After the most recent episode, it appears that Legacies season 3's final villain will be Darth Vader–or at least, an homage to him. The spinoff of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals revolves around the exploits and relationships of the students at the Salvatore School, a special school in Mystic Falls that operates as a private prep school but is really a front for supernatural students. Since premiering in 2018, Legacies has adopted a monster-of-the-week format, with the students regularly battling monsters that come out of the Malivore Pit, an alternate dimension populated with all manner of dangerous creatures.
Legacies season 3 has been somewhat bumpy, thanks to the COVID pandemic. The relationship saga of Hope and Landon has gotten stale, and it doesn't have the coherence previous seasons have had. The show has always been goofier than its predecessors, the only show in the Vampire Diaries universe to not take itself so seriously. In previous seasons, that's worked thanks to an overarching storyline holding it together, but because of the aforementioned disruption of COVID, season 3 has leaned even further into the wacky to mixed results. However, this week's episode may prove that that "anything goes" approach to the season was ultimately smart.
Legacies often makes references to pop culture and has, at times, spoofed certain IP. However, when the monster finally appeared at the end of the episode, it quickly became apparent it was Legacies' most obvious homage to a pop culture IP yet. The new villain that climbed out of the pit was none other than Darth Vader–in a fashion. Obviously, the CW show can't use the actual Darth Vader, but the monster was clearly modeled to resemble the Sith Lord, with a black helmet, cowl, and cape. He emerged in front of the swirling smoke and dramatic backlighting that so often accompanies Vader in various Star Wars properties, and to ominous music that was strongly reminiscent of Darth Vader's theme, "The Imperial March." With only two episodes left in the season, it's possible Legacies may break its one monster per week trend and utilize this Darth Vader homage as the villain for the finale.
Legacies has had a few recurring villains with ongoing arcs–the Necromancer, Ryan Clarke, and Malivore itself, to name a few–but their arcs tend to take a backseat to the one-off monsters the students directly battle every week. If Legacies ditched its normal format and utilized the same villain for the last two episodes of the season, it could be a fresh take on the random, interchangeable swarm of monsters they usually fight. Legacies-variant Vader closing out season 3 would give the show some meaningful stakes and a more interesting adversary without the need to give them an ongoing arc, a nice balance between the two-dimensional, one-and-done monsters and the long-term antagonists of the show. It could be a strong end for a third season that has been wildly inconsistent.
It's possible Legacies just intends to use its version of Darth Vader as a cheeky reference to Star Wars, which is technically fine and wouldn't contradict the show's canonical format. But it would be a shame to make such a clear and obvious homage to arguably the most well-known fictional villain of all time and then waste him. Should he be easily defeated in a single episode, there is virtually no other villain they could fight that would make a better final boss for the season finale. It's hard to imagine Legacies would go through the effort of creating a Darth Vader homage just to waste the opportunity it presents.