Our Best Legacies Theories About the Sphinx Prophecy and the Golden Arrow

It's usually impossible to predict the future when it comes to Legacies even when you have a mysterious Sphinx prophecy! At first, it was hard to make heads or tails of the prophecy delivered to the super squad before the holiday hiatus, seeing as it was essentially just another riddle, but now that we know more about what's really going on in Mystic Falls, things are starting to become clear -- just like he promised.

The prophecy in its entirety is as follows: "There are two prisoners. One is the master of his cage. The other returns home without power. The sins of the father are visited upon the daughters here. And not here. New hero rises, but can be felled by the golden arrow. The wolf among you has many faces. When time fractures, darkness overwhelms. But the greatest destroyer of all is love."

Let's break it down piece by piece.

One of the two prisoners seems like it could be the Necromancer (Ben Geurens), who did indeed return without his powers. As for the other prisoner, we've considered that it could be Kai Parker (Chris Wood), who certainly seems to be the master of his cage (a.k.a his prison world) in Entertainment Weekly's first look at his return episode. There's also a chance the second prisoner could be Malivore, himself. Without a corporeal form, he technically is just as much a prisoner to his dimension as the master of it, right?

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Moving on, the sins of the father visited upon the daughters has to refer to Josie (Kaylee Bryant), Lizzie (Jenny Boyd), and Alaric (Matthew Davis). It's looking more and more like this part of the prophecy is foretelling the twins' inevitable run-in with Kai, who we know will be appearing in Episode 12. The sins of the father are obviously in reference to his decision to send students too dangerous for the school to Kai's prison world. The "here and not here," could also be a reference to Kai's prison world -- which in Season 6 of The Vampire Diaries, was a replica of Mystic Falls -- where Alaric, Lizzie, Josie, and Sebastian have now found themselves trapped.

The new hero rising seems to be pointing to Landon (Aria Shahghasemi), given that he's been focused lately on being less of a mascot and more of a useful addition to the super squad. In the midst of that, we should point out that we still haven't found out if there are limits to his resurrection powers as a Phoenix, but could the prophesied "golden arrow" be his Achilles heel? If so, the fact that the Necromancer now has said golden arrow could be a serious problem.

Next; If we take the wolf clue literally, then we have to start looking at werewolves at the school. There are really only three candidates there: Hope, Rafael (Peyton Alex Smith), and Jed (Ben Levin). None of them seem like good options to have "multiple faces," but we could be looking at this all wrong. Ever heard of "a wolf in sheep's clothing?" There could be someone else, someone seemingly harmless, waiting in the wings to show their true face. Alyssa Chang seems like a good candidate for this given her recent turn, but we're still keeping our eyes peeled for potential traitors.

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Alaric all but confirmed the most obvious clue, which is "when time fractures, darkness overwhelms." Josie's hourglass, which contains all the dark energy from her dalliance with dark magic, has already begun to crack, and we've seen flashes of what will happen if it breaks entirely. All that dark magic will flood back to Josie, overwhelming her and possibly even turning her evil. Now that the hourglass has presumably been banished to a prison world along with Josie, Lizzie, and Alaric, there's potentially even more room for it to unleash darkness.

For a while, we thought the final line of the prophecy, "the greatest destroyer is love," might refer to the sticky love triangle Landon, Hope, and Josie found themselves in -- after all, his choice could have destroyed one or all of them -- but these three seem to have worked past a lot of their issues lately. So if it's not their love that destroys, whose is it?

Legacies will return Thursday, Jan. 16 at 9/8c on The CW.