It Still Stings: Hope and Josie Deserved to Be Canon on Legacies

It Still Stings: Hope and Josie’s Wasted Potential on Legacies

Editor’s Note: TV moves on, but we haven’t. In our feature series It Still Stings, we relive emotional TV moments that we just can’t get over. You know the ones, where months, years, or even decades later, it still provokes a reaction? We’re here for you. We rant because we love. Or, once loved. And obviously, when discussing finales in particular, there will be spoilers:

When Legacies first premiered on The CW in October 2018, the supernatural teen drama seemed full of potential. A spinoff of The Originals, the latest installment in the Vampire Diaries franchise positioned itself as a modern, younger, and more progressive take on the universe. The series revolved around teenage Hope Mikaelson (Danielle Rose Russell), who was born to Klaus (Joseph Morgan) and Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) in Season 1 of The Originals, as she attended the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted. In May 2022, The CW announced that Legacies would not be renewed after Season 4; the series finale subsequently aired that June.

There are a host of potential factors behind the show’s premature cancellation: The CW essentially rebooting itself, several major cast members leaving, declining ratings—the works. Honestly, the writing of the later seasons leaves a lot to be desired in general, and we could sit here for days dissecting the ins and outs of what went wrong with the Malivore saga. But, in all its storyline fumbling and missed opportunities, Legacies’ biggest mistake was refusing to ever fully explore the possibility of a romance between Hope and Josie Saltzman (Kaylee Kaneshiro).

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Hope spent most of the series in an on-again, off-again relationship with fellow student Landon Kirby (Aria Shahghasemi). Although the pairing (known as “Handon”) had its share of supporters, many viewers shipped Hope with someone else: Josie. From the very beginning, fans latched onto the chemistry between Rusell and Kaneshiro. Despite growing up alongside each other in Mystic Falls, Hope and Josie, affectionately dubbed “Hosie,” aren’t particularly close at first. However, that’s part of what makes their dynamic so rewarding to watch: they go from family friends who are basically forced to hang out to true friends and each other’s fiercest defenders. While both girls struggle with having “dark sides,” they each sense a light within the other. Hope understands Josie’s quiet desire to be seen, even as she outwardly presents herself as content to play second fiddle to her twin sister, Lizzie (Jenny Boyd). Meanwhile, Josie sees past the guarded persona Hope puts on and slowly gets her to let her walls down.

Hope and Josie’s dynamic first takes a major turn in Season 1’s “There’s a Mummy on Main Street,” when Josie admits she was responsible for Hope’s dorm accidentally catching on fire when they were younger. The reason? She’d had a crush on Hope and slipped her a love note, but immediately regretted it for fear of Lizzie finding out and swooping in. Hope seems charmed by the revelation and the two share a long glance that doesn’t make this “past” crush seem all that one-sided.

From the onset of the series, Josie is portrayed as openly pansexual. She starts the show fresh off a messy breakup with ex-girlfriend Penelope Park (Lulu Antariksa) and later goes on to date Landon—more on that later—and Finch Tarrayo (Courtney Bandeko). On the other hand, Hope’s sexuality remains unclear until Season 2’s sixth episode, “That’s Nothing I Had to Remember,” in which she casually declares, “I had a crush on Josie for a week when we were 14.”

This reveal is major for a couple of reasons. First of all, it confirms the lead character of a Vampire Diaries show as queer. Although LGBTQ representation in teen dramas continues to increase with recent hits like Heartstopper, Ginny & Georgia, and Sex Education, having the central protagonist be anything other than straight and cisgender still doesn’t feel as common as it should be. Secondly, Hope’s admission doesn’t just give Hosie shippers a win, it changes the stakes entirely. Every queer fan knows the struggle all too well of getting attached to a ship that you know will never become canon. But this time felt different: we had a canonically bisexual character and a pansexual character openly admitting to crushing on each other.

And it wasn’t just a small handful of fans on Twitter rooting for Hope and Josie to get together either. In 2019, TV Guide declared them “the cutest couple that never was” of Season 1. In my 2021 interview with Kaneshiro for BuzzFeed, they revealed that she and Russell were big supporters of the ship themselves, explaining, “Danielle and I loved the idea of Hosie starting from Season 1, and we kept asking and asking and asking for it.”

Even as they date other people, Hosie’s chemistry shines. The Season 2 love triangle between Hope, Josie, and Landon—in which Josie and Landon briefly date after Hope is erased from everyone’s memories—left a lot of viewers questioning if the girls ought to just forget the boy in the equation altogether. It’s not exactly difficult to see why fans would feel that way when there’s dialogue like, “I had to make a choice, and… I didn’t choose Landon,” and “He made his choice, we can make our own. Landon or no Landon, you belong here.” Throw in Lizzie joking about Josie having a “sex dream” about Hope, a fairy tale sequence in which a pig (who’s later revealed to be Josie) suggests Hope wake her up with a kiss, and an alternate universe in which Josie and Hope are literally shown flirting and about to make out, and it’s impossible not to feel like there’s something more there.

One of the most important scenes between the two comes in Season 2’s “Life Was So Much Easier When I Only Cared About Myself,” when Hope tries to get through to “Dark Josie.” “I know you think she’s weak, but I know the truth,” Hope pleads. “She’s strong. No one can shoulder the burdens you carry.” Although it doesn’t immediately bring Josie out of her trance, it demonstrates just how much Hope truly sees Josie in every way. It also serves as a nice parallel to Josie telling Hope, “You never gave up on me. So, no. I’m not gonna give up on you.”

Unfortunately though, Legacies just never lets itself go there with Hosie. The characters puzzlingly spend much of Season 3 apart as the writers continue to push hard to sell Handon as an “epic love.” It gets to the point where so much of Hope’s storyline revolves around Landon that she feels like a side character on her own show. There’s also only so many times we can watch Hope bring Landon back from the dead, break up, and get back together before it starts to feel stale. And to be clear, I don’t believe a bisexual character has to be in a same-sex relationship to be valid. But the fact that Hope never even so much as says the word “bisexual” and that her sexuality is really only addressed in the form of jokes leaves a lot to be desired.

As for Josie, she starts a romance with new classmate Finch. Their relationship isn’t bad per se, it just isn’t developed enough to feel earned. Part of the problem is that Finch herself doesn’t get enough solo character development for us to really invest in her (which is a shame, considering how much I would have killed for solid queer Filipino representation); the other issue is that the relationship feels… well, like a distraction from Hope and Josie’s clear chemistry. Too often, shows seem content to quietly pair queer characters off with side characters rather than admit there might be a spark between the leads.

Despite all their potential, Hosie ultimately ended up feeling like little more than queerbait in the end. After Kaneshiro suddenly departed the show in Season 4’s “I Can’t Be the One to Stop You” (to go find Hope, nonetheless), many fans stopped tuning in altogether. The series ended shortly after, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Would it have made a difference to the show’s success in the long run if Hope and Josie got together? We’ll never know—and that’s what stings the most.

Kelly Martinez is a freelance entertainment writer based in LA. She has also worked at BuzzFeed and People Magazine and her writing can be found on many other sites. For more of her thoughts on TV and movies (especially “Riverdale”), follow her on Twitter @kmartts.

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It Still Stings: Hope and Josie’s Wasted Potential on Legacies