Chris24601

Point of clarification; They're STARTING Jon in a different direction. As I've said before drama is all about reversals and D&D are damned near clockwork on having characters move from one pole to the other over the season. If Jon is starting on a bit of the outs with his family and the North while on good terms with Dany, make no mistake, the point of the season will be Jon learning to rely on his family and breaking with Dany (he may have Targ blood, but he's a Northerner in head and heart... he's not going to marry his already horrifically inbred aunt.* Even if he can never prove it to anyone else, that ship was sunk by Sam's reveal and even the music in the parentage reveal scene agreed; it was the Jon/Dany romance theme except in an entirely minor chord vs. the major chords used previously). The Army of the Dead isn't enough to carry the whole season either. They're entirely one-note. You fight them to the death, flee or you die. There's no negotiation and therefore no drama beyond what the human characters bring to it. That means the reverse of Jon and Dany will end up being the actual drama of the season... the Night King is just the pressure being applied to force action. Jon's arc is to learn to trust his family and with their help overcome the threats to them; both Ice AND Fire. * Seriously, people give Joffrey grief and he's just one generation of inbreeding. Dany is the result of multiple generations of it. Her family tree (family ladder more accurately) is so messed up that not only is she Jon's aunt, she's also his first cousin once removed AND his second cousin once removed. Genetically, they're about on par with full siblings (44% shared DNA).

Indeed. If she cared to spare his feelings and wanted to tell a version of the truth Dany could have said “They faced me on the field of battle and they died.” Technically true, but in Westerosi culture there seems a huge difference between dying in battle and being executed. On the battlefield it’s normally kill or be killed and father and son fought together on the losing side, their dying is tragic, but not a deliberate targeting of them; anyone on the opposing side might have killed them lest they be killed by them. It feels more “fair” in a strange way. Execution though is deliberate and ordered by the person in charge against someone at their mercy. And I think that is actually the point. The Starks have all executed people too. Ned did, Robb did, Jon did, Sansa did, Arya did. But they weren’t executed simply for being on the losing side. Ned executed a Night Watch deserter who knew the punishment for doing so. Robb executed Lord Karstark for murdering two boys, Jon executed Slynt for refusing, not once, but repeatedly, the lawful commands of the elected Lord Commander, despite knowing the consequences for it (he also previously fled from battle and hid in a cellar when the Wildlings attacked). He also executed members of a conspiracy for the attempted (technically successful but for magic) murder of the Lord Commander. Sansa executed Ramsey for the sadistic murders of many people, including her brother. Arya and Sansa executed Littlefinger for multiple crimes including the murder of Jon and Lysa Arryn. But Ned was executed for false crimes (and going back on the deal made to spare his family where he’d take the Black). Stannis burned alive those who would not convert to the Lord of Light or kneel. He was willing to let Mel sacrifice his nephew to bring him victory. He let her burn his daughter at the stake for the promise of victory. Dany crucified Lords at random without knowing or caring for their specific guilt (collective punishment is by definition unjust). She later threw a man to her dragons to burned and eaten alive and even stated afterwards she didn’t know if he was innocent or guilty... all she cared about was scaring the rest of them into line. She burned her prisoners the Tarley’s alive because they wouldn’t kneel to her in order to terrify the rest of the prisoners into kneeling. And that I think is the critical thing... the motive of every Stark execution is to punish a crime and the one killed is the one who actually committed the crime. Dany executes people to sow terror in her enemies without any sense of fairness. There were plenty of other men who were refusing to kneel, but Dany singled out Lord Tarley knowing his shocking death would scare the rest into line. She threw a man whose guilt she wasn’t certain of to her dragons for the message it would send to the rest. She crucified random Masters for the message it would send the rest. That’s not justice. That’s tyranny and terror. She’s not just more of the same... she’s more of the worst of the lot. Even the actors think Dany is supposed to be seen as a psychopath at this point. https://www.thewrap.com/game-of-thrones-sam-daenerys-pscyhopathic-jon-aegon-season-8-premiere/

This is my take. This episode was Dany and Jon/Dany’s apex... it’s all downhill from here. My reasoning for that is that drama runs on reverses and this show runs its reverses almost like clockwork. Take Jon for example, at first he's an outsider at home and so he goes and joins the Nights Watch. Over the course of the season he goes from hating it and not getting along with the other recruits to finding fellowship with his brothers when they stand together to remind him of his vows and together they range North to find Jon's missing uncle. So the reversal is that he goes from outsider to brother and from arriving at the Wall to leaving the Wall. In season two the reversal is that he goes from Brother in the Night's Watch and by the end he's killed one of his own brothers and is entering the Wildling camp under cover. In season three he goes from convincing the Wildling's he one of them and ends it escaping back to the Nights Watch with news of the invasion. In season four he goes from distrusted outsider who broke all the rules and whose warnings are doubted by those in charge and by the end of the season he's proven himself the true leader of the Nights Watch. In season five he goes from beloved Lord Commander of his men to a dangerous traitor that some of them murder "for the good of the Watch." In season six he goes from a man traumatized by his own murder and not wanting to lead anyone to re-embracing life and becoming King in the North. In season seven he goes from King in the North home in Winterfell to being pulled away and falling for and bending the knee to Dany. So this season began with Jon and Dany side-by-side and as happy as one could expect given the circumstances and Jon on a bit of the outs with his family and the North. Dany is also at the peak of her power while the North doesn’t even know what to call Jon right now. The logical reversal will be Jon reconnects to his family while falling out with Dany possibily to the point of being on opposing sides. Maybe he just parleys his true parentage and claim to Throne to regain the North’s independence. Maybe a Faceless Girl, the Three Eyed Raven (who may or may not be strong enough to warg a dragon) and a competent manager will prove decisive in actually beating her. I don’t know the specifics, I just know the reversals are coming because they’ve already started. They showed us Jon and Dany at peak happiness on dragonback together right before gut-punching Jon with his true parentage and dropping anvils about whether she’d be willing to give up her claim to the throne. It only gets worse for them from here because that’s how narrative structure goes.

Except the show set up pretty well as early as Hope remembering events that everyone else forgot that she was the loophole Nature put in place to destroy Malivore. That's why she was also immune to the bullets and that immunity critical in the plot to her own realization that she was the loophole created to destroy Malivore. Per the established rules NOTHING is immortal. There is always a loophole; always something that can kill them. Its been that way since the Originals first turned up in TVD. Their weakness was the White Oak Stake. Sylas had "The Cure." When Esther turned Alaric into an upgraded Original, she bound the magic to Elena's life. The people that could have originally destroyed Malivore were all killed, but Malivore got reduced to a puddle so nature basically let it sit. But then Malivore created Landon as a means of returning and that's when nature said "NOPE!" and Hope, the combination of the three things needed to undo Malivore, was conceived and born shortly thereafter. And to be fair on the blood healing thing; Hope's fast healing (which exceeds even a typical werewolf's) is actually because she's perpetually got vampire blood in her system (which goes all the way back to season one of the Originals when having Hope's blood in her system allowed Haley to heal quickly while pregnant and to transition into a hybrid after she got killed right after giving birth) and it was Klaus' mix of vampire blood while also being a werewolf that allowed his blood to be used as an antitoxin, just as it was also required to make a vampire/werewolf hybrid. Hope's blood has always had the hybrid creation ability, so it makes sense by extension that she'd also have the ability to cure normal werewolf bites with it. One reason I expect that the school relies more on Hope's blood than siphoning is because Hope's blood can be stored and is easily transportable. What happens when a vamp gets bitten by a werewolf and Josie and Lizzie are on holiday with their mom in Europe or Asia? Hope doesn't even have to be in the school at the time for them to use her blood. The other reason is that they established that there's at least some skill involved in selective siphoning. Caroline almost died carrying the twins because they were siphoning her vampirism to the point of draining it completely. In other words, it takes skill to siphon off just the werewolf toxin and not the vampirism and Josie and Lizzie are 15-ish, not 150-ish like the Heretics were. Finally, the primary reasons Hope doesn't qualify as a Mary Sue is because A) she's not a fan insert character (which is the number one requirement) and B) all her actual abilities, relationships, etc. were developed over the course of The Originals while the audience watched. You can say she's overpowered, but that's not the same as a Mary Sue. Also, so what if she is overpowered? Marcel gets to be a super Original+ vampire and no one bats an eye. Same with Klaus becoming a hybrid. Crossing the streams a bit, but Luke Skywalker in the old novels was basically a Force God who pulls Star Destroyers out the sky and no one complained... Rey uses standard level Jedi abilities without much training (the novelization claims she basically downloaded the skills from Kylo during their mind meld) and she's too OP. Also, overpowered is relative. Is she overpowered compared to vampires, werewolves and witches? Sure. Is she overpowered compared to dragons? mummies? spider-demon thingies? headless horsemen? Malivore? Not so much. How about whatever new monsters she finds in Malivore's belly or escape when she does?

To be fair; Malivore wouldn’t be the end of the world. He was an immediate threat to Landon (i.e. Malivore’s intended meatsuit) and to non-witch/wolf/vamp supernaturals (i.e. Malivore’s food source), but only proximate to the Salvitore School (Triad was trying to evolve the pit to eat Vamps, Wolves and Witches, but he couldn’t do it currently and arguably wouldn’t gain that ability if free of Triad’s experiments) and only indirectly to mundanes (i.e. those he planned to breed with to create a species... maybe they eventually supplant humans, but that would take many many generations). My sense is Hope was primarily sacrificing herself for Landon’s sake and because she’s been thinking of herself as a cosmic mistake for so long that a situation that gave her existence a purpose and meaning was an easy one for her to latch on to. Especially since throwing herself into Malivore wrapped everything up with a neat bow; none of her friends or family would have to grieve for her and she could go be with her mother in the afterlife and let her father be at peace. Of course I’m almost certain Hope was dead wrong precisely because it was so clean and “easy.” At most this is just her at the “Crossing the First Threshold” stage of the hero’s journey (i.e. the division between the normal world and the special world). Heck, the finale setup is even complete with the threshold guardian (i.e. Malivore) and the helper figure past the threshold (i.e. Clarke). If they keep to that formula, Hope will next find some type of Mentor figure in Malivore who will provide the information needed to prep her for a series of temptations and tests that she will fail because she didn’t heed or understand the mentor’s advice. This culminates with a huge revelation* at their lowest point and a metaphysical death and rebirth. Armed with the new knowledge they undergo a new series of challenges (which they overcome now) that returns them to normal world armed with their new understanding that allows them to change the world in some way. While you could potentially spread that across an entire season, my hunch is we’ll get one episode where we see the Hope-less world that ends with establishing Hope’s starting point wherever she ended up and then a second really Hope-centric episode that ends with her return, but also sets up whatever complications come with that (ex. a bunch of Malivore monsters escape, Malivore returns too in Clarke’s body, or returning doesn’t restore anyone’s memories of Hope; mix-and-match as appropriate). Given the first season, I’d expect monsters to be released as a given (since MotW seems to be their default and Malivore setting them loose would no longer be an option), Malivore returns as likely and people still not remembering Hope to be temporary at best (i.e. good for an episode’s drama, but too much is undercut if they never remember and have to start all her relationships from scratch).

I think a big part of the greater appeal is that we’re dealing with actual protagonists and not villain protagonists. All the kids are actually kids, not hundreds of years old with monstrous acts in their histories. They are struggling with control over themselves and the very first episode helped establish that the school is there to teach them how to not become monsters and that they don’t take in those who are already well down that road (hence the question about who Raf killed). TVD started out with that premise; Elena, Bonnie, Caroline, Matt, etc. were kids, Stephan was the saint and Damon the devil. Then they went and really darkened up Stephan and tried to make Damon more sympathetic (and only tried because it’s really hard to sympathize with someone who’s answer to personal setbacks is indiscriminate murder). The Originals didn’t even try, the leads were villain protagonists from the start and the premise was that Hope was a chance at redemption, but other than love for his daughter (and to a lesser extent the rest of his family), Klaus was a monster to the end and dragged a lot of people down with him. Legacies isn’t taking that road. They’re acknowledging that the previous shows didn’t feature saints; Stephan is explicitly called out by Ric as the person who murdered his family. Klaus was a bad guy. The school takes a hard line on their student vamps even non-lethally feeding on humans. Then, despite their screw-ups, the kids got to be genuine heroes in the end; Hope going so far as to sacrifice herself to “save the world.” It’s always more fun to watch a show where the people you’re rooting for aren’t just the designated so-called heroes, but are genuinely good (or conflicted) people struggling to figure out and then do the right thing.

Gotta say, it’s nice to see that they actually appear to have a plan for going into Season Two. My hunch is that Raf will be an element of Hope’s life they forgot to remove and/or his being a wolf at the time let him keep memories of Hope. Meanwhile I’m all but certain the twins finding Kai’s Ascendent in the finale also tells us where Hope has gone (with a snarky villain as her only companion no less) and how she’ll return. I’m 99% sure Malivore will turn out to be just the portal to an extradimensional prison realm (the Gemini Coven had to learn the means of creating them from somewhere) and all Hope blew up was the portal itself. So now she and Clarke will find themselves stuck in said dimension along with a whole load of monsters the world has forgotten about and be forced to cooperate to survive until Raf and the twins realize there’s a Hope-shaped hole in the world and get her out (and I would be shocked if a number of monsters didn’t come with her). We also have some potential for drama if, in coming back, people don’t automatically re-remember Hope. Say it’s only Raf who remembers and convinces the twins to get Hope out. Hope then tries to start again with Landon, but because the timing is different now, she fails to connect like they did before... There’s your instant love triangle where Raf loves and remembers Hope, but Hope loves Landon and remembers their old relationship, but he doesn’t remember her and has since developed feelings for say, Lizzie because she and Josie helped Raf become human again. There’s also the potential for a larger time jump than I’d expect too (say an entire year) and that could bring with it changed dynamics. Imagine if, due to the Hope-shaped hole, Hope came back to find that Landon is Alaric’s sidekick/favorite (not being able to die definitely makes it safer to take him into risky situations). Then there’s our Gorgon girl and the potential for other monsters to find a place at the school now that Malivore is off the table (sidebar: the Triad guys on the school raid are the lucky ones... per Landon everyone at the Malivore facility is dead). In short, there’s a lot of stuff set up here that could go a lot of directions for next season, but I’m pretty sure Act I will be Hope’s adventures in Malivore while everyone else realizes something’s wrong (ex. where did the werewolf bite curing blood they have come from? Surely not being able to remember where you get it from if it runs low would set off some type alarm bells that your memories have been messed with).

Which also probably explains why Hope is the only one unaffected by Malivore. She’s literally all three in one. This probably also makes her the only person who can permanently destroy it. There’s always a loophole and since it was created by a witch (I’ll wager an ancestor of Hope and Freya), a vampire (probably one of Klaus’ bloodline) and a werewolf (probably Crescent Moon pack) I’d say there’s good odds the Tribrid of all three is the loophole (possibly even the reason nature allowed her to be born despite not being entirely possible in the first place since she’s slightly younger than Landon and Landon was created specifically to release Malivore). Honestly, the “easiest” solution is for one (maybe both) of them to become a vampire/syphon hybrid like the heretics were. If one of the twins is technically dead there can’t be a merge. That’s probably the last resort though.

Almost like he’s a... wait for it... Featherweight? (Ba dum bum) As for #noshame... if having wardrobe malfunctions when wolfing out is just the price Hope has to pay for being the Tribrid/most powerful supernatural in the world... well, that’s something I am perfectly okay with.

So, I have a new theory I thought I’d float. I think Callum is going to prove more adept with Sky than even the sky elves. My point of reference on this theory are a combination of Rayla’s initial description of how primal magic works without a primal stone, how we saw Aaravos working magic from all the Sources, and Callum’s description of how he understands the Sky arcanum. First is Rayla’s statement, which I take to be the elves’ default understanding of primal magic. She stated that, without a primal stone, you need to have the element around to actually work primal magic and how much you can work is in proportion to how much it’s around. She references that to do Sky magic you’d need an actual storm or at least strong winds to do anything. Second is Aaravos using primal magic through Viran, which reflects the understanding of perhaps the most powerful mage in history. While no explanation is given by him for how he can do it, Aaravos summons up magic from the Sun (fire), Sky (freezing someone solid, lightning) and Earth (turning someone to stone and shattering them)... in a dark enclosed room. How could Aaravos do this? By the basic understanding of primal magic, Aaravos would have needed both sunlight/a large fire and a thunderstorm (in addition to Earth) to pull off those effects. The answer I think comes in Callum’s connection to the Sky Arcanum. While most elves only think of their connection in terms of their own inner spark (thus localizating their connection to the Arcanum), Callum was forced to think bigger. He came to understand that the whole world is a great primal stone and he and everyone lives inside it. That’s why Callum didn’t actually need a stiff breeze either time he used “Aspiro”; because he’s connected to a primal stone that has every bit of weather in the entire world inside it. That’s why Aaravos didn’t need sun or storm in his actual location either... because the whole world is his primal stone. That’s why Callum will prove to be stronger with Sky than even most sky elves... he’s muddled his way through to a piece of understanding that is really only the province of archmages like Aaravos.

So, apparently some people have actually gone and done the work of translating the texts Viren tried to look at about Aaravos and, in a case of genuine Easter Eggs, were actually real stories/poems about Aaravos in other languages. The first was in Danish and translates to... "Aaravos - Finally he told me his name. I had never heard a name like his, but I also had never imagined an elf like him. He is stronger, older and wiser than any other magical being in Xadia. Nonetheless he is a friend for all humans. Where others look down on us, calls us inferior, he sees great potential in us. When we accept the gifts Aaravos has promised us, they will pay for their condescension, they will be forced to see us as equals. When we are equals, we will take our fate in our own hands and build our future. I see it before me in my dreams." The “gifts” of Aaravos to make men equal to the elves strongly suggests he is the one who created Dark Magic and gave it to men. He apparently claims to want to elevate the humans, but Dark Magic is predicated on killing others magical beings so it’s kinda hard to take him at his word there. It feels a lot more like he wanted a war between Men and Elves or to use the potential of Men to make them his army against the rest of Xadia. If so, he’s almost certainly the Big Bad. The interesting thing to me is that because he’s the master of all six primal sources + dark magic, Aaravos almost feels like an evil Avatar. The reason I find that interesting is because it helps better define the likely ending. With an extremely powerful and sigular master-of-all as a villain who started the war and the intitial setup being young people from opposing sides putting aside their differences to end the war I don’t think “Callum masters all schools of magic” is as likely as “Callum, Ezran and Rayla unite humans and elves embodying each of the primal sources who are together more than the sum of their parts.”

Tyler absolutely got a raw deal. Not only did Landon get to keep his pants, shoes and shirt, but Raf was found fully clothed after transforming into a wolf and shifting back in a fugue state. Hope needs to learn that power. To date she’s the only werewolf on the show to have been shown needing to grab someone else’s jacket because she shifted back without any clothes on. Also nice in the episode was Hope referencing her mother’s side of the family for a change. I know the Mikaelsons are a big deal supernaturally, but the Crescent Moon Pack as the only werewolves with voluntary shapeshifting and descendants of the witch who created the werewolf curse in the first place is nothing to sneeze at either. The fact that Hope appears to be the only werewolf in the school with voluntary shapeshifting and also has the ability to heal werewolf bites (in case a bite happens despite their precautions) establishes yet another reason why she basically gets free run of the Salvatore School (along with the massive funding from the Mikaelson estate putting them on the map). Someone up thread mentioned siphoners being able to siphon werewolf toxin, but I suspect the reason they explicitly used Hope for the cure was precisely to showcase that, even though MG had killed someone she cared about and had opened up to, she still willingly saved MG’s life. That’s a good character moment making a distinction between Hope and her father since I’m pretty sure Klaus would have never been so forgiving in the same situation. It also firmly establishes Hope as having the ability to heal werewolf bites which is handy since the twins seem to only be in about half the episodes while Hope is clearly in the “must appear in every episode” category. Who knows when the writers will want to inject some drama with a werewolf bite, but need to write around the twins’ absence. Actually, other than Alaric and Hope I don’t think anyone is an “every episode” cast member. Someone’s going to need to do a count at the end of the season for the various members. If I were to guess I’d bet most everyone else is at 13 episodes a season which makes the juggling interesting (I’m still hoping for a Caroline appearance at some point too).

My read is that his resurrection isn’t tied to duration, but conditions. Specifically the Phoenix rises from the ashes at the dawn of a new day (hence him being backlit by the rising sun right after). What is very fortunate for Landon is that apparently it also resurrected his clothing along with him even though it all caught on fire. I was fully expecting him to come out buck naked and for Alaric to do a whole hand over Hope’s eyes gag when Landon stood up not realizing his clothes were gone.

Of all the options I’ve heard, something like this makes the most sense to me. Only I wouldn’t have it be a test; I’d have the Orville crew and/or Isaac “win” by presenting the Kaylon with a new variable to consider. Like Ed said in this episode, join/not join is a simple binary choice. So is kill/not kill. So what fits with the MO of the “weirdest ship in the fleet” would be for the crew to make the choice into a non-binary one; something the Kaylon’s can’t easily resolve, possibly even a version of the AI logic bomb (“everything he says is a lie.” “I’m lying to you.”). Basically, force the Kaylon to hit pause on the Eradication until they can resolve the contradictions. If they want to redeem Isaac have him be the one to develop and present this non-binary condition (with a prerequisite that resolving this issue will require extended further first-hand study... thus Isaac must remain and continue to observe). This ends the Kaylon threat for now, but leaves the potential for it to return if the issue is ever resolved. Isaac gets enough redemption by basically saving the Union from annihilation to keep serving on the Orville, but with enough tension to add drama (i.e. being a member of a species that’s probably going to genocide you as soon as it resolves the logic bomb you dropped on them). Actually, that wouldn’t be a bad “unconsidered element” to make the Kaylon pause their plans... rather in the vein of Alara giving the super advanced aliens a massive database of reality television in trade from freeing Ed and Kelly from their zoo. Reveal the absolute stagnation of the Kaylon (basically the opposite of the Borg who kept adapting) and then introduce some element of human culture that Isaac hasn’t been exposed to yet that is also a solution to some long-standing Kaylon problem they have been unable to overcome. The argument then becomes “we’re superior, but if we spare them and study them we might be able to become even more superior.” Then the Kaylons hit pause until they can figure out the benefits of keeping around the inferior but creative/innovative beings who can make them better vs. the danger they might eventually catch up enough that genociding them later might prove impossible. To fit with the theme we opened this episode on it should probably be something related to a children’s game where you can only win by thinking outside the box or by employing little kid logic (if you don’t like the game, invent new rules). Thus, Ty and Marcus end up beating not just Isaac, but the entire Kaylon invasion.

I lean towards Viren telling the truth about Sarai’s death because it tracks with the man who actually went to Harrow just before the Moonshadow elf attack willing to take Harrow’s place (at least right up til Harrow threw all of it back in his face). He was using the primal stone for spells when he could back them and essentially didn’t seem as corrupt, but rather as the guy trying to solve the problem his friend had created with his big heart and misplaced guilt for having been born a prince. Yeah, Viren is a villain, but he’s (ironically) not a cartoon villain. He’s the perfect example of the road to Hell being paved with good intentions. Everything he’s doing is what he thinks is right and he thinks he’s the hero of the story (the story where he and his mastery of dark magic saves humanity). His fatal flaw os that keeps trying to solve his problems with the same thing that’s caused all the problems in the first place because he thinks he’s being pragmatic to take the easy path when it’s clear that magic in this story follows Murphy’s Laws of Combat (“the important things are always simple, the simple things are always hard and the easy way is always mined.”). It’s like taking out loans to buy lottery tickets on the grounds that if you can just hit that jackpot you’ll be able to pay it all back and come out ahead overall even as you’re digging yourself deeper in debt with every attempt. So no, he may want the princes dead, but he’s basing that decision on the dangers of a peace-loving young king going into what he sees as an inevitable war. I took him at his word when he said he’d be equally fine with Amaya on the throne instead of him because he sees an adult who can make the hard choices he’s willing to make (Amaya was willing to be left behind to speed the return of the party who captured the Titan’s Heart back before Thunder returned... it was Harrow who overruled her). Only when she refused to take the throne and insisted that Ezran become king did Viren plot to kill the princes. * * * * As to Aanya, she did have a regent. Viren was expecting her regent to show up to the meeting and got derailed because Aanya decided she was old enough to rule in her own right without the regent. * * * * * Also, yes, I could see Soren’s recovery being temporary and require recurring sacrifices to maintain. It would definitely add weight to Claudia choosing to give up dark magic herself down the line if one of the prices would be Soren becoming a quadriplegic again (at the same time, if they go the one arcanum per character approach, I could see Soren finding a connection with the Stars (source of prophecy) as a tradeoff for returning to his crippled state.

Its been almost a week and the admins position is basically "if its available it counts as having aired" so I'm dropping the spoiler tags at this point. My guess is that it took almost nine years to kill Thunder because Thunder was basically a physical god and nothing short of dark magic was going to be able to destroy him. We already saw what a comparably minor dragon did with one swat to Soren, the Queens were taken out together with a single tail swipe and Sorai got killed by a near miss from Thunder's breath. Viren is a villain, but his threat assessment of what the Dragon Prince could do if fully grown (and what the forces of Xadia could do if provoked) is right on target. That's why the mission to return the Dragon Prince is actually so important; the way the two sides are pushing at each other and escalating it's only going to be a matter of time before we're looking at genocide against one side or the other (one could argue the 'drive all peoples of an ethnic group out of their lands' version has already been committed by the elves/dragons against the humans with the 'sins' of a comparative few humans as the justification for why it was right to take away the lands of all of them). So my guess is that it took nine years for Viren to come up with a means of actually killing Thunder and took it to King Harrow who took it because he was still nursing the loss of his wife. If he wasn't one would have expected the king to remarry at some point in those nine years, if only for the stability of the line of succession (Heir and a Spare; despite being called "Prince" Callum wouldn't be in the line of succession for any real world monarchy... he's the son of the queen consort by a previous marriage and was not adopted because Harrow didn't want to impose on Callum's love for his biological father) and to provide Ezran and Callum with the stability of some type of mother figure. Basically, if not for Rayla's soft heart Kotolis would have lost both the King and his only actual heir by the end of the third episode. You don't put the kingdom in jeopardy that way unless your judgment is compromised by something like still grieving over the loss of your first wife. My suspicion is that Harrow rather blamed himself for Sarai's death... she disagreed with the course of action, but went along anyway and ended up dying to keep the mission from being in vain. In a sense, I almost think he had a death wish and, if not for the threat to Ezran and Callum, was probably more than willing to go down swinging and join his beloved wife in death as his penance for having got her killed in the first place. * * * * * Based on Ezran's age at the time of her death, I can't image Harrow and Sarai were married more than a few years, but we have no idea how long their courtship was or how long they might have known each other before that courtship began. For all we know, Harrow may have been close friends with Callum's biological father before he died and perhaps grew up in both his and Sarai's company in much the way that Callum and Ezran grew up in proximity to Soren and Claudia. * * * * * Finally, anyone else wanna take a stab at the title for book three? My guesses are either Sun (based on where Callum and Rayla left off and the Sunfire Elves on the border... perhaps with a focus on its dual aspects as both healer and destroyer) or Earth (based on it being Ezran's turn for a season more focused on him and his animal speech being a thing connected to the Earth primal source).

Though the official policy is 'once its out it doesn't need spoilers', because this is show is a single thread I'm going to give it til the end of the week for politeness sake. With a total run time of just over three and a half hours I figure its comparable to a long movie and I typically wait about a week on movie spoilers because weekends are sometimes too busy to actually get around to seeing them. If someone decides to drop spoilers before then I'll do the same for those items though since it'd be silly to keep it up once the cat is out of the bag. To the topic at hand;

Seeing young King Harrow and Viren really brings to mind the saying about “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions” and how it all started to go wrong.

Some additional spoiler-y thoughts now that I’ve slept on it;

Bingewatch for the Win. Non-spoiler-ly thoughts; You can definitely see the improvement in the animation. Experimentation is all well and good, but not every experiment is a winner and I'm glad they're willing to course correct when its clearly not working. The story was excellent and remained pretty character focused. Everyone's decisions made sense for where they were at and while it answered a number of questions from season one, I think it left us with just as many new ones going into season three. Now onto the spoiler-y bits; So, when does season three drop? I'm absolutely ready.

I think they’ve gone and done a rather clever twist with “the real story.” What does VILE believe? That Carmen is working with ACME and Chase is her partner. i.e. Carmen’s traditional backstory. Conversely, thanks to an impromptu check-in by the Chief, ACME now completely buys Chase’s theory that Carmen is the leader of VILE. i.e. Carmen’s traditional present occupation. One could almost say the show has made Carmen’s traditional set-up a case of “the elephant” where each party has part of the puzzle and so completely misinterpreted what they’re seeing.

I am always fascinated by alternate timelines and what they can do to inform the main narrative. First, even if this was Lizzie’s episode, each of the timelines also showcased why Hope is so central to the narrative (because each one was essentially a Hope-shaped hole. For example, no wonder Hope kinda gets away with so much; Her dad’s fortune and that version of a locator spell she brought along made the difference between a shell struggling along on what goodwill a mortal Damon and Elena could provide to the struggling side of the family and it being a thriving and well-funded campus. It also looks to have confirmed theories about what happens if Hope is killed (because she’s always got vampire blood in her system)... she loses her magic and becomes a hybrid. I do wonder about the specifics of how her life went without the school. Clearly there everyone in family was dead by the time Alaric found her and the Hollow wasn’t still inside her so my hunch is that after season four (when she would have gone to the school) she instead stayed with her mom in New Orleans until a variation of season five happened, Hayley died as before and the spell to get the Hollow out of her may have actually killed her (making her transition to a vamp-hybrid) and presumably there were messier ends for Freya and Rebecca as well. The second timeline is interesting because from Hope’s dialogue, Klaus (and therefore Elijah) was still very much alive and expanding the school. Providing the school for Hope was actually making Klaus a much better man than he ever became in the actual timeline (note to show: THAT is how you do a plausible redemption; have them work for things bigger than themselves for an extended and ongoing period of time). Since Hope seemed non-traumatized in an almost over-the-top way I’m guessing Hayley was probably also still alive in that timeline... which ironically would have made it the fairytale version of “The Originals” where everyone got their happy ending. The final timeline was interesting in that it showcased what a huge impact Hope had on her family and in making Klaus someone better than he was. One other thing (from the first AU) also sparked with the Gemini merge thing. Unlike time it happened on TVD, Josie and Lizzie are literally the last members of the Gemini Coven. They’re also both siphoners so the solution is obvious; one of them should die and become a vamp-witch hybrid. Maybe they both have to do it to keep it from happening, but it seems like an obvious way around the problem that “wait until 21 years, 364 days then drink some vampire blood, take a “big blue shot” and wake up a vampire whose mother is probably the best person on the planet to teach you how to deal with it” should probably be the stated “what’s planned to happen” instead of the actual twin merge.

I'm not surprised that it's the Hope show (well, Hope and Alaric show) largely because of the show's title; Raf, Landon, MG and Kaleb don't really fall under the heading of "Legacies." Which means the best hope of keeping it from being "the Hope show" is to get more focus on the other two legacies who've been off with their mother (hopefully this means that whatever lead Caroline was pursuing petered out so she'll actually be turning up in Mystic Falls at some point in the future... because putting some focus on Alaric and Caroline's weird family dynamic for a while would be a good way to draw the attention away from Hope.

Except she kinda IS the Buffy of this universe. Heck, she’s Buffy with Willow’s magic on top. She’s got evolved werewolf strength and speed (equal to a hybrid thanks to that sacred marriage pact involving her mom), heals extremely rapidly thanks to her self-generating vampire blood. The Slayer was the result of ancient magics binding a demon to a line of girls; Hope is descended from a line of the most powerful witches in history (whose firstborns are particularly potent) whose paternal grandmother CREATED vampires AND from the family line of the witch who created the werewolf curse. And I’m pretty sure the reason she’s immune to Malivore’s memory wiping is probably because her bloodline actually created the place (my money would be on Dahlia and/or Esther given the timeline of monsters starting to vanish from everyone’s memories around a thousand years ago... putting it roughly in line with the time that Esther created the Originals to protect them from the supernatural).

I agree the chemistry just isn’t there with Hope and Landon and Hope and Raph having better chemistry, but at the same time Landon’s had such a crappy life that I hope they just break up and remain friends as opposed to say, him throwing himself into Malivore to save everyone and being forgotten. I think my favorite part was “I hid the thing the monster was looking for under my pillow” simply because that probably WOULD be the last place anyone would actually look when it’s someone like Hope who’s hiding it. My other observation is that this show would probably make a LOT more sense if they’d just pushed the timeline another year or so in the future so Hope would be 18-19 and working as junior faculty (or a teaching assistant) instead of being a student. Then all her hanging out with Alaric, solving problems for the adults and being all aloof from the students would be perfectly in line with her position. Sure, she couldn’t be macking on the students, but given the absence of chemistry with Landon I don’t know that it would be much of a downgrade. Frankly, I think the Landon character would have been more interesting if he were 12-ish and Hope looked at him more like a kid brother than a love interest. As it stands, I hope the timeline is more one year per season (the final exams for the term give me hope) instead of just half a year like it was for the first six seasons or so of Vampire Diaries, because at 17 Hope is hopefully a senior now and they could drop the student pretense quicker that way.