Danielle Rose Russell Reflects on 5 Years of Playing Hope Mikaelson After Legacies Series Finale

[Warning: The following contains spoilers from the Legacies series finale. Read at your own risk!]

Hope Mikaelson has finally found a somewhat happy ending. By the final scene of Legacies' series finale, she had gotten closure from her dad Klaus (Joseph Morgan), reunited with her sorta dead boyfriend Landon (Aria Shahghasemi), and joined the rest of the Salvatore School in turning over a new leaf. Caroline Forbes (Candice Accola) is the new headmaster, and the school is no longer hiding its students from the rest of the world. It's as nice of an ending as it could probably be, considering the fact that no one wanted this to be the end, and they had to create a finale that could either set up a fifth season or serve as a satisfactory conclusion to a beloved show after a devastating cancellation. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter. 

Danielle Rose Russell spent four seasons of Legacies and one season of The Originals playing Hope, the impossible daughter of a werewolf and a werewolf vampire hybrid, and granddaughter of an ancient witch. That meant that if she ever activated her vampire side, she would become the first and only tribrid in history, making her one seriously lonely supernatural kid. Over four seasons—or more accurately, over the course of just the last season—she became that tribrid, regained her humanity after a brief trip to crazy town, managed to find a place to belong with her found family, and reconnected with her actual family. After years of loss and trauma and that one time she temporarily erased herself from existence, she's finally in a good place in her life, and however sad she may be that the show has come to an end, that's not lost on Russell. She's especially happy that she got to unleash her full tribrid abilities before saying goodbye. 

"That was a huge, huge thing that I wanted to accomplish, so I'm really happy we did it this year. After doing that, I felt much more okay. Like, I've done the season that I really wanted to do as this character," she tells TV Guide. "So it was a little bit—I don't want to say easier, it wasn't easy, but just a little easier to go, okay, I can finish that story." 

While Russell hasn't played Hope the entire time that fans have known the character, she has still spent a lot of time growing up as the character has grown up, which she can now see very clearly. "I look at each season, and I even look different each season. I grew up from being a baby face to an adult," she says. "So it's been an interesting journey, because I've grown up alongside this character, and it's kind of like being a person where you're like, oh, I don't see the changes in the day-to-day, but I look back and I go, look how far she's come. It's been an honor to get to play her for so long." 

Below, Russell reflects on her time as Hope, her feelings on the ending, and what it was like to watch Klaus' final goodbye to his daughter. 

It feels so strange to be doing this finale interview. How are you feeling about it? 
Danielle Rose Russell: It's bittersweet. I've been feeling really sad this week. Like, once it's over for the fans, it really feels like it's over, so I'm actually really sad about it. I think we all sort of expected to go several more years, so it was an unpleasant surprise to get canceled at this stage. At least one more year, we were all pretty confident we'd go that far. So it didn't feel like the right time, but you know, I've been doing it five years, so I do feel proud of the long run we've had. 

For you guys not knowing it was the end, it feels like an ending. Like if you have to go, it's not a bad way to go. Did it feel that way to you? 
Russell: Yeah, it did. And we all sort of had an inkling, obviously. I think since the beginning of this year, it was really shocking when we didn't get picked up when we normally would, and with all the changes happening on the CW right now, there was a little bit of a question about whether or not we would get another year. THat was the first time we had really experienced that as a show, because we were always used to being picked up and being carried by the CW, so I think since the beginning of the year, we all knew. We were told to write a finale, and we did, and we said our goodbyes, even though they were sort of unofficial goodbyes, they were goodbyes nonetheless. 

What was your reaction when you read it? 
Russell: I cried. And when I watched it, even moreso. Because again, I've done this five years, and that's a long time, and I am proud of those five years, and I'm ready to move on with my career and playing new characters, but at the end of the day, it's really sad. We've built a little family and we've had a successful show and I've loved playing Hope. It's very bittersweet. 

How did you feel about Hope getting to hear from her dad? I assume you weren't watching the actual message when you filmed that scene, but how did you feel when you got to actually watch Joseph go that hard? 
Russell: Yeah, he delivered! I was not expecting that when I watched the finale. I was like, oh, wow, he really gave it. Had I known he was going to do that, I might have done something different. But because we shot it when we were filming still, and he had not filmed his part yet, I didn't really know what it was going to be like. I didn't really have any conversations about it. I was just acting to a blank screen and imagining what it would be like. He knocked it out of the park, as per usual. 

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The fact that it came as a video message from heaven was also so funny, but correct. 
Russell: I know, I know. When I was filming it, I was sort of like, this is highly unusual and really bizarre. But Legacies has a way of making the unusual things into something so beautiful and magical nonetheless. And I do think it came out well and cut together perfectly. 

We didn't get to hear anything from Hayley. What would you have liked to hear, if you could have gotten a heavenly video message from her? 
Russell: Ooh, that's a good question. I would have loved to have gotten that. I think there was talk when Brett was writing the finale, like maybe she'll come back, we don't know. I didn't know who was going to come back. I just knew that someone was coming back at some point, but I would have loved for it to be Hayley. Because I feel like Hope has had such an intense journey with her father, and I would love to have seen her embrace more of her mother. So I think if she were to come back, it would be much more about her strength and how her mother left her in limbo five years ago when her mother died, which was like, do great things, have a great love, live life to the fullest, all the same things her father would have said, just very different. There's just something special about Hope and Hayley's relationship. 

Feels like it was a little less…complicated.  
Russell: Yes, definitely. 

I also loved that the video message had those little clips of you on The Originals. 
Russell: I know. We had those clips on the day, and Aria looked at me and he was like, "Is that you?!" And I was like, "Yep, it's me, when I was 17." It did feel more personal, I think, because my situation playing Hope was a unique one in the sense that I was on two different shows in this big franchise and universe and world, so I feel very personally attached to Hope's growth in that way. 

It's weird to remember that The Originals was about Hope in a lot of ways, because she was this supernatural baby no one knew what to do with. So how do you feel about the way she's grown up since then and dealt with all that pressure, and has she done everything she needed to do by this finale, and what were you looking forward to seeing in the future? Sorry, that was a lot of questions at once. 
Russell: And I can answer them all! I will start by saying I think the finale was focused right where I wanted it to be, which was good. I think the final three episodes were sort of like a finale, with Hope saying everything she needed to say to Alaric, and the big battle [in the second to last episode], and the finale was very much about her coming to peace with everything that's happened, and her family. Like this season is really oriented with Hope and her family and her ties to her family, which is exactly where I wanted her story to begin and end. But it also felt that way with Landon, which was the show in a lot of ways, at least for Hope. So in that regard, I feel like it was right where it should have been. 

As far as looking forward, I would have loved to have seen her several years down the line, maybe outside of the Salvatore School, and just what she's done with her life. Like I would be so curious to know what she chooses to do as a career. So I think for me, I would have loved to have gotten at least one more year to do that. 

People have been waiting for Caroline to arrive since the show began, so what was it like to finally have her there? I loved that most of her scenes were just her standing there. 
Russell: She's just that powerful. You know, I've obviously met Candice before, but we never really got to spend much time together. Our paths just never really crossed, so her coming back for the finale was a nice homage to the entire TVDU. She knew so many of our crew, which was cool, because a lot of our crew were from The Vampire Diaries and have been under this big umbrella for so long. For some people, since the beginning, which is like 13 years. So seeing Candice come back, it was cool to see all that history they had together. It was really powerful in that way.