By: Catherine Palmer | @KitKatPalm

The CW’s Legacies, a TVD-verse spinoff, is often teased for its unconventional approach to the love triangle. But beneath the show’s “love-heptagon” lies a revolutionary approach to gender and sexuality that is helping to change the conversation surrounding love on TV.

In the Legacies pilot, Penelope offers to “rock [the] world” of her friend, MG. He’s hesitant, though, partially because he knows she has an ex-girlfriend. He assumes she only likes girls. Penelope claps back that she’s “an equal opportunity evil temptress” and that his “binary assumptions about sexuality are dated.”

At the time, it’s a challenge to MG to be open-minded. But it’s also proven to be a challenge to viewers. Within just the first twelve episodes of its first season, Legacies has uniquely established itself as a show that is remarkably non-heteronormative without ever actually labeling its characters’ sexual orientations, other than Penelope’s.

Now, admittedly, there are valid jokes that plenty of fans have already made about how Legacies not only has love triangles (Alaric-Emma-Dorian) but also has a love heptagon (Hope-Landon-Josie-Penelope-Rafael-Lizzie-MG). Basically, if you make a chart of “Who Likes Who,” it looks like something from a show that’s been airing for seven years, not less than five months.

But here’s the thing: that’s actually really cool. The reason that ship charts on long-running series tend to get so complicated is because new characters are always added over the years as potential love interests for the main characters.

By most shows’ logic, only a few main characters will ever pair off with each other, and two characters of the same gender won’t have any sort of romantic moments, unless they’re already established as being gay or the moments are meant to be gay jokes.

Straight is the automatic default. Two same-gender characters can certainly fight over the opposite-gender characters added each season or, you know, their opposite-gender best friend who they both suddenly realize they’re in love with.

Legacies throws all of those conventions out the window. Josie, who is Penelope’s ex-girlfriend, is established as being pansexual, but it’s not something that has to be explained or that other characters have to process. She’s not “the queer character.” She’s just Josie.

Then, there’s Hope, the main character. She likes Landon, her boyfriend, but she’s also close with Rafael, who has a major crush on her. She’s a perfect example of a “straight by default character” because, prior to episode ten, she only has romantic moments with boys.

In episode ten, we meet several versions of Hope, including one who lives in a world in which The Salvatore School never existed. Much to Lizzie’s chagrin, that Hope still crosses paths with the Saltzman family and is immediately attracted to Josie, who is equally taken with her.

Given that Josie’s sexuality doesn’t change across realities (she has a boyfriend in that same one), it stands to reason that Hope’s wouldn’t either. In other words, the show hints that Hope from the original reality might also be attracted to girls.

But, more importantly, Legacies makes clear that those versions of Hope and Josie are real, even though the show eventually returns to its original reality. They’re not part of some dream. They’re part of a real world that did exist and would have continued to if Lizzie hadn’t made another wish.

Turning to episode 12, Legacies drops several major revelations. Josie had a crush on Hope when she was about 13 and went to disastrously extreme lengths to hide it because she was worried that Lizzie if found out, she would go for Hope.

As Josie notes, Lizzie has a habit of competing for and winning over Josie’s crushes, the most recent being Rafael. So, why would it have been any different with Hope? Legacies does away with Lizzie’s “straight by default” status solely by implication, which is what makes it so powerful.

Lizzie doesn’t give some horrified, knee-jerk comeback about being straight, and Josie doesn’t offer her twin any sort of caveat (i.e. “I wasn’t sure if you were straight…”) when explaining her reason for driving a wedge between Lizzie and Hope.

Furthermore, Legacies doesn’t even dwell on the moment. Instead, the camera pans to Hope, who despite learning how badly Josie wronged her, is not only forgiving of her poor decisions but also clearly thrilled about being her childhood crush.

So, which of Legacies’ pairings will be endgame? Who knows? The most revolutionary aspect of the show is that there are so, so many options.

At this point, there are no canon male-male romantic ships, but it’s absolutely not out of the realm of possibility based on Legacies’ label-less approach to sexuality. How many shows can say that? How many shows about teenagers can say that? How many shows can say that in the midst of their first season?

If you haven’t already, check out Legacies and absolutely ship as many or as few pairings as you want. But especially if you’re only loyal to one ship, keep in mind how much of a privilege it is that you have so many choices and how amazing it is that the characters live in a world in which they don’t have to explain why they like who they like.