WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Legacies Season 3, Episode 14, “This Feels a Little Cult-y,” which aired Thursday on The CW.
For much of Legacies‘ run, Lizzie is seen battling an undefined mental illness. Being a witch, her unbalanced emotions can often cause unintended dangers such as accidentally shattering glass windows at the Salvatore School or leading her to magic her way between her sister’s romantic relationships. In a previous Legacies episode, Lizzie decides to go on a witchy wellness retreat to find balance after she almost caused Josie and Finch to break up. However, “This Feels a Little Cult-y,” finally shows Lizzie as more than just a victim of her brain chemistry. The latest Legacies episode even shows her heightened emotions as a kind of power. Instead of being the source of trouble, it’s actually Lizzie who saves the day.
At the start of the episode, Josie tricks Hope into going to the wellness retreat that Lizzie has been at by saying she’s in trouble. In reality, Josie thinks Hope is struggling to get over her breakup with Landon and thinks the retreat might help her. However, once Josie and Hope arrive at the Midsommar-like witch retreat, Hope is convinced Lizzie joined a cult. Similar to past episodes, Hope gets ready to save Lizzie and decides to confront the cult leader, Andi.
The confrontation doesn’t quite go as planned. After Hope touches Andi’s glove, she feels a sense of calmness that Andi calls “enlightenment.” Andi says that she comes from a long line of empathetic witches who heal other witches. However, Hope was right. Andi is a fraud and lies to Hope because she senses that she’s a Tribred and needs to use her power for a ritual.
As part of Andi’s con, she’s given every witch a crystal that supposedly functions like a mood ring — with all witches aiming to stay a tranquil, blue color. However, after seeing Hope receive extra attention from Andi, Lizzie’s jealousy flairs up, and her blue crystal flickers on and off, landing on a cherry red. Convinced she can gain back her coveted blue status by touching Andi’s glove, too, Lizzie sneaks into Andi’s room to investigate her power.
Inside Andi’s room, Lizzie discovers a drawer full of a psychotropic substance. she realizes that Andi has been drugging the entire coven through a form of sedation. Lizzie was only able to break free from the drug’s effect because she allowed herself to feel flavors of anger. Realizing that accessing negative emotions can break the drug’s control, Lizzie sits her sister down and berates her for always putting herself last and pokes fun at her short-lived independence streak. Furious, Josie snaps back at her, realizing that she was being drugged too.
While Lizzie’s suppression of her negative feelings might have seemed peaceful, it caused her to lose touch with herself. Lizzie struggles with the same kind of emotions everyone struggles with — envy, frustration, loneliness — but it’s self-awareness of her issues that is her true strength. Her mental instability isn’t something to fix, but be aware of and ensure that she knows the difference between controlling her emotions and when her emotions control her. That’s something not even Hope Mikaelson can do. As such, she needed Lizzie to save her for once.
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