The Vampire Diaries spin-off Legacies was just starting to emerge in the shadow of its predecessor The Originals by making Landon more self-sufficient and engaging in season, but the series today risks undoing this promising development. Debuting in 2018, Legacies is the third television series based on bestselling LJ Smith’s book show The Vampire Diaries.
Currently, in its third season, Legacies has largely failed to recapture the fan adoration of the original Vampire Diaries series and its first spin-off The Originals earned. As a spin-off of a spin-off, it’s arguably inevitable that Legacies would fight to feel fresh, but the narrative of Hope, Landon, and the remainder of the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted has become storyline issues unrelated to its own origins since the series started.
Among Legacies’ biggest problems is the show’s concentrate on Hope and Landon’s relationship, together with the pair’s on-again-off-again romance dominating the narrative of the series for the first two seasons at the expense of fleshing out subplots and supporting characters.
The connection would not be so frustrating if Landon received more personality development, but as it stands, the character spends most of the first two seasons as a dude-in-distress who needs Hope to rescue him from every perilous experience of this week. However, Legacies lately made promising strides with Landon’s character, which makes it even more disappointing that this apparent growth could be undone by the revelation that he’s not the”real” Landon.
Considering that Landon escaped the prison world, he has been another character from the marginally helpless deuteragonist of Legacies seasons 2 and 1. More confident and more competent, this brand new and enhanced Landon has shown more able to stand up for himself and has even been capable of shoving back against Hope if she needed it.
Season 3 of Legacies has finally given Landon the story arc that he wants (seemingly) and, consequently, his love interest has been respecting him as an equal, rather than treating him as someone fragile who will injure himself if left to his own devices. The connection that had fallen to a tired routine over the previous two seasons eventually appeared to be picking up potential since Hope and Landon were placed on equal footing in this third season.
However, the most recent episode of Legacies threatened to undo this promising development by hinting that people (or whatever) it was that came out of the prison world isn’t Landon, or at least, is not Landon because the fellow pupils of the Salvatore School know him. If this does prove to be true in the coming episodes, then the spin threatens to sabotage the smartest alternative that Legacies has made for its characters in a couple of seasons. Contrary to The Vampire Diaries, Legacies centered on its fundamental pair at the expense of the supporting cast, and enthusiasts hoping for more of Lizzie, Finch, and MG’s stories have been left to observe Hope and Landon’s recognizable dynamic play out over and above.
Because of this, the apparent development of Landon’s character to a more self-sufficient, proactive figure was exciting for its fandom, and if Legacies undoes this using a predictable twist, the show risks losing much more audience goodwill as an outcome.
