OH... and another thing!!
Consider for a moment: it's the final episode of S1 of Legacies. In the conclusion scene, a bittersweet pop song plays.
Tyler and Hope stand next to each other in the Appalachian Mountains under the light of the full moon. They have just reached the apex of Hope's arc (that if I was a writer for that show and had access to Tyler would absolutely make sure to add) in which she learns to embrace her werewolf side. Tyler reveals that this is the very place where he broke his sire bond. He tells her that he broke every bone in his body a hundred times. All two hundred and six. Over and over. More than two thousand small breakings and mendings.
Hope fidgets. She asks how he can stand to be around her after what her parents did to him. Tyler shrugs and says simply: you are not them.
Moonlight catches on her face when she looks at him.
Sometimes, she admits, that's all she feels like—that she feels like the sum of both of their parts and none of her own. That sometimes she feels like something that they left behind. An undying thing that forgot how to follow them.
Tyler tells her that sometimes our feelings lie to us.
Hope looks back to the clearing, the place where Hayley once helped Tyler free himself. And the cinematography cuts between those scenes for a moment—Hayley cradling Tyler's face as he weeps and (despite the unbearable pain) tries again and again, and Hope and Tyler left in the aftermath. Hayley's care for him and now Tyler's care for her daughter.
She asks him to tell her about her mother.
Tyler, older and wiser and softer with his hurts, tells her about the version of the girl that no one else in Hope's life would know. He tells her about the girl who found him in what he once thought would be his darkest days—until Klaus proved to him that it could always be worse.
He tells her about the moments they stole in those woods, how she comforted him as he sobbed from the pain, tells Hayley’s daughter about the best thing his mother ever did for him. He tells her about drinking with her, laughing with her. Tells Hayley’s daughter about all the reasons he cared for her. Tells her that Hayley saved his life. That she kept saving his life until she stopped. And how he loved her. That he kept loving her until he stopped too.
He does not say: your mother was an orphan and she made me one too. Does not say: your mother decided to help me because she wanted to kill me. Does not say: your mother loved me enough to change her mind. Does not say: your mother broke all her rules trying to save me. Does not say: and I broke all of mine trying to kill you.
She asks him about her father. Tyler looks up at the sky. The moon is full, but for the first time in over a decade, he is no longer a slave to it.
He does not say: your father ruined my life. Does not say: there was a time when I was young and angry and thought he had saved me. Does not say: there was a time I would have killed for him. Does not say: there was a time I would have killed for him happily. Does not say: there was a time when my moral compass pointed to him.
Does not say: he broke my heart. Does not say: when his brother died, I was cruel to him. Does not say: sometimes you love things that destroy you, and sometimes you hate them so viciously that they destroy you a second time.
Does not say: revenge makes you dig two graves.
Does not say: my revenge made me dig innumerable graves.
Does not say: I have never found a grave I would not throw myself into.
“I loved him,” Hope says. She says it like she doesn’t know if she wants him to tell her if she should stop or not.
Tyler looks at her (into eyes that are Nik and Hayley in such perfect harmony—his saviors and his damnation, the two people he had tied so much of his being to, even when they hadn’t thought about him in years) and back at the moon and thinks: there was a moment when all three of them existed under this same moon. There was a moment when all three of them lived and had not hurt each other yet. He does not say that either.
“I loved him too,” Tyler says instead, “for a time.”
They are quiet for a moment. They are so near the place where Tyler freed himself. So near the place where he chained himself to a new type of inevitability.
“I think I hated him too,” Hope admits. “I loved him, Tyler. I did! He was my dad! I loved him so much, but I hated what he did. What does that say about me? He died for me and I hate him for it?"
Tyler does not say: we are the sum of our parts, Hope.
Does not say: do you understand?
Does not say: your mother saved me by killing the people I loved. Does not say: your mother found me in the woods and told me to run. Does not say: the night you were conceived, your mother tried to save me one final time.
Does not say: your father killed Mikael. Does not say: your father became Mikael. Does not say: it is the same thing.
Does not say: I loved your mother and I hated her too. Does not say: I hated your father and I loved him too.
Does not say: I will never forget what they did to me.
Does not say: forgetfulness is the only gift I wish to give you, Hope.
Does not say: your parents named you well.
He reaches out and ruffles her hair instead. He tells her a story about the last time he saw his own father.
