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[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the latest episode of Legacies, “Kai Parker Screwed Us.” Read at your own risk!]
Kai Parker (Chris Wood) is back, and honestly, it was everything we ever hoped for and more! In the first part of Legacies‘ two-part guest star arc for Wood, Kai was back to his usual tricks, lying, stealing, and manipulating people all with a smile on his face. We even got another short musical number from him!
Most of Thursday’s episode, “Kai Parker Screwed Us,” focused on Josie’s (Kaylee Bryant) reluctant partnership with Kai, who appeared to be on Team Gemini so long as it got him out of his prison world. Unfortunately, Josie broke the cardinal rule of dealing with Kai Parker — never believe a word that comes out of his mouth.
While Alaric (Matthew Davis) was paying for past sins regarding the students he expelled from the Salvatore School and sent to the prison world, and Lizzie (Jenny Boyd) was having a very Klaroline-esque date with Sebastian (Thomas Doherty), Josie was faced with a pretty impossible decision. In order to escape the prison world, Josie had to shatter the Mora Miserium hourglass to become powerful enough to create a door back to the real world without an ascendant — all before Kai took a swan dive into the Malivore pit in a bid to escape himself, thus erasing himself (and the knowledge of how to escape) from her memory.
The craziest part? Kai fell right into the Malivore pit in the prison world and popped back out in the real world, ready to wreak havoc on Mystic Falls again! TV Guide talked to Chris Wood about reprising his fan-favorite character and got the scoop on what’s next on Kai’s agenda in part two. Read on.
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Chris Wood and Kaylee Bryant, Legacies
What was it like stepping back into Kai’s shoes again after all this time?
Chris Wood: Honestly, it was so great. I can’t say I was scared to go back, but there was a part of me that was wondering how hard was going to be the drop back in because it’s been a considerable amount of time. And when I first played this character, it was 2014 or something? It feels like forever ago, and I guess it has been a lot of years. So there was, not a hesitation, but there was the question mark. Like, is this going to be smooth to drop back in? And honestly, that’s where the writing comes in so handy. I feel like, thankfully having Brett [Matthews] still around and obviously Julie [Plec], and then Thomas [Brandon], one of the new writers watched a few episodes [of The Vampire Diaries] and very quickly got a hang of what Kai’s like. The dialogue helps so much because as soon as there’s those nasty one liners, it just kind of drops you right back to Kai Parker. It was so fun, honestly. It was a breath of fresh air for me to get to play him again.
Kai and Josie had such an awesome back-and-forth dynamic in this episode, so what was the funnest part of finding that relationship with Kaylee Bryant?
Wood: Oh, it was so fun. Working Kaylee was a blast. I loved how Kaylee plays sort of the assessment of Kai. She definitely had the fear and the distance, but then you see her also so furious at him. I think what was fun to play in those scenes was her balancing her distance and her anger with how to navigate dealing with him because obviously she knows all the stories and she’s heard nothing but how horrible he is and not to trust him, but then he sort of presented her with these alternative facts. She’s like, “Wait a second, I think maybe I actually do have to work with him to figure this out.” That was so fun to play with Kaylee, and she’s just a great actor and a fun person to be around.
And where do we go from here now that Kai has essentially been unleashed on the world again?
Wood: He sure has, yeah. He’s definitely ready to create havoc at a moment’s notice. I don’t know how easy it will be to get rid of him now that he’s in whatever state he’s in. He always has a plan, it always involves killing people, and it’s never good when he’s around. So, I would expect that the heroes have some trouble to deal with.
I know you probably can’t see too much, but did you get to share scenes with any other Legacies kids in next week’s episode?
Wood: I did, yeah. And I don’t want to spoil too much, but the first episode was really just Kai and Josie, really. Kai’s next episode, he encounters some other characters and he also uses a tactic that we’ve never really seen him use before. And it’s very fun and kind of silly, but a bunch of people who don’t actually know what he looks like but have heard stories might not see him walk in somewhere and know who he is right off the bat. So, he kind of uses that to his advantage in a very entertaining way.
We’ve asked Jenny Boyd and Kaylee Bryant which twin they thought was more like Kai, but now that you’ve had some experience with them, which do you think has more Kai in them?
Wood: Just purely from a hands-on standpoint of working with Kaylee so much in this episode, I would say probably Josie right now. And when she’s got that dark thing going on, obviously, the soullessness is something that she would share with her uncle when she’s in that place. I think they’ve done a nice job on the show of kind of presenting them both with possible elements of Kai and keeping that sort of up in the air if somebody’s gonna get a little too much of Uncle Kai in their blood. I would say Josie just because I saw elements of her craftiness, and you can see when she’s gone dark that things aren’t great for people. So that’s my vote.
Legacies airs Thursdays at 9/8c on The CW.
PHOTOS: Kai Parker Returns in Legacies Season 2 Episode 12 Photos
