S03.E15: A New Hope

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Quote

Stuck in a hallucination, Hope, Josie, and Lizzie are forced to find their way out of a sci-fi nightmare. Elsewhere, Alaric sends MG, Kaleb, and Jed on a team building mission.

Promo:

Original air date: 6/17/21

[memememe76]

Kaleb, MG and Jed are adorable together. 

[ybrik]

Wow this episode really makes you see what the show could be but also annoys you for what it settles for. I like Cleo and Landon but totally honest if the show focused on these six along with adult characters like Ric and Dorian, I would be completely okay with that. 

Kaleb, MG and Jed were great in their limited scenes but they set right their friendships which was needed moving forward. So did we finally get a last name for Jed? 

The Emma/Ric scenes were good which they usually are. It is a shame they let the actress get signed with another show and not had her already signed on as a regular. she works well as someone who Ric can use as a sounding board but also does question his decisions. We need more of that. We need more of Ric’s thoughts/motivations in his actions as a lot of it is perceived by what is shown and by other characters.  

Loved the girls scenes. Really nice to have them dwell on their past and why they acted towards each other like they did. Did feel kind of stupid I didn’t put it together that Lizzie would have Hope as the villain even after hearing the villain was Lord Marshall. It was always weird hearing how Hope between season’s 4 and 5 of the Originals considering it looked like at the end of season 4 she was going to enjoy living a more normal life around other kids and seemed to be making friends pretty quickly. It was sad to see how this period of time really did effect who they are now. Lizzie going through her episodes, Josie trying to take care of Lizzie and Hope isolating herself for fear of losing anyone else. I want more to be explored with them. 

Unfortunately the Clarke reveal at the end means it is time for Malivore to return along with Landon and I am afraid a lot of the same issues that really drag the show down.  

[Lady Calypso]

This episode was definitely one of the stronger ones this season. Not just because it was fun to see them do their take on a Star Wars parody, but because its focus was on character development and having favourite pairings interacting.

This season has been sorely lacking on Hope/Lizzie/Josie scenes, and on Kaleb/MG scenes, so this was a breath of fresh air to see both plots. Even Emma/Alaric was a nice C plot to have (I guess I forgot when Dorian/Emma got married? I thought they were just in a serious relationship).

MG, Kaleb and Jed teaming up to deal with the Wendigo was great because it was focused on MG and Kaleb patching things up, with Jed as fodder. I really like these three interacting.

My favourite part was the vision quest. I was surprised that it wasn't just a story that Lizzie wrote, but also one that Hope wrote when they were kids. So confirmation that Lizzie was a Star Wars fan AND a ninja fan! She's a secret nerd, I'm telling you! But not only did we get Lizzie talking about her childhood issues with Hope, we even got to focus on Lizzie's issues with her dad and how she recognized from an early age how he wasn't a great dad. Making him the enemy/betrayer in her own story at age 11 was a great way of showcasing the Alaric/Lizzie relationship.

We also got a little bit on Josie's perspective, once again betraying Lizzie's trust with revealing that she not only read her diary, but talked about it with other students (that Hope overheard).

And we got more of Hope's issues not just back then but in the current day. We get little Summer Fontana making a reprisal as Hope Mikaelson! We got The Originals references that this show has never focused on! We got Hope talking about herself and only mentioning Landon once! Hooray!

Of course, it led to Hope realizing she needs to become a tribrid to destroy Malivore, something we knew as an audience, but it was a good way to get Hope to admit that, and for Lizzie/Josie to reassure her. 

The return of Clarke. I gotta admit, I've missed Clarke but it also means the return of Malivore, which has been dragging on for three seasons and I'm so ready to move on from anything Malivore related so let's just get this Big Battle over with.

[tennisgurl]

Further confirmation that Lizzie is and always has been a huge nerd, complete with writing her own self insert Star wars fanfic as a kid, which also included space ninjas! That was probably the best episode of the season so far, both because the Star Wars parody was fun (this show usually does a good job with wacky parody episodes) but also because we had a lot of really good character interactions and growth. Josie/Hope/Lizzie are one of my favorite groupings on the show, they have so much complicated history that we really got to see play out over the course of the episode, I really like that they decided to focus on a lot of their older issues instead of the things that we have seen recently. It was nice to get a lot of references to the events of The Originals, although I watched that whole show in one long binge so the details of everything that went down are a bit of a blur, and to explore more of how the relationship between the three girls started and how far they came. It had a lot of good insights into Lizzie and her state of mind when she was a kid, especially making her dad be a villain who betrays her and her sidekick/sister to Hope, the real villain of the story, because she resented Alaric for spending so much time with Hope and Hope for taking up so much of their dads time. Ouch, I don't know what's worse, that Lizzie saw her dad as a bad guy who cant be trusted, or that she imagined him with that terrible facial hair? We also got more insight into young Hope and her issues, and again, I really like them focusing on her older traumas and not her recent relationship woes and how hard things were for her growing up. You can certainly imagine how her trauma and loneliness could read as unfriendly to other kids and that just made it worse. We also got a bit more insight into Josie and Lizzie, although less so then Hope and Lizzie, with her reading the diary to "help" Lizzie but also apparently sharing it with all of the other kids as she has often struggled with both dedicating her whole self to helping Lizzie while also resenting that her sister always has to be the center of attention, wanting to knock her down a peg, while Lizzie writes Josie as her robotic servant, which is a dynamic that they have very much explored over the show and how Lizzie often took her sister for granted. There really are a lot of complicated dynamics at play and it was great that they dedicated so much time to them, while also being a fun science fiction parody with a lot of wacky hijinks. "I was eleven!" 

Unlike last week, when I thought the main plot was good but the subplots were weak, I thought the subplots complimented the main plot really well. I was happy to see MG and Kaleb back together again and hashing things out, while Jed got to add some much needed comic relief. I also thought the return of Emma was nice, she and Alaric always had good chemistry and its sad that the show never really knew what to do with her and then wrote her off. All three plots went well as stories about people dealing with unevolved issues between friends. 

Not super surprising that Hope now has to become a tribrid, or that Clarke has returned, but they both seem like promising developments. Hope becoming full tribrid always seemed like it was going to have to happen and they have had Clarke making cameos for awhile now so of course he comes back. I like Clarke as a villain, but hopefully it wont mean too much more Malivore, we have had WAY too much Malivore already. 

It really shows admirable restraint by the show that they held out this long to use the "A New Hope" title. 

[Terrafamilia]

"Lord Marshall" - Chronicles of Riddick.

The Chewbacca replacement - Abe Sapien from Hellboy.

I was pretty sure Clark was the one who would be called back via the big ritual. Too many flashbacks with him to not be showing up in the present.

[foxfreakinmulder]

On 6/18/2021 at 10:02 AM, Lady Calypso said:

The return of Clarke. I gotta admit, I've missed Clarke but it also means the return of Malivore, which has been dragging on for three seasons and I'm so ready to move on from anything Malivore related so let's just get this Big Battle over with.

Amen to that! Move on show.

Fun spoof of Star Wars.

That was a nice surprise to see young Hope from the Originals.

You can tell Matthew Davis is having fun this season.

It was nice to see Ethan again.

I really enjoyed MG, Kaleb and Jed's adventure.

Jenny/Lizzie is very pretty but those eyebrows are so distracting.

I don't remember Dorian getting married.

Alaric needs more adults conversations, I hope Dorian and Emma go back to the Salvatore school.

Yay, no Finch.

For the last time, I was ELEVEN!

 

 

 

[Chris24601]

Everyone else has touched on a lot of the interesting character development elements, but one I haven’t seen touched on yet is the story young Hope wrote and how she sees herself by way of her self-insert. She gathers up junk and fixes it. Josie isn’t a “service model” she’s a protector. She reminds Lizzie she’s the princess. Alaric has a change of heart and turns up to help the girls.

She wants a happy ending where they’re all friends and the defeat of the Hollow means she gets her whole family back. Older Hope knows how that turns out, but the core is still there; Hope faces the monsters because she wants to fix things and if she can’t have a happy ending, then she’ll at least make sure everyone else can... which is why she’s the hero of the story (and of the story).

Color me as one though who hopes she’s wrong about the “must activate her vampire side.” Because the show has also done a pretty good job of establishing that it’s NOT something Hope actually wants, it’s something she’s convinced herself is her duty.

Narratively speaking, willing to sacrifice is good, but 9 times out of 10 what the hero thinks they have to do is actually wrong, they realize that at the last possible moment and course correct to save the day.

So I think Hope is misreading the vision quest; because in it she DID defeat Malivore without activating her vampire side. I think the actual trick is right there in why young Hope wrote the story in the first place; to be friends with Lizzie and Josie... because at the end of the day, Malevore isn’t a natural creature; he’s an entity created by magic and we’ve already seen how big a spell a Siphon can drain down to nothing from their uncle Kai in TVD.

[ybrik]

Watched the episode again and seen other people’s thoughts online about the episode and few more thoughts have come to mind. 

They seem to be making it to whether this is really going to be the beginning of Tribrid Hope to destroy Malivore or there really is some twist that will defeat Malivore. However, it also feels ridiculous to keep talking about destroying Malivore if it isn’t going to happen and the show is just going to keep dragging it along on the as the big bad. 

I swear they keep making me think Ric’s death is eminent with all these little heartfelt conversation he has with characters. 

Feel bad for Josie in this episode because we get these really deep insights into Hope and Lizzie during their childhood through the story but Josie doesn’t really have her own part of the story. Instead we find out that she read Lizzie’s diary and told some of the other witches about Lizzie’s fan fiction writing. Which while isn’t great, isn’t as bad as people seem to make it. As Lizzie keep mentioning they were eleven. I can imagine Josie being hurt reading that Lizzie thought of her as basically her servant so her wanting to get back at Lizzie isn’t that surprising. Relationships between siblings are complicated. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Hippie space Alaric was hilarious!

I love that this show always manages to surprise me with silly unexpected moments like Jed sneaking his way into the MG/Kaleb bro hug.

I liked that the Star Wars vision quest was used to help Hope, Lizzie, and Josie really confront each other about their pasts and the way they treated each other. Of course 11 year old kids don't have the emotional maturity to process everything that's happening, especially abandonment issues and deep seated trauma, but when you continue to bury it for years, you end up with all kinds of unintentional resentments and behavioral patterns so it was nice to see all three of them address their shared past and realize that none of them truly realized how much pain the others were in.

I found it both good and bad that Hope has finally resigned herself to becoming a Tribrid in order to defeat Malivore. I really appreciated that Lizzie and Josie both told her that she didn't have to and that they would help her. It reminded me of one of the ongoing themes of Buffy - that she was a stronger slayer because she wasn't alone and she had friends who helped her, which is what helped her stay alive longer than many past slayers.

This episode was a good reminder of how much better the show is when they focus on the friendships between the characters instead of the romantic entanglements. I loved that Kaleb knew he wasn't dealing with the real MG because he never would have left Jed behind.

On a shallow note, I loved that they brought back little Hope from The Originals.

On 6/18/2021 at 10:02 AM, Lady Calypso said:

So confirmation that Lizzie was a Star Wars fan AND a ninja fan!

And Lord of the Rings! Gandalf4eva!

Edited June 20, 2021 by ElectricBoogaloo

[Chris24601]

9 hours ago, ybrik said:

They seem to be making it to whether this is really going to be the beginning of Tribrid Hope to destroy Malivore or there really is some twist that will defeat Malivore. However, it also feels ridiculous to keep talking about destroying Malivore if it isn’t going to happen and the show is just going to keep dragging it along on the as the big bad.

My hunch is “Twist” because “Hope becomes a full Tribrid if she’s ever killed, but it’s NOT something she actually wants” is just a far better tool for adding tension than “Welp, she’s an immortal Tribrid now... wonder what will finally have her hit the inevitable Humanity switch and make her a bad guy for a while and have to go back to protagonist-centric morality.”

It basically puts a limit on Hope where instead of her potentially dying being no big deal because it’s just a power up; it’s something she wants to avoid, something you can threaten her with and something she can risk in order to demonstrate her heroism.

And it makes sense; her father’s spirit can’t find peace until she does... something an immortal bloodthirsty Tribrid who will never have children of her own might need eternity to find vs. say dying in your bed at a ripe old age of natural causes while surrounded by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Basically, this episode actually reinforced that Hope’s happy ending is Family and becoming the full Tribrid, while for a noble cause basically takes away her happy ending when even her Aunt Rebeka who’s lived a thousand years thinks it’s better to become mortal and live out a single human lifetime.

So, given the general trend of this show towards the protagonists being ACTUALLY heroic, my hunch is “twist” where Hope will be prepared to fully activate her Tribrid nature, but something will stop that at the last moment and provide an alternate means of pulling off the same end.