Warning: Spoilers for Legacies season 4, episode 7, "Someplace Far Away From All This Violence."
Over the years, The Vampire Diaries and The Originals took themselves more seriously than Legacies, whose first three seasons reveled in goofy Monster of the Week stories and sillier plot lines.
However, not all the longtime franchise faithful were happy with this tonal shift. Since Legacies season 4 began, the show has taken on a darker tone, and many viewers consider the more serious version of the series to be an improvement. That said, even the more self-serious iteration of Legacies has found time for plenty of humor. The most recent reference to Stranger Things was a perfect example of that new tone.
For example, one scene in Legacies season 4, episode 7 "Someplace Far Away from All This Violence" saw the series parody the ending of Stranger Things season 3 with a cruel but funny twist on a classic, poignant trope. As the Super Squad attempted to reach Hope (Danielle Rose Russell) and work out a way to make her access her humanity again, Cleo (Omono Okojie) read a letter to the former heroine that Landon (Aria Shahghasemi) wrote before he died. Mirroring the moving letter that Hopper wrote Eleven in the Stranger Things season 3 finale before his self-sacrifice, the message was a heartfelt screed about how Landon wanted Hope’s life to turn out in his absence. As the love of each other's lives, anything involving Landon has always had a profound emotional effect on Hope. But Legacies flipped the touching and heartfelt Stranger Things moment on its head. "I am feeling something," Hope revealed: "Boredom." It was an unexpected and darkly funny moment, cementing the fact that sentimental approaches were never going to sway her away from villainy.
It was an emotionally brutal, self-aware twist that poked fun at the Netflix hit’s sweet, tragic season finale. But the Legacies season 4, episode 7 scene also slyly pokes fun at itself. The humor of the jarring moment stems from how co-dependent Hope has always been with Landon; Hope not caring about the letter’s contents and point-blank ignoring its moving message shows how far gone she is.
This was not the first time that Legacies spoofed a famous moment from another major franchise. In Legacies season 4, episode 6’s opening scene, Legacies spoofed Twilight’s infamous Breaking Dawn Part 2 ending by having Hope cut a bloody swathe through the entire Super Squad before revealing that the entire cold open was all an extended therapy box scene. And in Legacies season 3, episode 14, a monster climbed out of the Malivore Pit that was clearly supposed to be a homage to Darth Vader, complete with heavy breathing and dramatic backlighting.
In all those scenes, Legacies took moments that were intended to be moving and turned them into comedic beats, proving that the spinoff has kept its sense of humor despite its tone growing darker in recent outings. The balance between Hope’s cruel mistreatment of her friends and the show’s winking sense of humor has been carefully maintained in recent outings, but the show does always run the risk of relying too much on these sort of goofy parodies and failing to focus on the central drama of Legacies. Some of the show’s weaker outings like The Originals spin-off gets to recapturing the brutal tone of its predecessors while still adding some humor to proceedings thanks to moments like its unexpected Stranger Things nod.
Legacies releases new episodes Thursdays on the CW.