Legacies Review: Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost (Season 4 Episode 12)

The playing field takes a turn on Legacies Season 4 Episode 12, “Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost,” as Lizzie listens to her humanity.

In an episode centered around the repetitive and monotonous limbo storyline, Lizzie reigns supreme.

Hope enacts her plans for revenge against Aurora at the expense of Lizzie’s feelings toward torture. It hurts Lizzie to her core that she has to help inflict pain because of the sire bond when she knows the reason behind Aurora’s actions.

Being an accomplice to the malicious behavior is too much for Lizzie and the humanity that she preserves. It isn’t what she signed up for, and she knows that both she and Hope are better than that.

Becoming a heretic may not have been on her list of plans, but it’s bettered Lizzie in the long run. Her eyes are open to truths she couldn’t see before and allows her to come to terms with battles she’s been fighting inside for years.

In the beginning, she believes the pain and suffering she feels would go away once she gets revenge, but now she sees that isn’t fact. Watching Hope and witnessing Aurora’s outcome makes her realize that inflicting pain on others and thinking in a destructive manner solves nothing and only makes things worse.

Lizzie also realizes that the extreme levels she was reaching to get revenge on Hope weren’t because she hated her but because she loved her. The sire bond itself should clearly indicate Lizzie’s feelings towards Hope, but I love when it’s said out loud.

Lizzie: You can only hate what you can love.

 

In fact, how many times does Lizzie have to exclaim that she loves Hope before Hope gets the hint? There have been multiple moments now where Lizzie lets her love for Hope be known, with no acknowledgment on Hope’s part. The subtle buildup between Hope and Lizzie’s dynamic/relationship to where they are now is what makes Lizzie’s realization moment so bittersweet.

The consistent character progression that she’s had within the past two seasons has been marvelous to watch. At the beginning of the series, Lizzie is seen as the weaker twin, the one with no control and least likely to win the merge. Now, she’s one of the only people strong enough to go up against the tribrid and survive to tell the tale. 

Legacies may be hinting with Alaric’s return that he’ll be the one to return Hope’s humanity, but I believe it’ll be Lizzie. She’s the itch that Hope can’t quite scratch or get rid of, and eventually, it’ll wear her down.

In true Damon Salvatore fashion, Hope is trailing the open but tremendously foggy roads on the outskirts of Mystic Falls, dealing with how to process her emotions. The betrayal she feels because of the sire bond’s destruction is not something that she anticipates. Her humanity is cracking through, and she has to resort back to being evil and reckless to stop it.

In order to fight off her humanity, Hope does something she has yet to do and feeds off of a stranger. While it may seem like a minute detail, it has significant meaning behind it. Even in her humanity-less journey, Hope has yet to be seen drinking from a living person and killing them.

The writers using Hope to kill someone in cold blood and pay a visit to Mystic Falls is an attempt to reclaim the villain role, which Danielle Rose Russell kills. At the beginning of Hope’s transition, she’s ruthless, unforgiving, and has no care for the safety of anyone around her. But since then, she’s allowed herself to become tamer with Lizzie at her side, without even realizing it.

If Hope’s reaction to Lizzie breaking the sire bond is any indication, it’ll be Lizzie who forces her to flip the switch back.

I don’t particularly like that the sire bond is over so soon. With Hope’s tribrid status, I hoped for potentially new lore and her sireline to not be like every other vampire. Since she’s the first of her kind, it would make perfect sense that not all supernatural rules would apply to her.

However, the ability to overcome and break a sire bond alone is not seen until now, further proving how powerful Lizzie truly is. Without any outside help, only the battle inside raging more and more, she breaks through sire bonds hold over her. It’s an extraordinary moment to witness as Lizzie does the impossible.

The connection that Lizzie feels with Aurora personally is because she took the time to figure out why she’s doing what she is. At a surface-level glance, Aurora seems vile, vicious, and downright nasty, all in the name of having fun. It’s the reason Lizzie decides to stop helping Aurora in the first place.

But nobody has ever taken the time to figure out the root cause of her hatred and why she acts the way she does, until Lizzie. For far too long growing up, Lizzie dealt with mental health issues and was perceived as crazy anytime she got upset.

Instead of actively listening to her and trying to figure out the cause of her pain, everyone waited until she had an outburst and called her insane. Aurora is going through the same ordeal that Lizzie once did.

While Lizzie may not be alright with helping her inflict never-ending torture upon Hope, she wants to help her heal in any way she can. Their pairing is one I’m not opposed to, but I’m not a major fan of the introduction to time travel on the show.

If I’ve learned anything from the countless movies and tv series that have tackled time travel, it’s messy and does not end in the fashion intended ninety-nine percent of the time.

Other Thoughts:

• With Kaylee Bryant’s departure from the series, it’s clear that Danielle Rose Russell and Jenny Boyd are being set up as the central duo, and I’m not mad. The chemistry the two share on screen is magnetic and keeps me coming back.
• Legacies holding on to Alaric, Landon, and Ted is one of its biggest failures in Season 4, by far. No amount of coercion will make me care about Alaric’s outcome.
  In my eyes, Landon has been dead for quite some time. There’s no sense in bringing him back now. I will scream if he’s used as the reason Hope flips her humanity back on.
• The time spent on the limbo storyline could be better put towards Cleo, Finch, and Jed’s character progressions. You know, the characters that are actually alive and have some meaning.
• As amusing as Wade’s scene with Landon is, it only upsets me to see Wade being used to further another boring plot. In a series surrounding the supernatural, it only makes sense that the fairy would be explored at some point. Wade has been given only one episode for exploration, and at some point, it needs to be touched upon again.
• Hope and Lizzie’s matching outfits throughout the episode had me gagging. The wardrobe department has been putting in the work this season.

What did you think of this episode of Legacies? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Critic Rating:

User Rating:

 

Legacies airs Thursdays at 9/8c on The CW.

 Follow us on Twitter and on Instagram!

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!

20 Best Characters from Limited TV Series in 2021