The only official tribrid on record, Hope Mikaelson has only ever had access to her witch bloodline. Now that she’s triggered her werewolf curse, what does that mean for the supernatural balance?
About Hope Mikaelson:
Hope Mikaelson is the main character of Legacies, which is a spinoff series of The Originals and The Vampire Diaries. She is the daughter of Niklaus Mikaelson and Hayley Marshall-Kenner, which makes her the only tribrid on the series. Hope Mikaelson is the only character that is hybrid of all three bloodlines: werewolf, witch, and vampire.
Her father, Niklaus Mikaelson, was also the original vampire-werewolf hybrid. The witch legacy also comes from the Mikaelson line from when her family was witches before becoming vampires. Meanwhile, her mother Hayley Marshall-Kenner (a.k.a. Andrea Labonair) also means that Hope is part of the royal bloodline of werewolves.
Hope Mikaelson was born on The Originals season one finale “From a Cradle to a Grave.” After being born, Hope was given to Niklaus’ sister Rebekah to take back to New Orleans and raise away from danger.
Is Hope Mikaelson the exception to supernatural law?
We learned a long time ago on The Vampire Diaries that when it comes to supernatural beings, you cannot be more than one type at a time. For example, when Rebekah Mikaelson was turned into an Original vampire, she lost her connection to the magical abilities of the Mikaelson witch bloodline. Simple rule to remember, right?
Sadly, wrong. Soon after learning all about that succinct supernatural law, along comes Klaus and his hybrid curse to muddy the waters for us. Now, since he was born a werewolf, but turned into a vampire by magic, it seemed plausible that he somehow found a loophole in the laws of the supernatural world.
His hybrids lose their werewolf title and curse when they are turned by him, so they don’t truly live in both worlds, satisfying the previously mentioned law. They are a totally new breed of supernatural beings that just so happen to have similar abilities to werewolves and vampires.
Enter Hope Mikaelson and her twisted, crazy lineage that somehow gives her a toe into three different sects of the supernatural world. She is a born Crescent wolf, has the Mikaelson magical abilities in her blood, and has vampire blood coursing through her veins, lying in wait for her death to complete the triad of tribridity, which reserves her a place in the vampire world, too.
If we set aside her vampire lineage for the time being, since the only way to become a vampire is to die (therefore nullifying any of her other supernatural identities per that aforementioned law), we still have her werewolf and witch lineages to try and justify.
Prior to the events of the last few Originals episodes, I was under the impression that because her werewolf side was still dormant, her magical Mikaelson blood was the only active bloodline.
However, in The Originals penultimate episode, “The Tale of Two Wolves,” Hope Mikaelson transforms for the first time after triggering her werewolf curse by accident in the previous episode. I found myself wondering if she would suddenly realize that her magical abilities were no longer in her reach. I was certainly quite confused when she returned from her first werewolf run and immediately used magic against her father before he could sacrifice himself to save her.
Is she only able to exist in both the witch and werewolf worlds because she was born into both? That’s the obvious answer, but as we’ve never had a witch who had another supernatural bloodline in her lineage, this is all new territory.
More than just how she manages to occupy two different supernatural identities, does this mean that Hope is going to find herself the exception to the rule more times than not throughout Legacies?
Well, I think we know that the answer to that is a resounding YES. Hope Mikaelson was born to be the exception. She was conceived under dubious conditions, at least as far as we understood vampire anatomy to work, so it’s only fitting that her mere existence continues to befuddle all things supernatural.
Every time she comes into contact with Malivore, we learn more and more about what Hope expects to happen with her tribridity in the future. She didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised that her magic stayed accessible to her after her first werewolf turn, so maybe there have been witch/werewolf hybrid children at some point in the not-so-distant past. That’s fairly plausible in the supernatural TVD Universe.
The sticking point, at least for me, is how she’s going to maintain her ties to her witch and werewolf ancestry after death. The only answer seems to be that we just have to accept that the rules for tribrids are very different from those covering every individual facet of the individual supernatural races.
Until we see Hope Mikaelson activate her vampire side, we’re just going to have to believe that when she dies and completes her transition, something about her nature will allow her to continue to turn at will and maintain her connection to the magic in her bloodline.
It’s easy to just accept this because it seems that her triad of supernatural identities does have a superior purpose. Malivore poses a real and present danger to the supernatural world as we know it, and only a creature with all three factions’ blood coursing through his/her veins will have a chance at putting a permanent stop to his machinations, especially his attempts to procreate.
So, long story short, it seems that Hope Mikaelson is absolutely going to be the exception to every supernatural law that we know. She has gone into Malivore and returned to everyone’s memories, she manages to be both wolf and witch at the same time, and will someday complete her tribridity by activating her vampire side.
And I know we’re all anxious to see what the repercussions of her becoming a full tribrid will be. We know it will make her a more substantial threat to Malivore, but remember how passionately her existence was warned against in The Originals, it’s hard not to imagine that a true tribrid walking the earth could change the supernatural world permanently, and maybe even for the better.
For now, only time and more episodes of Legacies will tell.
Catch up on all your favorite Legacies episodes now! Both aired seasons are available digitally and on Netflix, and are just waiting for you to tune in.