Legacies - This Feels A Little Cult-y

 

Discussing Ep. 3.14 - So for an episode that served as a welcome back, I didn't mind this one too much, though it was disappointing in some respects. The fact that there was no relationship drama and Lizzie was back and funny as ever I think is what held my interest throughout the episode. This felt like a bridge to the final two episodes and the final arc of the season, so I am curious how they're going to try and wrap everything up with these last couple of episodes. 

We keep seeing Clarke throughout the season and I'm really hoping that it's for a reason and not just out of some simple contributing element to the overall plot. Either he's coming back or he isn't. When I saw him talking to that silhouette in the cell, I was REALLY hoping that the silhouette would turn out to be the Hollow from TO. I know it was a longshot but at this point, I'm getting such Malivore fatigue and the thought of taking a chance and introducing a new villain who is as personal and as powerful as the Hollow is such a a tantalizing idea! Instead, it turned out to be your run-of-the-mill witch who was acting as some kind of hippie cult leader. 

Now, I will admit that I was intrigued as to what her plan was and if she was indeed a mere witch or if there was something more to her. But at the end of the day, she was a mere witch who was recruiting other witches to perform a specific spell for Clarke to bring about some guy who literally looked like a cheap knock off of Darth Vader. And in that I was disappointed because I thought it would lead to something far loftier. With the crystals and that big crystal that Andi had everyone touch and the fact that she had basically everyone under her control, I expected her to do a lot more. 

And I was sort of expecting a little more from Lizzie, to be honest. While she kind of retraced previous steps of being insecure and drawing humour from that (I LOL'd at that line about the dicks), I was hoping we'd get something different. Still, she was rather funny and in essence, she was the hero of the episode for discovering Andi's secret and being able to break the hypnosis that Hope and Josie were under. What I'm really hoping for is that this episode truly serves as a transition for these characters to finally move on to something else. While I appreciated the truth bombs that they all served each other, I think they should be moving past all that at this point. 

One thing that I didn't understand at all was how Hope was able to defeat a gaggle of witches all on her own. Look, I get that Hope is super powerful but I didn't think she was THAT powerful. She essentially beat the equivalent of an entire coven all on her own! There must have been like 20 witches there, all under the control of Andi (who I assumed was a powerful witch in her own right) and Hope just jumped down and took them all out on her own! I don't think so. I've said this before to Dark Rose that I truly believe that if Hope is turned into a vampire, then she should malfunction, for lack of a better term, because she'd be so OP that it would be unfair for her to become almost god-like and not suffer any consequences for it. There has to be a cost to attaining all that power and it would be intriguing if indeed Hope essentially became the villain. I'd be down for seeing that. 

And then we get to the second storyline, which was Finch and Jed. It seemed to be the theme of this episode for characters to sort of regress back to what they were early on in the series. So despite Finch's seemingly smooth integration into the pack, she apparently had to go through a hazing of sorts and be the low girl on the totem pole, doing the menial jobs and serving the pack. Jed really seemed to regress to his old ways and I didn't get why. Jed looked like a chump in the end and I don't know what his purpose is on the show other than to look like a chump or a dummy or an asshole or a scumbag. It just seems like he can't do anything right and, like Kaleb, is a character that if he were to disappear in the next episode, I wouldn't miss him at all. I don't get why they need the werewolves at the school anyway when they don't seem to contribute anything at all to helping the school. It seems like it's always magic, magic, magic that saves the day. 

What surprised me about this storyline is where they DIDN'T go with it. I was fully expecting Finch to challenge Jed for the Alpha position by beating him in a wrestling match or boxing match.....in something physical where she couldn't possibly have won from a physical standpoint but did it because of her pluckiness and determination. Look, I'm all for female empowerment but not when it comes at the unnecessary cost of emasculating a male character (sometimes there's a need for it, but sometimes not). I didn't think it was necessary here and thankfully the writers thought the same. Finch didn't really annoy me as much as I thought she would and I can appreciate the fact that she was a pool shark who essentially took mercy on Jed and let him keep his Alpha position even though she easily could have taken it from him. So it's a nice display of a positive character trait on her part. But like I said, I don't know what all this does for the Jed character other than making him look like a complete and proper loser. 

And then we get to the last of the storylines that dealt with regressions of character (or at least, it was implied). I was shocked as all hell that the show remembered that MG used to be a Ripper! But that's what they were hinting at as Dorian seemed to be on the rampage and was bent on essentially killing MG because he believed he had returned to his Ripper ways. I have to say, Dorian is just fucking annoying! You'd think he was brand new to Mystic Falls or something the way he just assumed it was MG and was not willing to entertain any other explanation, despite the fact that he knew MG! I'm not a fan of the guy to begin with considering he's still with Emma and they both abandoned Alaric. But beyond that, in this episode he tried to come off as compassionate and almost as the champion for the victims but it felt so pretentious. So...yeah...he can go and fucking blow it!

I don't know, I thought this was a weird and unnecessary side story that they wrote that didn't really pay off in any big way at the end. I get that MG was somewhat distraught about breaking his friendship with Ethan and felt the need to be distant. And I suppose I could see it that he wanted to continue helping people using his vampire powers, but to have it that it looked like he had regressed to his Ripper ways (when they have barely mentioned that at all for like 2 seasons) without any real catalyst that made the audience believe that it might have actually happened did little to make me a fan of this storyline. It really was a lot of bells and whistles for nothing in the end. I guess it was also done for a laugh as it was finally a wendigo that they got to face, but still. Didn't really add much to the overall storyline.

So I guess the question is, who is Darth Imitator and what is his overall plan? Is it Clarke underneath there? Are we going to get an answer as to why there are seemingly two Malivore's wandering around (the one in the prison world and the four-armed one that Hope and Landon faced)? Where have Landon and Cleo gone to? 

And what was with the panda outfits? Was that a play on words for pandemic? 

That was my theory anyway.