While many fans are happy to see Legacies season 4 becoming more like The Vampire Diaries, few viewers will be glad to find the tired trope of body-swapping return to the franchise. Since its debut in 2018, Legacies has been something of an anomaly in The Vampire Diaries universe. Unlike its franchise predecessors The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, Legacies doesn’t take itself very seriously and features a streak of campy humor missing from both earlier shows.
Some fans of the franchise found this frustrating, feeling it was harder to invest in the lives (and many, many temporary deaths) of the students at the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted since their stories were often silly and lacked stakes. However, while Legacies season 2 and 3 may not have been all that tense, the spinoff did not lack invention. From Krampus to Golems, Legacies introduced a slew of new supernatural beings to the franchise and had a new monster for the cast to face almost every week.
However, this approach led to a lighter show and many fans of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals were glad to see Legacies season 4 take on a darker, more self-serious tone in its early episodes. Turning series heroine Hope Mikaelson into a cold-blooded villain was a solid start, and the decision to kill off both Landon and Alaric (even temporarily) brought back the tragic side of The Vampire Diaries. However, not everything that the spinoff has taken from its predecessor has been as welcome as seeing Legacies bring back The Vampire Diaries’ most brutal punishment. The sight of Aurora appearing on the show was a welcome one for most fans, but seeing her swap bodies with Hope was a reminder that some of The Vampire Diaries’ hoarier cliches had no place in Legacies season 4.
The body swap plot was one that The Vampire Diaries overused and one that Legacies does not need to bring back, particularly when it was already a familiar genre convention before the original series got its hand on the trope. Klaus possessed both Alaric and Tyler, Elena was possessed by Katerina, and now Hope has been possessed by Aurora and left in her body while The Vampire Diaries character acts like her. Although this twist did technically see Legacies season 4 stop Tribrid Hope, it was about the most frustrating route the spinoff could take to this destination and will likely lead to tiresome body-swap plot machinations as the series dwells on the switch-up.
Legacies season 4 made an admirable commitment to keeping Hope villainous for longer than many fans anticipated, and the show has proven that the heroine can be a more complex character as a result. Seeing Tribrid Hope terrorize the cast with her humanity turned off was a surprise that elevated the action of Legacies season 4, so trapping this newly dynamic character in someone else’s body was the last thing the plot needed. When Legacies' Dark Josie, Lizzie, and the Super Squad’s separate interventions all failed to take down the Tribrid, bringing back an old plot device from an earlier series seems like the weakest way out of a tricky plot for the spinoff. Hopefully, Legacies season 4 will find a way to make body swap plots fresh, but for now, this Vampire Diaries borrow is one that will please few viewers.
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