New ‘Legacies’ Poster Released

The CW has released the official poster for Legacies, the upcoming continuation of The Vampire Diaries universe.

In the poster, which you can check out below, Hope Mikaelson — the daughter of Klaus Mikaelson and Hayley Marshall who fans first got to know in The Originals — is front and center while other students at the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted along with headmaster Alaric Saltzman stand behind her.

Set in Mystic Falls, Legacies serves as a continuation of the story begun in The Vampire Diaries and carried through with The Originals. It will follow Hope Mikaelson (Danielle Rose Russell), the 17-year-old vampire-werewolf-witch “tribrid” still dealing with the death of both of her parents as she attends the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted along with a new generation of supernatural beings trying to find their place in the world. It’s something that might end up being a bit of a challenge, considering the delicate balance of hero or villain legacies most of the students of school will face.

The series will feature largely new characters and new faces, but there are a few that will be familiar to fans of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, including Matt Donovan (Zach Roerig). Showrunner Julie Plec recently told Entertainment Weekly that when it comes to Matt, the life-long Mystic Falls resident may still be the sheriff, but he’s not exactly the character fans will remember.

“For the first time, Matt Donovan isn’t torn by a commitment to protecting his best friends against other people in their peer group,” Plec says. “His singular goal is to keep the supernatural business on the DL, if not out of Mystic Falls, and to protect the town. So that puts him continually at odds with Alaric and the kids at the school. He says very clearly in an early episode, ‘If I get so much as a wind of your kids causing any trouble, I will come for them.’ So, he’s both friend and antagonist at the same time.”

While that itself doesn’t sound particularly crazy, it’s important to consider it in context of the character. On The Vampire Diaries, Matt spent the majority of his life surrounded by supernatural creatures and while most of those creatures were his friends, it still resulted more often than not in the very human Matt suffering or experiencing truly horrific, supernatural things. By the time audiences see him in Legacies, those experiences have taken a toll.

“He’s going a bit insane at this point,” Roerig explains. “He kind of went off the deep end. We see him in the future a little more frazzled and a little out of his mind from the vampires. He’s crazy sheriff Matt Donovan.”

Julie Plec, who was behind both The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, co-writes and executive produces Legacies with Brett Matthews, along with Leslie Morganstein and Gina Girolamo. The series will air Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET.

Will you be tuning into Legacies? Let us know in the comments below.

Legacies premieres Thursday, Oct. 25.