Legacies Boss Explains How Hope's Sacrifice Will Affect Season 2

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Legacies. Read at your own risk!]

Legacies took some big swings in its first season, but none so big as killing off Hope Mikaelson (Danielle Rose Russell) in the Season 1 finale. The jury's still out on whether she's actually dead or alive or hovering somewhere in between though.

The finale saw the Salvatore School under attack from Triad Industries, and the confrontation eventually left Josie (Kaylee Bryant) in mortal peril. After she jumped in front of a bullet made from Malivore mud intended for her sister, Lizzie (Jenny Boyd), the poison slowly started to kill her. Only Hope's magical tribrid blood managed to save Josie's life, but time will tell whether or not that's a good thing considering she found a magical device in Alaric's office that could eventually release a pretty huge baddie from The Vampire Diaries, -- more on that later.

As for Hope, after facing off against this week's monster (a headless horseman, of all things), Ryan Clarke (Nick Fink) finally got the best of her and Landon (Aria Shahghasemi) and threw the third and final artifact into the Malivore pit, raising his father from banishment. Knowing she couldn't allow the monster-eating golem to return to Earth so it could use Landon's body as a meat suit, Hope killed Landon (temporarily, obvi) and threw herself into the pit along with Landon's brother. As the tribrid of all three species that created it, Hope realized she was the only thing that could destroy it, finally giving her loophole existence a purpose. Girl, you are too noble for your own good.

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Is that the end for Hope, especially now that no one even remembers her? Does the fact that they can't remember mean that Malivore is still alive? And what does her "death" mean for everyone else, especially Rafael (Peyton Smith), who may now have to remain a wolf forever since she was the only one that could turn him back?

With so many questions left unanswered, TV Guide spoke to executive producer and showrunner Julie Plec about this huge finale twist and where we go from here when Season 2 picks back up.

So Hope is officially erased, but are all traces of her really gone? Or can we hope to stumble across some clue to remembering her and getting her back in Season 2?
Julie Plec:There is hope, and there is an actual pitch for that, so your brain is in the right place, creatively.

Is Malivore dead now or did she just prevent him from rising?
Plec: That is the question, I think, that we're left with at the end of the season, which is -- technically if she had destroyed him, would she be destroyed in the process? Maybe not. So the fact that no one remembers her might mean that there's still a blackness out there that is keeping her captive. And since we've already seen a glimpse of how s---ty that is, I hope that's not the case.

Can we expect to see a Hope-shaped hole in the lives of everyone left in Season 2?
Plec: That's exactly what we can expect to see. What's fun about it, and sad about it, is we'll be able to realize just how much impact Hope had in these people's lives without them even realizing what they're missing. And just understanding that they all feel individually like there's something that doesn't feel right and that they're struggling with this feeling of not being complete somehow. It just feels like such a universal experience, especially for teenagers. I'm looking forward to having each of those characters act out on that feeling.

If feels like Raf is the one most affected by her loss, since he's kind of stuck as a perma-wolf?
Plec: Yeah, Raf is screwed. Raf is a perma-wolf. Look, when Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) on The Originals was turned into a wolf all that time, that really did a number on her, and Raf is a new werewolf, who is still a teenager. So to be stuck in your most primal and feral state for God knows how long, if he's ever even able to get out of there, that will be catastrophic.

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Landon did learn that he was intended to be a "meat suit" for Malivore to let him procreate, but does he even remember that? And if not, is that still a looming threat in Season 2?
Plec: I think that's a good question. What, if anything, of his experience and all the information that he learned about Malivore will he remember? Even more so, what does it all mean now that Malivore doesn't appear to be functional anymore? So Landon is going to have a lot of questions moving forward, and a Hope-sized hole in his heart, as you've said.

I love the chemistry between Hope and Landon! Every time they're on-screen together, you just can't help but go, "Awww!"
Plec: Thank you! It's so pure; I think that's why I love it so much. It just feels really innocent and honest and pure in a way that you don't get a lot in relationships in movies and television. So I think that's why I really like it.

Will Triad Industries play a role moving forward, considering most of their staff was just killed or consumed by Malivore?
Plec: We may have seen the last of Triad for now in that I think M.G. (Quincy Fouse) made it very clear with his mother what role he expects her to not play in his life moving forward. I certainly don't think the organization is going anywhere, so they will be out there lingering in the shadows and maybe our heroes will cross paths with them another time.

The twins seem to have found the Ascendant, which The Vampire Diaries fans will recognize as the key to a prison world. How worried should we be about a visit from evil Uncle Kai (Chris Wood) if they start messing with that?
Plec: I think when a key that would open the lock that is keeping evil Uncle Kai imprisoned shows up on your screen you should always be afraid ... and also super, super psyched -- which, by the way, is not me saying that Chris Wood has agreed to come back because I have not gotten any answers out of him yet, but I would love nothing more.

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Will we be seeing more of Penelope in Season 2?
Plec: Penelope was a very successful character for us, and we always love the villain that ultimately finds a way to redeem her wicked, selfish, evil ways over the course of the season and leave us all crying and wanting more. Certainly my hope is that she remains in our universe and she, in spite of being in Belgium with her family, may make an appearance again. I can't make any promises, but I certainly would love to see her.

Can we also hope for the return of Clarke? Because I was really digging the revival of the whole supernatural brothers thing!
Plec: There's going to be a hole in the marketplace right now for supernatural brothers. We have not necessarily seen the last of Clarke. Certainly wherever Hope is, it seems to be that he is there as well. It depends on where that is and what that looks like and if we want to tell that story.

So if we want Hope back, we might have to get Clarke?
Plec: Exactly. Two for the price of one.

Are you looking to introduce a new big bad for Season 2 or are you hoping to stay invested in this Malivore storyline?
Plec: We are going to take a page out of Harry Potter and hope that Malivore can be an ongoing threat, much like Voldemort was able to be over the course of all the books. That is the goal and we will see how long we are able to do that.

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And are you planning to keep the monster-of-the-week format or lean into more serialized storytelling.
Plec: I think our emotional and character stories will always be deeply serialized like The Vampire Diaries, but the structure of the monster of the week or a monster that can span a couple weeks has been a lot of fun for us, and we've really enjoyed it. So we'll definitely be continuing down that road.

Are there any plans to return to monsters we've seen and spared before like that gorgon who was getting flirty with M.G.?
Plec: There's absolutely opportunity for any of the monsters that we've seen before to come back again. I know my personal favorite is the necromancer. We've got some competition... people who loved the dryad, the gorgon -- if we can figure out a way to make snakes cost less in visual effects, [it] has a better shot at coming back when technology can catch up to what we want to achieve. That was a "learn the hard way" kind of character.

Alaric's (Matthew Davis) position at the school has been left up in the air, so what can you say about the impact of potentially removing him as headmaster if that's how the council votes?Plec: I think that for a man whose last decade-plus of his life has been committed wholly to his daughters and this school, if he wakes up one morning and is no longer the headmaster, that's going to be a big dramatic shift for him and I'd wonder how he would make it through that.

Season 1 of Legacies will be streaming on Netflix starting Friday, April 5.

(Disclosure: TV Guide is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of CBS Corporation.)

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