Legacies: 10 Smartest Characters, Ranked

Season 3 of CW’s The Vampire Diaries spinoff series Legacies is scheduled to conclude on June 17, 2021. As fans eagerly anticipate the season finale, all eyes turn toward Hope (Danielle Rose Russell), Josie (Kaylee Bryant), and Lizzie (Jenny Boyd) as they get trapped in a hallucinatory nightmare following their time at the witches’ wellness retreat. Meanwhile, MG (Quincy Fouse) must be rescued from sudden danger.

In order to avoid peril and end the season safely, the aforementioned characters and their supernatural contemporaries will in part have to use their intellect to succeed. Whether book smart or streetwise, the characters on this show have varying levels of genius.

10 Rafael Waithe

As a non-evolved werewolf, the tall and handsome Rafael Waithe (Peyton Alex Smith) often trades brawn for brains when helping his fellow lycanthropes. However, Rafael overcame an abusive childhood in foster care to become a solid student at the Salvatore Boarding School.

When Rafael isn’t using his physical prowess and brute strength to defeat foes, he is often seen spending time with Alaric, the brilliant headmaster who imparts pearls of wisdom to help the kid overcome his troubled past and use his intellect to succeed.

9 Lizzie Saltzman

Described as a narcissistic mean girl, 15-year-old Lizzie Saltzman often spends her time thinking more about boys and gossip than how to harness her inherent powers for her own success. Often getting in her own way, Lizzie’s emotional volatility tends to hinder her intellect.

Driven by emotion over logic, Lizzie struggles to see things from anybody’s perspective other than her own. Yet, despite her self-involvement, Lizzie does have the capacity to outsmart her opponents when it becomes a matter of life and death.

8 Landon Kirby

Despite his pensive nature, the shy and often bullied Landon Kirby (Aria Shahghasemi) harbors ill-will toward the rich attendees at Salvatore. This hinders his scholastic progress, although Landon does demonstrate a knack for using his smarts to identify various monsters.

Landon is also one of the few Phoenixes on the show, a creature more reliant on its regenerative powers, levitation, and flight than its innate intelligence. After enduring abusive foster parents, Landon often favors romance over logic when he first arrives at Salvatore.

7 Cleo Sowande

Cleo Sowande (Omono Okojie) is a new Salvatore student and witch who is fluent in English, Italian, and Yorubian. In just a few episodes, Cleo instantly showed her smart, artistic side.

Cleo’s inherent intellect comes from her status as a Muse, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. Even at a young age, Cleo expresses such wise words to Kaleb as “in my belief, magic is neither good nor bad. Its alignment, positive or negative, is set off by the user’s intentions.”

6 Kaleb Hawkins

With a profound philosophical outlook on the nature of vampirism, Kaleb Hawkins is also an Honor Council member at the Salvatore School. Despite his athletic build, Kaleb expresses himself with a level of articulation that indicates his intelligence.

Kaleb uses his intellect to feed on human blood without killing people, a trend that lands him in trouble at school and with the law. Never one to act without thinking things through, Kaleb is a sneaky smart character on the show.

5 Dorian Williams

When the young vampires, witches, werewolves, and hybrids need intel on their supernatural foes, they often turn to the highly knowledgable Dorian Williams (Demetrius Bridges), Salvatore’s librarian and substitute teacher, and later Mystic Falls High School Principal.

The supporting character always demonstrates his firm grasp on the occult and paranormal activity. He spends much of his time in close proximity to Alaric, Salvatore’s headmaster, soaking up his superior knowledge that he in turn imparts to his students.

4 Milton “MG” Greasley

Often painted as a smart and popular nerd, Milton “MG” Greasley also serves as Alaric’s hale student aide at the Salvatore School. As such, MG often demonstrates his book smarts when in a dangerous jam.

Moreover, MG is a vampire who grew up knowing he had to conceal his true personality in order to protect his father’s public image. Despite the challenge, MG uses his street smarts to read people and keep them in the dark about his troubled past.

3 Josie Saltzman

During Season 1 of Legacies, Josie Saltzman’s report card states that she is a borderline genius. Considering such, the Japanese-speaking student ranks as one of the show’s smartest characters. However, she often lets her emotions get the best of her and sometimes makes poor decisions as a result.

Balancing book smarts with a lack of street wisdom, Josie is also a Salvatore Student and Honor Council Member who uses her intellect to speak on behalf of her fellow witches. Josie couldn’t be more different than her popular twin sister, Lizzie.

2 Hope Mikaelson

In the classroom, Hope Mikaelson is shown to be one of the most excellent students at Salvatore. The first-ever vampire-werewolf-witch tribrid showed tremendous intelligence as a baby when she was able to harness her magic to switch Camille’s car engine on and off.

As the show’s primary protagonist, the orphaned teenager is shown to defeat her foes with her inherent magic as well as her superior intelligence. While she makes typical teenage decisions that often betray her intellect, Hope uses her wits and wiles to triumph on the show time and time again.

1 Alaric Saltzman

Akin to Professor X, Alaric Saltzman (Matt Davis) is the ingenious headmaster at the Salvatore Boarding School. As the father of Josie and Lizzie, Alaric uses his supreme intellect as a monster hunter to protect his daughters and kill more enemies than anyone else in the series.

In addition to being an expert hunter, Alaric imparts his vast knowledge to his own children as well as several Salvatore students, allowing them to realize their potential and come into their own. All things considered, Alaric is clearly the smartest Legacies character.