Legacies
“Hope is Not the Goal”
November 15, 2018
“We’re a family. And we will stand together. We will fight together. And we will win or lose this battle together, no matter what comes next.”
Ric brings his students up to speed on the first three episodes and then turns the floor over to guest speaker Sheriff Blue Blue. Not Now Dana and her friend Sasha are missing, and given the recent monster activity, Matt fears the worst.
MG also fears the worst having caught Kaleb feeding on Dana during their community service, but he remains silent, upholding the “vamps before tramps” code.
With nothing else to go on, Matt and Ric have decided to send a few Salvatore students into Mystic Falls High to gather information. Lizzie immediately volunteers, still flush from her encounter with the gargoyle. She offers to put aside her differences with Dana for a day, “because that is what heroes do.”
She’s joined by Kaleb, MG, Landon, and Hope, who thinks it might be fun to try on being a normal teenager for a day. Lizzie tells Landon to talk to anyone he still knows, and Hope not to alienate the entire school, while she and her League of … Whatevers … save the world.
Sadly, they’re not going to save Dana. Ric and Matt find her body in the woods after a jogger calls in her abandoned car. Ric immediately calls his undercover teens and relays three things to MG and Lizzie:
- Dana is dead.
- She was killed by a vampire.
- He told Sheriff Matt that no one in the Salvatore School had anything to do with it, and he needs to know that he’s right.
Lizzie gets Kaleb’s secret out of MG just as Landon and Hope notice all the girls wearing jaunty neck scarves. The four confront Kaleb who insists he’s innocent. He fed on Dana, but he didn’t kill her. I mean, she’s right there, pale and disoriented, stumbling out of the woods at the edge of the school grounds.
She’s not dead. She’s only mostly dead.
The group thinks at first that Dana has been turned and is in transition, but then her internal organs liquify and she melts into a puddle of goo on the ground.
Well, at least Ric wasn’t lying to Matt, so
Rafe is trying to navigate werewolf pack politics. Alpha dick Jed presents him with two options—submit or bleed and then submit. Ric might really want to think about reviewing the school’s anti-bullying policy because right now it suuuuucks.
Rafe ends up with Josie at the old mill where she tries to explain to him that he’s a wolf and that’s just how it is. Rafe isn’t really hearing her—not because what she’s saying is bullshit, but because he’s distracted by the giant spiderweb encasing the mill’s loft.
They go upstairs to investigate and discover Sasha, alive, but cocooned. They also managed to get their fool selves trapped in the web.
We will not speak of the amateur-hourness of this set dressing. It looks like it was decorated by a sixth grader for a Halloween party. The only thing missing is a bunch of rubber spiders.
MG is having the same thought about spiders. He uses his comic book-fu to identify their monster as an Arachne, a once beautiful woman cursed by a jealous god. He explains that all it wants is to be human, so it wears the skin of its prey to pass. And the bite from its fangs could be mistaken for a vampire’s. Also, the whole liquifying thing, so.
If only they had something from the Arachne, they could do a tracking spell. That’s when Landon trots up with a piece of bully Connor’s face that peeled off when he punched him for reasons.
Ric calls as the four are racing to the mill. MG quickly hands the phone off to Lizzie. “No way I’m telling your dad what we’re about to do.” Lizzie complains that she sucks at lying and hands the phone Landon. He’s great at it! He gives it to Hope. “You’re his favorite.” Hope passes it right back to Lizzie. She’s the hero.
Lizzie answers and gives it her best Han Solo.
Really? Things are good? So good? Define good, Lizzie. Does it involve Ric tracking down Dana’s body to the glove compartment of the school shuttle?
No, but Lizzie tells him it does mean he’s going to have to trust her for once.
Josie siphons magic from Rafe with her lips, but the fireball she casts just burns off Connor’s skin and leaves the giant spider behind. Landon runs in and distracts the Arachne long enough for Josie to steal another kiss and free them.
She rushes down the stairs to join hands with Hope and Lizzie. Together they cast a spell that explodes the spider like a bag of Chunky soup.
I’m beginning to notice a pattern to Hope’s vanquishings. And seriously, why is she even still attending the Salvatore School? She’s already picked up more hedge magic from her Aunt Freya than she’ll ever learn there.
Anyhoo, the three goo covered girls stride out of the mill like the big damn heroes they are. Rafe carries Sasha out and later, it’s left to MG to glahmuh huh. He tells her she and Dana were at a party in the woods having the time of their lives. But as so often happens to people in Mystic Falls, they were attacked by a mountain lion on their way home. Sasha survived. Dana didn’t.
Lizzie tells MG to just compel it all away. Tell Sasha not to feel anything. Hope won’t rob Sasha of the chance to grieve. Tell her instead that it’s going to hurt. That it always will. Tell her that some days will be harder than others, but eventually she’ll remember the good times that she had with her friend.
“Tell her to hold on to those, because it’s the key to getting through this.”
Rafe reconsiders going lone wolf. He sees the possibility of a different life, but he needs reassurance. He asks Josie if the school, its students—keeping Landon there—is it worth it?
She tells him that the school is flawed and every person in it is cursed in some way. Everyone has issues, but they’re all in it together. So, yeah. It’s worth it.
Legacies airs Thursday at 9/8 p.m. on The CW.
Whitney also watches Supernatural. Follow her on Twitter @Watcher_Whitney.