Legacies Season 2 Review

Major Spoilers are included in this season review. Please read with caution.

Legacies Season 2 had a solid beginning, only to fumble the ball a bit toward its coronavirus pandemic cliffhanger. Let’s talk about the beginning first. The season 2 premiere started off with a “Hope-less” summer vacation, seeing as Hope Mikaelson—our main protagonist—found herself stuck inside Malivore. As she is trapped inside the Malivore pit, everyone else’s memories of her have gone as well.

While everyone else was going on with their lives during summer vacation, the only characters who seemed to have suffered without Hope are Alaric and Rafael. Rafael is stuck in his wolf form due to a spell that only Hope can reverse, while Alaric is working as a Principal at Mystic Falls High School instead of the Salvatore Boarding School for his failure to protect the students. He is also driving himself mad trying to figure out who was there with Landon on the night Malivore was defeated (hint: Hope Mikaelson).

The main issue with Malivore this season is the repetition. Malivore does nothing different—still sending monster after monster on a weekly basis—after he makes his return alongside Hope Mikaelson. This repetition adds to the “playing it safe” Legacies did in the previous season, and when they did kill characters off later this season—like Rafael—they were all conveniently brought back to life through the Necromancer. It also made Hope’s sacrifice feel pointless if season two was just going to use Malivore again.

Josie and Landon romance—in Hope’s absence—didn’t play out too well either, especially when the characters had no chemistry whatsoever. The whole romance was designed as an obstacle for Hope-Landon, and it was immediately discarded after Landon—and everyone else—retrieved his memories. The love triangle wasn’t a strong one when it came to these two, and when Landon had to choose—the choice to pick Hope was too obvious.

The Josie-Hope friendship is also pure queerbait throughout the spin-off series so far, when they both revealed at different points in season 1 and 2 that they had crushes on each other during childhood.

The supposed romance between Josie and Hope is similar to the Kara-Lena queerbait from Supergirl or the Dean-Castiel queerbait from Supernatural except Josie-Hope—Hosie—actually had a chance of happening due to their canon sexual orientations. The CW loves queerbaiting for some reason.

Josie and Hope’s friendship also added to Lizzie’s intense jealously of Hope Mikaelson, and how Hope keeps “taking” her family away from her. I did appreciate the growing friendship between Lizzie and Hope over the course of season two, and how Lizzie was the first one to “remember” Hope.

Overall, season 2 was ultimately cut short when the coronavirus pandemic hit. The cliffhanger with Hope and Landon being trapped in a deep slumber—fairy-tale epic love style—was an interesting one to land on, as season 2 could make it work going into season 3. I’m hoping Legacies figures out its flaws—considering they have a lot of time to figure out story ideas—to make season 3 more smooth-sailing in 2021.

Thanks for reading this season 2 review, everyone! As an avid fan of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, I’m excited to see where Legacies goes next with its upcoming season.