With Legacies‘ fall finale just two days away, there’s a vampire diary’s worth of questions left to be addressed, including what the heck Landon Kirby is up to. When last we saw Hope’s “human” “friend” (there aren’t enough quotation marks in the world for this!), he was hopping on a bus headed for New Orleans, where a Mikaelson associate would be waiting to help him track down his mother.

So, when should we expect to see that emotional head of hair back in Mystic Falls? “Not right away, but soon enough” is all series creator Julie Plec will say, though she is willing to put another mystery to rest: “Vincent is the family friend” with whom Landon is rendezvousing in New Orleans. “We’re not going to show [Yusuf Gatewood] on camera, but I would be thrilled to have him show up at some point in the series,” she says. (So much for my Declan theory.)

As for what we can expect from Thursday’s episode (The CW, 9/8c), Plec says, “We knew it was the midseason finale [when we wrote it], so we knew it had to split our story. We approached it as a way of ending one chapter and launching the next.” In other words, brace yourselves for a big ol’ cliffhanger.

What are your theories about Landon’s lineage? And what are your hopes for Thursday’s fall finale? Whatever’s on your mind, drop it in a comment below.