Legacies EP Brett Matthews Explains How the Pandemic Shutdown Impacted Season 3

Regular, scripted television programming is making its way back after the COVID-19 upended production last year and that means that several shows whose seasons were unexpectedly cut short are back to finish up those stories while also heading into new adventures for fan-favorite characters. Thursday night, Legacies returns to The CW, and with its second season having ended on an unexpected cliffhanger, fans are eager to see how that interruption will impact things going forward. Now, series executive producer Brett Matthews explains how the shutdown will impact things in Season 3.

Speaking with ComicBook.com ahead of Thursday's Season 3 premiere, "We're Not Worthy," Matthews said that the production shutdown on Season 2 impacted Season 3 "drastically", but also said that those stories will get their due before moving full steam ahead into new material.

"Yeah, it impacted it drastically, in one sense," Matthews said. "I think I'd literally finished like writing the last line of Episode 20, which we thought was the finale when we had to shut down. So, when we made the decision to sort of wind down the show for a year because we just didn't feel like it was safe to continue so, like you said, luckily we were sort of able to engineer what feels like an ending and leave storylines in a good cliffhanger-y place in Episode 16. But we sort of made the decision that we still wanted to give stories from Season 2 their proper conclusion so you will see, you know, certain things bleed over and play out over the first couple of episodes of Season 3 before we sort of begin the majority of the new material post-COVID in episode five."

Giving the stories from Season 2 their proper conclusion means dealing with where things were left off last spring. Last we visited the Salvatore School, Hope (Danielle Rose Russell) was in some sort of coma or sleep state after having going into Josie's (Kaylee Bryant) mind to help her defeat Dark Josie while Landon (Aria Shahghasemi) was also in an uncertain state, having been killed with the one thing that could truly harm him -- a golden arrow. Of course, the Super Squad will have more to deal with than just the concerning states of Hope and Landon when the show returns on Thursday. According to the episode synopsis, a medieval monster comes into play prompting the students to figure out who is "worthy" enough to save the day. You can check out that official synopsis for yourself below.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN -- In order to get a handle on some urgencies at the school, Alaric (Matthew Davis) sends the students off-campus for their first-ever field day. But when a medieval monster arrives with a challenge, the students are left scrambling to guess which one of them may be a worthy opponent. Danielle Rose Russell, Aria Shahghasemi, Kaylee Bryant, Jenny Boyd, Quincy Fouse, Peyton Alex Smith, Chris Lee, and Ben Levin also star. Jeffrey Hunt directed the episode written by Penny Cox & Cynthia Adarkwa (#301). Original airdate 1/21/2021.

Legacies will return on Thursday, January 21, 2020, at 9 p.m. ET following the premiere of the Jared Padalecki-led Walker series.