Can Legacies' Mikaelson Family Reunion Bring Hope's Humanity Back?

Legacies is taking a trip back to its roots this week, but it's not all fun and games in New Orleans. The CW drama is staging an Originals reunion, including Rebekah (Claire Holt), Marcel (Charles Michael Davis), Freya (Riley Voelkel), and Kol (Nathaniel Buzolic), in a last-ditch effort to get Hope (Danielle Rose Russell) to turn her humanity back on. That means emotions sure are going to be running high, but could it possibly work? Nothing else has so far, and things are getting dire as the Super Squad prepares to take on literal gods. 

In an interview from earlier in the season, showrunner Brett Matthews told TV Guide that it will take "a lot" to bring back the Hope we know and love. "If it happens, it's going to be something that has the deepest of connections, because we've already seen people with really good connections come at Hope and have no success, so you wonder what the nuclear option is," he said. "It probably takes some old faces from the past. Her family is really Hope's cornerstone, so that seems like if anybody's gonna succeed, it's probably going to be her family." 

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Assuming that Hope does eventually allow her human side to return, Matthews says she'll be staying put, with some changes. "It's a storyline we're only gonna do once, and so we definitely want to explore every corner of the character we can in this mode," he said. "We certainly miss Hope as she was, but this version is obviously a lot of fun but does a lot of awful things. It's really the push and pull of those two things, and seeing what Hope will be like on the other side, whatever that looks like. This journey will carry forward with her. I don't think a character can go through these things and not be changed by that. So what version of Hope shakes out in the end is really the question." 

Matthews confirmed that it was very intentional for Lizzie to become a vampire, like her mother, at the same time that Hope was exploring life as a villain, like her father. While neither of those characters are set to make any upcoming appearances (though as always, Candice King is welcome anytime), Legacies appears to be both growing up and fully embracing its origins at the same time, with as many other characters as it can. Alaric (Matthew Davis), the show's primary connection to The Vampire Diaries, has woken up from his coma/trip to purgatory to a whole new world of gods and vampire daughters, while most of the living (or at least still undead) characters from The Originals are back to help their favorite and only niece through one hell of a transition. The show doesn't necessarily need a Mikaelson reunion, but it's nice to know that it can have one without losing what makes it Legacies. 

"I think Legacies is such a weird little show. It's always gonna wear its heart on its sleeve and have an optimism that I don't think the shows before it prioritized as much," Matthews said. "Our DNA of Legacies will always be what Legacies is, but it's nice to explore storylines that harken back to our old days, to call upon the connections and the foundations of these other two great shows that the franchise is built on and just be a little more connected to them, while still viewing some of those thematics through the lens of Legacies." 

This show also gets the chance to sort of redo some of the more controversial storylines attempted on TVD or The Originals, like the sire bond. Lizzie frequently pointed out how much of a violation it was that Hope had such control over her, before it was quickly broken. Legacies gets to have all the fun of those shows with a modern twist, without some of the creepier, Gothic romance aspects of the rest of the TVD universe. ("People who loved each other were snapping each other's necks left and right!" Matthews pointed out.) 

"There's stories we did in the old shows that we would never do nowadays. There's artistic choices, technology changes, all these things," Matthews said. "That is the fun of this being a show in a franchise that's a decade in the past. The world's changed a lot in 10 years. It's really fun to look back at the older shows through Legacies and revisit characters and dynamics and storylines in a completely new way." 

Hope is certainly not the first vampire in this world to turn off her humanity, but she is the first tribrid to do it, and possibly the first to do it in order to fight some gods. Luckily she's got all manner of supernatural friends and family ready to set her straight.  

Legacies airs Thursdays at 9/8c on The CW.