10 Times The Vampire Diaries Canon Was Contradicted By Legacies

Legacies is one of the two spinoffs from The Vampire Diaries original series and is best remembered for the many story contradictions that populated the TV show. The first series is based on the books by L. J. Smith, and after The Vampire Diaries exploded in popularity, it made sense for the network and the creators to capitalize on its success. The Originals, the first spinoff, introduces Hope Mikaelson, played by Danielle Rose Russell in Hope’s teenage and young adult years. She went on to be the star of Legacies alongside characters old and new to the franchise.

The daughter of an original vampire, an alpha werewolf, and descended from powerful witches, Hope was set up to be a memorable character in her own spinoff, Legacies. Although Legacies season 5 was canceled, the series impacted the franchise, especially because it altered so much of the original lore from The Vampire Diaries. So much happened in both The Vampire Diaries and The Originals that it can be difficult to keep track of the many magical rules and creatures included in the series. However, some flaws are so glaring that they’re impossible to ignore.

10 Lizzie Easily Breaks Her Sire Bond

Something that was nearly impossible in The Vampire Diaries takes a moment in Legacies.

Overall, the characters in Legacies don’t have to deal with the worst of hardships and difficulties that those in The Vampire Diaries do. Plot points that derailed episodes and upended character development, like the sire bond, barely make a dent in the storylines on Legacies. Elena’s bond with Damon changes her personality and is one of the biggest factors in her initial decision to pick him over Stefan. Overcoming the bond is difficult, time-consuming, and is often defined by intense physical pain to help the new vampire out of their fog.

Lizzie is barely affected by her sire bond with Hope and easily overcomes Hope’s demands and influence. Hope tries to force Lizzie to kill someone after she turns, and Lizze refuses because it’s the right thing to do. This is confusing, as in The Vampire Diaries, Tyler bites Caroline and nearly kills her because Klaus demands it as his sire. Tyler loves Caroline and states he will never do this, but still must leave for the woods to break his bond. Lizzie’s ability to exercise self-control and break the bond upends The Vampire Diaries plotlines.

9 The Existence Of The Malivore Doesn’t Make Sense

The Malivore and Landon’s characters are a difficult part of Legacies to understand.

One of the core features of Legacies that differentiates it from both The Vampire Diaries and The Originals is the existence of monsters and the Malivore. Monsters and the Malivore are meant to be treated differently than supernatural entities that populate the earlier shows. It makes sense that Legacies would want to distance itself from the lore and stories of the other series, as it was a new entity that should be considered a unique project. However, Malivore and the monsters added by Legacies end up blurring the line between the rules for existing creatures.

This also brings up the inconsistencies with the plot of The Triad, the group that created Malivore. The Triad was a group of one witch, one vampire, and one werewolf who created Malivore to consume all the monsters on Earth. However, the timeline of The Triad’s existence and when Malivore was made doesn’t align with when vampires were born in The Vampire Diaries. Additionally, if The Triad had existed the whole time, they would have come after Klaus and other hybrids for their supposed abomination.

8 Hope’s Past Timeline Is Altered

How and when she gets to the Salvatore School is inconsistent.

The Vampire Diaries and its spinoff timeline is a confusing aspect of all three shows. As time progressed, each show jumped forward to account for changes in the character’s ages and to avoid problematic storylines. The Originals includes time skips twice to account for Hope getting older and Klaus’ absence in her life. Later, Legacies would be set in the near future, though this is rarely important to the show’s premise. However, the exact time she is sent to the Salvatore School versus when The Originals and Legacies overlap doesn’t line up.

Though Hope, Josie, and Lizzie aren’t the same age in the earlier shows, they’re described to be in Legacies. Additionally, in The Originals, Hope is sent to the Salvatore School when she’s seven, but there’s an inconsistency in a flashback episode later on. It’s implied that Hope came to the school when the twins were eleven, but this wouldn’t be possible, as they’re two years younger than her. However, Legacies plays with the character’s ages and pasts to best fit the present storyline.

7 The Existence Of Gods

Once Gods were introduced, it was clear that Legacies was going to change a lot.

Every God in Legacies brings something unique to the table, but they all challenge the previously established ideas about how magic, vampires, and other supernatural beings came into the world. When the Mikaelsons were introduced in The Vampire Diaries, their story explained how vampires were created as well as the powerful witch line that every Mikaelson descends from. The Vampire Diaries does a good job of making magic a tangible and natural force that witches connect to through the Earth. However, this explanation for the supernatural is altered by the Gods.

Additionally, if the Gods’ powers were fueled by human belief in them, there would be more proof and evidence of their history. The rules for how Gods can exist and why they never appeared in The Vampire Diaries are never fully explained. Many different afterlives and realities are discussed and explored in The Vampire Diaries, so they would likely have encountered the Gods already. Overall, the Gods are a needless addition to a franchise that already had enough lore to draw from.

6 Blurring The Line Of The Invitation Rule

A vampire can’t come in unless they’re invited, but the exact rules aren’t clear.

One of the most enduring rules across all vampire lore is that a vampire can’t come into someone’s house unless they’re invited inside. The Vampire Diaries circumvents many traditional vampire rules by giving them magic sunlight rings so they can walk around during the day and giving them unique ways around being killed time and again. When it comes to the invitation rule, every show in The Vampire Diaries franchise is fairly consistent with ensuring that a vampire has the weakness that they can’t enter a home where they’re not welcome.

However, Legacies alters the specific nuances and requirements of this rule. Hope gets inside the school without an invitation after she’s turned in the wake of turning off her humanity switch. Additionally, it’s explicitly stated in Legacies that a vampire must be verbally invited in for it to work. This contradicts a moment in The Vampire Diaries when Bonnie invites Stefan inside merely by nodding. Though this is a smaller detail and could easily be overlooked, it shows the rift between Legacies and The Vampire Diaries.

5 The Siphoners Powers & Twin Merge

Lizzie and Josie have the difficult job of shouldering the Gemini twin burden.

At the start of Legacies, Lizzie and Josie are introduced as Alaric’s children, who are biologically Jo’s but were carried by Caroline in The Vampire Diaries. How a vampire can carry children is one of the many problems with the original series, but things grow even more complicated when Lizzie and Josie grow up. As members of the Gemini Coven, the sisters know that they have to perform The Merge as part of the coven’s traditions. However, The Merge determines who will become the coven’s leader, meaning one of them will die in the process.

Though Lizzie and Josie are close, this fact makes things very difficult for them and their relationship, and they were born siphoners. While they can’t generate their own magic, they can draw it from other sources and even retain this ability if they’re turned into vampires. The problems of siphoning and merging are huge issues in The Vampire Diaries. Conversely, they’re easily resolved with little drama in Legacies. They avoid The Merge when Lizzie becomes a vampire, and siphoning is characterized by something easy and painless. This diverges from how both were characterized before.

4 The Dark Magic Split Personality

Tapping into dark magic does something entirely different in Legacies.

It’s obvious that Julie Plec, an executive producer and co-creator of The Vampire Diaries, is interested in other supernatural teen dramas. Buffy The Vampire Slayer likely influenced the dark magic plotline that alters Josie’s personality, making her Dark Josie. This can easily be compared to the Dark Willow plotline in Buffy The Vampire Slayer season 6, but it doesn’t align with what The Vampire Diaries had done in the past. Bonnie, one of the best witches in The Vampire Diaries, has a few forays into using dark magic but doesn’t change who she is.

Dark magic physically and emotionally affects Bonnie, but she’s still herself and doesn’t have a wild personality shift. Conversely, Josie becomes someone entirely different when she uses dark magic, even though it’s initially for the greater good. Josie transforms into an antagonist and behaves similarly to how vampires do when they turn off their humanity switch. While Josie is a siphoner and all witches are different, it doesn’t make sense that the impact of dark magic would be so incongruent with the past.

3 Ben’s Backstory

The demigod who made everything more difficult.

Ben’s history as a demigod and the so-called Prometheus of magic made him one of the most contradictory characters from Legacies. His backstory is a clear adaptation of the myth of Prometheus, but he brings magic to humans instead of fire, and his actions spur the development of all supernatural beings and monsters. Based on what audiences know about magic and vampires from the earlier shows, this wouldn’t be possible. Additionally, Ben’s motivations are unclear throughout his arc, making it difficult to follow these changes.

It’s Ben’s story in particular that stands out as the most anachronistic when it comes to already established storylines from The Vampire Diaries. It’s frustrating that Legacies‘ final season was the one to change the history of magic’s origins after so much of Hope and other witches’ identities are tied to how magic came into existence. Instead of magic being a part of Earth and witches having the power to tap into it, it was one man who made it available to humans, who then misused it.

2 The Humans In Mystic Falls Forgot Alaric’s Many Deaths

Legacies finally brought his constant cycle of deaths and resurrections to a close.

Alaric Saltzman dies a lot in The Vampire Diaries and Legacies, but the consistency of canon and continuity when it comes to what people remember about his past is murky. It’s in The Vampire Diaries season 3 that Alaric dies the most, and eventually loses his body and is a ghost for most of season 4. Though The Vampire Diaries frames magic and vampirism as an open secret in Mystic Falls, the fact that no one in the town seems to remember Alaric’s past in Legacies is confusing. He was a high school teacher in Mystic Falls for years and was a staple of local events.

Tragically, Alaric finally succumbs to death for good in Legacies season 4, but it seems that this is always where his character is going to end up. The inconsistencies in his deaths and people’s knowledge of them aren’t the only parts of Alaric’s character that don’t always make the most sense. In Legacies, he makes many of the same mistakes with Hope and his daughters that he did with Elena and Jeremy when he was partially raising him, and Alaric should’ve learned from some of these past missteps.

1 Hope’s Missing Relatives

The Mikaelsons loved Hope. They wouldn’t leave her at boarding school and never return.

As the daughter of some of the most powerful beings on Earth, Hope Mikaelson always has oversized abilities and strength. However, she got this way through great cost and personal loss. The many deaths within her family have a profound impact on Hope, and this influences how she interacts with the people who try to get close to her in Legacies. After Hope arrives at the Salvatore School, she’s very lonely and sees Alaric as a surrogate father. However, it doesn’t make sense that the other Mikaelsons wouldn’t come to see her.

Of course, this is likely because many actors from The Originals and The Vampire Diaries had no interest in renewing their contracts with the franchise or were booked on other projects. Despite these tangible reasons why Hope doesn’t see her surviving family often, it still feels like a plot hole and a missed opportunity to further explore Hope as a character. For much of the series, Hope feels defined by her family’s legacy, even though the audience rarely sees them.

Legacies

Legacies is a Supernatural Fantasy Drama created by Julie Plec and starring Danielle Rose Russell, Jenny Boyd, Kaylee Bryant, and Aria Shahghasemi. The series if a spin-off of the show The Originals. The premise revolves around Hope Mikaelson, a character deeply rooted in the world of vampires, witches, and werewolves, as she attempts to integrate into life and the many struggles that come with it.

 

Cast

Peyton Alex Smith , Jenny Boyd , Ben Levin , Aria Shahghasemi , Danielle Rose Russell , Leo Howard , Quincy Fouse , Chris Lee , Matthew Davis , Kaylee Bryant

Release Date

October 25, 2018

Seasons

4

Showrunner

Julie Plec

Prequel

The Vampire Diaries, The Originals

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