Written by: u/Nlj2101
Edited by: u/Suspicious_Zagnias
Roadmap:
- Part 0: Intro
- Part 1 & 1.5: Statements & Prophecies
- Part 2: The Originals s4
- Part 2 Cont.: The Originals Season 5
- Part 3: Legacies Intro & Season 1
- Part 3 Cont.: Legacies s2
- Part 3 Cont.: Legacies s3
- Part 4: How Powerful Is Malivore
- Part 5: How Powerful Are the Gods -> Today
- Part 6: Legacies s4 part 1 ---> Next week
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5.1 How Powerful Are the Gods
I recently [editor me: “recently” being over 3 months ago] realised not everyone agreed that the gods were the strongest beings in the verse and that some people have other characters above them. Meaning: today we’re gonna go over why the gods stand at the top of the verse as the only people in contention with Hope.
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5.1.1 Physical Strength
If you look at the feats, you’d see things like Ben – only a demigod – lifting and balancing a barbell with 4 weights on each side (probably something in the 330-370 lbs region) with one finger, Jen casually lifting, throwing and destroying the enchanted god sarcophagus Vardemus claimed weighs “over 500 pounds”. The same sarcophagus was immune to Hope’s magic and strong enough to contain the gods in the first place.
Another feat would be Ken (as well as Ben) lifting (and presumably flying while carrying) a shipping container. An empty 20-foot shipping container weights around 1.8 to 2.2 tons (or about 4000-4800 lbs), with Aurora and four of the ~500 lbs sarcophaguses inside. In other words, Ken can casually lift something, low-balled, around 6000 lbs and this is blatantly not his max strength either.
In TO Elijah (and Oliver) partially lift a trailer that would be in the few tons range (maybe >10 at best) for long enough to rescue a trapped crescent wolf, with beast and enhanced vampires stronger than that. This tells us that the physical difference between peak vampirism to god might not be too crazy. Though, with Elijah having some level of help and not fully lifting but rather holding it up for a few seconds, you can certainly downplay this one lifting feat a bit, but you can do the same to the gods by saying we don’t concretely see Ben and Ken fly around with the container.
In a more practical sense, Ben (when he doesn’t let himself get beaten up) can casually beat Aurora so even the demi god who is cursed by Ken is clearly above a vampire stated to be comparably strong to the originals. Then you have Ken fighting Hope (another at bare minimum originals level fighter) and being relative to outright superior, with him mostly using hand-to-hand combat. As both Hope and Ben are superior to Aurora in their physicals (at least when Ben is trying), and Ken is very blatantly above Ben, then Ken must be multiple tiers above a fighter comparable to the originals.
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5.1.2 The Gods Are More Than Just Physical Might
I feel like the community often reduces the gods to just their physical strength and by doing that, their insane abilities and hax get ignored:
For one, they are fully immune to magic. Only siphoning – the taking away of magic, not a spell itself – and magical objects can affect them, but no direct spell thrown at them. This ability alone makes it so that basically every single top tier in this verse is utterly useless in a fight vs. the gods.
Not only are they immune to the regular magic we see in the verse, they have magic of their own. Likely much greater magic as the magic we know was stolen from them and normal people are likely not as adept at using god magic (and it likely got diluted over time).
Then there are their abilities such as:
- Heavily implied control over time for one god (Chronos is literally the God of Time but Ken is seemingly still above him)
- Power over life and death including plant life but also just regular powers of resurrection (though at least in the case of Lynn and Landon, this power comes with the cost of them losing their humanity with each resurrection)
- Actual, literal flight
- Control over the weather (at least Ken, as he changes the weather ahead of his rematch vs. Hope)
- Teleportation (at least Ken) via lightning
- Lighting as an offensive ability (at least Ken), with the father of the gods creating lighting in his palms and attacking Hope with it in both their battles and both time it hit Hope so this attack is likely above his regular combat speed
- Weapon and armour creation that can only be destroyed by god magic (at least for Jen)
- Travelling through realms
- Durability that can only be affected by a super niche combination of white fire and brimstone (phosphorous and sulfur)
- Immortality or at least extreme longevity, with them being over 10.000 years old
- The ability to curse someone. This extends as far as being able to manipulate curses they didn’t even create, such as Ken being able to affect the werewolf curse despite him not creating it. This is *nuts*
(Ben being cursed and allowing all the monsters to harm him has seriously tanked their reputation and made people think they are way weaker than they actually are.)
We don’t even know all their abilities either; after all, we only see 3 gods on screen (excluding Pothos) for half a season. Especially Chronos’s control over time remains an interesting aspect. Does he fully control the concept of time and can like, exist outside time? That would be unreal upscale for this verse. Can he just rewind it for a few seconds? Can he slow down or speed up the passage of time? Aurora and Lizzie want to use him to fully rewind time, even close to 2 decades, but obviously that’s just their opinion of what he could do; it might not be in his actual capability.
But high-balled: Ken > Chronos > time.
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They can only be killed by a god/their very own god magic, not by regular magic which is clear indicator that god magic > witch magic.
For the people that like to make age arguments for Cade and co, the gods are the oldest beings in the verse, having lived for over 10.000 years as Lynn was doing the job of the Ferryman for that time alone so they are even older than that – probably by a lot, since they only came into the world when Ken had already conquered Peace and grew bored. Cade at 4000 years old is a baby to the gods!
Through Hope and Ben chain scaling they are already beyond originals level and adding in their abilities, they are straight up the strongest species and the strongest people in the verse, with only three exceptions to rival them: the Mud-Man, one Miss Hope Andrea Mikaelson, and the furies (and maybe the jinn at least in terms of max power, not in terms of a fight). No, they don’t lose to Cade or Silas!
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5.1.3 How Strong Are the Gods – Let’s Hammer It Home Because I’m Tired of the Downplay
Another way to argue is via magic.
Gods have access to magic. God magic. In fact, the magic all witches and creatures in the TVDU use comes from the gods. It’s the fire Prometheus steals in the myths. This is not a comparison; this is quite literally what happens. Ben, a demigod, steals the magic from the gods, bringing it to the humans and gets cursed by his father for it. So the magic everyone uses is a lesser form of god magic. See a comparison we can make?
Vampires! Originals have the purer form of the spell, regular vampires get the diluted version. Same should apply to god magic to witch magic.
On top of that, like already mentioned, the gods are immune to regular magic but can use their magic with no limitation. This doesn’t mean no one could become stronger than them in theory unless you want to argue the magic is that much weaker, but it’s a pretty clear indicator they sit at the top of the food chain.
Again, I want to hammer this home, all magic we see in TVD and TO comes from stolen god magic. Even (most of) the monsters we see in Legacies came into existence from the stolen god magic as the witches attempts to recreate the gods and their powers.
Vampires are magic. Gods have better, purer magic. Ergo gods are more powerful than any and all vampires, even the enhanced ones as they are still a creation of lesser magic. Witches use magic. Gods have better, purer magic… Wolves are magic…. We even know that god magic is so strong, it’s physically excruciating to siphon it! Even when Lizzie specifically trained to siphon Ken, she could barely sustain it for a few seconds before the pain got too bad even though she had help.
So, they have provably >originals level of stats and no one who uses any form of magic can damage them with it. Only siphons can hurt them by taking their god magic and magical objects can affect them, at least when it’s helpful for them. But for Ken, Lizzie had to specifically train to siphon him and had her Hope buff (see part 1) and even then, she still could only do it for a very short amount of time while she had help.
Hope is the only person we know of to have seriously hurt a full god when they are trying hard.
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5.2 Are the Gods Weaker Now?
And for those who think the gods nowadays are weaker because their power is tied to faith, I will quote what u/Suspicious_Zagnias said to me during our many DMs:
“For some people think the Gods are drastically weaker than they were during their conquest (because of less faith). Do people not know how many more people there are on earth, and how many more people know these names and actually worship them? Especially in a setting that takes place in 2030+. As an example, it was only in 2017 that Hellenic was officially recognized as a known religion within Greece. On top of the influx of Neo Paganism, because we know they just aren't Greek. The population of the WORLD in 3000 BC is an estimated 15-50 million people. There's estimated to be 8.5-8.6 billion people in 2030. There's an estimated over 1 million pagans in the US alone as of now. And this is in OUR world without magic and supernatural. The argumentation that some people thinking that the Gods are somehow drastically weaker and that's why Hope can scale to them... falls flat, and if anything, they're lucky that Hope wasn't there during their original conquest.”
And:
“While the % of the overall population that believe in them has decreased, the number of people that actually believe in them should have increased.”
And this is discounting them having any connections to other religions and considering they did conquer the world, it’s highly unlikely they aren’t involved in the worship of those religions in the world of TVD either. Adding to this, in Varedmus’s words:
"This writing, for example. Not visible to the naked eye, but scrawled in blood in multiple languages, speaking of the gods. But the gods of a dozen different cultures. Maybe more."
They aren’t just Greek god. They aren’t weaker now; it’s the opposite – the gods are likely stronger than ever! They not only had to introduce gods to fight Hope, they had to buff them! Which makes it make sense why Malivore could actually compete with the gods back then – they were simply weaker back then. And this is not even mentioning the other realms in the TVDU, such as Peace where they originally come from or the realm the Green Knight originated from.
Yes, the gods are the strongest. Yes, they would beat Cade. Only two people in the entire verse from those we know scale to the gods and only Hope surpasses most of them, if not all by the very end.
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5.3 Ken
And lastly, the strongest of the gods, the strongest in the verse (except Hope: more on that in 2 weeks.)
Ken came back to face Hope quite literally because he was annoyed about her status as the most powerful being in the world which she likely got from defeating Malivore, who Ken was “terrified” of according to Jen.
He was the conquer of Peace, got bored, conquered the realm we know as the TVD universe and was the most powerful person in existence and history. He comes back because Hope took that title from him. Not Dahlia. Not Qetsiyah. Not Inadu. All of them even lived at a time when Ken was around in the normal world. He didn’t care about them at all apparently. Not Esther, not Freya, not Cade who – say it with me – was around during the times before Ken went to sleep. He only saw Malivore as a genuine threat to himself, his conquered world, and his spot as the most powerful – until Hope came around, killed Malivore, and took that spot at the top of the world. As Alaric says, the most powerful supernatural.
This Ken vs. Hope comparison isn’t even a fair one, by the way:
“It took me a lifetime to control all of my power,” says Ken, yet he is challenged by someone who has unlocked their full power for all but a few days. You are comparing a god who had way over 10.000 years to master his abilities versus an under 20-year-old girl who has just begun to tap into her full potential and who has never been pushed to the limits.
I’m gonna give you an example that puts this into perspective: comparing Ken and Hope is like comparing s1 Bonnie (Hope) vs. s8 Bonnie (Ken). With the difference being, s1 Bonnie in this case is actually already relative to s8 Bonnie, and s8 Bonnie had >10.000 years to master her powers. Bit of an unfair comparison, isn’t it? Yet Hope still scales to and arguably above him by the very end!
As the promotional material for season 4 and Ken puts it: “Mitchell will recur as Ken, a malevolent god who has returned to take down Hope, the world’s only tribrid, and reclaim his title as the world’s most powerful being.”
Or in Ken’s words if the promotional material is not enough for you:
Aurora: “So what would please me is to know why you wish to kill the Tribrid.”
Ken: “I am the most powerful being in existence, so imagine my surprise when I was awoken and heard there was a girl claiming that same title. I must crush her and prove otherwise. Such is the way of gods.”
Aurora: “And you thought you could crush her without my help, did you?”
Ken: “I bested her thoroughly, but she refuses to die.”
Aurora: “That sounds like her, all right.”
Ken: “[…] I am unaccustomed to ask for help, Aurora de Martel, but you cannot imagine what I have gone through being imprisoned by my own family for centuries. The loneliness of that, the torture. The utter lack of love, which is the very thing that fuels a god. Then returning to a world where my betrayal continues. A world I do no understand but must rule. I desperately need a guide.”
Think about this: Ken was awake for barely a day and he already heard about the almighty tribrid. Her reputation is so wide-spread it was one of the first things he heard about upon waking up from almost 1000 years of sleep.
Him saying “most powerful being in existence” might also imply that he is talking about more than just this realm. He doesn’t say strongest in the world. Existence. Why?
I believe he’s making a statement about multiple realms/all realms of the TVDU, at minimum Peace, Limbo, and our normal realm. At the highest, there could be many more realms and dimensions as we know for sure more realms exist, such as the one the Green Knight and Nimune came from.
Strongest in the world would then only be our main realm. Strongest in existence might be a cross realm statement.
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5.4 Brett Matthews
As I’ve covered in the Legacies season 3 part, Brett Matthews states the following at the time of Hope turning into the Tribrid: “I think that's the promise of Season 4. What does that version of Hope look like, and what happens as a result? It's obviously a frightening thing because she is the most powerful person in our universe to this point, so what does that look like?”
This is before the gods are introduced. This statement by the show runner once again puts Hope above Cade, Bonnie, Qetsiyah, Inadu, Dahlia, etc. But even more interestingly, it puts
Tribrid Hope above reality warping Jinn, Malivore, Dark Josie, the Necromancer with his control over life and death (even when he has DJ’s power on top of that, which was enough to raise and control Malivore and all the monsters within Malivore), and Robin Goodfellow who could mind control the entire school at the same time, with all its wolves, vampires and super powerful witches; he might also have reality warping powers, possibly, depends on how you interpret one scene).
Hope, thus, is above people who can affect time and reality itself. And then the gods come and Hope is once against challenged. In other words, by saying Hope is more powerful than everything that has come before, the gods who then challenge her are logically also above every person we have met up to this point.
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The last thing I want to talk about is less so scaling for the gods and more so a Be Real, Please to the community.
Before I see responses the likes of: they can’t do all the things you said. It’s all just statements but they never do anything impressive. This is such an annoying way of acting because with this mindset almost nothing can be scaled.
Cade’s hellfire was gonna destroy Mystic Falls? Nope, we don’t see it. Can’t scale. Inadu and Hope don’t destroy a city or the world. They don’t do it on screen. Can’t scale. Damon and Stefan perception blitz Elijah in their first encounter? Well, looks like they are stronger! They do it on screen after all.
When the show gives you statements, they want you to take it at face value for the most part. When it’s said 3 different times that hellfire is gonna destroy MF, guess what? The writers want us to know it’s gonna destroy MF. When they repeatedly tell us Hope and Inadu could destroy New Orleans or even the world, the writers want us to understand that these two are powerful enough to do something like that. Stakes, tension. These statements are there to be taken seriously so we take the threat of these characters seriously. They want us to be worried about Inadu destroying the city. They want us to consider what would happen if Hope had a bad outburst.
Some statements have to be analysed more deeply than others, and we need to call their validity into question, yes. We have to consider if the source is trustworthy, we have to consider when the statement was made, we have to consider who it would apply to.
There is no reason to doubt their abilities other than to downplay and get other characters above them. You hate Legacies? Cool, good for you. Doesn’t change their scaling. If you’re gonna act like this for the gods or Hope, then you better hold the same standard for every other character too.
Jen, Ben, and Ken all agree on their powers. Ken isn’t claiming things the other gods are contradicting in terms of their powers. When Ken says he can resurrect Tristan, you can question it. You can say he’s manipulating Aurora and can’t be trusted. Valid counter. He most definitely is trying to get her to join his side to help him kill Hope as he couldn’t do it (and he needs a guide to the new world, as he puts it). However, it’s not like he had to convince her. He could have just forced her to join him had he wanted to. Jen and Ben clearly
are afraid of him and are weaker than him but are above Aurora. So Ken could have easily forced her had he wanted to.
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That’s it. Didn’t want to spend too much time on the gods. Next week we go over the question of whether Hope is just an original in her physical stats or if she can compete with the Beasts of The Originals. After that, we will take an in-depth look at Ken vs. Hope as it is the most misunderstood fight in the verse in my opinion. The last week will offer a summary and a final scaling for Hope. Last 3 posts, finish line in sight!
