We have a special
scary knife which Alaric is studying in detail to see why it’s so special,
which means reading lots of ancient French and us getting a flashback over a
gargoyle killing a couple of ancient witches who tried to steal the fancy
knife. Which seems pretty resistant to fiery magic.
He has also decided
to punish his brawling high school students who have drawn attention to
themselves by sending them into the town under the eyes of his chief librarian
Dorian to do community service. Because mixing your volatile supernatural kids
with hostile and volatile towny kids is just such a great idea. Lizzie protests
that she was provoked (true) and then breaks and totally throws her sister
under the bus blaming her. Bad twin etiquette!
Hope is angry that
she isn’t being allowed to stay with Alaric to research the dagger - but Alaric
dismisses her, let the adults handle it (her and Dorian the Librarian) and Hope
is angry about this because he wasn’t saying this when he called her in to use
her magic to fight the dragon last episode. Again, this is the problem with
Alaric running the school - I’ve said this repeatedly even as this series was
proposed - a completely human Alaric does not have the tools to handle the
problems that can arise with this school. Instead he uses his students - Hope
and MG - to be tools in his tool box to fix whatever problems he has. Which is
both inappropriate, exploitative and means Hope has a very real point. It also
really undermines his authority - a headmaster cannot run a school when he relies
on his students to handle major structural procedures of that school
Also he needs Dorian
to do research but has just sent him to monitor students doing community
services in the nearby town probably without a great deal of relevant reading
material. Alaric’s decision making is… pretty much consistent with everyone
else in this world.
They go for litter
picking and graffiti cleaning and lots of snarling. Lizzie is shunned by Josie,
has many issues with Hope and then gets into a nasty milkshake accident with
one of the locals. She storms back to the school in a rage.
Josie and Hope are
pretty much together after a rockys start - Josie points out that Hope is
continually poking them and picking fights and how this isn’t going down well
especially since she’s already keeping secrets with Alaric - and Alaric is
spending more time and attention on Hope than he is with his own daughters.
They have issues, she’s clear which Hope kind of concedes, especially after
Hope accidentally impales her own foot and Josie helps and Hope reveals that
she didn’t tell Alaric that Josie helped her with the naughty black magic. Also
Hope pushes Josie to make a play for Rafael because she shouldn’t always defer
to her twin
Meanwhile MG makes
out with a local towny girl before compelling her to find out why and
discovering that she’s only doing it to make another guy jealous - but since
he’s doing the same thing for Lizzie, he recognises that he can’t be angry and
also that continuing to make out with her knowing the underlying motives is
kind of exploitive. He compels her to forget making out with him (so if anyone
talks about it to her later she looks like she’s suffering from weird amnesia)
but also remember he’s awesome (he’s a teenager. Apparently. Maybe. He’s a vampire
so who even knows). But later he finds fellow vampire Caleb is also compelling
that girl so he can feed off her… and he agrees to keep his secret when he
appeals to friend and fellow vampire (and possibly fellow Black man). He also
has some disturbing ideas on the superiority of supernatural beings over humans
Lizzie returns to the
school, she curses out her father with Emily, the therapist, apparently
believing it’s appropriate as a professional to get involved in this family
discussion uninvited. Lizzie blames everything on Alaric’s absence as a dad and
how he is more focused on Hope than his own daughters. Which… is…. Not wrong
She ends up looking
after the small children and is attacked by the ominous gargoyle statue. This
statue has been moving around this magical campus for a while and absolutely
no-one notices this except a 6 year old. HOW?!
Lizzie takes the
child to safety and tries to use magic on the gargoyle and ends up clawed by it
- and slowly turning to stone.
The school goes into
lockdown, with Emily protecting all the small children by hiding behind an
invisibility spell while Alaric tries to lead the Gargoyle away with the knife
it’s after. Which doesn’t really work, the gargoyle catches Alaric, knock him
out and takes the knife. It tries to leave with this knife except that spell
Lizzie cast was a containment spell to stop the Gargoyle running amok in the
region. It’s now trapped in the school
This spell is broken
when Josie and Hope return to the school because Josie feels psychic twin pain
from Lizzie being clawed. They also have a convenient gargoyle book to pass on
which advises that to kill a gargoyle you have to hit it until it stops
moving so they set off with medieval weapons
Why? Why 2 witches
and a human? Are Caleb and MG the only vampires on campus? Because when
fighting a magic resistant creature that needs smashing to death in melee, the
super strong, super fast, nearly-impossible-to-kill beings may the best ones to
unleash.
The gargoyle attacks,
nearly stabs Hope but Alaric stands in the way and the Gargoyle pauses before
stabbing him in the face. Josie and Hope then use magic to make it explode.
Which is a victory - but Josie is outraged that her dad was willing to die for
Hope, willing to throw away his life for her while he has two living daughters.
He tries to protest that his research suggested gargoyles, as protectors, love
humans and wouldn’t kill them and would only harm supernatural creatures it
views as evil. Hope thinks this is unlikely to convince anyone (especially
given that’s a huge logical leap) and makes a pretty speech about how everyone
totally has to stop keeping secrets if they’re going to stand together. A
sentiment Alaric echoes in a pretty speech to the whole school
Can I say again how
this kind of undermines Alaric as a headmaster and his faculty. Because in most
schools? Headmasters and teachers keep things secret from students. Because
they don’t rely on the students to run the damn school!
He also keeps the
knife in school despite the fact two magical creatures have just been willing
to kill to obtain it. This sounds like the sort of thing you, say, call Marcel
and Rebekkah and have them take care of.
And time to catch up
with Landon and Rafael. They ran away together because Rafael is loyal to his
human friends and are now eating rabbit in the woods (how they know how to hunt
rabbits, I don’t know?). Landon is still mooning after Hope and still can’t
explain why he stole the knife and lied about it
They don’t like
eating rabbit so decide to place bets on Rafael being able to do physically
near impossible feats in order to win bets. This means clearly displaying his
supernatural nature to lots of nice people with camera equipped, internet
connected mobile phones
Everyone on this show
makes terrible terrible terrible decisions
Oh and this means
werewolves have super physical abilities even when not in wolf form or not on a
full moon which may be new or not because this show continually plays fast and
loose with everyone’s abilities
Someone sends them a
menacing note about how the wolfboy better run and Landon thinks it is totally
a good idea to hide from Rafael. Everyone on this show makes terrible
decisions. Everyone.
They’re attacked by a
hunter (how shocking!) and they’re just lucky it wasn’t a vampire (hey,
remember when werewolves were near extinct because vampires hunted them down?
No. It was back in Vampire Diaries days and has been largely forgotten
since them). He is rescued by Jeremy!
Yes, that Jeremy.
Jeremy Gilbert. If I were a petty, cruel man I would say that Legacies
may be becoming a dumping ground for all the Vampire Diaries actors who
didn’t do a great job relaunching their careers after being written off that
show *cough*Matt*cough*
I never claimed not
to be a petty man.
Honestly I can’t even
remember if Jeremy is supernatural or not any more? Is he a hunter, a ghost, a
zombie a mummy? I don’t even know. Anyway he works for Alaric now because he
has qualifications. Apparently
Landon apologises for
lying to Rafael, again, and thinks Rafael should go to school since it’s so
good for him. Rafael insists that Landon should come with him as well, kind of
forgetting Landon didn’t leave for fun, but because he was kicked out
And did anyone ever get to the bottom of why he’s immune to compulsion?
