Legacies EP Breaks Down that Shocking Season 3 Premiere Ending

Legacies returned for its third season tonight on The CW, picking up where The Vampire Diaries and The Originals spinoff series unexpectedly ended Season Two with Dark Josie defeated, Rafael and Alyssa released by the Necromancer, and both Hope and Landon unconscious. With the season premiere — and indeed the first few episodes of this new season — helping to close out Season Two’s stories there were sure to be plenty of surprises in store for viewers. However, the last few minutes of the episode came with a twist fans may not have seen coming and now, series executive producer Brett Matthews is breaking it down — and how what comes next will matter in a major way.

Warning: spoilers for the Season Three premiere of Legacies, “We’re Not Worthy”, below.

At the end of last season, the Necromancer restored Alyssa (Olivia Liang) and Rafael (Peyton Alex Smith) to life and released them from his control. He presumably did the same for Chad (Charles Jazz Terrier), his acolyte who he had killed and returned months before. In the Season Three premiere, while Alyssa is off at field day causing trouble and bullying Josie Salzman (Kaylee Bryant) and Rafael is trying to convince Landon’s (Aria Shahghasemi) soul to return to his body, Chad is hanging out in the Salzman Crypt, imitating the Necromancer and raising a monster from the Malivore pit — the Lady of the Lake, who ends up at field day warning of the coming Green Knight.

While things work out by episode’s end — Hope and Landon both awaken and Rafael is shown go to be worthy as a descendant of King Arthur allowing him to defeat the Green Knight — things don’t exactly end on a happy note. Alyssa decides to leave the Salvatore School and while walking away with Chad talks to her about how he plans to make good use of his second chance at life. Suddenly, though, he starts vomiting some horrible black substance and then simply drops dead. Given Chad’s ties to the Necromancer — as well as those of Alyssa and Rafael as well — this sudden turn may not bode well for the others. According to Matthews, the surprising turn will matter in a big way for all involved and marks a shift in how death is approached on the show.

“It’ll matter. I think the ways in which it matters will be, I don’t think you’ll miss them. I think they’ll hit you upside the head.” Matthews said. “So, I don’t think you have to worry about them. Here, this concept of death, as you know, sort of portrayed by the necromancer and you know, Vampire Diaries… we used to drop a body every other day. And so, [Legacies] is a very different show and intentionally so, where I think we’re all a little more thoughtful and mindful about the idea of killing characters and what that means. And so that’s why the body count in Legacies is so low. It’s a totally different thing in Legacies and so even Chad’s death, you know, I think a really interesting wrinkle on that is what Chad’s death ultimately that the Necromancer too is something that will have fingers because like the Necromancer and Chad became this weird little dark mirror to the Super Squad, frankly. And so that’ll have some fingers on it as well. And just the notion of death and loss that comes with that is something we will explore more than we have in this show over the course of Season Three for sure.”

Legacies airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET after episodes of Walker.