The Vampire Diaries will return in less than a week… with a huge twist.
As previously reported, Legacies Season 3 Episode 3, titled “Salvatore: The Musical,” find the Legacies characters playing characters from the series that kickstarted the franchise.
The CW unveiled photos earlier this week, and now they’ve dropped an official trailer, which shows off characters such as Damon, Elena, and Stefan.
Chris Lee, who plays Kaleb/Damon on this special episode, gets to show off his singing voice again, and if the trailer is any indication, he’s going to steal the show.
Lee is a recording artist, so it will be fun to see what he brings to this musical iteration of Damon Salvator in the actual episode.
Jed is playing Stefan, while Josie is playing Elena, and Lizzie is playing her mother, Caroline.
“The students prepare to put on a musical about the founding of the Salvatore School at the behest of their mysterious new guidance counselor,” reads the official logline.
“Meanwhile, as Landon (Aria Shahghasemi) throws himself into writing the musical and Lizzie (Jenny Boyd), Josie (Kaylee Bryant), Kaleb (Chris Lee) and Jed (Ben Levin) dive into their roles, Hope (Danielle Rose Russell) distances herself from the musical.”
Legacies Season 3 Episode 2 ended with Rafael moving to a prison world after his condition worsened when the Necromancer’s spell over him faded.
It was a tragic installment that, once again, put Hope and Landon on opposite sides as they tried to make sense of everything that happened.
It makes sense then that Landon would jump straight into something creative in order to not dwell on the past, but it also makes sense that Hope would want to stay well away from anything that could bring up her family.
If you watch The Vampire Diaries online, you know the Originals were heavily featured before spinning off into their own show, so it will likely bring up tragic memories for Hope, who has never fully recovered from all of the loss she’s endured.
Legacies showrunner Brett Matthews previously spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the project.
“We had done a musical episode in season 1, so that was sort of the test run, and we just loved that episode.”
“[Executive producer] Julie [Plec] and I have always been looking for a way to talk about The Vampire Diaries, which is difficult in absentia in some of the actors.”
The original musical episode was not as good as it could have been, but this episode honoring The Vampire Diaries may be filled with easter eggs and showstopping performances.
It’s also possible that many fans will not want to watch it because the original series ended less than four years ago, so for many, maybe not enough time has passed to pay homage to it.
Given the conclusion to Legacies Season 3 Episode 2, it’s hard to imagine Alyssa and the Necromancer not scheming to cause some problems for everyone.
The Necromancer wants to rewrite the original Triad spell to make the leader of Malivore his slave, while Alyssa wants all of the Malivore monsters back to wreak havoc at the school.
Whether that means a monster will arrive to bring the musical to a halt, we don’t know, but we’re inclined to believe there will be a lot of action.
This was supposed to be the penultimate episode of Legacies Season 2, after all. We have COVID-19 to blame for it getting delayed, but at least it means there should be some big moments ahead for the fans.
We still don’t know whether Bonnie or Matt will be featured in the musical, but with Bonnie single-handedly saving Mystic Falls countless times, it would be a slap in the face if she was not featured in some capacity.
Matt was the sheriff until Legacies Season 2, so maybe it will be too meta for the students to include him. Then again, when has this show ever cared about being too meta?
All told, have a look at the full trailer for the musical below.
Do you think Legacies will do the parent series well, or are you expecting to be disappointed with the result?
Hit the comments below.
Remember, you can watch Legacies online right here via TV Fanatic.
Legacies Season 3 Episode 8 airs February 4 at 9/8c on The CW.
Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.