While The Vampire Diaries spinoff Legacies ended without reuniting Landon and Hope, this was a bad mistake for The Originals follow-up. Much as it tried not to be, Legacies was always destined to be the Landon and Hope Show. The follow-up to The Originals (which was itself a spinoff of The Vampire Diaries) was ostensibly intended to be the story of Hope Mikaelson, a student at the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted, discovering the extent of her supernatural powers and the dark history of her famous family.
However, from the moment that Hope first saved Landon Kirby from seemingly certain death, the dynamic of almost every future Legacies episode was set in stone. In particular, the first two seasons of Legacies made the mistake of focusing on Landon and Hope’s familiar on-again, off-again relationship dynamic instead of spending more of its screen time fleshing out characters like MG, Lizzie, and Josie. However, while seasons 3 and 4 of Legacies ameliorated this issue somewhat with more episodes that focused on the supporting stars, this ended up leaving Hope and Landon’s story feeling unfinished. Ironically, after years of setup, Legacies season 4 didn’t even get to reunite the duo.
Legacies Season 4 Wasted Hope and Landon
Landon and Hope were clearly meant to end up together by the time that Legacies wrapped up. However, in failing to pull this off, the spinoff betrayed its longest-running storyline. Hope stayed a humanity-free villain for way too long and Landon spent way too much of Legacies season 4 in Purgatory, throwing away any chance at a satisfying ending for both of them.
While Hope’s villainous turn stagnated her character growth in season 4, Landon’s abandonment in Purgatory meant that he couldn’t reconnect with his lost love even if he wanted to. Eventually, this led to a forgettable Legacies series finale where, after too long apart, Landon and Hope parted as distant friends. This anticlimactic conclusion ultimately wasted the two characters, despite their prominent status.
Why Hope and Landon Needed Legacies Season 5
The revelation that Landon can no longer feel emotions since he became the Ferryman was an ironic mirror of Hope turning her humanity off earlier in Legacies season 4. For the pair to be reunited, Hope and Landon needed a chance to overcome this latest obstacle. In a potential season 5, this would have worked, since the plot would have put Hope through the hard work of getting through to an unfeeling character (which is what the rest of the Super Squad experienced while trying to access Hope’s humanity). The reason that the Legacies series finale did not feel like a finale is that this plot was evidently meant to carry on.
The problem with this approach is that Legacies season 4 spent so long wandering through Purgatory with Landon that the spinoff didn’t have any time to explore how Hope felt about her love interest becoming the Ferryman. Similarly, Hope turning off her humanity meant that the rest of the supporting ensemble of Legacies all got a chance to shine, but this also ensured that she acted as a straightforward villain for most of season 4. While Lizzie was first plotting to kill her friend and eventually working out how to save her soul, Hope was just killing, maiming, and cackling her way through proceedings.
Hope and Landon’s Tragic Ending Could Have Worked
This approach meant that Hope and Landon’s Legacies relationship sat on the back burner for the entirety of season 4 and, by the time the pair were reunited, there wasn’t enough time for them to re-establish a connection. That said, this didn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing. Landon spent the first few seasons of Legacies over-relying on Hope’s powers and acting as a “dude in distress,” so the pair parting ways amicably could have proven they were both independent and had grown out of their relationship. However, this didn’t happen because the plan was clearly to get them back together, leaving both characters in sad, unfinished stories.
Like True Blood’s disastrous final season, the last episodes of Legacies tried to tie together its disparate plots too late. The spinoff ironically let down both Landon and Hope after spending seasons ignoring its supporting stars to focus on the duo. By the end of Legacies season 4, the fact that Landon and Hope didn’t end up together was not a surprise or a clever subversion of viewer expectations. Instead, the revelation felt like more evidence that Legacies season 4 didn’t have a plan for the pair, that The Vampire Diaries spinoff wasn’t ready to end, and that The Originals follow-up couldn’t make their relationship work despite years of trying.