Legacies Boss Explains How the Series Finale Also Set Up a Potential Season 5 Time Jump

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

It's the end of The Vampire Diaries Universe as we know it.Legacies just aired its series finale, and in spite of the fact that no one knew for sure if it would be the series finale when it was made, it turned out to be remarkably satisfying anyway. Lizzie (Jenny Boyd) and MG (Quincy Fouse) finally got together. Cleo (Omono Okojie) seemed to have gotten her groove back with help from Kaleb (Chris Lee). Jed (Ben Levin) lost his werewolf powers after coming back to life, so he and Ben (Zane Philliips) left to live a new life together. Hope (Danielle Rose Russell) found a new normal with Landon (Aria Shahghasemi), who may have to stay in Limbo forever, but will never stop loving her. Ethan (Leo Howard) found peace, and as he left Limbo, Landon sent him on a mission to track down another newly peaced out supe: Klaus Mikaelson (Joseph Morgan). 

Yes, Klaus made it to heaven, and with Ethan's help, he sent what was essentially a Cameo to his daughter to assure her he was proud of her and that she was doing everything right. Landon showed Hope this video message on a large outdoor screen, and everything about it was simultaneously hilarious and touching as Klaus/Morgan really made every one of his few moments on screen count. 

The other big news of the finale was that Caroline Forbes (Candice Accola) finally returned to the school she helped found —right as Lizzie and MG were sharing their first kiss— and will now be taking over as headmaster as Alaric (Matthew Davis) steps down to go write a book about the supernatural world. He finally realized that while maybe he wasn't the best person to run the school, the school definitely needed to stay open, and maybe become a little bit more public. The episode ended with a peaceful and optimistic Hope welcoming a crowd of new students to the Salvatore School. It's not really the end anyone wanted, but it could have been a lot worse. 

TV Guide talked to showrunner and finale co-writer Brett Matthews about ending the show early, those cameos, and what could have been in a potential season 5. 

How are you feeling about things coming to an end? 
Brett Matthews: It's very sad. It's bittersweet for sure, for all of us involved with the show. But you know, it's the end of one chapter. I'm sure it's the beginning of another, but it is definitely a big moment. 

Tell me about the timeline with this, because this episode managed to feel like a series finale even though I know you didn't know for sure when it was made. How did you make sure you included everything the fans needed? 
Matthews: I mean, I hope that's true. We certainly tried. It's obviously a strange and not ideal scenario, and I don't remember the timeline exactly, but we were certainly warned a couple of months beforehand that hey, there's some big things going on with the network, and we're not sure how it's all going to shake out, so sort of gear towards a world where it's both [a series and season finale]. Many shows [were told the same thing], and I think all of those shows essentially got canceled. It was at least good to have the heads up to try to build to as satisfying a conclusion as we felt we could, while also trying to build something that had legs moving forward if we were in a more fortunate world. 

Knowing that this could be the end, what did you want to make sure happened in the finale? 
Matthews: I think the answer is in this finale. It was to try to service as many of the characters and bring them to the sort of logical—or surprising, but hopefully logical—conclusion of their stories. That was really the goal. The finale has very little plot and is character-based and emotionally driven, so we were just trying to go through each character and look at the arc of the story we'd been telling with them over the years and—as opposed to some of the other shows in the franchise—try to give them some peace and happiness. That was always the plan. Legacies is a goofy, silly, big heart-on-its-sleeve kind of show, so I think seeing these characters and these teens who has gone through so much trauma reaching a happy place in their life was definitely a priority for us. 

Peace definitely felt like the theme of the episode, especially for Hope and Klaus. How did you figure out how you wanted Joseph to make an appearance? 
Matthews: Klaus reaching peace always felt like the hanging chad of The Originals, and it drove our narrative. It was very clearly stated early on that he won't reach peace until he knows Hope is going to be okay, so those two things had a synchronicity that we were always striving to over the course of the series. 

How Klaus' Appearance in the Legacies Finale Came Together

I love the concept of getting video messages from Heaven. That is so funny to me. 
Matthews: Yeah, it would certainly make the afterlife a little easier to get your head around, if you could. 

And then there's your other surprise guest, Caroline, who has finally come back to the school she helped found. Tell me about finally cashing in that favor. Was it like, if it's the final episode, she'll show up? 
Matthews: Yeah, I mean we've made it very clear to Candice that whenever she wants, the door, it's always been open, and I think she's been a little reluctant to revisit the character over the years, but when I called her for this one, I don't even think I got the sentence out before she was like, "Yes, absolutely. It feels right, I want to do it, I'm excited to do it." And it was really great to have her on set for a couple days. It brought back a lot of nostalgia. She's just such a wonderful person who has become such a friend to us over the years, and it was really exciting just to see her inhabiting that role again. It was like she never left, a piece of cake for us on our end. And we're really lucky. If this thing had to end, there's no question that the return of those two actors was essential for our cast and the three chapters of this show that we have told thus far. 

I loved that half of her scenes were just her standing there. She didn't even have to say anything, but it was nice to see her. 
Matthews: Yeah, she doesn't even have to. But her voice is always one of the most fun to write of all the characters in the shows. So just to hear that dialogue and spin she puts on it come to life again was really a walk down memory lane. We've all grown up within this franchise, so it was a really happy day on set for us and certainly for our cast. I think it made everybody feel tied together in the fabric of this quilt we've been making for a decade. 

Talk about the decision to have Caroline take over the school in the end. 
Matthews: It just felt right. I mean, in a world where we could have had Candice on the show, this may have happened earlier. But logistics being what they are, it did feel like Alaric had reached the end of his journey, and the purpose of the school was always to protect the world from these kids. But at the end of the day, it's the ultimate act of showing these kids that he believes they're ready and that they're going to control their own destiny and their own legacy and they're going to be the ones who write it, and he will be the one who writes it for the world. I think he always thought the point of the Salvatore School was to keep this a secret, and by the end, Alaric's really accepted that the world needs this, and the world needs you, and that day will come and it will be a hard, confusing day for everybody. And him finding his own purpose in this later chapter in his life is because if he sticks around this school, he's going to die for good at some point. So I think there's just a human aspect to, what is my next chapter? I'm not sure Alaric ever realized he had one until the kids sort of gave him one and he embraced that, and I think that's the ending of his story. 

Is there a world in which, if the show had continued, Caroline would have stuck around? 
Matthews: Oh, it's very hard to say. I think that becomes the stuff of contracts and availabilities and would Candice have wanted to do it. Those are all hypothetical questions I guess we'll never have the answer to, but if she had wanted to, certainly that would have been a route we would have been very excited to explore. 

I loved that Josie got some moments in the finale without actually being there. 
Matthews: Yeah, I mean Josie is a huge part of the show and always will be. Legacies would not have been what it was without her, and so of course anything that brings the series and this chapter to a close, it's really impossible to imagine without her playing some type of role in. 

I know you didn't want this to be the end, but it does end up being the finale of the Vampire Diaries Universe on the CW. Do you feel okay with that? Do you feel like you got to say everything? 
Matthews: I don't think anybody really feels like they got to say everything they wanted to say, which is a testament to the actors and the writers and the universe itself. I think there were many more years of story and it would have been exciting to see where those characters went and to be able to tell those stories with them, but everything happens for a reason. I just believe The Vampire Diaries Universe is really important to a generation and to new generations who've discovered it on Netflix. I guess I don't see this as the end. I see it as the end for now, and that's sad in some ways, but I think our big concern was sending Legacies off the best we could. Trying to bring three franchises to a close, that's a big ask for any episode, so we tried to service our characters and their ties to the past and their ties to the franchise and put as good a bow on it as we could, knowing that none of us wanted to end. Some of us are very optimistic about seeing more in the future, so I'd say it's more of a see you later than a goodbye, but still, bittersweet is the right word. 

I mean, so many shows are coming back, and it feels like this franchise is exactly the right kind of thing to come back in a few years. 
Matthews: There are a lot of stories and Mystic Falls is a weird place. There [are] so many great characters that already exist in that universe that it's hard to believe that any one thing will ever be the end of it. This thing may outlive all of us in some strange way, and let's hope that it does.

Again, knowing this isn't how you wanted to end it, I'd love to know what you're proud of after this finale. 
Matthews: I guess at the end of the day, Legacies had a relentless optimism to it that I think was really needed in a world that's so dark. It came out of the Parkland shootings, and to suddenly end so close to all these other acts of gun violence and school shootings, it feels tragic. I mean, maybe its relentless optimism is pointless. I think we all hoped the world would be in a better place when this show ended, but I think what people will remember is the relationships with the cast and crew, the time we had making the show together. Those are things we'll remember fondly, with the writers, the directors, the cast and crew, the hundreds of people that nobody knows who just make these shows their lives. Those are the people I'm going to remember more. Certainly, when I think of the show, I'll think what a good ride it's been. What a fun time it's been. Our goal was to make being an open-hearted optimistic person not the worst thing in the world, and cooler than maybe it usually is in television, and the show was either a success or failure on that front and that's for other people to determine. But certainly its goal, and it clung to that tone throughout its run, so people can think what they will, but it will always be the people. Making these shows take up every waking moment of your life, so I guess the best compliment you can give it is, 12 years down the road and four years on this show, I think a lot of us look back with really good memories. And that's the best you can hope for. 

What Could Have Been 

Below, Matthews shares how the finale and its many endings also set up new storylines for a potential Season 5, starting with a deleted scene that included Jen (Piper Curda) and the "future of the gods." 

"I think if the show were to continue, we would certainly be moving into a big time jump forward and we would have shaken up the dynamics and the situations of the characters, and probably brought most of them beyond the bounds of the school and all that good stuff," he said.  

Hope and Landon: "To [Julie Plec] and I, it felt like a fairly optimistic ending for them both. Hope always felt like the school was sort of this warning system, or this place meant to contain her, and her really coming to accept her role in it, not out of obligation or duty or destiny, but out of a want to be there and to be a leader in all the best senses, and that was her journey at the school. It's about a character who's always been told she's this really bad thing and had all the worst things happen to her, and she came out the other end I think better for it, and a more caring and better leader who knows who she is. 

And Landon has gone from being a foster kid who never felt like had a home or felt like he belonged to having this essential place in the fabric of the mythology between life and the afterlife. So for him, I think he gets everything he wanted, except Hope. But that is sort of the story of young love, and how sometimes the person you think is all things to you becomes something different. And who's to say where their story would have gone in the future, if they would have found their way back to each other. That's fair to speculate on, but they're hugely important to each other and will continue to be, and I think that's the tone the finale tries to strike. Their relationship has evolved." 

Lizzie and MG: "In a world where this was a four season story, it was the end of their story. MG sort of coming into his own, and Lizzie coming into her security as a person and saying yes to a good thing in her life and not be afraid of screwing it up, trusting herself enough to say 'Let's do this.' It's two people who were really good for one another who finally accepted that instead of creating all these obstacles for each other along the way, and I think that's growth for both of them. We would have been excited to see them grow together. I'm sure many obstacles would have come in their way in a world where the show continued and who's to say how it would have all shaken out in the end, but in a four season version of the story, it definitely was the right conclusion." 

Jed and Ben: Jed losing his werewolf powers was a way to create more storylines for this slightly mismatched couple. "It felt like a really interesting wrinkle and a really interesting problem for the two of them to go about solving. Certainly, that would have been a big part of the next season. We really love Jed and Ben and how they understood each other on such a fundamental level." 

Kaleb and Cleo: "Cleo is just a hugely successful character for us, as was Kaleb, and there's fate and prophecy and things standing in their way, but what I love about them is that they've seen it all, and dealt with a lot, and so Kaleb's just not being deterred at all by that. And with Cleo seeing this future where she's hugely essential to the school, I'm sure those two would have figured it out and it would have been a lot of fun to see them do it."