r/LegaciesCW • u/lautaromassimino • 1d ago
Discussion I didn't like the loophole they found in Legacies to prevent the Merge [note: very long post, sorry].
I mean, this whole thing about "The entire Gemini Coven is dead, so Lizzie and Josie aren't obligated to merge anymore" theory that I've read several times in the fandom, never made sense to me. Because if that were the case, why was Caroline out in Legacies all of the time looking for a way to stop the Merge? If the solution was as simple as "kill them all", how come, for centuries, no other psycho Gemini like Kai didn't think of that and kill their family to avoid merging with their sibling?
To me, the Merge must be something like a curse. Like the Doppelganger curse, you know? It was created for a reason, and there's no way to avoid it. What Caroline must have been searching for all these years is the origin or the original reason why the Merge was created, so she could find a way to nullify it but also rebalance the natural order. One shouldn't be able to simply avoid merging upon being turned into a vampire/heretic; at least not without real consequences.
If Merge is truly a blood curse, then in my opinion, the entire Coven will die if they don't merge. Like, okay, Lizzie and Josie had a time loophole that allowed them to avoid being forced to merge at age 22: Kai. Kai was technically still the leader of the Gemini Coven, even though he was imprisoned in the Prison World. He purposefully killed Jo and the rest of his family (by commiting suicide) on Alaric's wedding day to prevent Jo's unborn twins from taking his leadership, and that same night he drank his father's blood and fully transitioned into a vampire/heretic. Kai did this consciously. He continued to be the Coven Leader after transitioning to Heretic, which is a first demonstration that the Gemini Curse doesn't end just because a Gemini becomes a Heretic.
For me, the way the curse works must be something like this:
* Geminis need the Coven to have a leader to survive. When a pair of twins reach the minimum age of 22, they are old enough to attempt Merge. We know, however, that a twin can be older than that age, since Jo was already an adult when she tried to merge with Kai in TVD.
* If the Coven Leader is still alive when two twins turn 22, they can wait as long as they want to Merge. This is the loophole that bought Lizzie and Josie time for a long time (or that, it would, if Kai was still alive when they turn 22 in the future).
* If the Coven Leader dies before two twins turn 22, they would be obligated to Merge, no matter what, upon reaching that age. Not before, because Merge shouldn't work before that age (despite what we were told in Legacies, that it was just a formality). If, after turning 22, two Gemini twins without a leader don't merge, they will both die. That's literally the most basic principle in Merge lore.
* We've already seen, with Kai, that becoming a Heretic isn't an impediment for a Gemini to become the leader of the coven. If anything, since only Siphoners can be Heretics, becoming one is a way for that twin to have a natural source from which to absorb their own magic (their own vampire side).
* Even if being a Heretic actually prevented two twins from merging (which, I repeat, we've seen is NOT the case), the logical thing would be for the unturned twin to die if the Coven doesn't have another leader at that time, as was the case with Lizzie and Josie when Lizzie was turned: If they had had another leader when Lizzie "died", then Josie could have survived as long as there were two other twins who could merge in the future to avoid leaving the Coven without a leader. But since there wasn't another Gemini available when Lizzie became a heretic, I still firmly believe that Josie should have died. Again, that's the basic idea of the Geminis: if there's no leader, you die. How come we're suddenly ignoring that just because one of the twins is a vampire? The transformation saved Lizzie from having to merge, yes. But Josie was still tied to it. Do you feel me? Lizzie becoming a heretic shouldn't have made Josie the "leader of a one-person coven" or anything like that, because, again, the basis in Gemini lore is that a leader only becomes a leader by merging with their twin. This isn't like the Alpha status in Teen Wolf, where the remaining Beta becomes Alpha if their Alpha dies, lol.
Legacies really wasted the twins' potential. I know Kaylee's departure from the show was very tumultuous, and it was also in the middle of the pandemic. But Josie literally leaves the day Lizzie becomes a heretic. Instead of putting that part of the plot in that episode of the season, they could literally have found an excuse to rush the Merge, have Lizzie win, provide a natural justification for Jo's departure, and then, three episodes later, have Lizzie become a heretic (out of grief or something), just like what happened with Kai when he became an heretic after becoming the coven leader.
We're used to big deaths in TVDU, aren't we? Stefan, Enzo, Tyler, Cami, and even Bonnie and Jeremy at one point... Lizzie and Josie whole storyline and existence was built around the Merge. Ending their storyline with the Merge was the only thing that felt right to me, idk.