This past Thursday, Legacies returned to The CW with its season two premiere “I’ll Never Give Up Hope.” The double-spin off of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals takes place at the Salvatore Boarding School for Young and Gifted—a boarding school designed to teach and protect witches, vampires, werewolves, and all other mythical creatures.
Photo credit: Vampire Diaries Wiki
The first season ended on multiple cliffhangers last March—the most confusing (spoiler alert!) being Hope Mikaelson, played by Danielle Rose Russell, tossing herself into the pit of Malivore, erasing herself from the memories of all of her friends and family. Along with other viewers, I spent the past seven months trying to figure out how the world of Legacies—where so much revolved around the witch/werewolf/vampire tribrid—could possibly continue without her.
Photo credit: CinemaBlend
So what were all of the characters up to in Hope’s absence? “I’ll Never Give Up Hope,” written by executive producers Brett Matthews and Julie Plec, was split into three parts—June, July, and August—that visited all of the main characters as they took a much-needed summer break after the last hectic school year in Mystic Falls.
I was glad to see so many of the characters doing well—MG and Kaleb spent the majority of the episode training for a BBQ Cook-Off, a much easier task than the monsters they had to fight during the past school year, Lizzie jetted off to Europe with her mom, and Landon and Josie tried to keep busy looking for answers about their missing memories back at the school. However, those happy scenes were bittersweet and fleeting, as they were quickly broken up by heartbreaking scenes of Hope after she realized she hadn’t died and found peace but was in fact still alive and now had to face the world completely alone.
Photo credit: TVLine
“I’ll Never Give Up Hope” was, in my humble opinion, one of the best episodes of Legacies yet in terms of both writing and acting, setting the second season up to be a great one. It featured the perfect ratio of happy moments, bittersweet flashbacks, and, of course, a beautiful soundtrack (I will be listening to “you were good to me” by Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler on repeat until further notice). Most importantly, it left me with a million questions, and I will be anxiously waiting for answers in next Thursday’s episode.
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