so some of you wanted to read my thoughts on the actual Legacies show

I will not lie when I say that Legacies is very addictive to watch, the first season was just so interesting because ultimately we love this universe and these species are so well known to us that it's like 'hell yeah let's do this'.

And there have been some pretty good episodes, some pretty cool ideas, and let me tell you that the second that Lizzie shot up from bed remembering Hope and stating her full name, "Hope. Andrea. Mikaelson." I got chills and was actually looking forward to the next episode like I had no patience. The last time that happened to me was when Teen Wolf was airing season 3 (both parts).

Let's start things off with some positivity, shall we? Yup, let's see:

- The S2 episode, Since When Do You Speak Japanese?, okay so the best part of this episode was, without a doubt Lizzie Saltzman. The actress just nailed it, but the actual idea? The idea that a demon cannot take full possession of a person with mental illness (Lizzie) or those who have suffered brain damage (Kurutta) is so amazing to me. Not only does it bring more questions about what internal things the human body can do to prevent a force to control it or do anything to it, but also giving those with mental illness this defense against those forces is just incredible. I just really love that idea.

- While I didn't particularly enjoy Josie going dark side, I'm glad it wasn't Hope going dark side. Like, you'd think Hope Mikaelson would be wrestling with dark forces inside her or whatever, but nope, she's got it down, she knows what's right and wrong, she knows it's not always easy, she's got it pretty on par. I'm just glad they ended that quick and the resolution was that she saved herself. It really opens peoples eyes, because Josie realizes that this entire time she believed that her having power meant being evil, that being strong meant being like Kai or other bad people and that good side of her was weak. But then she recounts that Hope is powerful and strong, but she's also good. So she realized that she was afraid of being strong. But being powerful didn't mean you had to be evil. That, I hope, stuck with the younger tween audiences watching when they go off to write fanfics or other stories and remember that.

But you know what I hated about her dark storyline? It's because of dark magic. I mean, we all know it isn't Expression because Bonnie went through that and Expression is all about sacrifices, so it's just plain old dark magic. I mean, Freya uses dark magic a bunch of times, you don't see her succumbing to the darkness or throwing up blood. Though, since the main problem was what Josie believed what evil and good represented I guess you can divert it to that.

^ that's right they are, but they aint evil dammit julie

I'm not gonna lie, there are some really fun episodes.

-  The unicorn one where everyone's happy and singing?

- The weird Christmas one.

- The 80's gamer labyrinth.

- The black and white noir episode.

- Lizzie's entire multiverse episode was wow, it was something. [Also, her third wish was for Hope to never be born. This doesn't insinuate that Hayley and Klaus never got together, that timeline is very possibly this: Hayley and Klaus did have a one night stand, the first few episodes of The Originals take place as usual except Hayley is killed with the unborn child and that could've been the main reason why Klaus went uber-dark. What's worse than your child not existing at all? Them dying before they were even born. That's my headcanon, thoughts?]

- just, every single time Lizzie or MG were on screen

now time for the negativity:

Now for the main character: Hope.

(im legit thinking about what to write since I've ranted about this like five times to my friends ain't that right -xanthippe  ? damn, lemme track down some of those rants)

written by me around March 2020 and edited as of now

so im catching up on Legacies right now and I realized just how little Julie Plec takes advantage of Hope's tribridness and her status as a Mikaelson.

I mean Hope can make hybrids and having a werewolf in the school become one would be so flipping interesting. And her just having to take up responsibility for that newly turned hybrid, becoming their alpha (especially when we know that for those first few eps that that hybrid will be very ostracized from other werewolves). Like the wolves would just be like 'no, you aren't one of us anymore' yatta yatta and the vampires would just be afraid of being near them and just avoid them mainly, maybe also start shit with them or Hope like they're afraid she's planning a hybrid revolution and that makes the werewolves scared to hang out with her in fear that she'll turn them. Point is, it should only be a big storyline for maybe five episodes and resolved may be in the middle of the season, and then by the final episode of that season everyone (or at least the majority) accept the new hybrid and respect Hope again. Maybe even keep some characters against her to build them up as villains.

I also seriously want her to spend more time with the werewolves in general. It'd be even better if that happened after her hybrid and she had peace amongst the other wolves so yeah she'd be more involved with them.

And the lack of vampire content is getting to me, I seriously hope season 3 will be more centered around all her tribridness since we're getting the twins storyline this time around.

Also, I honest to the gods wish we got some more believable reactions to new students scared of Hope or her family, I mean in easy terms she's basically half-princess half-mob family so?? Where are the overly-cautious new kids that are scared to bump into her in the hallway?

Like okay, I know she's been in that school for almost a decade now and the others she grew up with know her and are used to her and aren't afraid of her, especially since she's such a loner. But, what about a new kid or new kids that transfer there and are taking supernatural history class and learn about Klaus Mikaelson and all the horrors he's committed and even though he's dead, there are still Mikaelsons out there alive and powerful and these kids are low-key shook but THEN they find out that Klaus Mikaelson has a daughter and that daughter is also attending the same school and they apparently take biology with her?? Those kids would be frightened to even walk in the same direction as her.

It would be like a small storyline, they're afraid of her, of her family, and then they might get stuck together for something and the student realizes she isn't like her father. But,,,, maybe the student also talks smack about him being so evil or whatever and she's offended and defends him and shit goes down. That's the good drama we want. Because on one hand: the student is right, Klaus be scary and cruel and vicious but on the other hand we love Klaus so it's like 50/50.

What about young werewolves from the Crescent Pack in New Orleans going to the Salvatore School because they broke their curse and discover that Hayley Marshall-Kenner's daughter is there? Did everyone forget Hayley was royalty to the pack, referred to as 'queen' multiple times, how would this new werewolf react to Hope? Would they respect and offer their help in anything she needs? Would they rebel and say she isn't a real werewolf, unworthy of her royal status? Would they just be scared of her because not only is she royalty in the pack, she's also Klaus Mikaelson's daughter but they'll still respect her or maybe that's exactly why they don't like her.

Hell, how would Lizzie react to Hope apparently literally being a princess? Imagine going to New Orleans and the wolves just taking a knee to bow to Hope or the vampires very clearly showing her respect (mainly out of fear but still). That would be golden to watch.

Too many witches, Julie

They're just so into witches, three of their main characters are witches, with Hope barely exploring any of her other traits. The last time we explored her vampire side was her blood healing MG, and we've only gotten one wolf-up scene per season AND IM STILL SOUR THAT WE NEVER GOT TO SEE KLAUS WOLF UP EVER AGAIN SINCE S2 OF TVD I MEAN IT'S BEEN A FLIPPIN DECADE.

There was a whole episode about a day celebrating and dedicated to witch covens and witches history. Like, where's the day dedicated to wolves and wolf packs? Or a day celebrating for vampires? Or a day (or week) celebrating the school getting made or opening or whatever?

I mean, I know that for fifteen years, Hope only had real access to her witch side, but she grew up with her mother, someone who taught her about werewolves and the pack and everything. And then she has two years of getting used to her werewolf side and it's cool, whoo-hoo. But that's it? That's all we get?

STORYLINES

Okay so, Legacies is just going on and on with the 'hero and villain' thing. Like way too much. Back in season 1 we're getting small references to Wonder Woman, Super Squad, Green Lantern, etc. and how the characters reflect them or wanna be like them?

let's shut the door on that

Season 2 comes in and we get even more, I mean Super Squad is a thing now known amongst the mains. There's a whole episode where MG has to come to terms that he can't always be the sidekick and has to take the lead. Lizzie and he actually spend time thinking up superhero names for him. And the episode where Josie's bad and challenges Lizzie to the Merge and it's uber weird in a boxing ring match for some reason? The whole speech that MG gives her so she would go and face her sister and she talks back to him is all about heroes and doing the right thing and what would a hero do? what's the heroic thing to do? and I'm like???

Okay so my guess is that Julie saw how much of the young audience loves the MCU and then the CW's long line of Arrowverse shows and is slowly leaning towards heroes and like no, honey, no. This is a dark fantasy drama show. It's supposed to be about vampires, werewolves, witches, darkness, blood and death, the lack of humanity, and the bonds of family. We don't want heroes struggling to do the right thing, we want teenagers doing the wrong thing, realizing they fucked up, and then keep fucking it up until they find a way around it, that's how TVD and TO did their stuff. [though TO was more filled with adults fucking shit up].

And then you have the big deal storyline, Malivore.

Okay, so, I'll be honest, the whole 'creature that ate other creatures and erased humanity's memories about them leaving them to only be real in stories and art' was interesting and a great way to bring in more magical creatures. But it really should have died by the end of season 1. Coming back and being used as a weapon is thin already, if it doesn't wrap up in those last few eps of s2 that we're missing, the show isn't going to make it to season 4 after they finish s3.

The problem with the Malivore storyline is that they kept saying if he was released there would be a supernatural apocalypse and the end of the world. That, that right there is where it fell flat. Do you know how many movies, shows, books, comics, have used 'end of the world' as a storyline? Infinite.

The number is infinite because it'll keep happening.

When you go back to the start of TVD, look at their villains and what their plans were.

TVD S1

- All Damon wanted was to wake up Katherine.

- All Isobel wanted was what Katherine ordered: the Gilbert device.

TVD S2

- All Katherine wanted was to deliver Klaus his ingredients to end his curse so she'd be free of him.

- All Klaus wanted was to end his curse.

TVD S3

- All Klaus wants is to make hybrids. He also wanted his family.

- All Esther wanted was to kill her children. That would've resulted in the end of the vampire species entirely. So, not world ending, but surely a big deal for everyone there.

TVD S4

- Klaus wants Elena human, this means finding the cure.

- This meant Silas was set free and all he wanted was to destroy the Other Side and take the cure to be reunited with his long-dead lover. This would mean all supernaturally dead people would come back to life and there would be even more of them running around. Including a lot of enemies of our main characters. That's it, that's the 'Hell on Earth' they said Silas would bring. Not exactly a big deal compared to the world ending.

TVD S5

- Silas wants the cure. He wants everything he wanted last time. Except now he finds out Amara is still alive, there's a chance for them to be happy once Amara dies. It doesn't work.

- Katherine wants to live. She's human now and dying, so she wants to live. She goes into Elena with traveler magic. It doesn't last.

- Dr. Maxfield invents a Ripper virus. Damon gets it. So does Elena. It doesn't last.

- Travelers come back and want the town, their leader Markos is apparently the villain of the season. They don't last but their spell does.

Season 5 really was up and down with villains and conspiracies, huh?

TVD S6

- Kai Parker is here and he wants to give his coven a brutal death and the Merge he rightfully deserves.

- It ends with releasing heretics from the first ever Prison World made.

TVD S7

- Julian, Lily Salvatore's partner, wants the phoenix stone/sword to get rid of them.
- Reyna Cruz, owner of said phoenix sword, wants what every hunter wants: vampires dead.
- The Armory comes in and they want a certain person to unlock a weird door in the basement.

TVD S8
- A siren, Sybil, needs to deliver bad people to her boss.

- Her boss is Cade, or Arcadius, the Devil. And he wants the Salvatores for some reasons?? Did he wanna take over the world? I don't remember at this point, I mean who does?

- We find out Katherine was manipulating the Devil. High-key not surprised. All she wanted was revenge.

TO villains:

TO S1

- Technically Esther was the villain with the intention of killing her newborn grandchild by the hands of the Quarter's witches.

TO S2

- Dahlia. She wanted to take Hope. That's it.

TO S3

- Aurora and Tristan de Martel, and Lucien Castle. They wanted to put the remaining Mikaelsons to sleep.

- Marcel ended up being the big bad instead.

TO S4

- the goddamn Hollow, that's it, smth about taking control of all magic and witches?

TO S5
- Literal Nazi vampires, wtf Julie? Ran out of ideas?

[side note: is that like a thing? like you've been writing movies, shows, books or whatever for so long that sooner or later you run out of ideas so when you do it's time to whip out the Nazi storyline like a backup? is it? it happened here, with jeff davis, american horror story, every so often on every single time travel show, dozens of marvel and dc comics, the entire villains of the crossover in the Arrowverse titled: Crisis on Earth X (a literal earth ruled by nazis) ]

{supernatural doesn't count, it's fifteen seasons, they can do whatever they want}

Point is, those are a lot of seasons where they face powerful enemies that had superficial and revenge filled or hate-filled goals. But they didn't involve the world ending or an apocalypse, so for Legacies to make that their big plot in their first season was like, really lowered expectations for the rest.

speaking of EXPECTATIONS

Remember the trailer for S1? Hope narrated how the rules were to NEVER reveal yourself to the normies in Mystic Falls. Like it seemed as though that was gonna be a rule they were gonna break, and yet it hasn't been brought up like at all?? Like the last impactful time they were careful to hide it all was the Miss Mystic Falls pageant.

Legacies could've been so much better if they used the drama correctly.

Have Landon and Raf go to Mystic Falls High and then Raf breaks his curse in the car accident with his girlfriend, leading to the Salvatore School to invite him to join. There, he can't reveal to his brother that he's a werewolf and it brings up sibling drama and trust issues but Raf assures him they're still brothers. But Landon is also l0wkey suspicious of that school because why would they offer Raf a scholarship? A townie, a kid who isn't on the top of anything, just a regular kid.  And then Hope sees Landon again and she's breaking the rules by slowly dating a human in the town.

Do you know what I'd like to see? The human's perception of the school, what the adults and the teens think about them. Like imagine the first episode of a new season being some kid in Mystic Falls High getting dared to prank the snobby boarding school at the edge of town and the kid does it because they wanna impress these bad influences and as they're jumping a fence or something, they can't really find it. [this is because of the spell cast to keep normies out] and maybe some Salvatore students are up late doing stupid teenagery stuff and catch the human poking around the place and they decide to scare the shit out of them. She/He/They come out of the woods yelling and scared shitless. The dicks that dared him/her/they are laughing and then they get scared shitless too, later on causing some tension between the two schools and rumors spread and now Alaric is giving detention to the kids who broke the rules and it's when we see what the Salvatore school is like.

SIDE NOTE: What if that kid slipped, hit their head, the students freak because they cant risk a normie dying so one of the vampires in the group heals 'em and then the normie gets themself killed somehow and is now in transition, feeds, is now a vampire. Alaric finds out, obvi, and invites the new kid to the school, in the process giving detention to those responsible for not coming to him first instead of directly giving vampire blood to a human. Then we see the school from that human's perspective and then later on they deal with not being with their old bad influencing 'friends' hating them for choosing the rich snobs school. Maybe this kid is Landon.

Maybe there's a student in Mystic Falls High who tried to get admitted to the Salvatore Boarding School but they rejected her. Only, no one gets it, good grades, good activities lists, etc. And maybe there's someone trying to figure out why the Salvatore School rejects such good students from time to time?

Hopefully, in like S3 there could be more human deaths and Matt starts up the Founders Council and now the adults know about the school and there's some serious drama between all that. Like I'm talking proper drama like in the X-Men series The Gifted with all types of mutants facing hate and violence from humans only in this case it's supernatural hate.

OTHER STORYLINES THEY HAVE, MORE LIKE EPISODE BY EPISODE

Something I don't like is how goofy it can get. Like, I already mentioned a lot of the funniest episodes we've seen but they've also been the weirdest. That just doesn't happen on TVD or TO. It happens on Supernatural. Like daily.

Oh gods,

I just realized something.

Is Legacies trying to slowly become a teen version of Supernatural? Kids that are superpowered fight monsters on a daily basis? Monsters aren't what you expect? A main character facing their dark side every few seasons? The unkillable main character? Teasing of queer almost couples yet never actually delivering? Yep, sounds plenty Supernatural to me.

Anyway, my point is that the episodes have been focusing so much on laughs and weird situations that we don't get enough horror. I'm just glad that when someone gets stabbed we see it and we actually see blood because this is a CW show. These might be students but the universe is the same as The Originals and we all know how bloody that show can get. This isn't FreeForm or Disney+, we should be able to get these students mixed up in gnarly situations buttt BECAUSE OF ALL THE WITCHES WE BARELY GET THAT. Wanna know why? 'Cause witches fight with spells, from a distance, they don't physically fight, it isn't their style. So, all we get is two students away from each other making light shows, it might as well be Hogwarts since it's all so clean. If it's just witches fighting, there's no need of choreographed fight sequences and lack of bloody fights which I'm certain they for some reason wanna avoid. [my guess is they had to dial it back down kinda like TWD after Negan used Lucille on you-know-whos heads]. Meanwhile, if you actually wanna see a good fight scene we gotta wait for the vampires or wolves to ACTUALLY HAVE SOME SORT OF PURPOSE OR ACTION IN A GODSDAMN EPISODE.

speaking of the vampires and wolves, or lack of them

They could've made Kaleb and Jed ex-boyfriends and that's why they were passive-aggressive at each other rather than a pair of boys angry [so stereotypical, smh] at each other for a girl who couldn't give a crap about either of them, I mean??

OH! And guess what, I found Rafael's storyline, let me see if I can get it for you.

Oh, well, would'ya look at that? HE DOESNT HAVE ONE.

Seriously? He's a POC and the only main werewolf on the show and he essentially has no storyline? This is Tyler Lockwood all over again, isn't it? Yup, the character has already been left out of numerous episodes, when he comes back immediately it's: love interest. Then he leaves or comes back because: family. Like?? Come on Julie, I know that for some reason you have a weird hate towards werewolves, I mean you must hate them if this is how you've been treating them since the Lockwoods at the start of S2 to their multiple shit storms in New Orleans for the Cresent Moon Pack rather than actually putting some development there.

Alright, this is the last thing that comes to mind:

Landon sucks. There I said it.

me, (and probably lizzie) to landon:

His character doesnt exactly suck, not all of him at least, but his purpose as a character? THe fuck? I mean, Hope is the main character of the show, yet it's her boyfriend that everyone is after and that apparently puts a strain on their relationship. I just- it aint necessary. Why cant you just give her a nice actual relationship without any weird prophecies behind her love interest? Hm? Is that so hard?

Remember that black and white noir episode notable for it's lack of Landon and it's male lead being MG? Now that was the shit. MG nailed his piece, I absolutely love his character, he's such a well-made vampire. [even though they made him a Ripper for no real reason]. [lawful good]

Kaleb too, he's the best and has such good lines. [true neutral]

Damn, I miss Penelope. And not just for the Posie rights, she was genuinely fun to have around. Alyssa was fine landing Alaric and his girls in mortal danger and possible death situation for revenge, that ain't cool. But all Penelope did half the time was pranks or mess with people by being vague and shit but she never wanted anyone hurt, she was chaotic neutral but Alyssa was chaotic evil.

[Lizzie's chaotic good]

Remember those first few episodes of season 1, the one where a giant spider was in town and Matt made a cameo appearance?

When Dana was found alive after being killed by a supposed vampire, they all assumed she was in transition and now Lizzie had to deal with Dana at their school, if she completed the transformation.

THAT was perfect. It was a great way to have someone from Mystic Falls, another teenager, with a high ranking parent apparently, be thrusted into the world of the supernatural. We'd get to see Dana's journey and how she had to adjust to vampire life and also see her old friends judging her for switching schools. There coulda been this great clip of her mom finding out about her daughter being a vampire and having to go to another school and depending on her reaction they'd have to compel her and have her be okay with Dana going to the boarding school.

But then it turned out to be a spider thing and it all just got weird.

side note, that episode was also the first one where Lizzie refers to herself as a hero. So it's where the whole ridiculous 'hero' thing came from.

i hope you guys liked my use of gina linetti and april ludgate gifs

this is 4,440 words guys, wtf