Legacies Season 4’s Gods Storyline Makes Absolutely No Sense

Legacies season 4 has taken a big swing and fully introduced the concept of gods, but in doing so revealed the show’s mythology regarding the deities makes absolutely no sense. It’s unclear if Legacies will be renewed for season 5, but season 4 certainly has the feel of a show going for broke in the final season. Legacies season 4 has seen a number of familiar faces from The Vampire Diaries and The Originals return for cameos, and Hope (Danielle Rose Russell) has finally seen her long-prophesied transformation into the Tribrid, to disastrous results.

Legacies season 4 also introduced arguably its most daunting villains yet: the gods. So far, the students of the Salvatore School have only officially met two of them: Jen (Piper Curda) and Ben (Zane Phillips), who is technically a demi-god. But their father and the rest of the pantheon of deities are being set up as the ultimate big bads of the season, with the show laying the groundwork for an epic battle in the season finale.

Related: Legacies Season 4 Borrowed Stephen King’s Most Terrifying Monster

However, as ambitious as it is to have the supernatural students square off against actual gods, the truth is that the storyline hasn’t made much sense. Gods in human form have been a theme in many TV shows, but they usually have well-established mythology. The godly mythology of Legacies season 4, on the other hand, is all over the place for a few reasons.

For starters, nothing about Legacies‘ family of gods makes sense. Bickering families of deities are nothing new in mythology, but they’re at least contained in the same cultural pantheon. Legacies‘ gods are not. A few episodes ago, Lizzie revealed that she knew Jen’s real identity, referring to her as Vulcan. Jen herself also mentioned her brother, Chronos, when she related that she got along with him best of all her siblings. Jed also figured out that Ben is really the demi-god Prometheus. All of their characteristics line up with their descriptions as gods in mythology: Jen is a blacksmith, just like Vulcan, the god of fire and the forge; Chronos was referred to as the god or personification of time; and Ben also stole fire (or, in Legacies‘ case, magic) to give to humanity, just like the myth of Prometheus.

The problem is that Vulcan is a Roman god while Chronos and Prometheus are from Greek mythology. Yes, it’s true that many Roman gods evolved from their earlier Greek counterparts, but in that case, it’s extremely odd that Legacies didn’t just make Jen’s real identity Hephaestus, Vulcan’s Greek counterpart. There’s really no explanation for it. Either there was no research put into the storyline or it’s just sloppy writing. Either option is not great.

That’s not even mentioning the fact that the father of them all, introduced in Legacies season 4, episode 14, “The Only Way Out Is Through” and portrayed by Luke Mitchell, is named Ken. Not Zeus. Not Jupiter. Not even Odin, if Legacies really wanted to mash up mythologies. Some reading this might argue that Ken is perhaps his “human” name, the same way at least two of his children have adopted different names for themselves. But it’s unlikely the king of the gods would deign to shun his given name, and, what’s more, he’s been shut up in a coffin under Jen’s sleeping spell for ages. It’s more likely that the writers simply thought it was clever that all their names–Ben, Jen, Ken–should rhyme. Whatever the case may be, it all underscores that the mythology of Legacies‘ gods is haphazard and so far is just a rehash of the Original Vampires’ family dynamic with a new godly veneer.

Related: Legacies Season 4’s Werewolf Alpha Plot Twist Makes No Sense

Something else that doesn’t quite add up is that all of the characters in Legacies season 4 have reacted to Ben’s arrival and the concept of gods as though it’s a brand-new concept for them. Some characters even initially scoffed at the idea that gods exist. That reaction essentially ignores, if not outright retcons, the fact that gods have already been introduced in the show. Legacies season 2, episode 11, “What Cupid Problem?” introduced Pothos (L. Steven Taylor), who presented himself as Cupid before the students figured out his real name. In the Legacies episode, it was discovered that Pothos was an erote, a type of winged lesser god with the ability to share love and erotic passion. He was only in one episode, but it’s not as though Pothos’ story was forgettable; he actually killed Landon (Aria Shahghasemi). Though it was a few years ago, Landon’s friends in Legacies, and especially Hope, would remember the time a god of love killed their friend. Even before that, in only the fourth episode ever of Legacies, the students had to fight Arachne, a giant spider. She herself was not a goddess, but, according to the lore they uncovered, she had once been a beautiful woman cursed by a jealous god. Same goes for season 1, episode 14, in which they met a Gorgon, a.k.a. Medusa. So the fact that the characters have been so surprised to learn about Ben and his family in Legacies season 4 makes very little sense considering that they’ve already met deities and those associated with them before.

If one wants to get really technical, not only have they met a deity before, but they’re friends with one and see her every day–sort of. Cleo Sowande (Omono Okojie) is a Muse; in Greek mythology, the Muses were a group of sister goddesses. In fact, Cleo’s name in Legacies is just a different spelling of Clio, the Muse of history. Legacies hasn’t exactly been faithful with the origins of many of its monsters and supernatural creatures, and that’s certainly the case with its Muse. In Legacies, a Muse isn’t a type of inspirational goddess, but merely a type of witch (the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter) with the magical powers of inspiration. But even that just shows how fast and loose Legacies has been with the concept of gods and real-life mythology.

Somehow, someway, Legacies‘ golem Malivore, the one storyline that longtime viewers have hated most, always returns. This time around, it’s revealed that he had a direct connection to the gods. As Jen explained it to Lizzie (Jenny Boyd) and Aurora (Rebecca Breeds), the gods were untouchable until Malivore was created and started devouring them, which is why the world has forgotten about them. But if that’s the case, it means that Malivore is stronger than a god, maybe multiple gods at once, which is incredibly hard to swallow (pardon the pun). They’re gods. Hope defeated Malivore, and though she is incredibly powerful as Legacies‘ only Tribrid, “The Only Way Out Is Through” showed that on her own, Hope wasn’t strong enough to kill Ken. Though he’s the father of the gods, it stands to reason that his offspring and relatives would be almost as powerful as him; it’s hard to believe that they would have been bested by Malivore, a slow-moving mud golem. Legacies season 4 has also failed to explain what happened after the gods were swallowed, if and how they got out, or why Malivore started targeting them in the first place.

What’s more, no one has yet seemed to figure out that–technically–it’s Ben’s fault that Malivore was created. Legacies season 4 revealed that it was Prometheus who stole magic from the gods and gave it to humanity (which is another Legacies plot hole/ TVD magic retcon entirely). Powerful black magic was used by the first witch, vampire, and werewolf Triad to create Malivore in order to defeat dragons and other monsters, and it was Prometheus who gave magic to the world in the first place. While that’s a minor issue as there was no way Ben/Prometheus could have known that his gift to humanity would lead to the creation of Malivore, it’s still another example of the way Legacies tries to shoehorn Malivore in as an explanation whenever possible, even when it doesn’t make much sense to use him.

Related: Legacies Acknowledged It’s Failed Its Characters (Without Realizing It)

At the moment, it’s not yet known if Legacies will be renewed for a fifth season. One thing is certain, though: if it is, it has to tell a more consistent and cohesive story. The narrative continuity has been up and down all season and not all Legacies season 4 choices have worked. Even beyond those stumbles, though, the whole gods storyline just feels like the writers stumbling around and grasping at straws. If that’s the case, maybe it would be for the best that Legacies ends after season 4, allowing a new spinoff series in the Vampire Diaries universe to be developed and give the world a fresh–and more coherent–start.

Next: Legacies: Why It Seems Like Hope Was Nerfed (& Why She’s Not)

New episodes of Legacies are released Thursdays on the CW.

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Author: Alisha Grauso