Time for a new
monster because we have a new mcguffin everyone wants - the glowy urn.
Alaric and Hope
consult on what best to do and it’s time for my broken record moment! I’ll keep
it brief because I’m going to revisit it at length later on - but note
headmaster Alaric now has to work with his student, Hope, as an equal
conspirator rather than speaking to her as an adult to a child/student. She
even refuses to tell him where the urn is, dismissing his adult claims simply
because she is the one with super powers. And… she’s not wrong. You can tell
because Alaric backs down on this and allows her to be the sole defender of the
urn be because he’s human and woefully ill-equipped to deal with this
We do have a couple
of elements of angst - Hope is keeping secrets from Landon about the whole
missing memories and dead mother thing. She thinks this will bring him nothing
but pain but achieve little. Alaric doesn’t force the issue because he’s kind
of resigned to being her lackey now. The problem is that Hope is now super
awkward about this and is avoiding Landon which sends Landon’s insecurities
spiralling (foster kid bounced from home to home, many of them abusive) and he
tries to gently poke her with not-subtle-but-kind-of-sad “zomg please love me”
near desperation
And Rafael sees this
and is super concerned because he’s really really protective of Landon (who
does have this whole lost puppy feel to him) and is worried that Hope is going
to hurt him and isn’t happy that Hope is keeping secrets. They have a
philosophical difference in which she thinks it’s ok to keep secrets and lie if
it’s to help people while he thinks that’s completely unacceptable.
To top up that drama,
Rafael is also having issues because he’s into Hope and realises this could be
a super betrayal of Landon so ANGST
MG is also fighting
with some bad self-image issues of vampirism and how vampires have to change
while Kaleb is against this anti-vampire turn.
Into this steps in
the latest monster - a ghostly woman who invades people’s dreams and torments
them with nightmares to make them give up the location of the urn
Which doesn’t really
work because only Hope knows where it is and Hope is staying awake. Alaric and
Hope consult and again we have a brief debate about secrecy - and they decide
the best thing to do would be to inform the school that monsters are coming.
Alaric does so and evacuates the youngest students while offering the older
students the choice whether they want to evacuate or stay and face mortal peril
And schools shouldn’t
work this way!!!! Hey kids, want to make a life or death decision at age 13
(the mandatory evacuees seem to be very young kids)! And honest no social
stigma about running away (it’s not like this may affect your reputation and
future standing in packs/vampire bloodlines etc).
Yes, more on that
later. Several students leave but Hope, Rafael, Kaleb and MG stay. As does
Landon despite pretty much everyone telling him to get his human arse out of there.
Which to me just emphasises how much Alaric should do the same.
So research - after
deciding they’re being attacked by a Night Hag, a monster that manipulates
nightmares, they spend a while discovering that what happens in dreams can hurt
them. Rafael is injured by a nightmare of an abusive foster family (he also
dreams about Hope). Landon has dull, boring first-day-at-school nightmares
while MG freaks about about being a murderous vampire and Kaleb tackles his
doubts as he fears vampires MAY be terribad awful mixed with his actually
enjoying being one
Through this Landon
realises that their research is off, if the monster can hurt them it’s only
pretending to be a Night Hag and they should look for an alternative. He hits
on an Oneroi, a greek nightmare demon because…. Reasons? I mean we start this
episode with a note that there are a gazillion monsters world wide that mess
with dreams, but whatevs
And Hope has a plan
to pull him out of the dream world. There’s a bit of weirdness where it seems Alaric
overrules her and takes over because he’s the ADULT DAMN IT and he’s totally
been fighting monsters forever! Uh-huh, but it turns out to be a dream. There’s
a brief suggestion that Hope used magic to set him to sleep which would be a
bit of a dick move with a dream demon involved et al but hey. But when it’s all
resolved he’s not mad at Hope so either his show down over who should lead was
faked for some reason or he just resigned himself to her taking over
Either way…. Yeah
that’s not a good look, Alaric.
So everyone dreams,
faces their nightmares and fights back - and feeds the demon a false location
for the urn. He bursts into the real world to take it - only to have Hope leap
on him and unleash 8 kinds of Tribrid arse kicking, helped by Alaric throwing her
an arrow.
In the aftermath
Alaric and Hope think they need a new plan - because evacuating the school all
the time is a bad idea.
Meanwhile at creepy
Malivore place, creepy guy checks the archives to see who Salah was - and she
exists in their super secret records (so is paper not expunged? Memories are
gone but records remain… you’d think there’d be more fact based accounts of the
monsters that have been Malivored then…) and he is confused by the fact she was
Malivored several years before. But it does put him on the path of tracking
down Landon
I’m going to expand
my eternal Alaric rant.
Alaric is out of his
depth as a headmaster but can probably struggle through because he’s doing
something unique. As a teacher he could work. If Legacies was just a
story about high school drama with maybe a human dropped in trying to find his
place or Hope trying to find her place as a tribryd and a bit of everything or
how dramas like Josie’s relationship with her sister and Penny and Lizzie’s own
struggles with who she is and her personality - with maybe related drama like
MG’s vampire control, the Gemini Coven’s twin murdering… etc etc. Hey you had a
story here. Alaric being out of his depth would have been an interesting story
in and of itself, sprinkle in some love triangles and lo, television series
that works
I mean, the whole
concept of a magic school doesn’t remotely work in the world setting, but let’s
run with that. It would work, Alaric would work. And I can still see parts of
that in the series… but then the Malivore plot line kind of ate it all (which
led to MG seemingly being repurposed and Josie and Lizzie and Penny all being
plot boxed entirely). Even the title of this episode suggests the focus was supposed to be the Landon/Hope/Rafael love triangle potential more than anything else
But then the Malivore
plot is introduced - I think the writers wanted something more epic. But this
makes Alaric go from “rather out of his depth” to “WHAT THE HELL MAN!?” I mean
he’s actively inviting monsters to attack his school, his school full of
children. And saying “hey you can run if you want” to kids is ridiculous! Of
course he needs the kids there because he needs them to fight. He can’t fight -
and so we see Hope literally stepping into the role as co-leader of the school.
Maybe even complete leader: beyond her sassing her headmaster in a way which
would cause a few raised eyebrows, he’s actively overruling him. And he’s
backing off because she’s right. And as for “well if not the school, who would
protect this?!” Ummm, pick up a phone, call Rebekkah and Marcel. Or Kol. I mean
most of these monsters would be all “rawr, I want my Malivore shit” before
being Original Vampired into itty bitty pieces. These resources exist, we know
they exist and we know they’re accessible because the whole Original family is
ALWAYS there for Hope. Always and Forever right?
