Roadmap:

1. Part 0: Intro
2. Part 1 & 1.5: Statements & Prophecies
3. Part 2: The Originals s4
4. Part 2 Cont.: The Originals Season 5
5. Part 3: Legacies Intro & Season 1
6. Part 3 Cont.: Legacies s2
7. Part 3 Cont.: Legacies s3 -> Today
8. How Powerful Is Malivore -> Friday
9. How Powerful Are the Gods
10. Legacies s4

After the last post unexpectedly gained significantly more traction than all the previous (go back and read them, especially the TOs4 one), we’re back with season 3.

-

3.6 Season 3

Season 3. Oh season 3. While season 1 was still mostly well-received and season 2, especially the first 8 episodes, is now generally liked, season 3 is where the show really lost many people. In terms of power-scaling it’s a very interesting season for Hope, with the introduction of Cleo, Malivore finally returning to his normal form, prison world shenanigans and even more monsters. Hope fights surprisingly few monsters this season but there’s nonetheless quite a bit to talk about.

I will ignore the plot point of the one true kiss bullshit for the sake of my own sanity. I just – no. No! BYE!

-

3.6.1 Intelligence

1 Another notch in the Hope Is a Great Strategist column comes from Hope’s plan to save Rafael’s life. Rafael is dying after the Necromancer got Alaric on a technicality on their vow so the freshly resurrected Rafael is facing certain death.

To save him, her plan is to repurpose the Trident that can transfer consciousness into another person so that it instead transfers energy. She wants Lizzie to siphon Landon’s phoenix power away – his energy, his immortality – in a ritual and then transfer it to Rafael. However, it doesn’t work because Landon is not a phoenix anymore which she didn’t know yet.

(Every time Hope fails at something it’s because she didn’t have full information, basically never because she lacks the power.)

2 After the plan fails, Hope has a last second idea after noticing the supernova that she could send Rafael to a prison world. She and Lizzie send Rafael and dozens upon dozens of students over. In season 6, Bonnie and Kai had to work together to even ascend 4 people (which is including them) and before that Kai wasn't strong enough to allow them to physically interact with the PW. Now those two are ascending possibly a hundred people, the entire school. Which is more evidence for how LGC power gaps the previous shows.

(The reason she didn’t just turn him into a hybrid or even into an original is that the actor wanted to leave the show so they had to write him out)

-

3.6.2 Magic & (Magic) Knowledge

1 Hope when slightly distressed sends out an accidental, unintentional wave of magic that knocks over books and turns off all electricity. Later, after Landon dies, Hope suffers from flashbacks and has issues controlling her magic. Electricity malfunctions, objects getting knocked over, a magic wave she sends out on accidents that sends tables, chair and students alike flying through the air and this wave fully knocks out all the students (they were out for a while).

Cleo was included in the knocked-out students, the same Cleo who can create monsters that satisfy Malivore’s hunger, dimension travelling Ferrymen, Goblins that can affect a full town of people not even close by, etc. Hope’s accidental magic is enough to knock someone on that level out cold. Or in other words, Hope’s accidental magic waves could beat 90% of TVD/TO.

Throughout this season Hope has unintended magical outbursts when she’s upset. And it’s around this time we can probably say Depressed!Hope is gone for the most part and that’s why her powers are leaking out more and more.

2 It feels redundant to still talk about this but did you know Hope has mastered telekinesis? No? Should I say it again? Hope shows more mastery over telekinesis! Did you know she can also perform locator spells? And you know what, Hope can create a boundary spell but not just a regular boundary, a boundary that only works specifically on supernaturals. The last repeat of spells we already know she can do is: Hope still knows invisibility spells!

Invisible, immobilised you, created a tornado, used a death spell, set you on fire, bit you with her venom. Endless win cons.

3 Hope performs the memory return spell Josie and Freya created for herself and later in the season when Cleo gets Malivore’d. As u/Suspicious_Zagnias pointed out to me, this spell is broken af. If she pulled this out in any fight, she insta wins because basically everyone (at least any vampire/immortal) forgot someone via Malivore and everyone we see passes out when hit with the spell.

New win con vs. Lucien unlocked: Malivore memory return spell.

4 Hope can use death spells without having the grimoire page (which she did have vs. the dragon) so she just can pull out a death spell at any moment in a fight should she desire to do so. But! This specific spell only works as long as she can see you.

5 Hope can use her telekinesis to press Alaric against a wall so hard and exert so much force he can’t move, barely move his mouth to talk, and even starts suffocating from the pressure.

6 Hope can do magic to create art, which is just another indicator for her mastery over all aspects of magic.

7 Hope has a dream that she’s in the black magic infested prison world and she fights Malivore there, using a wind torrent spell so strong it causes an earthquake and tornado in the real world. Her magic in her sleep is strong enough to cause tornados and earthquakes. She says it felt more like a vision than a dream which would mean she can do magic inside a vision which is kinda cool ngl.

8 More elemental magic: trapping a Banshee with vines. But not just vines, fire too: Hope is so good at using elemental spells, she can close up a cut on Clarke’s throat with an incendia. Crazyyyy control and precision over her magic. A lesser witch with lesser mastery would have set him on fire and killed him or not done enough and he’d have bled out.

9 Hope can spell you so you can only speak Sumerian, which is the oldest written attested language, dating back to 3100 BC or earlier. Imagine Hope fighting another witch, she does that, the other witch can’t cast any spells that need verbal casting lmao.

-

3.6.3 Fights & Physicals

1 Hope throws a dodge ball so hard at Jed he’s sent flying and crashing into the gym wall. I’ll leave it to someone else to calc how hard you need to throw a ball to make someone fly that hard.

2 Hope can hear someone’s heartbeat as a hybrid but her supernatural hearing is a bit inconsistent in Legacies. Sometimes she can hear your heartbeat, sometimes she needs a vampire to listen in to someone’s conversation. In TO, like I mentioned in the season 5 part, she already has some level of supernatural hearing as a witch (more evidence she is not your regular witch/wolf/vampire, she's something new).

3 Hope with the Berbalang infection could easily snap a sword in two over her knee. Who you attribute this feat to, I leave up to you.

4 Hope can backflip multiple meters high, without any momentum, just free standing.

5 Hope obliterates Golem Landon who was created by Cleo out of Landon’s ashes and Malivore mud. He doesn’t even land a single hit on her once the fight starts properly. One of her coolest looking fights. This Golem Landon could lift 300 pounds and is low-key kind of capable at fighting; his punch even opened a cut on her through her clothes so he’s by no means weak.

6 Cleo stabs Hope with what is Alaric’s “deadliest” weapon (directly stated). Hope, impaled, punches the weapon in two, and barely even drops a few drops of blood from it because, say it with me, she has the best healing and durability in the verse! It only actually bleeds when Hope grabs the spear and twists it LOL. When she pulls it out, no blood drops from her stomach.

Considering the insane magical objects Alaric owns, this could be a super crazy healing/durability feat but sadly there’s nothing stated about this. This weapon could have been cursed, hold magical properties, whatever.

Alaric’s deadliest weapon is nothing to Hybrid Hope.

7 Hope is physically strong enough to punch a punching bag out of its holding, across a room until it gets stopped by a wall, the same way Elijah did in TO. Not only that, the punching bag has a hole in it from the punch. The impact of it crashing into the wall makes the wall wobble. For a direct comparison, you can watch this.

Any regular vamp on human blood and any crescent should be able to do this so it's not that impressive even though Josie's reaction tries to sell it as impressive.

8 Hope defeats Andi’s entire cult of brain-washed witches. 24 witches, put down, zero effort. Andi herself was dangerous enough to be locked up by Triad and entrusted to resurrect Ryan so pretty good stocks. We obviously don’t have any scaling for these witches but 24 witches is a quarter of 100 witches Bonnie and they get no diff’d :3 Could 100w Bonnie no diff 24w Bonnie?

(Yes, violent deaths, Bennetts, stronger than your average 24 witches, I’m aware, you don’t have to point it out to me)

9 Star Wars fanfic Hope can put Josie, Lizzie and Young Hope to sleep with her magic. She also beats Malivore in a sword fight in this shared psychotropic trip. This is more so a shared consciousness thing reflecting what they think would happen rather than reality. Tribrid Hope is, same as later, implied to gap Malivore, not just via blood hax but stats wise too. This god threat is helpless against the Tribrid, essentially.

10 Hope and MaliLandon beat the Vitruvian Man Cleo created as a new vessel for Malivore.

This vessel is immune to magic and allowed Malivore to speak while inhabiting it, but we have zero idea how strong that thing is now without Malivore using it as his body so I cannot tell you in any way how impressive this is. What I can tell you is that MaliLandon fights pretty well alongside Hope which is a good feat for him. He even gets the kill.

11 Hope styles on a monster called Cerufe, a humanoid creature made out of rock and magma according to the TVD wiki/mythology.

Hope used a torrent of water (more elemental mastery, she really is the avatar) to douse the magma/fire but it reignites. The fact this water was strong enough to turn the magma (or fire if you downplay) off in the first place is impressive. The monster could also instantly melt Hope’s metal sword upon his touch, fully liquefying it (I leave it to you to look up how high of a temperature would be needed for that), so he could probably melt the majority of the verse if it touched them. Hope could throw it around with her telekinesis and she then kills it by throwing a bunch of metal bars at it, impaling it, after hearing its heartbeat and likely locating the heart via her hearing even without vampire enhanced hearing.

So in case you were doubting it, Hope can throw something hard enough to impale a monster made out of rocks, as a non-vampire hybrid! Those pipes weren’t sharp.

We don’t have any scaling for this thing, at all, only narrative implication since it’s in the penultimate episode before Hope turns into a tribrid and is at the end of the Malivore storyline so it probably is pretty powerful? Maybe? Probably! But Malivore wanted Hope to kill it to torment her psychologically but then again, he knows she would beat basically everything he has sooooo.

I’ll leave it up to you.

-

3.6.4 Statements & Lore

Yes, after a full post just on all the statements about her, there is still so much just in this season that it warrants its own section.

1 Hope’s touch unlocked the “make-a-wish” artifact which in reality housed Cleo.

This artefact was previously owned by Albert Einstein, Rasputin, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Queen Elizabeth I. Leonardo Da Vinci created it. Triad called it Project Pandora. Yes, this is actual lore, no I am not making things up to see if you’re still paying attention. The box can survive getting blown up without any damage. Same goes for acid, and hundreds of other tests to remove Cleo from that box done by Ryan and Triad. Hope’s touch is what did it.

Hope is the chosen one, the most special and unique of the unique. A fanfic character, really. Hope opened Pandora’s Box. Well, in reality the box could only be opened by the person capable of killing Malivore aka Hope so yeah, chosen one.

2 When Hope touches the crystal, Andi – Miss Cult Leader – says Hope has “extraordinary power.” Hope is so powerful the ritual doesn’t have to wait any longer, in Andi’s words. “I needed a lot of witches with a lot of power who wouldn’t ask any questions. All I know is that it was a summoning ritual.” Andi has 24 witches already, plus Lizzie. But Hope showing up is like, oh okay well no need for more, that’s all I need, thanks.

In the end, the ritual revived Ryan Clarke as a human, not as Mini Mud-Man, which kinda goes against everything we know about resurrections but whatever.

3 Landon is scared of what Hope becoming the Tribrid will do to her and the world:

>“I shudder when I think about how becoming the Tribrid could change Hope. Change the supernatural world,” Landon says.

>“For better or for worse?” Cleo asks.

>“Well, if I knew that, I’d shudder less.”

Wow have some more faith in your girlfriend, dude! Again, Hope as a threat to the whole world. “An immortal, unstoppable force of nature.”

Literally everyone is terrified of Hope becoming the Tribrid, even her boyfriend.

4 Malivore’s whole plan to beat Hope is to bait her into transition, capture her, distract the rest of the school with monsters or bribe them by making promises or giving them powers while he waits her transition out and dies. He doesn’t even have the faintest intention of fighting her.

Being in transition actually disables Hope’s magic and wolf powers. Even without supernatural sides that enhance her strength, Hope is strong enough to punch the slightly cracked glass apart.

5 The moment Hope drinks Alaric’s blood to complete her transition into a full tribrid, the sky immediately gets cloudy, turning red, then fully black, red lightning striking. Like, it’s been 2 seconds. It looks like the apocalypse is starting, Nature shitting itself.

The only thing even remotely comparable in all 3 shows is when the Green Knight showed up.

Hope’s power, her mere existence, has the planet reacting like the world is about to end; it’s like an ancient power waking up. Dahlia creates a storm, Inadu’s powers/Klaus and Hope's physical proximity in s5 create a storm or hurricane (see the prophecies section) implied to destroy NOLA, but it’s Hope’s mere existence that turns the weather, just like Ken. Nature only calms down possibly hours later.

6 “You underestimate me, Tribrid. I eat monsters like you.”

“There is no monster like me.”

7 Show runner Brett Matthews states about the freshly turned Tribrid:

>"It's obviously a frightening thing because she is the most powerful person in our universe to this point, so what does that look like? Hope was a person who was so driven by her emotions and her love and her intelligence, so taking away the thing that has kept the power in check...you know, great power, great responsibility. She's been a person who has always managed both, and with that filter gone, it's obviously not a great thing."

This statement specifically includes a time frame. Up to this point in our universe. Everything we see in TVD season 1 to Legacies season 4 episode 3, Hope is more powerful than anyone we’ve seen. And notice he mentions her intelligence in this too. Her love and intelligence are what keeps her power in check.

-

3.6.5 Hope vs. Malivore

She uses her beloved telekinesis spell to throw Malivore and speeds to him, punching him mid-air. The punch alone is enough to make him run for his life, realising he stands absolutely no chance against her. She turns into a wolf and jumps him, then turns back, just to flex on him.

And now, one of my favourite things she does in Legacies: she bites herself to draw blood (which, weirdly, might be an AP feat for her bite force considering it was nearly impossible to make her bleed before lol), draws it out with magic, and creates a dagger out of her own blood that is hard enough to pierce MaliLandon’s skin and get to his heart. She can turn liquid hard enough to make it a weapon lol. SHE IS A BLOOD BENDER FOR REAL!

His last try is to give Landon control over his body again because he is so utterly outclassed (and to use Cleo’s door to run away).

She kills Landon and Malivore and so the Mud-Man, Eater of Dark and the gods, meets his end. Immortal for 1000 years until Nature created the greatest loophole and exception to the rules to ever exist, the most powerful supernatural who ever existed, just to defeat him. If I was Malivore, I’d feel screwed over by Nature! Qetsiyah’s immortals get to chill and he gets Nature to bend over backwards to kill him?! Unfair! Nature had to break all the rules it created just to get rid of him loooool

It’s funny, they consistently play up the idea of teamwork defeating Malivore; as long as they stick together, they’ll win. In reality Hope solos Malivore without anyone there, fully on her own. This, then, is a point in season 4 when Hope has her friends helping her defeat Ken instead of doing it on her own and succumbing to her trauma again.

Ken says he wants to protect his family that hasn’t been eaten by him yet. So Malivore is a being that can take down even the gods and put the fear into Ken. Hope is above Malivore :P Malivore was taking over the world Ken had conquered but is terrified of Hope.

-

The season ends with Hope’s humanity switched off after it flipped the moment she killed Landon (meaning it wasn’t a conscious decision, more so an automatic protection from her body/mind to protect her from the grief because my girl is traumatised). When Alaric realises what happened to her, he is full on terrified. It’s rare to see Alaric genuinely scared, let alone terrified, of another person. This man stared down the Hollow and couldn’t be bothered to be even remotely scared but Tribrid Hope? Now that is terrifying.

-

3.6.6 Hope Transcends Vampirism And Death

First off, Hope (with Lizzie and Josie) creates the red oak, the only weapon that can kill her. She didn’t know what she was doing at the time but it’s hilarious that Hope was so strong, she had to create the only thing capable of ending her herself. Hope’s own powers, Hope’s trust in her friends, Hope’s bonds, it’s what creates the new life in the form of a tree, new life that holds power over her life.

It’s only her own powers than can take her life from her, not anyone or anything else.

The same way she dies at her own will, allowing a person she loves and trusts to guide her from one life to the next. And this goes hand-in-hand with:

Hope is the only case in history (as far as we know) who had the decision to not wake up from dying with vampire blood in her system. If she so chose, she could have gone to Peace instead of waking up in transition. Hope is above the rules of vampirism!

No, she’s not just a regular (original) vampire or just inherited Klaus's level of vampirism!

Not even the doppelganger who never wanted to be a vampire could decide against it, nor humans with willpower strong enough to resist compulsion could say no to waking up in transition, nor powerful Bennett witches. No one.

Except Hope.

And the rules are usually for everyone else that you need to give the Ferryman a coin to go over to Peace but for Hope she could have given over her necklace because she’s so super-duper unique not even the Ferryman rules apply to her lmfao. Gosh, people really think Marcel, Lucien and Alaric would beat her? Yes, I am really hung up on that! What show did you watch?!

Even the Ferryman, ruler of limbo, a god, is like, oh hi Hope, what’s up? You wanna go to Peace? You don’t have a coin? Oh yeah, uh, sure, go ahead! Also, like, the Ferryman doesn’t even take her back! Hope jumps into the lake and wakes up. She brought herself back lolol.

-> This actually, funnily enough, fits with her seemingly going to Peace in TOs5 to see Hayley when that doesn’t really make any sense and only works if you think she hallucinated it or that Lynn just said, oh yeah sure, go see your mom, girl. All good, I’ll allow it, no coin needed! Hope went beyond the rules and skipped limbo to go straight to Peace to talk to her mom.

And to jump ahead to s4 already, when Ken beats her, Hope finds herself in limbo and despite Hope, Landon, everyone stating that she is alive and needs to go back, Hope might have been able to go to Peace since she could overpower Lynn. She could have gotten into the boat there and then.

So… if Hope is ever tired of living, she could possibly just break her own neck and just go to Peace. Especially now that Landon is the Ferryman.

The concept of the Ferryman, the extremely strict coin system that binds even reality warping jinn, doesn’t apply to Hope. The rule system of vampirism does not apply to Hope. She transcends it all. This would also be the point where Hope outright scales above the jinn imo.

Remember this the next time someone is trying to tell you Hope is just a regular vampire or just like Klaus and stuff. No, Hope is her own being. She had the decision not to turn which no other vamp had. Her healing is so great she can barely bleed at all which no other vampire can claim. She’s not just an original, don’t let others tell you that lol.

-

And with that, we’ve reached the end. On Friday we will go over Malivore and where he scales in relation to the first two shows.

 

TL;DR if you need tldrs this is the wrong post for you. And like I said in the intro post, this is meant to be like a handbook: you choose which parts are interesting to you and you can read them, or skip them, or not read at all.

Roadmap:

1. Part 0: Intro
2. Part 1 & 1.5: Statements & Prophecies
3. Part 2: The Originals s4
4. Part 2 Cont.: The Originals Season 5
5. Part 3: Legacies Intro & Season 1
6. Part 3 Cont.: Legacies s2 -> Today
7. Part 3 Cont.: Legacies s3 -> Sunday
8. How Powerful Is Malivore -> next week
9. How Powerful Are the Gods
10. Legacies s4

As you may have noticed, today was supposed to cover season 2 & 3 but it's a bit over the character limit so I will split it. Makes it easier to read. S3 on Sunday so the schedule overall doesn't change, with the Mud-Man coming next Friday.

Fun fact: Earlier this week I realised the LGC season 4 part was over 15000 words long… which is why it’s now gonna be a 3 parter and this whole thing is gonna take a 2 weeks longer than expected (part 1: Hope’s physical strength scaling and currently debated question of whether Hope's vampirism is beyond originals or not; part 2: Hope vs. Ken; part 3: conclusion & epilogue).

Anyway, welcome back once again. Let’s not waste any time and get right into it.

-

3.5 Season 2

Hope starts the season in Malivore where the Mud-Man is desperately trying to kick her out since she is toxic to him. Then she spends some time while no one remembers her, still protecting the school from monster attacks. And later the season shifts its focus to Josie and Lizzie more as Malivore and Hope take a backseat. Same format as s1, let’s go.

-

3.5.1 Magic, Abilities & (Magic) Knowledge

This is gonna be quite a lot so bear with me. Spells/Magic Hope shows this season:

1 More sleeping spells and more boundary spells.

2 She knows comfort spells that provide peace of mind as well as truth spells which are super useful and makes you wonder why they weren’t commonly used in TVD and TO. Especially TO season 3 could have benefitted from some good old truth spells (or just Ariane being alive! Stupid Elijah!!).

3 Hope knows a billion telekinesis spells (not literally, don’t be obtuse) and generally has mastered telekinesis on a level no one has shown before.

4 Not just regular spells, Hope also knows how to create potions. For example, a potion that creates artificial sunlight. At a different point, Hope is praised by her teacher for her skill at healing potions because Hope is great at every aspect of magic I guess.

5 Invisibility. Hope, like the Gemini loved doing in TVD, can turn herself invisible. Any fight vs. someone who might be faster or physically stronger than her, she can just go invisible and they are pretty much screwed. Lucien? Invisible + sleep spell. How on earth is he supposed to counter that?

And before anyone comes at me with a “Lucien could still hear her!” I would say: when Kai did his invisibility trickery, Damon was full on clueless. Ethan’s/Pukwudgie’s invisibility on the other hand does not suppress sounds for sure.

6 Imitation spells and freezing spells, i.e., spells that force the person she casts it on to mimic all her movements and a spell that immobilises you. Imagine this one combined with the invisibility spell. Boundary around her, invisible, immobilises you, puts you to sleep. Hope can and does use these things in character.

You can’t see her and then she immobilises you without you being able to do anything about it. Alaric, Lucien and Marcel are NEVERRRRRR beating her, lol. Sorry, I’m being petty, saw a serious post on that where people were arguing in favour of the vamps.
[Editor Me: this comment reminds me how long ago I wrote this section lmao].

7 Hope knows silencing spells that literally remove your mouth, which would come in very handy against any witch in a fight. Invisible, immobilised and no mouth. GGs.

8 Fire spells, a wind torrent spell, magic that accelerates the growth of flowers/plants because Hope’s the Avatar. On top of that, she can turn off electricity at will (which she could even do as a baby) – lightning bending! I’m gonna keep pushing this Hope Avatar thing, sorryyyyyyy

9 Hope knows of mora miseriums and how to protect them. She says Vincent told her about them, but it’s not clear if she called him in that moment or that was in the past and she just remembers it. This is why I said in the TO sections that it’s possible Vincent was one of her magic teachers.

10 Hope, the twins, and the Salvatore School Coven together create a new prison world and send the mora miserium there (but Alyssa tricked them, sending Alaric and the twins to Kai’s prison world). 27 people (if I counted correctly) were involved in the creation of this prison world and they used a meteor shower as the celestial event.

In other words, Hope has knowledge of prison worlds and how they work.

In season 3 she states that only a Gemini witch can activate the ascendant which is a retcon, probably, unless you think Bonnie always had an already activated ascendant from Kai (or the twins in s8). A different possibility is that only a Gemini or a Bennet could use the ascendant properly which could make sense as all PWs we know about were created by the combined power of Gemini and Bennett.

11 Hope creates a magical ear piece that allows her and MG to communicate even though they are not physically close to each other. Spyware tech created by magic because she knows everything about magic lmao

12 Hope can project herself into the prison world but for some reason only Dark Josie can see her. Hope and Landon both think astral projection into the prison world is dangerous.

Hope also has prophetic dreams about Dark Josie (or Dark Josie can enter Hope’s dream while being in the prison world, you pick) so even though her future-seeing abilities seem to have gotten less after the Hollow possessed her, she still has the ability.

13 Hope can do magic inside Josie’s mind.

On top of that, Hope defeats the big bad wolf in Josie’s fairy-tale mind and saves the pig/Good!Josie. The wolf represents the darkness so Hope just defeated the darkness. Then the real Dark Josie shows up after noticing Hope was in her head and turns Hope to stone which obviously doesn’t scale since it’s quite literally inside Josie’s mind where she has full control.

14 One feat that could indicate Hope knowledge gaps the entire school when it comes to magic is when no one knows how to return Rafael to human form. Not any teacher, not even Josie who is extremely smart and actively working on it, not even supernatural expert Alaric can figure out how to turn Rafael back.

Hope later implies she is the only one who can turn him back as she cast the spell so this might not be a knowledge gap but it could also mean she is the only who can do it because she is the only one who knows how to. I’ll leave it up to you. But, considering no one had any clue whatsoever – like, listen. No one is like, /we know what’s going on, we just don’t know who turned him/ or something like that. They straight up have no clue what to do.

So, yeah. Knowledge gapped. And apparently it’s not siphonable either.

15 Hope demonstrates she’s capable of catching magic spells like Darth Vader would block a blaster shot with his hand when she catches the incendia thrown at Lizzie by Alyssa. [Editor Me again: I’ve been informed tutaminis is the name of the ability]

Sooooo, in a fight vs. any witch, Hope might just catch the spell of the other person but granted, she only does this once so it’s not an in-character thing she spams like, say, telekinesis or sleep spells or even silencing spells.

16 Hope was the strategist to ensure Lizzie would survive the merge regardless of if she wins or loses. She had a plan for both scenarios and it worked flawlessly. Which goes out to those of you who think Hope isn’t smart or a great strategist and just a punch first, think later type of girl like Landon sometimes accuses her of. She’s actually very intelligent.

She linked Lizzie’s life to Landon’s and through his ability to revive, Lizzie revived. And that’s just plan B. While Josie was vulnerable, MG sent Hope into Josie’s mind. Fully played Josie.

Or in other words: Hope has mastered mental magic too and even found an on-the-fly solution to the merge within a few hours. Meanwhile, finding a way to beat the merge is the reason Caroline was gone for all these years, travelling the world, talking to ancient covens, all to somehow beat the merge.

Hope does it in a day.

17 Freya helps Josie create a black magic spell in Japanese that can reverse Malivore’s memory erasure. We don’t see Hope speak Japanese and she doesn’t understand Kurruta but considering she can do magic in 12 different ancient languages I’m inclined to believe she could probably do magic in Japanese too. And, well, you know, she does do the spell later in s3, multiple times, so maybe she learned Japanese in her free time while watching movies and cuddling with Landon or whatever, idk man.

-

Okay, I know this was a lot. But Hope shows a lot of different magic in this season and I have to at least mention it. It’s important to establish how many things she can do and what she does use in character.

-

3.5.2 Monsters Hope Fights And Beats in Season 2:

1 A Cyclops.

This monster could flip over a bus that Hope was gonna take to travel to New Orleans. It looks like a tour coach which would weigh – assuming it’s empty of passengers – roughly in the 10+ tons range, give or take. It’s hard to get a good look at the size of it so take this with a grain of salt.

Hope with her telekinesis can throw the Cyclops around, casually. In hand-to-hand combat, Hope could inflict damage with a punch but the Cyclops could compete with Hope, managing to hold her in place. Once she knows it’s a Cyclops and not a troll, she one-shots (without magic) – a very familiar pattern by now.

Considering the Cyclops can flip over something so heavy it’s comparable to feats the originals show, such as Elijah (with Oliver – which he couldn’t do on his own despite being an activated crescent (pre unification)) casually holding up a trailer that likely weighs a few tons, Hope then being able to tank its attacks and hit it puts hybrid Hope on quite the absurd level physically already.

I am not saying hybrid Hope is physically superior to an original. I’m saying, the Cyclops can flip over a bus that is probably around 10+ tons in weight and Elijah casually can lift a trailer that is a few tons heavy. We don’t know Elijah’s upper limit for his physical strength or that of the other originals in terms of lifting strength. Hope without her vampire side beat this monster multiple times on- and off-screen. The only reason it survived this long is because Hope was under the assumption it’s a troll and so her methods of killing it didn’t work.

The one possible counter to this is: we don’t actually see the Cyclops flip the bus. The bus flips and then the Cyclops appears so if you wanna be annoying, you can say the monster used some unknown ability or threw something rather than using physical strength.

In other words, Hybrid Hope is far, far beyond regular werewolf and young vampires and probably already puts her physical strength in the ancient vampire category which would fit with Hayley.

2 A Shunka.

This monster literally hunts werewolves. Think about this: Werewolves are prey to this thing! In wolf form! Not human. Consider how crazy that is. It even spit out a human because, you know, not a werewolf!

It’s a mix of wolf and hyena, and it’s huge (Hope in wolf form is tiny next to it). Shunka can walk on two legs and on four. Physically it’s much stronger than a werewolf (even Hope who is likely stronger than your average werewolf in wolf form), obviously, since it hunts and eats them. It could also easily tank an incendia from Hope.

Hope is not the one to deliver the kill this time but the one to distract it while Rafael and Landon do the actual killing after she turned Rafael back to human form. As Landon says, “She saved us both,” and don’t say girlfriend bias, he didn’t even know who she was at the time.

3 A Croatan.

Croatan can walk through barrier spells (!) like he’s a god and is an absolute menace, genuinely. The fight is a masterclass in elemental magic from our favourite tribrid, trapping the Croatan by spawning roots out of the ground and wrapping it around the monster’s ankles (the same way Ken later does to Cleo). She follows it up by using a wind torrent spell that sends the Croatan flying and off its feet. MG then shows up to bring Hope the talisman that Casandra gave Sebastian to protect him from the Croatan.

Hope, zero confusion how to use it, immediately uses another (unknown) spell to kill the Croatan, turning it into blue-black goo.

This fight encapsulates the Legacies formula: a monster that runs through all the characters, resistant to all the conventional ways of killing and trapping things and then Hope no diffs it, never any doubt what spell to use, how to use some new artefact she just got her hands on and has never seen before, just pure mastery of magic.

4 The next “monster” Hope doesn’t fight but since she scales above him and he does some pretty cool things, I wanted to get over it too.

Santa!

Yes, Santa is canon to the world of The Vampire Diaries. Before you roll your eyes, TVD gave us the devil, why not Santa too? Well, Santa (or possibly Krampus, depending on your interpretation) changes the weather to make it snow and gets people in Christmas mood even though it’s October. Weather changing and psychic-like mind manipulation. Thanks Santa!

Hope stays the only one unaffected which I’ll take as another point for my Hope Can Block Out Silas And Psychics agenda. Well, and Clarke but he is literally made out of Malivore’s DNA sooo.

Santa was never directly caught by Malivore since Ryan doesn’t think he’s real so maybe Santa would beat up Mud-Man and the Gods (but Santa was trapped by the Krampus who was caught by Malivore so Malivore likely would beat Santa too (sorry Santa :c)

Soooo. The elephant in the room. Santa is real. Kaleb remarks that he is really fast. Santa counters by asking, “How do you think I make it to all those houses in one night?” Meaning… this Santa is not freezing time, he’s just that fast. That would put TVDU characters on a much higher level of speed than we currently assume for them if you think Santa brings gifts to kids around the world in one night. I’m gonna ignore this one, yeah? Okay, cool. Because, yk, this wouldn’t just apply to Hope. Kaleb speed blitzed the Krampus who is fighting somewhat evenly with Santa and who managed to trap Santa in the past sooo. Yeah.

And don’t ask me how Santa comes up with the gifts, such as a car he gifts to Kaleb. He can possibly create them out of nothing. Uhm. Moving on.

Santa might beat Ken! Who knows!

5 Pothos.

Our first god of the TVD universe!

Hope shows up twice to easily beat the self-proclaimed God of Love (who claims to have never been with a mortal – if he considers vampires as mortals, I don’t know. He might have just been dating gods). Later, Pothos hits Hope with an arrow in a surprise attack. The only reason Pothos didn’t die earlier was because Hope was under the false assumption she was dealing with Cupid and so her method of killing was the incorrect one (another familiar pattern).

The first time she beats Pothos she speed blitzes him quite disgustingly as she comes from out of frame to catch the arrow Pothos shoots at Landon. The camera shows no one is around Landon, Pothos lifts his bow and shoots at Landon and boom, there is Hope, in front of Landon, having caught the arrow mid-air. And Pothos looks shocked, communicating he had no clue she was there.

In other words, Hope perception blitzed a god. Even in their second encounter the arrows she telekinetically throws at him are too fast for him to dodge. Ken saying she could have been worshipped as a god when Hope as a hybrid is already out there beating down gods...

-

3.5.3 Hope vs. Mini-Malivore, Ryan Clarke

Clarke with the Trident that can swap bodies + he has an illusion ring. I’m gonna cover this one in-depth because it’s crazy.

So, Clarke can absorb monsters like Malivore, he can make people explode by touching them, he has a weapon. And Hope is extremely weakened:

In fact, trust Alaric’s words if you don’t trust mine: “You’re in no shape to move.” And: “You have just enough blood in your veins to breathe.” Hope, with just enough blood to breathe, is then further nerfed by Clarke putting magic suppressing shackles on her (which Clarke found in the school’s armory so it’s a different set of shackles than those in NOLA most likely).

Okay so Clarke is a worse version of the terror of the gods, Malivore. Hope has almost no blood in her body. Her magic is suppressed by the shackles – and if you think the magic suppression applies to Hope’s wolf powers too, then she has no hybrid/crescent strength boost now either since lycanthropy in this verse is magic and using the power of the wolf in human form is magic. But maybe she can still tap into that power, hard to say for sure.

(If you think her werewolf powers are indeed suppressed too, then this is further evidence for Hope’s regular state being far beyond human level. You really have to stop comparing her to regular wolves or vampires (or even humans and witches) because Hope is fundamentally a different being.)

He has a dark object that insta wins the fight if he hits her with it. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be a clean hit – a crazing hit that just cuts her slightly would be enough for him to win the fight. He wants to become her/take her body so he can stand up to his father. (Yet another person wanting Hope's body for its immeasurable power. Get in line, Clarky!)

Hope is giga nerfed – literally about as much as you could possibly nerf Hope – while Clarke has a genuine one-hit win condition.

How does the fight go?

While lying in bed, she blocks his attack with the Trident, kicks him away and runs away. Which is already insane. Reminder: “You are in no condition to move.” Or as Clarke says: “You literally have no blood.” Probably not quite literally since she’d be dead then but you get the idea. Basically, she just has enough blood in her system to stay alive but literally nothing more. The fact she is fast and strong enough to intercept his attack in time while this nerfed is unbelievable.

He tries to find her, singing her name like a horror villain. She seemingly super-speeds around even though she has no blood and then he finds her but sike, it’s an illusion! The trident goes right through her! Turns out, she stole his ring without him noticing when she blocked his earlier attack and apparently the ring isn’t negated by the magic suppression for whatever reason.

The illusions must be something other than magic, then, even though when Josie siphoned Clarkedemus, it stripped off the illusion to reveal Clarke. Maybe the ring is just more powerful than the shackles! It genuinely might be. This thing is some god-like device.

Back to the fight: Ryan takes the trident back and punches the door apart which prompts Hope to jump from the balcony. She lands knees first, belly, arms and face second from a pretty significant height, maybe 5-6 meters (I’ve been told this would be 5.4-6.5 yards by u/Suspicious_Zagnias which I will blindly trust instead of double checking)?

And she takes zero damage from it, just a lil bit of pain. Again, she has "literally no blood", is “in no shape to move” and has “just enough blood to breathe” and possibly without any werewolf healing but she can still tank the damage.

She’s panting now, screaming for help.

Clarke shows up behind her, grabbing her throat when Landon shows up to grab his arm and punch him. He tackles Clarke to the ground but Clarke fights him off, kicking Landon as he’s on the ground, punching him, beating him up. It goes on for a bit with Clarke beating both Hope and Landon in 1v1s as the other tries to regain composure.

Landon eventually manages to hold him in place, getting Ryan to use the trident on him but sike^(2), it’s not the real Landon: Clarke’s consciousness goes into Simul!Landon.

Hope takes the moment to stand up and then she literally kicks the shackles off her wrists lmao why didn’t you do that earlier girl??!

“You’re gonna whammy me, aren’t you?” Clarke in fake Landon’s body asks. The same body was just able to hold Clarke in place. She creates an orb and hits Clarkedon? Rydon? Lanke? Clarke in SimuLandon. Anyway, she wins the fight in the end.

This is the TVDU version of the Goku with no limbs, blind and deaf and gagged, after a long fight, heart virus,… meme. No blood, no magic, and she still holds her own pretty well against a lesser version of Malivore! She’s still physically relative (or even above, at least before the fall) to Ryan with a one-shot weapon while barely alive.

The moment she got her magic back, she obliterated him even though she’s still very nerfed. So in any vs. battle that has Hope starting with the shackles on for some reason, she can just kick it off and beat you up even while half-dead basically. I covered this one in so much depth because it’s actually insane lmao. Similar to No Blood Rebekah holding off Aya and beating a bunch of Strix members!

In the next scene after the fight, Hope is dandy, fine, chilling, no damage, no exhaustion. I reiterate my earlier take from part 2 that Hope has the best durability and healing out of anyone in this verse.

-

3.5.4 Hope vs. Kai

Kai, my beloved. Heretic Kai gives Bonnie one of her worst ever beatings, tanking her attack, laughing it off and then one-shotting her. This same Kai, 10+ years older and more experienced from play-fighting with Jade, Wendy and Diego (who is a genuine half wolf-human and potentially the strongest pure wolf in the verse?), gets no diff’d by Hope though he is intentionally not trying. He’s sand-bagging.

What’s important, however, is how easily Hope deals with a siphon.

I would make the argument Hope might have blocked his powers, both magic and siphoning, as she chains him up with what should be normal regular chains and he cannot free himself for hours until Alaric shows up to chop his head off. Even if you think those chains had magic suppressing properties, he should be able to siphon off the magic in that too as he could even siphon a spell that purified magic and unmade beings as strong as originals.

If the chains aren’t magic/siphoning suppressing, then Kai should be able to use magic to get them off. If they do have magic in them, then Kai should be able to siphon them and then use magic to get them off. So this is just a gigantic plot hole, Kai wanting to die, or Hope somehow spelled the chains in such he way he couldn’t siphon or destroy them which would be crazy.

Kai, the magical prodigy, can’t get out of this. Because Hope made magic unsiphonable? One of the stronger TVD characters stands zero chance against Hope! The gods and Ken himself could be siphoned but apparently not these chains. Even magic-siphoning beings aren’t relevant to someone on Hope’s level if you take this interpretation.

-

3.5.5 Hope vs. Dark Josie

Now I have to talk about Dark Josie. I’m of the opinion that s2 Dark Josie is actually unbelievably powerful but she loses that power when she gives it to the Necromancer who uses it to raise and control Malivore and all his monsters. S3&4 Dark Josie is essentially just Josie, no power boost except for maybe a confidence boost which probably makes her slightly stronger since it’s a bit of a mental amp. It is season 4 Dark Josie who states she is not originals level so s4DJ = Josie ~ Lizzie < originals (at least in terms of turning someone’s humanity back on).

This does not apply to s2 Dark Josie.

(Furthermore, what s4 Dark Josie is referring to in that moment is most likely psychic/mental power as she is trying to turn Hope’s humanity back on. Josie isn’t talking about how strong Hope or an original is but more so that she lacks the psychic power (or general power) to override her mental which makes sense as it is incredibly difficult to do so. Certain people want to accuse me of making stuff up but then can’t understand basic context of statements lol)

Vampires can’t compel witches for their psychic powers are so great and weaker vampires generally can’t do head dives on stronger vampires unless they are caught off guard or sleeping or otherwise with lowered mental defences.

This statement is not: Hope is an original in terms of stats. This statement is: DJ admits she cannot turn Hope’s humanity back on. This statement gets misused /all the time/.

Anyway, all of this doesn’t really scale to Hope anyway. I wanted to cover Dark Josie and Josie scaling but it got too big so I’ll eventually do a separate post at some point breaking down how crazy DJs2 actually is. But for the purposes of this post, I’ll keep it very short:

Dark Josie in s2 successfully manages to hit Hope with a sleeping spell when Hope was off-guard, and in their fight Hope is blatantly not trying to kill her. Dark Josie even acknowledges as much. “This isn’t any fun. You’re not even fighting back.” Hope is trying to reach the real Josie by talking to her, telling her to fight. Hope has zero interest in hurting Josie and is willing to put her own life at risk if it means getting Josie back.

And this is all her plan anyway – Hope had the whole thing planned out and Josie walked right into it. In other words, this fight is meaningless for scaling Hope. It’s more so a feat for her intelligence and a showcase for how reckless she is in regards to her own wellbeing (hence why I said you can read some level of (passive) suicidality into her actions in the last part).

The cliff-notes scaling for season 2 DJ:
The “all-holy” and “ever-divine” sphinx, the oracle who can see the future, the being unable to lie, thinks Dark Josie will be worse, more terrifying than even Malivore - the guy who scared even Ken. Dark Josie’s power can raise and control Malivore and his monsters. Dark Josie’s power turns an entire prison world radioactive, so much so that even opening a portal to it is killing her (regular Josie), Lizzie and Hope at the same time. Dark Josie’s power is described as beyond apocalyptic (two steps beyond it, even). I hate to say this but Malivore is a god level, world or humanity ending threat. DJ is described as worse than that, has feats greater than Expression Bonnie with turning a vampire’s humanity back on, straight up destroys one prison world on her own and turns another one radioactive.

Trust me, I take no pleasure in say all this. In fact, it pains me to say it. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut DJ probably is above the entirety of TVD and TO. Ugh. Blegh.

And yet, Hope is still above that!

-

3.5.6 Conclusion Season 2

Like I teased in the intro, Hope takes a backseat just a bit in this season as the Malivore storyline is basically on pause and repeating season 1 while the show focuses more on characters like Josie, Lizzie, Landon, MG and Alyssa. Hope still has a bunch of very solid feats and one extremely impressive showcase when she’s giga nerfed and basically half dead from blood loss. But most of all, Hope shines through her wealth of spells, potions and general magic knowledge in season 2. Hope has by far the craziest move set, so to speak, of any witch. No one shows as much variety!

(Hope is such a cheat code, Lizzie siphoned her to cheat on finals. That feels like a meta joke from the writers lmfao)

See you in 2 days to talk about Season 3 and next week we go over just how crazy Malivore truly is. Also, the s3 part will technically include s4 parts but I wanted to cover up to Malivore's death so that the season 4 parts can focus on the gods and Hope's physical scaling.

Roadmap:

1. Part 0: Intro
2. Part 1 & 1.5: Statements & Prophecies
3. Part 2: The Originals s4
4. Part 2 Cont.: The Originals Season 5 -> Today
5. Legacies s1
6. Legacies s2&3
7. How Powerful Is Malivore
8. How Powerful Are the Gods
9. Legacies s4

-

Part 2 Continued – The Originals season 5

Welcome back once again to continue our exploration of how powerful one little Miss Mikaelson is. Last time we covered the absurdities of season 4 scaling after we already covered the many, many statements about Hope in part 1. Initially I wanted to cover s4 and 5 in one singular post, but that would have been about 10k words and been over the reddit character limit so both for you and me, I split it up into two so it’s less overwhelming to read and so I don’t have to fight reddit once again. With that said, let’s not waste any more time and get right into it!

-

2.3 The Originals Season 5

We return to Hope 7 years after the events of season 4. The show has a timeline error and Hope is more than likely 14 rather than 15 (or even more likely to be 13 than 15 tbh).

If you want to know why, read the side note. If not, skip to when the italics part is over.

Josh and Vincent say it’s been 7 years of peace and we know they are preparing for Mardi Gras so it would be very early in the year and Hope’s birthday is in May. 2012 was the year Hope was born, so it would be 2019 May or later or 2020 pre May in s4. According to the wiki’s timeline, it’s May 2019 at the start of s4, five years since the fall of the Mikaelsons, so Hope would have just turned 7.

7 years later, if you take the statement to be precise, would be May 2026, but since it’s Mardi Gras preparations, it has to be earlier in 2026. Placing it in February would be very generous since preparations usually take a while. Season 5 takes place over a few weeks and hits Mardi Gras during the season so it’s likely early to mid January or earlier at the start of the season. It can’t really be early 2027 because then they probably would have said “nearly 8 years” or something like that. So it’s possible Hope is not even 14 yet since she would only turn 14 in May of 2026.

So we have a 7 year jump that should put us to May but that can’t be since Mardi Gras so it’s either earlier in 2026 or early 2027. In both cases, Hope is not 15. She is either 13 or 14. (Something to keep in mind when you evaluate Hope’s role in Hayley’s death and how much blame should really go to a 13/14 year old. Also, Roman flirting with her looks even stranger than it already was now. Oh well, the show does pretend she’s 15 so take that as you like. They do try to save it a bit with Vincent saying Hope barely survived the darkness when she was 8 when she was 7 in reality so that the 7-year-jump would make sense but it just doesn’t work, sorry Vincent.) Either s4 is wrong when they say Hope is 7 or s5 is wrong when they say she's 15.

Timeline error that’s annoyed me for years aside, let’s start:

I will keep this section a lot shorter since Hope does a lot less that’s relevant for power scaling. Season 5 Hope is a bit more ambiguous to scale, but we have the baseline from s4 to compare her to. With seven years of time, knowledge, and practice, she should be higher than her S4 baseline. In general, we see less impressive magic but more skill and knowledge feats.

-

2.3.1 Hope with Inadu’s power?

The most notable things Hope does in this season are annoyingly when she took Inadu/Inadu’s power/the evil into herself so it’s difficult to determine if this back-scales to Hope without this power like I went over last time. The craziest moment is certainly when she kills a room with 50+ vampires inside it with just magic. Most people usually reduce this by saying she was just letting out the Hollow’s power so it wasn’t her doing it but let me offer a counter argument.

Inadu’s power was split in 4 and put into containers strong enough to hold at least a quarter of her. Those 4 containers, Elijah, Klaus, Kol and Rebekah, were supposed to stay away from each other for all time so the power couldn’t come for Hope and destroy the city. Hope then unites the 4 parts and takes it all back into herself (when her originals family could barely handle a fourth) but like a poison, it’s killing her slowly from the inside, probably because the magic is so dark and evil and less so because it’s Inadu as a sentient being as she stops existing once quartered as implied by everyone at the end of season 4.

It’s also making her angry and violent. You can’t put the magic out in the world as it needs to be contained so if Hope really pushed out said magic, it would be really stupid because then a piece of Inadu would be out in the world again. I mean, the whole point was to keep the magic contained and separated. Now it’s together and released into the world? Doesn’t make sense, does it?

What is happening to Hope is that she hears voices from the magic (not sure what voices those are, exactly) and she notices that violence stops it – again, evil, darkest of dark magic pushing her to do this, magic craving sacrifices and death. So Klaus lets Hope throw him around but it’s not enough so he instead has the brilliant idea of letting his teenage daughter commit mass murder.

And also, if she did just push out Inadu’s magic when killing the nightwalkers and, following this logic, somehow didn’t allow Inadu back into the world, why can’t she release the rest of the magic in the same way? It doesn’t actually make sense. Well, Hope does say after the vampire massacre that it was as much about killing bad guys as it was about getting the magic out of her which doesn’t make sense but oh well.

So I think that all the Hope feats attached to Inadu’s power are more so Hope feats.  She probably is amped still, in some form, and she does use different magic than what she usually would, darker, more violent magic. When she kills those vampires, her eyes flash blue, overrun by the poisoning of her mind from the violent nature of the power she took into herself. But – and I think this is the key part – generally, nothing she does is beyond what Hope should be able to do if you just look at her regular scaling. So, I think, it’s pretty safe to assume Hope would be able to do anything in her base state that we see her do with Inadu’s powers inside her even if the power is amping her.

With that out of the way, let’s look at some moments of the season.

-

2.3.2 Shift in Focus

While season 4 was built around the idea of demonstrating how powerful Hope is and people coming after her for her power, season 5 was about the otherness Hope and people like her experience. It’s about trauma and bad decisions and living up to ideals so naturally we see less of Hope doing insane things as the season is about emotions (not to mention this is a full Julie Plec season, so. Yeah. Michael Narducci left the show after season 4). I’ll go in less depth and do a list of things she does. Not just feats, anything I find noteworthy I will, well, note down.

-

2.3.3 Magic & (Magic) Knowledge

1 Hope uses a cloaking spell she wrote herself – which goes out to all the people who downplay Hope’s witch prowess and skill – to kidnap her mother so that her family would be forced to reunite after Kol plants the idea of a family crisis bringing them together again. Freya mentions she tried every locator spell in every language she knows and yet she couldn’t find Hayley, which becomes even crazier when you then see Hope being unable to find Hayley, even by using locator spells in 12 different languages (which she might have written herself). No, even crazier, 12 ancient languages.

Now, you could get into a discussion about what is considered an ancient language here by Freya who herself is an ancient person if you use that word loosely. There is no formal criteria that determines what is and isn’t considered an ancient language but generally it’s referring to languages existing before the 5^(th) century. Examples would be languages such as Latin, Egyptian, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Old Chinese, Aramaic, and so on. I’d assume that Hope is familiar with Old Norse through her family’s grimoires but it doesn’t fit the common understanding of ancient language.

Don’t ask me how Hope learned those languages or who taught her or how well-versed she is in them. I’d assume she knows as much as is useful for spell creation but I don’t think she and Klaus could have a conversation in Aramaic (but you could make a case that Aramaic might be the ancient language she’s the most well-versed in since she might know Klaus spoke it from Stefan’s diaries).

>Freya: “Alchemy of the Iberian Peninsula; Magic of the Middle East?”

>Hope: “I’m the one who put the cloaking spell on her in the first place. Maybe I can find a way to lift it without being in the room with her.”

>Freya: “And the fact that that’s never been done in the history of witchcraft isn’t going to deter you.”

So, Hope has created a cloaking spell so perfect she herself can’t work around it unless she is physically close to the cloaked object. She can cast in 12 different ancient languages. As a 9-year-old she created her own astral projection spell (Klaus thinks astral projection is complex magic as he stats later in the season about Ivy projecting him, doubting her ability). Pre s1 of Legacies (so possibly between TO and LGC or probably even between s4 and 5 of TO), Hope created a globe that shows newly awakened supernaturals across the entire planet. This is an active transcription spell on a planetary basis that can magically track if you turn supernatural or activate a supernatural side of yourself.

Just some things Hope does before even turning 16 that show her ingenuity and skill when it comes to crafting spells.

Hope also gives Freya attitude when her aunt is trying to teach her how to break cloaking spells, saying she knows how it works, but she also says later that Freya taught her most of what she knows about magic.

(I wonder how many languages Hope knows if she’s well-versed enough in 12 different ancient languages.)

2 Hope says people think she’s gonna melt the city if they don’t find Hayley. Roman asks if she could actually do that to which she replies with, “Probably.” This, once again, puts Hope on a similar level as s4 Inadu who was consistently expected to destroy New Orleans though with Hope it’s always tied to an outburst and unintentional whereas Inadu would be intentional destruction.

3 A small outburst sets the Old Mill on fire and Freya has to calm her down before it gets worse.

4 Hope, like Vincent in season 3 when he is the Regent, can feel that someone is trying to track her which leads her to cloak herself and Roman. Caroline says their entire Honours Tracking class is looking for them, so the best of the best at school at tracking vs. one Miss Mikaelson. This tracking class could potentially include formidable witches like Lizzie, Josie, Alyssa, and Penelope if she was at school already by then.

5 To finally reunite with her father dearest after years of abandonment, the first thing she does is to casually throw him aside in order to save stepdad Declan. Later in the season, she can easily throw Klaus around with her magic though he is not actively fighting back so not too impressive. Even later, when Klaus is about to kill himself, Hope easily puts him to sleep. Hope vs. Lucien? Sleepy sleepy time, Mr. Castle.

6 At the funeral march for Hayley, the nightwalkers attack. Hope magically pushes Freya aside (some might say she teleported her away), disorientating her in the process. A witch as powerful as Freya, waved away, dismissed with zero concern or effort. After that, she starts blasting their vans, making them explode with the nightwalkers inside. Josh saves her from a surprise shot from Emmett. Later, Hope easily sends Klaus’s astral projection away.

 

7 The Mikaelson siblings + Marcel are sent to a Chambre de Chasse.

So, the chambre de Chasse. “It’s a mental prison,” Klaus explains to Elijah.

It’s interesting, timing wise. It’s only at the funeral pyre itself that Hope asks Freya for help and she doesn’t name anything specific. After he and Hope reconcile, Klaus is leaving the funeral when he is knocked out, waking up in the Chambre with Elijah already there. Meaning: The Chambre was likely created by Hope who then asked Freya for help – though probably later adjusted by Freya since there is a room in there Hope can’t know since it was destroyed far before her birth.

With Kol and Rebekah being far away, this might be quite impressive to get them in there. Rebekah was in Corsica, Kol was at home waiting for Davina.

In the Sisters’ Chambre, they had to be physically close to the person they wanted to send in. With Finncent’s, they were at least in the same city. We know for sure Hope sent Marcel in when he tried to stop her (Hope > Marcel). We don’t know for sure if it was Freya who sent Rebekah, Kol and Elijah. Klaus must have been Freya.

Anyway, while this is happening, the city is experiencing all the signs laid out in the prophecy, so much so that it’s even showing in the reality of the Chambre. (The siblings take too long finding their keys as Hope rips the magic out of them to take it all into herself. Love this episode, just 40 minutes of the Mikaelson siblings interacting. Honestly the stretch from episode 7 on has lots of great moments even if the overall quality of the season is questionable)

8 To get ingredients for a spell, Hope goes to the bar where she finds Elijah and Declan. She puts Declan to sleep (for mere seconds, lol) and starts slashing Elijah up with her magic as if she was wielding a sword (which is such a cool usage of magic that I wish we saw more of). When Klaus appears, she pain-inflicts him (before even realising it was him, just reacted that fast) and then runs away. Hard to scale this since they aren’t actively fighting back.

9 Okay the big one. Elijah’s ruse works, the nightwalkers all gather and one pint-sized powerhouse shows up, to steal from u/OneOnOne6211.

She uses her magic to destroy the vials with Marcel’s venom and then Hope kills the entirety of the nightwalkers all at once. Her eyes glow blue, as does her magic. Just pure release of magic, no spell, and all die. Her magic also caught Declan and Bill who were upstairs and Bill dies, activating Hope’s werewolf curse in the process. I tried to count and it’s easily 50+ vampires. Probably something in the 50 to 70 range but not over 100 as some like to claim.

10 Hope has read Stefan Salvatore’s diary. Memorised it, even. That’s a lot of info! She also read The Mystic Falls Files (written by Alaric Saltzman), which has multiple volumes detailing the history of Mystic Falls, presumably (Alaric considers Klaus a greater evil than Cade!). This means Hope has knowledge of all the crazy powerful people and spells we see across TVD. She even knows about Jenna as “some woman that he [Klaus] killed in a moonstone ritual.” Seems like she’s a bit hazy on the details! We also know they teach Origins of Species at the school where they cover how werewolves were created and likely vampirism too, maybe even things like the immortal Silas and Amara. So Hope has knowledge of all these things.

-

2.3.4 Physicals & Abilities

1 Hope already has some level of supernatural hearing as we see when she tries to eavesdrop on Hayley but Henry can’t keep quiet.

2 She knows how her blood works (that is, how to create hybrids) and that the hybrids she turns are sired to her.

3 Freya has Hope perform some exercises where we see she already possesses supernatural physical abilities. “And that’s nothing compared to what I’ll be able to do once I trigger my werewolf side.” She has physical strength high-key werewolf levels without activating that side at all. We see Rafael – a fully activated werewolf – in Legacies perform a similar parkour to scam humans for money. Hope as a human just has werewolf strength because of course she does, she’s Hope Mikaelson and the Avatar and the chosen one and and and

At the end of the season she activates her werewolf side and ends The Originals as a hybrid but we don’t see any feats for Hybrid Hope. I’m trying to limit how much Legacies I include here so for now Hope’s physical strength is a mystery but very, very likely far beyond regular werewolf level if her human feats are anything to go by since she is both a crescent – who can control their transformation and use the full power of the wolf in human form – and a hybrid + she has original vampire blood.

4 Speaking of her blood, Hope has absurd healing abilities. She already heals faster than she can bleed: “It’s healing faster than I’m bleeding.” (At least until the cut gets too deep, then she can lose a few drops of blood before healing, but still has to cut multiple times to get enough blood for the spell.) No vampire, not even originals, ever had the problem of healing faster than they can bleed. In other words, Hope has greater healing than an original.

u/Suspicious_Zagnias when beta-reading this post mentioned that this is a bit hyperbolic and a big claim but I fully stand behind it. No original heals so fast they can’t bleed. Hope (including Legacies) shows this multiple times! Her healing is at least faster than that of an original even before becoming a vampire.

5 Hope has mastered comedy since she has the feat for funniest scene in TO when she talks about Hayley and Klaus hate banging and somehow creating her to poor Elijah who I’m sure would like to rip his ears off in that moment. 10/10 makes me laugh every time I see it!

“Dad lives a thousand years, does a weird ritual to become the only vampire who can procreate. Mom moves from foster home to foster home to end up in Mystic Falls. When dad got sad and drunk, had a one-nighter with mom, who was basically hate-banging him, Then, boom. Loophole. Miracle baby.”

No notes, perfect. Elijah’s reactions, 11/10.

6 Alaric thinks the ocean isn’t big enough to hold Klaus after he offers to let them chain him up and put him in the ocean. This would apply to Hope and everyone stronger than Klaus, in theory, at least the immortal ones. Klaus agrees, by the way, that the ocean won’t hold him.

This goes out to all the people questioning why they never dumped Klaus in the ocean, the show thinks it wouldn’t work somehow for whatever erason. The same would then apply to Beast Marcel or Lucien and presumably Alaric, and in turn for Tribrid Hope or the gods or Malivore (who even hunted Kraken lmao).

7 Hope has incredible psychic powers:
She finds out Klaus tricked her to put the magic inside him and so she puts him to sleep before he can kill himself. His arms are immediately full of black veins which it took days (maybe weeks?) to manifest for Hope. Freya says Klaus will go mad within hours. Freya also says that there is not enough magic in the world to slow this down which is certainly a questionable statement.

But she’s right in one way because Klaus wakes up and immediately experiences severe hallucinations and cannot tell visions and reality apart which Hope never had, which shows us quite the (probably psychic) power gap and why I think Hope would beat up Silas bad. You can also go back to season 4 where both Klaus and Beast Marcel – who should have even greater psychic powers than Klaus – were affected by those hallucinations.

Hope never is.

So if you think these visions are based on psychic energy and not induced by a spell or something, and Inadu is certainly stronger than Immortal Silas, then Hope probably can just shut out Silas’s psychic powers and he wouldn’t be able to affect her. But this, again, depends on if you think Inadu and Silas’s mind manipulation works at all similarly (Dahlia also has greater mind manipulation powers than Silas btw and is generally above Silas via MN's statement.). So you can make a good argument Hope wouldn’t be affected by hax from psychic powers, at least by the lesser psychic attacks.

8 I will leave this section with potentially the craziest Hope feat across every season, Legacies included – I’ll pick it up again in the Legacies section, for now here’s what happens:

Hope: I just want my mom. I just want my mom.

Hope: Passes out.

Hope: Wakes up, in Peace, no limbo, no Ferryman, and sees her mom.

And that’s about it. Finally done with The Originals as far as Hope’s scaling is concerned. But we’re not quite done yet.

-

2.3.5 Anti-Feats?

Hope has two anti-feats in the season:

One, Klaus manages to pull off a head-dive to extract the information about Hayley’s location from Hope. You can chalk this up to Hope being off-guard and not expecting her father to do this.

The second: the magic suppressing shackles that Linked Freya could overpower, Hope can’t. I don’t have any possible solution to offer that makes this any better for Hope either. There are 3 possibilities I thought of and you can decide which one you think is true: 1) Freya and Dahlia are far, far more powerful than we thought, way beyond Inadu and even Hybrid Hope, 2) Freya actually destroyed the shackles and they off-screen created new shackle that are significantly more powerful, 3) it’s just a plot hole.

Hope also seems to have lost her danger sensing ability or she’s just that distracted by Roman’s eyes and her missing mom that she cannot tell the trap Roman is leading her to when as a baby she had the pre-cog to know there would be an explosion so she shut off the car with her magic.

What’s not an anti-feat, however, is this: “She’s in her room, searching for a spell that doesn’t exist to fix a problem that can’t be solved.” This is about no spell they know of existing that can bring people back from a place that isn’t the other side or the ancestral realm. Limbo as a place didn’t exist yet, conceptually speaking, but with Legacies knowledge we can interpret this in the following way: Hayley seems to be at or rather in peace. There is no spell to bring someone back from peace (which is the original realm of the gods). Or I guess I should call it Peace, capital p, to indicate it’s a physical place your spirit goes to, not a state of being.

Or you could see it as them not knowing about any spell that brings people back from limbo and only the likes of the Necromancer can do so (and possibly the spirits in TVD when the Other Side is there). Probably not an anti-feat.

Or! If you do think it is an anti-feat, then the same applies to everyone who dies at the end of TVD that Bonnie cannot bring back. Or Bonnie really hates Stefan for Enzo and doesn’t want Enzo back lol. Or Tyler, or anyone who dies towards the end of TVD.

Emmett implies Marcel could even take down Hope. Which is ridiculous. But what he means is not a fight but rather his venom as he’s currently extracting it from Marcel as he makes this statement.

>“Well, at least your venom can help us where you failed. Did you know there are stories about it, too? How it can take down a hybrid, an original, even Hope Mikaelson, whatever she is.”

This is, as he says, speculation from the people in the world of TVD, not a confirmed fact. Considering Legacies implies it very, very hard that only red oak can kill Hope (as even the strongest person in the verse cannot kill her), even creating it in the first place which wouldn’t have been necessary had there already been a weapon able to kill Hope, she probably could tank it but Hope’s blood (pre werewolf activation) couldn’t save Finn from Lucien’s bite so you can decide for yourself if Marcel’s venom can kill Hope.

-

2.3.6 Summary

Let’s take stock of what we can say based on just TO, no Legacies:

• Hope is clairvoyant and Hope has the greatest danger sensing ability in the verse
• She is extremely intelligent, can perform magic in at least 12 different ancient languages, not to mention English, French or any modern languages
• Kol and Davina gifted Hope the collective works of William Shakespeare for her 9^(th) birthday and apparently Hope has read them all. She has also read Stefan’s diaries and Alaric’s volumes on Mystic Fall’s history and went to school at a magical school so her magical education is pretty insane. Hope likely has knowledge of the majority of the events in TVD history and knows all the powerhouses and important spells so in any vs. battle aganist a major TVD character, Hope – in character – would have knowledge on them!
• She has created a ton of her own spells (has her own grimoire), some so good even she herself can’t break them. Even at age 9 she already created astral projection spells which Klaus thinks are difficult magic (and which apparently aren’t taught at school as Hope had to teach it to Josie in LGC). Her version is arguably better than the one Freya uses in season 5
• She is the biggest power source and everyone wants her power, from ancestors, to Dahlia to The Hollow
• Her blood is the TVDU version of Hashirama cells from Naruto. Need a power source? Try Hope’s blood. Need to heal something? Try Hope’s blood. Need to kill some ancient giga powerful being? Try Hope’s blood!
• As a kid she scales to or above the Hollow who herself is called the strongest witch in the verse and is a narrative parallel to Dahlia who was also called the most powerful witch/"thing we've ever seen" by Michael Narducci at the time of TO season 2. All her feats that put her on that level are done with extreme ease and no signs of exhaustion or effort at all.
• Her magic has a mind of its own and can act fully autonomously which is a Hope exclusive.
• Hope has also never been sick, ever.

-

Part 2 Conclusion: The Originals – Where Does Hope Rank?

Okay so let’s say you don’t care about Legacies at all. You just want to scale based on TVD and TO – where does Hope actually rank?

Well, as a 7-year-old she is a rival to the probably strongest witch in history at that point (who herself transcended death) and might already eclipse her in power. This same 7-year-old Hope is theorised by multiple people to either have more power than anyone ever – including hellfire-feat Bonnie and Cade and the same person who was too powerful for Cade to control as a spirit – or that she will get there with time. Then she gets years of education, learns from some of history’s greatest witchcraft experts in Freya, probably Kol and Davina, maybe even a bit from Vincent (as Legacies implies), and whoever is at school to teach.

Lastly, in The Originals she becomes a witch-werewolf hybrid when just as a witch she already had physicals likely greater than most wolves without moonlight rings or crescents (evolved wolves). Now she is a crescent wolf/a hybrid who can tap into the power of their wolf in human form and we know werewolves could overpower the likes of Rose (500+ years old) or that multiple wolves can beat up an original when they are in wolf form (s1 with Rebekah). Hope now has access to a level of physical strength that puts her bare minimum in the 500+ year old vamp category without any magic, likely far above considering her human physicals and vampire blood.

If you take Hayley as a baseline, Hope probably boxes with people like Shen Min and Hayley is likely only that strong because she was turned by Hope’s blood considering all the Klaus hybrids are significantly weaker than Hayley. Klaus’s hybrids are barely a threat to pretty young vampires in Stefan and Damon whereas Hayley is competing with ancient vampires and holding her own. The only difference? The blood that turned them.

The sceptical ranking is right next to the Hollow (and potentially s8 Bonnie). The high-end interpretation (assuming you think the hellfire feat is impressive) is that Bonnie ~ Inadu ~ 7-year-old Hope < Teen Witch Hope << Hybrid Hope (<<< Tribrid Hope), which lines up well with statements. It would also just make sense if you do think 7-year-old Hope rivals them in power but then she closes the knowledge and skill gap they still had on her and thus would rank above them. (If you don’t think Cade and hellfire are as impressive as a lot of people hype it up to be, then you can just do the same scaling chain, just change it to Bonnie ~< Cade < Inadu ~ 7y.o. Hope < Teen Hope and so on.

Even if you don’t take this interpretation, at the latest when she becomes the Tribrid, Hope completely eclipses this tier and rivals the strongest god rather than the strongest witches. If you go by TVD/TO only, no LCG, at the lowest, the most you could possibly down-play, she is behind the Hollow. You can’t even really argue her to be below Bonnie and Cade since Inadu transcended death and Cade’s control and with Hope scaling to Inadu, she scales directly above Cade and Bonnie. There’s no real, non-disingenuous way to put her lower. You have to start lying to get anyone other than the Hollow above Hope if we only talk about TO and TVD.

Another way to make a chain is this: Dahlia is stated by Michael Narducci to be the most powerful thing we've ever seen by the time of TO s2. This would scale Dahlia above the likes of Qetsiyah, Silas (witch and immortal), 100w/Expression Bonnie. The Hollow is relative or outright stronger than Dahlia. Hope scales to the Hollow. Thus, Hope scales about Silas, Qetsiyah, Amara, Alaric, the originals, Esther (even while channelling the Bennett line), Linked Freya, etc.

Realistically, Hope is the strongest being in TVD and TO.

You have to really downplay Hope, hype up Dahlia as a narrative rival to Inadu, and gass up Qetsiyah’s off-screen feats a ton to get them over Hope (and ignore writer statements). Both statements and feats just blatantly put her relative if not directly above the Hollow. No matter how much you hype up Cade, he straight up couldn’t control Inadu’s spirit. Even if you make the argument Inadu somehow tethered her spirit to the normal world and so her spirit never went to any afterlife realm and thus stayed out of Cade’s control (and Lynn’s for that matter), Inadu has higher AP assertions than hellfire (same as Hope).

(If you take things into account that Bonnie with max effort held off an attack that would destroy a town/would have the destructive capacity to reach a few miles as Katherine, Seline and Kelly state about hellfire, and that Inadu and s5 Hope are considered New Orleans city busters (with Hope even having implications to destroy the whole world in her interaction with Inadu’s magic), then Hope quite clearly scales about Bonnie. I didn’t say anything! Don’t send me death threats! I don’t make the rules, I’m just telling you what the show is saying! Be nice! Runs away)

-

So, all in all, Hope must be in any top 5 strongest characters in TVD/TO if you really, really, really hate her and she’s more realistically #1. And that’s just as a witch, to be honest. Not because she’s a tribrid. Her magic probably does get amped by her other sides but everyone – writer or character – hypes up her witch side in TO, not her overall potential as the Tribrid (that only starts in Legacies).

Anyway, that’s it for now. Next week we will start to cover Legacies where Hope transcends the realm of witches, vampires and werewolves altogether as she’s fighting the eater of monsters and the gods themselves. In Legacies Hope goes from miracle baby to the chosen one bringing balance to the world.

Yes, Hope is that strong. She just is. Thanks for reading.

-

(The joke is, the majority of the verse loses to infant Hope when her danger sensing ability kicks in and like we see repeatedly, her magic can act completely autonomously of her will. Magic wave. Dead. GG. Hope doesn’t have to learn magic, or learn spells, she just knows. It’s like she is a being of pure magic.)

Mods, I’d say there has been enough interest shown to warrant the Legacies posts here too but if not, please tell me (:

Note: This was originally a section in part 1 but due to reddit's character limit, I had to cut the prophecy and first-born part out and post it separately. We will continue with part 2 this Friday.

As a reminder, the road map for this series:

1. Part 0
2. Part 1
3. Part 2: The Originals s4
4. Part 2.5: The Originals Season 5
5. Legacies s1
6. Legacies s2&3
7. How Powerful Is Malivore
8. How Powerful Are the Gods
9. Legacies s4

With that said, let's get right into it.

-

1.2 Prophecies

There are multiple prophecies about the destruction Hope Mikaelson would bring.

For one, Sabine or rather Celeste proclaimed: “Hoc est infantima malom. Nos omnia perdetu el eam.” (Season 1 episode 3). Or in Sophie’s words after Klaus asked her how this vision was interpreted: “Pretty much that your baby would bring death to all witches.” (The Originals season 1 episode 5).

Ivy, in season 5 episode 2 translates it as: “The child will destroy us all.” In the following card-reading revealing spell meant to confirm the vision Sabine/Celeste had, Ivy, the greatest Seer in New Orleans at the time, tells us about the following cards in regards to Hope: The Hangman for terrible sacrifice; the Devil for bondage and slavery; and the Tower for calamity.

>“That charlatan was right, Vincent. Hope Mikaelson will be our downfall.”

Vincent, however, tries to stay optimistic even in the face of blood rain, dying flowers, and snakes, saying Hope Mikaelson might be strong enough to destroy New Orleans but she might also be strong enough to be the spark that ignites a revolution, which is another common thread of predictions about Hope – that she would be the one to unite the divided factions of the supernatural world. Though, when talking to Freya in a later episode, he says: “I know this is hard for you [Freya] to hear, but Ivy’s cards predicted that your niece might, in fact, be the devil in disguise so you cannot be soft on her.”

Hope being referred to as the devil or Lucifer is also something that happens a few times across the seasons.

Note, too, that the prediction says all witches or end us all so it’s not tied to just the witches of New Orleans or, if you go with Vincent’s version, maybe not even just about witches but humanity as a whole? Or the supernatural? Which would fit with Hope and Freya’s conversation in s5, more on that in a moment.

Interpretations of the prophecy vary and most think it’s more about Indau or the interaction between Inadu and Hope more so than just about Hope herself.

However, the more overlooked prophecy comes in the form of Tyler Lockwood in season 1 episode 7 when he kidnaps Hayley to test if Hope’s blood could create hybrids. There, he states the following:

>“Been running with wolf packs all over the country. One of them was tight with a witch. She had nightmare visions about your baby and how Klaus could use its blood to make an army of hybrid slaves.”

So, second prophecy/vision about Hope when she wasn’t even born. This one is correct in the sense that Hope can indeed create hybrids but Klaus didn’t end up making a hybrid army with her blood. Or rather, I should say these ones as Tyler says visions so it was more than just one.

With one prophecy, Hope is supposed to bring the end to all witches, in the other she is an existential threat to werewolves due to her ability to create hybrids [Theory Cap On: you could draw an arrow here and imply Hope might be able to create witch-vampire hybrids that are not siphons first but normal witches. Theory Cap Off].

And, to complete the trifecta, there is also this statement: “If this baby is born, it’ll mean the end of the vampire species,” said by Tyler Lockwood too. This is not attached to a witch’s vision but rather a prediction based on his confirmed theory that Hope’s blood can create hybrids and so hybrids would end the vampire race as they knew it, or so he thinks.

But wait, there’s more!

Another prophecy, season 5 episode 7:

>“It’s a grimoire of a powerful seer from 1718 who prophesied the destruction of this city’s supernatural communities. ‘And thou shall know the signs of blood from water, vipers from the rivers, larvae from the soil, ice rain from the skies, fire across the water, monsoons from the sea. The death of all firstborns.’”

Yeah. So. All supernaturals. All firstborns. All of NOLA destroyed. This pretty much plays out exactly in season 5, but don’t ask me how magic would kill all firstborns or how it would know who is a firstborn or anything about the mechanics of this.

But wait! There might be even more! Season 5 episode 8:

>Marcel: “Ivy was telling Vincent and me all about the latest prophecy when a hurricane showed up off the coast out of nowhere.”

Vincent already knows about the prophecy so this might be yet another one. Or it could be the same one still. What’s interesting is that Klaus says this: “She’ll [Hope] take the power back. She’ll end the curses, she’ll keep the firstborns safe, and then my daughter as we know her will be forever lost to darkness.”

Honestly, this has always been confusing to me. Why would uniting the power stop the destruction when its physical presence caused it in the first place? Well, it is what happens and the apocalypse is averted, though don’t ask me why or how exactly this works, in universe, mechanic wise. Regardless, Hope saves the supernatural communities and the firstborns, the first of many times she saves the world.

The 1718 and the Celeste predictions might be related and/or the same or they might be completely separate prophecies about Hope.

-

1.2.1 Prophecies Summary

To summarise, we have a prophecy by Sabine/Celeste, by an unnamed witch hanging with werewolves, and a seer from centuries before Hope (and before the ancestral realm itself) even existed. Even before birth, Hope was predicted to end the 3 main supernatural species (which is balanced later by the counter-narrative that Hope could also be the saviour, the one to unite them, as Hayley and Vincent seem to think and as Legacies gets into more with Hope being the leader of the school with all its supernaturals).

Witches, werewolves, vampires, NOLA, the world, Hope is gonna end it all, or unite them all, such is foretold.

But. wait! There is even more still! Davina in The Originals season 1 episode 5, when she was “all-powerful” (according to Elijah) drew a person, a woman. A red-head. It straight up looks like Hope. We know her drawings have meaning, such as when she was drawing Celeste who then later showed up or rather was there all along. Which could be a premonition for Hope’s existence, even down to her appearance.  Some have speculated it’s supposed to be Genevieve and not Hope and this could be true but personally I don’t think the drawing looks anything like Genevieve and looks more like 7-year-old redhead Hope as a teen. It looks like early concept art for Hope, to me.

While these prophecies aren’t about power per se, they do indicate what a big deal Hope’s mere existence is and what a threat to the supernatural status quo she is.

-

1.3 Dahlia's Warning & First-Born Mikaelson Witches

Next we also have Dahlia’s warnings to Klaus about Hope:

>“First-born witches in this bloodline possess devastating power.”

We can guesstimate the first-born Mikaelson power based on Freya and a little from Dahlia:

Like I outlined earlier in Part 1, we know Freya is pretty clearly the strongest of the Mikaelson siblings, above Klaus (and Mikael) and the most ancient vampires, even competing with the Beast level characters and maybe being outright above them when they don’t have the ancestors to support them as the ancestors had to intervene before Freya could rip out Beast Lucien's heart.

Dahlia is very hard to scale in her base since she is almost always linked to someone so we barely get to see her base. She seems to have gotten stronger, though, as she couldn’t fight back against the Viking raids but after severing the link between herself and Freya and later herself and Klaus, she was still tiers above the originals. She straight up beats Klaus, Elijah, Rebekah and Freya at the same time and could explode the indestructible white oak. So the minimum baseline for just a first-born Mikaelson witch is, low-balled, at an originals+ tier, likely even Beast level+ and that’s without anything else factored in.

But Dahlia goes further than that, saying Hope wouldn’t just have this base power:

>“Hope’s magic will be tainted with your vampire blood as well as the aggressive wolf temperament."

This is more so a statement about the nature of Hope’s magic and the difficulty of controlling it. Vampirism is dark magic, as well as lycanthropy (at least it should be) and I think the idea is that first-born Mikaelson magic is already on the darker side of the magic spectrum.

It has to be noted that Dahlia is trying to manipulate Klaus into thinking he needs her so her words can’t be taken at face value. However, we do know Freya struggled with her powers a lot (at least when linked to Dahlia) and Freya herself warns Hope about the first-born power and having outbursts and we get some glimpses in Legacies where Hope’s outbursts cause earthquakes or knock out students without her intending to do so.

u/Suspicious_Zagnias brought up the theory to me that the reasons that Hope is so strong might be tied to the fact that there hasn’t been a new first-born Mikaelson witch in a thousand years and that this power had been accumulating during this time and it all went to Hope. The power somehow exists in their bloodline so I don’t think it’s too much of a reach to think that the magic can accumulate. This would help explain why even a 7-year-old Hope is so many tiers stronger than Freya and Base Dahlia.

-

1.3.2 Freya's Warnings

>“For what happens inside of you any time tragedy strikes. For when your emotions are tested in ways you couldn’t even imagine.”

>“How can anyone prepare for that?”

>“You aren’t just anyone, Hope. You’re a first-born Mikaelson witch with a terrifying amount of power, even without the darkness [Inadu, or what’s left of her after her spirit was split in 4] that your family is keeping you away from.”

>“So, what? I’m so sensitive, everyone’s afraid I’m just gonna flip out?”

>“Well, when people like you and me flip out, entire villages can burn.”

Villages burning is obviously downplay but Freya always uses that lingo. Vincent in s4 was always on about the Hollow destroying the city. Since Hope scales to the Hollow, Hope destroying a village is a nothing point. It’s more so on a reflection of Freya’s upbringing and on the nature of the destruction, with Vincent saying the Hollow would destroy New Orleans while Hope just while having an outburst could burn a village down. We know from Legacies that Hope being upset causes earthquakes and tornados, and Inadu was creating storms and such. Hope in s5 also implies her outburst could "melt" New Orleans.

Hope also asks Freya what the prophecy even means: the destruction of her family? The city? The world? Freya seems to think any and all are possible interpretations. So no, Hope is not town level in that sense.

Bonnie never got such a statement outside of power ups, no one scared of what would happen if Bonnie had a bad day. The only real time was when she was using Expression. Same goes for pretty much every single other character in the verse. Only Harvest Davina was threatening to destroy the city by her powers becoming unstable and Inadu was expected to destroy New Orleans. Only in Legacies are there statements similar to this or even greater than this to be honest when it comes to Malivore and Dark Josie.

-

Bit of a sudden ending since it wasn't supposed to end here. On Friday we get back to regular scheduling as we deep dive The Originals season 4, perhaps the greatest season for Hope feats there is!

Part 1: Statements

No long intro today. You can read part 0 here. Let’s get right into it. This is going to be by far the longest individual part so buckle up.

-

1. Narrative Implications and Statements

For the first part of the series, I will cover every statement about Hope’s power that I deemed relevant (if I covered all, we’d be here all day!). I will contextualise them so you can get the full picture.

-

1.1 Early Statements

Throughout the shows Hope was built up as this being with the potential to become the most powerful of them all, surpassing everyone and everything that has come before in all of history. There is a plethora of statements, both in and out of universe of this and later of her fulfilling this prophecy. Her father tells her she will be the greatest witch to ever live but that one is easily dismissed: Of course a father would tell his kid daughter something like this.

-

1.1.1 The Hollow’s Acolyte

Season 4, Episode 12:
Harder to dismiss is when the followers of the Hollow tell Klaus the same: When Klaus and Elijah hunt down the Hollow’s acolytes, one of them reveals what body Inadu has taken over. Klaus tells him they would kill the Hollow over and over, no matter what body she’s taken, and the acolyte says the following:

>“Oh, you won’t dare kill the body she’s taken. Even now, she’s locking herself within the greatest witch this world may ever know.”

This is pretty blatantly about Hope and not Inadu since he says she locked herself within the greatest witch the world may ever know, not that Inadu herself is the greatest witch or that Inadu with Hope’s body will be the greatest. And this is a follower of the Hollow, not a Mikaelson or anyone who has any reason to lie. This is an outsider who thinks Hope will be the greatest *witch* – not person, creature, whatever, witch.

He thinks that while actively following a different witch. If Hope > Inadu isn’t true at this moment already, even Inadu’s own followers think Hope will surpass her in the future. To argue against this interpretation, you’d have to make some argument that when he says greatest, he means something other than most powerful, such as that Hope will accomplish great things or will be revered as such. It’s not impossible he means it like that but unlikely since the Hollow’s whole shtick is power and people follow her for power so it’s safe to assume with greatest he is indeed making a statement about power.

-

1.1.2 Alaric

Legacies season 4, episode 5:
When Hope was supposed to enrol at the Salvatore School for the Young & Gifted, there were discussions about admitting the young Mikaelson at all between Headmaster Alaric and school counsellor Emma. Alaric was vehemently against it at the time and we see the following exchange:

>Emma: “You’re being a little extreme, don’t you think?”

>Alaric: “I’ve already sent the construction crew home, Emma. Because we can’t open this school if it means admitting Hope Mikaelson, and you know it. I mean, this psych evaluation you did on her – it has more red flags than a Georgia football game.”

>Emma: “Of course it does. She’s a Mikaelson. But I thought the point of this place is helping children like her.”

>Alaric: “There is no one like her. This girl might be the most powerful supernatural who ever existed, and she’s a ticking time bomb. [...] But tell me what happens, in your professional opinion, if we take on this risk and screw it up.”

>Emma: “Honestly? It would likely haunt us for the rest of our lives.”

Emma tries to convince Alaric to admit Hope by trying to get him to see the good Hope could do but he says his mind is made up.

Personally, I hate this scene. For one, it’s a bit of a retcon to the Originals where it was Alaric who invited Hope to the school and now he almost stopped opening the school altogether because he was so scared of her?! That psych evaluation must have really scared him off! And timeline wise it’s weird because in TOs4 it seems like the school is already fully constructed, operational and running by the time Hope enrols but I guess it could work.

Personal issues aside, this is another statement about 7-year-old Hope where she is either expected to become or already is the most powerful person /in all of history/ just as a kid. Alaric sees this kid and thinks it’s genuinely possible she has already surpassed everything/everyone he knows.

In fact, Alaric was so scared of this little girl’s potential power he refused to teach her altogether at first and had to come around and change his mind as to not be biased just because her last name is Mikaelson.  Reminder: This is post s8 Hellfire feat and the destruction of hell and Cade plus Alaric has met the Hollow at that point but he still thinks Hope might already have surpassed them all just as a kid, at least in terms of power. Next time you see some post pop up about who has the most raw power, remember Alaric’s words.

And this fits perfectly with what Michael Narducci said!

-

1.1.3 Michael Narducci

Both the acolyte’s statement as well as Alaric’s assessment are surprisingly consistent with what The Originals show-runner Michael Narducci said in an interview previewing season 4:

>Question: “Will that be the only challenge they face [bringing the family back together after the defeat at the end of season3]?”

>MN: “No.”

>Question: “Can you tease anything about the other challenges that are gonna come when they wake up? Besides Marcel?”

>MN: “I think the fact that we have gone to such great lengths to create Hope as a person who is now 7 years old and she is her own character, you can imagine that one of the reasons we wanted to do that was to take delight in building a story off the consequences of having a 7-year-old who is the most powerful witch in the world. You know, I’m not saying in any way that Hope is the villain, but I am saying that there will be certain elements that will circle that child and that will want to have her and make use of her for their own nefarious ends.”

He also calls the Mikaelsons the most powerful family in the world which I don’t think anyone would argue against.

So, there are many things to get into with this statement:

One, let’s look at when it was said. The interview was a preview for The Originals season 4 which would air its first episode in March 2017 and the statement itself comes from a video that was upload in August 2016. Season 8 of TVD started in October 2016 so this statement would for sure apply to s1-7 of TVD and s1-3 of TO and presumably every witch alive, though it should be said that s4 of TO is set at the same time or after s8 of TVD in universe as s4 ends with Hope going to the Salvatore school which is only opened at the end of s8. Of course, people like Dahlia, Silas, and Qetsiyah are dead so they presumably wouldn’t be included in a statement about strongest witch in the world. Alive at the time, though, are people like Freya and s7 Bonnie (or even s8 Bonnie).

Second, MN calls her the most powerful witch (not person/creature) in the world which fits with the acolyte. This goes to all the people who claim Hope is only so strong because she is a tribrid and doesn’t scale to the top tiers witch to witch.

Third, he is previewing season 4 so he might even be saying Hope is stronger than Inadu and this would make sense as he goes on to say people will want to “have” Hope and make use of her. I used to take this more as a throwaway statement that wasn’t to be taken too literally but I’ve since changed my mind. He clearly is proud of the build-up they have done for Hope and he sees her as the most powerful, and wants to get into that story wise which season 4 actually does very well, better than probably any other season featuring Hope including Legacies. Hope being this mega powerful person is what the plot focuses around as the “certain elements” as he puts it, the Hollow, are after Hope for her immeasurable power.

Let me put it in other words:

The idea behind season 4 is that Hope is the strongest witch in the world and the antagonists are after her power (and, you know, they aren’t after Bonnie or Freya!). Meaning: Kid Hope > the Hollow at least in the Hollow’s spirit form, at least in raw power, if you think Inadu is the greater being overall, more skilled, more knowledgeable, more experienced and such. Which would fit with what Alaric thinks.

For reference, s7 Bonnie could “resurrect” people when drawing out souls from the phoenix stone, though personally I think this isn’t as much of a resurrection feat as some people make it out to be as she isn’t actually recreating the bodies, more so transferring souls from a talisman. She isn’t creating a body and restoring its magical properties and I would assume bringing a spirit back from a talisman is far easier than transferring the spirit from a different realm like the Other Side or the Ancestral Realm but that’s more my head-canon (see Freya storing people’s soul in her talisman). If you think this is a genuine resurrection feat, then all the better for Hope as Hope would be above that Bonnie via this statement from Narducci.

Then there is Freya who could restore Eva’s dead body at the end of s2 post Dahlia’s death so no more Linked Freya so another resurrection feat which Kid Hope would scale above.

Freya is also massively above the oldest non-original vampire in the world in Lucien, demonstrating as such when she can easily break his neck with zero effort. The Trinity (of which Lucien is a part of) was stated back in 2015 by a Carina Adly Mackenzie – a writer and story editor for The Originals – to be comparably strong to an original and that a fight between a member of the Trinity and an original would be a “pretty fair fight.” She also said the Trinity are only 2 years younger than the Originals so “they’re relative, strength-wise.” In other words, if you take this statement to be true, then Freya is easily above her siblings in power. By a lot.

Furthermore, Freya can casually break the necks of Strix vampires – an organisation who only admits ancient vampires or those capable of proving themselves against ancient vampires – while she is on a different continent and she is generally above her siblings in power. At her best she almost ripped out Beast Lucien’s heart, who himself was massively stronger than even Klaus and all the originals, and only failed because the ancestors interfered to rescue him from her attack.

Hope then is above the level of power that is easily above an original and above even Beast Lucien (without the ancestors’s help) who himself is debated if he is stronger than Marcel. So just through clearly scaling above Freya, Hope would be multiple tiers above her family in power.

If you do think Narducci was including Inadu in his assessment, then even Kid Hope scales to a witch I think almost everyone has in their top 3 for the entire verse, if not #1.

To offer my personal opinion here, I do actually think he is including Inadu. Hope is the most powerful, Inadu and co are coming for her for her power. That’s the point of the season. I would argue this is consistent with the feats Hope shows in s4 but that’s for Part 2. Hope then of course gets older, learns more about magic and activates her wolf and vampire sides and only gets stronger and gains greater control over her powers.

It’s more difficult to get 7-year-old Hope above s8 Bonnie with just this statement, however – unless you grant that since he’s talking about TOs4 which in universe is set after season 8, then Hope would be straight up more powerful than s8 hellfire feat Bonnie. Or if you think s8 Bonnie feats should all scale to s7 feats as Bonnie was even rusty at the start and such. If you think s8 Bonnie is way stronger than s7 Bonnie and if you say the MN statement doesn’t apply to s8 too, then you can’t get Hope to Hellfire Bonnie level yet. You’d have to find connective tissue for Inadu ~ Bonnie and with Hope’s relativity or even superiority to Inadu, you then can scale Hope to Bonnie. But of course, Alaric’s statement calls into question if Hope hasn’t already surpassed Bonnie and Cade so there is connective tissue via Alaric’s expertise.

So, if you combine what Alaric in Legacies and Michael Narducci in The Originals think about 7-year-old Hope, then she is just the most powerful witch in the world bar none.

-

Okay. Let’s take stock for moment and see where we are. We have 3 different quality statements, both from trustworthy character sources and a word of God statement. Certain people in this sub treat every word MN says about power scaling (such as his Marcel vs. Alaric assessment) as gospel so if you’re consistent, you have to take this one seriously as well.

Before getting to later statements about our favourite tribrid, let’s go even further back because even before Hope drew a single breath, people were predicting what she would do and how catastrophic her mere existence would be.

-

1.2 Prophecies

Unfortunately the post exceeds reddit's character limit so I will post this section separately in the next few days and then edit this post to include a link to it.

-

1.3 Dahlia's Warning & First-Born Mikaelson Witches

1.3.1 How Strong Is A First-Born Mikaelson Witch?

Same thing unfortunately. Hate to split it up so much but can't help it.

-

1.4 Later Statements

First we looked at statements about 7-year-old Hope. Now we’re jumping to Legacies with a more grown-up Hope.

-

1.4.1 Alaric Part 2

Season 4, episode 3:
The most important in-universe statement comes once against from the historian of the supernatural world, Alaric Saltzman. [Note: The way Legacies was released was strange due to covid so this is basically s3 episode 19 so keep that in mind. That’s why something as important as Hope becoming the Tribrid is in episode 3 where it is kinda jarring, placement wise.]
I’m gonna give you the long version so you can understand the context in which it was said better. The relevant statement is at the end.

>Hope: “Malivore just found a way to turn innocent people into monsters that he controls. They’re not gonna stop coming. And eventually, we’re gonna run out of cages and chains and sleeping potions and then what? The longer we keep him alive, the more innocent people are gonna die. I can’t live with that.”

>Alaric: “You’re still in shock. All right? So just calm down and take a second.”

>Hope: “Don’t tell me to calm down like I’m a child. I just killed someone. You know, the former vampire hunter who took me in when I was little would have made this choice in a heartbeat. It’s the right thing to do, and you know it.”

>Alaric: “It’s not that simple.”

>Hope: “Why not?”

>Alaric: “Because it’s not gonna work.”

>Hope: “Why wouldn’t it work?”

>Alaric: “Because you’re not ready.”

>Hope: “You don’t trust me. Just like you didn’t trust me to know that Landon was still alive.”

>Alaric: “We’re talking about more power than anyone has ever had! And no matter how strong you are, you are still your father’s daughter.”

>Hope: “Get out.”

Here’s a list of people Alaric directly or indirectly (through watching from the Other Side) met and also remember he becomes a supernatural historian (he’s written multiple books on the history of Mystic Falls, for one) and scholar and he teaches people about supernatural history:

• Esther – one of the witches who was revered as the most powerful witch in history and the creator of the most dominant supernatural species of the last millennium;
• Bonnie (including 100 Witches Bonnie – who is a stated Originals killer, Expression Bonnie – who can compete with Silas and bully originals, s8 (Psychic) Bonnie – who held off Hellfire, destroyed hell and created a pocket dimension);
• Qetsiyah – the creator of perfect immortality, the cure, the Other Side, capable of wielding blue fire, and so on;
• the Hollow – another witch revered as the most powerful of all time and an originals slayer, who could transcend death itself (though he only meets her very briefly and might not know much about her specifically though they do teach Origins of Species at school so he probably knows enough);
• Cade – the “devil” of the TVDU, creator of a pocket dimension that would become one of the TVDU’s hell dimensions, capable of using hellfire, borderline invincible psychic;
• Sybill and  Seline – mind-controlling sirens;
• Silas – an immortal with psychic powers so strong he put terror into Klaus and as a witch probably somewhat relative to Qetsiyah though not on her level;
• Freya and all the other Mikaelsons outside of Dahlia though he likely knows about her through second-hand accounts but probably doesn’t fully understand her and Linked-Freya’s peak level;
• Marcel (as the Beast) who is above the originals;
• Malivore – who is single-handedly the reason all the monsters that have roamed the earth since Ben brought god magic into the world are gone and forgotten, and the terror of the gods themselves though at this point Alaric wouldn’t know about gods yet;
• Dragons, trolls, ogres, nighthags, mummies, fucking Santa Claus! and just about every top tier we see across the 3 shows.

Alaric has seen and/or fought and/or studied them all and he thinks Hope has more power than any of them. No one compares in his mind.

Also note that in his first statement about Kid Hope he thought she may have more power than anyone ever, meaning he wasn’t sure yet; he was speculating. This time he is outright saying her becoming the Tribrid would surpass anything that has come before after he has known her for years and seen her grow up, fight monsters and everything.

If there is anyone qualified to make this statement, it’s Alaric. He should have a very good understanding how strong Hope is at this point and as I just went over, he knows about every top tier in the verse and he still thinks Hope would surpass them all if she became a full tribrid.

Furthermore, you could even argue this statement doesn’t necessarily mean Hope would only become the most powerful of all time once she becomes the Tribrid, by the way. She could already be the most powerful right now, as a hybrid, and the statement doesn’t change since he could be saying that it’s more a control thing when she becomes a full tribrid. But I think the idea is that she without a doubt surpasses the verse at that point if she becomes the Tribrid and as a kid it’s still a question, still a debate.

People like to downplay Alaric’s knowledge of the verse but this guy managed the armory, he lived through all the events of the shows, he met the people he’s putting Hope above, seen them, interacted with them, studied them. He’s a teacher, a historian, a scholar. If his opinion on this topic doesn’t count, then no one’s does. The only people where such a statement might hold more value would be like Esther, Qetsiyah, maybe Kol, and that’s about it in terms of experts on supernatural lore. And these 3 haven’t met the same amount of top tiers as Alaric.

At best you can downplay Alaric’s statements by saying he is talking out of fear and isn’t being rational. He could just see the worst-case scenario of Hope turning evil and going on a rampage but then again, he and the MF gang did defeat the “devil” (using quotation marks because we meet actual gods later and Cade is just a psychic), outlived the Mikaelsons, Qetsiyah, Silas, and so on, and Bonnie is one phone call away. If he was sure Bonnie could stop Hope, would he be that worried of Hope’s potential?

So even if you downplay the statements to an absurd degree that is not implied at all, at worst it makes Hope a Bonnie rival rather than clearly superior but honestly? Honestly... this is crazy low-ball.

As a last point about this statement, Alaric might have even been including specific channelling in his statement such as Esther channelling the entire Bennett bloodline, or Bonnie and Qetsiyah doing similar things like channelling their ancestors or doppelgangers. Channelling in general is obviously included here since that’s just a normal witch power that every witch uses at all times basically. Traditional magic is channelling; dark magic is channelling. Almost all magic is to some degree channelling.

-

1.4.2 Brett Matthews

This is, once more, consistent with what Legacies head writer and show-runner and previous TVD writer Brett Matthews thinks about a now grown-up Hope:

>Question: “Was there a reason why the show didn’t fully dive into the darker storylines that were set up for Hope in The Originals?”

>BM: “On one level, it’s the Superman problem, because the minute you have the most powerful creature in the world, you have to find ways to put obstacles in that person’s way. And maybe there’d be some people who would like the show where Hope is just the most powerful creature in the world and just tears through every single thing in 20 minutes. But it’s generally how drama works, so you’ve always gotta find people who are stronger or at least a challenge – and it is a challenge."

This is from an interview after the conclusion of Legacies that has actual gods and the equivalent of Zeus in the show. The show-runner thinks of Hope as the single most powerful person in the world and how difficult that made the writing process which is a departure from MN who was delighted in exploring this all-powerful girl which makes sense as he was involved in making her this strong and BM took over when she had already reached this level and had different ideas what to do with it. If MN continued to be in charge of Hope’s story, I’m sure he would have explored her powers more and in a more mature way than Legacies did, but this is not the direction we got (sadly).

The Superman comparison is quite crazy. Superman is someone so powerful, he - alongside Goku - is like the poster-boy for power scaling and Could This Character Beat Superman? topics. Hope is compared to a narrative benchmark other people are measured by: Can They Beat Hope Tho? Someone so strong it’s difficult to even conceive of enemies they wouldn’t immediately rip apart so they had to come up with other ways of challenging Hope.

How did they do this? How did they try to challenge Hope to have a story with tension and stakes?

1. They introduced a new mythical monster every week, many of them hax-based to negate traditional power and unkillable through traditional means so Hope cannot rip through them immediately. Or antagonists like the Necromancer who beat Hope through mind games rather than power in season 1.
2. They used an organisation such as Triad that doesn’t have one face to beat.
3. They created antagonist like Malivore who is hax-based, elusive and introduce limits about what can kill him, with only the completed tribrid being able to (otherwise Hope would have killed him in s1 already) and who power-cliffs the other two shows entirely (more on that in a later part).
4. Four: When everything else was used, introduce gods. Not pseudo god-like figures. Not wannabe devils. Not psychics, not witches so strong they appear as god-like. They had to introduce actual gods because Hope was too powerful for them to think of anything else that could realistically, believably challenge her!

Then they give that god a weapon they had to invent so Hope can actually be killed (which means she can’t be killed by white oak and probably beast venom as if they could kill her, Nature wouldn’t have had to intervene to create red wood) as well as magic immunity because without it, Hope would rip them apart once more.

Bonnie fought the mock devil of the TVDU? Hope fought the actual gods and the strongest being to ever exist within the world of Vampire Diaries.

-

1.4.3 Carina Adly MacKenzie

We already talked a bit about Carina so introductions away, Carina was hosting the I Was Feeling Festive in Mystic Falls Heretic Panel from December 3^(rd), 2023 (Legacies ended in 2022). There, Chris Wood (Kai’s actor) asks if there is anyone who can be a wolf and witch at the same time and they tell him about Hope being a tribrid where MacKenzie says: “the most powerful being on *all* the shows.” This would include Ken.

-

1.4.4 Ferryman Landon

One statement I originally didn’t want to cover in depth but then changed my mind on comes from the following moment: in the final episode of Legacies, after Hope and the super squad defeated Ken, the strongest of the gods, Hope summons Landon – who has become the Ferryman and now rules over limbo, the place spirits go to before they can go to Peace – to her room.

I will go over this feat in detail when I get to Legacies; for now I only want to focus on the words said. But to make sense of it, and for those who haven’t seen Legacies or those who need a memory refresher, Landon has full control over limbo. Like Cade was the leader of hell, a dimension spirits went to after death, Landon is now in charge of the spirits that go to limbo, a realm as old as the gods themselves (or older, possibly) and previously controlled by a god in Lynn. Limbo is the original afterlife before Lynn took pity on the humans so Landon now controls the TVDU's original afterlife. Landon controls the spirits, he decides who goes where, he keeps the spirits in limbo or transports them to Peace. He can even go to the real world and return the spirits should they somehow escape, or allow the spirits to come back to life.

What’s important is that Landon might be a god and might have magic immunity though that’s a contentious topic – considering Hope thinks he’s become extremely powerful and that he can set up a connection between Peace (the original realm of the gods) and the normal, living world, I’m inclined to think he at least has god-like powers. Either way, he has to be extremely powerful now since he has to keep the spirits in check. If anyone was stronger than him, they could just bully him into sending them to Peace or back to life. Hope summons him. Against his will. He was mid conversation and then disappears.

He expresses his surprise to Hope when he says: “It’s been a minute since I’ve been summoned. You’ve become incredibly powerful.”

Landon knows how strong Hope was as a hybrid already (and even as a tribrid, actually) but summoning him from limbo makes him think Hope is way, way stronger than that as a tribrid since he says you have become incredibly powerful. So this possibly god Landon, or at least ruler of limbo super powerful Landon, thinks Tribrid Hope (or rather, post Ken fight Hope) is incredibly powerful and way stronger than Hybrid (and earlier Tribrid) Hope who was already putting the fear in Malivore.

To push the idea that Landon is actually super strong now, here’s what Hope says: “Look who’s talking.” They are acknowledging each other’s strength. And remember, this is a post Ken fight Hope who might have surpassed him at the end (or at least his weakened version – more on that in the last part of this series). She equates his power with his newfound position as ruler of limbo and lost souls as she immediately after returning the compliment says, “I heard you’re the Ferryman now.”

Ruler of limbo, the original afterlife before Lynn took pity on the humans and allowed them to go to Peace, possibly a god, even Ferryman Landon bows to the Tribrid’s might.

-

1.4.5 Ken

Season 4, episode 19:
Again, for those of you who have not seen Legacies and those in need of a memory refresher, Ken’s entire personality is all about power and conquering. Think of him as a male version of Inadu. He cares deeply about his reputation as the strongest in the world.

Ken, father and strongest of the gods, says to Hope:

>“You could have been worshipped as a god.”

This is almost certainly a power statement. We know Ken is a battle and power obsessed god and his reason to even fight Hope at all is because she is seen as the strongest by the world and to reclaim that spot, he has to beat her.

(Sidebar: this is indirect scaling for Hope > Bonnie as Bonnie isn’t seen as the most powerful by people in the verse even though she beat Cade’s hellfire but that’s a reputation statement so not too serious, like how Hiruzen in Naruto was seen as the most powerful Hokage because Hashirama’s power was so absurd people thought it was a myth and exaggerated; they couldn’t believe it. Reputation, of course, isn’t the same as actual power).

What Ken is saying is basically that she is so powerful she is god-like and could be worshipped as such – but ofc still inferior to him because he’s the bestest and strongest. Ken stronk. He’s not very interesting I’m afraid (: “But you chose to bind your fate to lesser creatures.” On some Palpatine shit, he sees her bonds and trust in her friends as her weakness and he is promptly defeated by Hope and her friends.

This is actually a big idea all throughout season 4 that a lot of people seem to miss – the Hope as a god idea, which I will cover in more detail in the Legacies part of these posts. But for this part, all you need to know is that the strongest god – probably by a large margin, at least over those gods we see on screen – thinks Hope is so powerful and great she is basically a god but weak for her bonds and the narrative proves him wrong by showing the bonds are what matter.

-

1.4.6 Ken Part 2

Like I just mentioned, Ken’s stated reason for coming back at all and fighting Hope is because she is seen as the world’s most powerful being. The statement comes from promotional material for Legacies season 4: “Mitchell [Ken’s actor] will recur as Ken, a malevolent god who has return to take down Hope, the world’s only tribrid, and reclaim his title as the world’s most powerful being.”

Or, if you don’t want to believe in promotional material for whatever reason, take Ken’s own words:

>“I am the most powerful being in existence, so imagine my surprise when I was awoken and heard there was a girl claiming that same title. I must crush her and prove otherwise. Such is the way of gods.”

In other words, Ken’s stated reason to come back after being awoken by Ben is to beat up Hope since she has taken his spot as the world’s most powerful being. He was alive and in the TVD world around the same time as Inadu, Qetsiyah, Dahlia, Cade, and… and yet, he let them live; he did not “crush” them to prove his superiority. The same reputation =/= actual power idea applies here obviously but it’s pretty blatant imo.

-

1.4.7 Everyone Wants Her Power

The last point I want to make is a narrative one: Dahlia and Inadu, seen by people like Freya, Esther, Vincent, etc. (or show runner Michael Narducci), i.e., reputable sources, as the most powerful witches/beings in all of history, both want Hope or her body/power.

Dahlia while linked to Freya was pretty much already unstoppable and near all-powerful, waving around originals like they are mere insects compared to her power. But she still wanted Hope to attain true immortality and to be truly unstoppable. Hope as a baby would give Dahlia the power a grown-up prime Freya can’t.

Meanwhile, Inadu states the following: “Once Hope Mikaelson gives in, I will be more powerful than you can even imagine.” This statement comes from Inadu herself (talking to Vincent) which, to me, pretty clearly implies it’s Hope’s body that is so absurdly powerful. And having said body would make her so powerful, someone like Vincent couldn’t even comprehend it anymore.

This fits with what the Hollow’s acolyte thinks about Hope in the future probably becoming the greatest witch ever. And it tracks with what Vincent says later when he tells Hayley to pack her bags and leave with Hope. “Hayley, the Hollow has felt your little girl’s power. And it’s gonna want to get that power back.” The Hollow craves power over everything and who does she target? Hope Mikaelson. She wants Vincent but as a follower, certainly not his body. Not Freya, a first-born Mikaelson witch, not any of the other Mikaelsons, and she doesn’t go to Mystic Falls to get Bonnie either.

She wants Hope.

So we have maybe the two most powerful witches in the verse, at worst below s8 Bonnie and Qetsiyah so at worst the 3^(rd) and 4^(th) most powerful witches in history (excluding Hope) wanting Hope’s body for their own power. You already are near all-powerful, why do you need more? Because Hope is that strong, that’s why.

Who else wants Hope’s body? Ryan Clarke, who is a lesser version of Malivore, Eater of Darkness and threat to the gods. He wants Hope’s body and outright created a device that lets him transfer his consciousness into her body so he can stand up to his father.

The joke is, these aren’t even all statements! There are more, smaller ones, like the Necromancer and Ryan and Malivore and Landon calling her all-powerful, almighty or unstoppable, or the ancestors wanting Hope’s death for their power too, which would apparently sustain them for generations and a bunch more but those are the major statements and narrative implications for Hope.

Everyone in Legacies treats her like she’s the invincible, strongest in the world, from friends to enemies alike. Not a single person doubts she’s the strongest. It’s just their reality that Hope is number one.

A few characters have crazy statements attached to them: Esther, Qetsiyah, Expression Bonnie, Dahlia, the Hollow. But Hope has prophecies and statements, in universe and outside of it, from trustworthy sources. We even have admissions from the show-runner that it was hard to write for Hope because she was too strong to come up with any antagonists that could realistically, believably challenge her.

The narrative, the lore, whatever you want to call it, is very clear: Hope either already is the strongest as a baby to kid, or she will become the strongest witch and being in history. She will unite or break her family; she will unite the supernatural factions or be their downfall; she was allowed to exist with the purpose to kill Malivore and – going further – possibly even to defeat and kill Ken for he unbalanced the world.

She’s a miracle, the only one of her kind, the Good Mikaelson^(TM), the saviour of the world, the chosen one. I don’t know man, she’s the Avatar of the TVDU! She can bend all the elements and bring peace and balance to the world or whatever. It’s kinda stupid but that is the story they were telling. From this perspective, you can already see why it’s pointless to power-scale Hope at all because she’s not really a part of the normal world of power – she exists on a higher level, conceptually speaking.

-

1.5 Hope Is A Power Boost

I originally wanted to only touch upon this in the Legacies section but I think it actually fits better here. And it’s one of the funniest scaling points in the verse. Buckle up.

You ready? Yes? Alright. Listen up.

Hope being one’s leader makes that person more powerful.

In Legacies season 4, they try to find the right strategy to fight the almighty Ken, or rather to find out if there is any way they can win at all. To do so, they run simulations. And there they realise that if Hope is leading the super squad, they can actually win. When she’s not leading them, their chances go down to zero every time.

Vardemus, who is running the simulations, states that Hope is giving them courage, a belief they can win against the strongest being in the verse. Without her, they don’t think they can win. Just her presence is making other people stronger!

If you recall, the power of the gods is to some degree determined by people’s belief in them. The more people believe, the stronger the gods. Hope is a god in reverse in this sense. She doesn’t get stronger by people’s belief in her, she makes people stronger for their faith. She’s the narrative opposite to Ken’s thirst for power and taking belief into his own strength. She takes it and makes you stronger.

>“Having the real Hope as their leader, it’s increasing each of their powers,” states Professor Vardemus.

(This tracks with what Kaylee Kaneshiro (Josie’s actress) said in an interview about the super squad not knowing what to do without Hope.

“I think that the super squad is really lost without their main super squad leader. We’ve kind of leaned on Hope for so much of all of our monster fighting issues that as we’ve kinda reached a point during even the first episode, the main question is just like, where is Hope Mikaelson? Because that’s all we’ve ever depended on this entire time.”

Without Hope, the super squad is lost. Sounds kinda familiar with the Mikaelsons. Hope the saviour. Hope, the one every sacrifice is worth it for. Everyone needs Hope. Without her, they are all lost, Mikaelson or super squad alike. Hope Mikaelson aka the Avatar.)

-

1.6 Statements Are Feats! + Conclusion

Let’s finally conclude this part.

Since I know some people will be like, this is all well and cool, OP, but this is all just statements, show us something she actually does that puts this Alyssa victim so high. I hate it when people argue that statements and feats are two separate things. They’re not! A statement is a form of feat for a character. It’s feats > statements when the feat contradicts the statement but as long as there is no contradiction, statements are just a form of feat and there is no reason to disregard the statement.

Hope has at least 5 high quality statements that she either is or will be the most powerful person to ever exist + countless smaller ones + prophecies + narrative implications and you know what, they are all consistent with each other! They fit into each other perfectly. The BM statement even implies she is stronger than all the other gods outside of Ken, possibly including gods who can control time since Ken is stronger than that god and Hope scales to Ken, or even possible stronger than Ken since he calls her the most powerful.

Even if you don’t include Legacies at all, she is still at worst, at the most low-ball you can low-ball an Inadu and s8 Bonnie rival. Hope also never reaches her full potential in The Originals so you would put the strongest forms of Dahlia, Qetsiyah, Inadu and Bonnie versus a still developing, non-prime Hope. Including Legacies she reaches the tiers of the gods, surpassing all we see in The Vampire Diaries and Legacies (except Nature itself, I guess).

-

TL;DR Hope as a 7-year-old is potentially already more powerful than Bonnie, Cade, Qetsiyah, Inadu, etc according to Alaric, and Michael Narducci thinks she’s the strongest witch in the world in season 4 of The Originals which is set after TVDs8. Brett Matthews, Carine Mackenzie Alaric, Landon, Malivore all think she’s unstoppable, almighty, all-powerful, basically the strongest person in the world and throughout all of history. Even Ken himself acknowledged her might and position as the world’s most powerful, seeing her as a god-like figure, coming back only for her, to retake the spot she took from him.

Thanks for reading

(I understand this is a mostly fruitless endeavour. Trying to get people to read 10k words in 2026? Hard enough. About giga nerd shit? Power scaling? Practically impossible. I’m wasting my time. But this is for me. I’ve been meaning to write something like this for like 6 years so.)