Julie Plec laid out for us, is a bummer.
Another bummer is what Hope found when she got out of the pit. Everyone truly has forgotten her, and Landon and Josie are now making out with each other after spending the summer bonding, and some new monsters have come to Mystic Falls.
We got the scoop from Plec on what all of this means—especially when it comes to what Malivore erased and what kind of threat he/it still poses.
So when you had Hope throw herself into that pit, how much did you know about what that would mean in season two?
We knew that we wouldn’t keep Hope in Malivore for long, but that we also wouldn’t immediately make everyone be able to remember who she was. And so then it just became about how long we were going to keep her in the pit and at what point people remember her. So the answer to the first question is in the first episode, and the answer to the second question is not in the second.
How did you figure out exactly how much of her impact would be erased, and how much she had changed each of the other characters?
There are characters who are so deeply connected to her, like Alaric and Landon, that they would have a Hope-sized hole in their hearts and not even realize it. And I think the other characters never really realized how much she was the glue that drew them together, so in the absence of her, they’re finding new and different way to be with each other and new and different ways to build their squad when they don’t even know they’re missing their captain.
Alaric knew something was missing, because he found footprints where the pit had been and knew what the pit did, so it doesn’t seem like it would take much for Hope to be like, “Hey, I’m the person you forgot.” So what are we in for when they’re reunited?
Well, uh, that very predicament comes up in the second episode. So people will have to wait and see how she handles it.
I mean, she seemed kind of defeated there at the end when she was talking to fake Landon, like she was ready to start over somewhere else. So what is her headspace right now?
Well her goal first and foremost is just to track and defeat that monster, because she feels pretty responsible for its return. And in tracking the monster, she does come face to face with another monster hunter named Alaric who is surprised to find there’s a new hunter in town.
I have a lot of questions about the pit itself. How did you decide what was happening in there, and what’s the significance of having Clarke there?
I think our goal with Malivore is to make him much like Voldemort, a very malicious presence throughout as much of the series as we can, and they might be able to defeat him year after year, but somehow he will remain a nefarious presence in their lives. And so Clarke is an extension of Malivore, and is sort of serving as a sentient version of the Malivore threat.
So Malivore is not only this thing they’re in, but it’s also…a guy?
Basically, Malivore, as they refer to it, is an alternate dimension, like a prison world, or the Other Side, the things we’ve set up on shows in the past. It is his consciousness that is in control of this world. He is no longer a sentient being, because he was melted, basically. But it is he who is in charge of what happens in that alternate reality.
What is it like for you guys as writers to have this constant threat that is so many things at once?
It’s actually kind of fun, because he sends soldiers in his place, and the soldiers are our monsters, and half the fun is being able to have all these new creatures that in the franchise, we never would have been able to have before.
Obviously Hope didn’t actually defeat Malivore by jumping into the pit, so can you talk about what that fight is going to be like throughout the season?
What she’s learned from her experience is that probably the only actual way to defeat him for good is to be a fully realized tri-brid, and then to sacrifice herself once again in order to annhilate the existence of Malivore completely. She’s already done it once and learned a pretty hard lesson, so in order for her to be the hero again, that’s a thing she’s going to have to do. And I think a lot of the series will be spent trying to figure out how to save her from that fate.
So is she having trouble dealing with that, or is that something she kind of has understood would always happen eventually?
I think it’s both. I think she’s someone who believes herself to be this self-anointed hero, and as we’ve seen, very ready to sacrifice to save the world, but with that comes, you know…even becoming a vampire means you can’t grow old, you can’t have children, you can’t grow old alongside the love of your life. You’re stuck at 17 forever. So there’s a downside, for sure. Certainly in this day and age, being a vampire is not what it used to be.
Other tidbits:
Landon hasn’t forgotten his new family history, but what he’s lost is “the thread that held it all together,” so he’s definitely been having a rough summer aside from his new romance with Josie.
Josie and Lizzie are learning to live life while they can now that they know about the merge, “so each of them will set out to live a great, spirited, adventurous, romantic, and sexy and interesting life, but the merge will always be lingering in the background as something that could ultimately come between them and something they’ll have to deal with eventually.”
Alaric is no longer the headmaster, as we saw, and he’s going to be struggling with that for a while. He’ll have to come up with something else to do with his life, “and lucky for him, there’s a whole high school down the road that could probably use someone like him.”
Alaric is being replaced by Headmaster Vardemus, played by Alexis Denisof, and Plec describes him as “very fashionable, in a Harry Potter kind of way,” which sounds excellent if you ask us.
Legacies airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on The CW.