Teenagers struggling with the incoming problems spewing from the supernatural is a popular category. Both Teen Wolf and Legacies fall into this genre. Teen Wolf did not have the same amount of built-in background to its world as Legacies. As the second spinoff in the Vampire Diaries universe, Legacies is the merge of every backstory told in its two predecessors. Meanwhile, Teen Wolf had to create the essence of what would occur in Beacon Hills.
By doing so, the creators had to figure out how the characters would fit into it. While both shows have come up with some spectacular events, each show has managed to outdo the other in various ways.
LEGACIES: School Life
It tends to be rare in teen dramas that students always attend school, and if they do, they manage to leave early or be taught something irrelevant to the main plot. Teen Wolf acknowledged the amount of time Scott had been absent from school in favor of supernatural drama. However, while Beacon Hills High School may have played a vital role setting-wise, Legacies utilizes the school much more productively.
As the Salvatore Boarding School has dormitories for the students, it is a much more permanent location. Even though the series does not actively show the students in class, they are continually interacting with Alaric or using the library resources.
TEEN WOLF: Focusing On The Werewolves
The Salvatore Boarding School houses witches, vampires, and werewolves. However, the show tends to focus most of its attention on witches. Vampires do get some attention as well, but werewolves manage to lag with Rafael being the only prominent werewolf on the series.
The Vampire Diaries and The Originals had spent more time going into the background of werewolves, but Legacies has not spent as much time on them. Meanwhile, Teen Wolf uses most of its time, especially at the beginning of the series, to explain and show what it means to be a werewolf, and how it changes a human.
LEGACIES: The Overall Setting
Beacon Hills is home to the Hale family, McCall Pack, and multiple other supernatural characters. The town may have become a beacon for the supernatural after awaking the Nemeton, but it does not hold the same history as Mystic Falls.
Mystic Falls has been involved in supernatural activity for over a thousand years. The Mikaelson family lived there, as did the Salvatore brothers. Years of history is embedded into Mystic Falls that Legacies utilizes from the Salvatore Boarding School, which used to be the Salvatore Boarding House. It also builds from Mystic Falls High School and the rest of the town.
TEEN WOLF: The Villains
The monster-of-the-week format hurts the show as there is not enough time in an episode to get to know the antagonist. Instead, the biggest enemy is Malivore, which appears as a giant mud pit. In Teen Wolf, Peter Hale, Gerard Argent, and the Nogitsune are just three of the series’ overall villains. However, each of these antagonists made significant impacts on the main characters.
While Peter Hale started as the surprise big bad, he becomes an anti-hero by the end of the series. The Nogitsune’s possession of Stiles is eerie as he tricks Stiles’ friends for multiple episodes. His lasting effect on Stiles afterward is prominent as well. However, Gerard Argent manages to pull off a momentous villainous change when he uses fear to turn the series’ heroes into Beacon Hills’ antagonists.
LEGACIES: Characters’ Origins & Mythologies
Given that Legacies stems from two shows that have already given the world so much information, it is fitting that the spin-off would do better in this category. Teen Wolf does its homework with each of their supernatural creatures or antagonists, but not to the degree that Legacies does.
Even the main characters themselves have origins to be concerned about as they stem from the series’ predecessors. Hope’s existence is only explained through the mythology of how Klaus could conceive a child. Meanwhile, Josie and Lizzie still have the Gemini Coven merge to be concerned about.
TEEN WOLF: Characters’ Mortal Stakes
Vampire Diaries and The Originals always made it clear that if a character died, it might not be permanent, and there may be a way of bringing them back to life. Given that history, it would be expected that a similar reality would occur with the Legacies characters.
Having their main characters being a tribrid and a phoenix, they have already achieved a level of awareness that a permanent death would not be easy to accomplish. In contrast, Teen Wolf mentions in its mythos that it is significantly harder to kill a werewolf, but not impossible. As such, the lives of Scott and his friends were always more vulnerable than the Salvatore students.
LEGACIES: A Wider Variety Of Supernatural Creatures
The variety of monsters may not work as adversaries, but it does introduce many supernatural creatures. Necromancers, Krampus, and others have piled out of Malivore. Those are only in addition to the witches, vampires, and werewolves that audiences were already prepared for.
Each episode includes a new monster to incorporate into the world. Beacon Hills is home to multiple supernatural characters as well. Hellhounds, Banshees, Were-coyotes, and Foxes run rampant through the town, and each has made their mark. However, they do not have as many as Mystic Falls has introduced.
TEEN WOLF: Character Development
Scott McCall began the series human, and by the end of “Wolf Moon,” he had been bitten and transformed into a werewolf. From not wanting anything to do with Derek Hale and his new identity as a werewolf, Scott embraces his new life. He even grows to care about Derek and rely on his werewolf side.
Scott’s personality had later deemed him worthy of becoming a True Alpha, allowing him to become an alpha without having to kill another. Hope and her friends have been through a lot. But, their growth is stunted by it occurring off-screen during a break. An example includes the aftermath of Hope jumping into Malivore.
LEGACIES: Family Ties
While it would be easier to claim Teen Wolf did this one better given that nearly all of the teenager’s parents play an active role in the series, there is too much history with the families of Hope and the Saltzman twins.
Even without showing up in the series, Caroline is playing a major role in Josie and Lizzie’s lives by searching for a way to prevent the Gemini merge. Their connection to the Gemini Coven also still resonates with their uncle, Kai Parker. Meanwhile, Hope is a Mikaelson which comes with a long line of enemies and stories.
TEEN WOLF: Memory Wipes
Both Teen Wolf and Legacies use a memory wipe during their runs. Hope’s sacrifice jumping into Malivore leaves her missing for three months before she returns to Mystic Falls. Legacies’ time jump skips over most of Hope’s disappearance and then focuses the next few episodes on her interactions with everyone that can not remember her.
Hope’s changed dynamics with her friends is heart-wrenching, but it is not as mysterious as how Teen Wolf utilizes Stiles’ disappearance when the Ghost Riders capture him. Lydia’s determination that she knows someone prominent is missing from her life is immersive. The small hints of Stiles’ existence, the proof that he is real, and the Jeep that represents so much on the series rounds out the close bonds Stiles has with his friends as they try to figure out a way to bring him back.
