If you don’t already watch Legends of Tomorrow, whatever kind of show you think it is, it’s not that. It’s too kooky, too adorable, too raucous, too frenetic, too earnest, too inexplicable, too wonderful, too cheesy to be contained. I’m full of warm fuzzies just thinking about it. Legends of Tomorrow is the kind of show that knows television can be fun and fresh and diverse and inclusive all at once. As season 5 kicks into high gear, I want to take a moment to celebrate a show we don’t talk about nearly enough.
If you know nothing of Legends of Tomorrow, let me give you a quick TL;DR. The lineup of the custodians of the chronology changes regularly but as of the season 5 premiere we have: BAMF Captain Sarah Lance (White Canary), Ava Sharpe (former Time Bureau director, current hot mess), John Constantine (master of the dark arts with enough baggage to fill the Grand Canyon), history detective Nate Heywood (Steel, and yes, I said history detective), Charlie (a shapeshifter recently escaped from Hell), stoner slacker Behrad (wielder of the Air Totem), perma-drunk Mick Rory (Heatwave), and cinnamon roll Ray Palmer (The Atom). Originally, the Legends were gathered to help a rogue Time Master defeat a supervillain. But as of late they have been chasing magical monsters and evil souls released from Hell and protecting history from those who would alter it for their own nefarious benefit.
My journey from Legends of Tomorrow hater to stan is a convoluted one. Having thoroughly enjoyed many of the characters from their exploits in the Arrowverse, I was excited for the premiere. Cue my supreme disappointment. Few seasons of television have made me angrier than season 1 of Legends, and halfway through I bailed out. The tone—halfway between the humor of The Flash and the grimdarkiness of Arrow—was off kilter with the premise. The writers wanted me to care about underdeveloped characters portrayed by underskilled actors standing around on cheap sets. I tried again with the season 2 premiere, but the last thing I wanted was yet another show full of mediocre cishet white dudes and token women and POC so I ditched out again. Sure, I watched the Legends crossover eps, but that felt like homework.
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Then came the jumbled, glorious mess that was NBC’s Constantine. I was DEVASTATED when it was cancelled in early 2015, but somehow it took me until summer 2019 before I learned that the CW had ported Matt Ryan onto Legends as a repeat guest. So I dipped my toe back in with a few of his eps from season 3. And then I watched a few more that he wasn’t in. And then a few more. And a few more after that. Before I knew it I was hooked. Back to the first season I went. Even though it was still rage-inducing, this time I could see how the writers were aiming for. Once the show moves past the dire Hawk-people vs Vandal Savage arc (and once the remaining actors settle into their characters), it embraces humor, charm, and out-of-this-world silliness.
Make no mistake: Legends of Tomorrow is a wildly goofy show. A 50 foot tall child’s talking stuffed toy named Beebo appears—twice. A character comes back from the dead with the magic of a group singalong. The Atom is chased through an air vent by a rat named Axel. Damien Darhk wanders around the timeline in increasingly ridiculous outfits and wigs. Gorilla Grod tries to kill a young Barack Obama. In one failed timeline, Sarah, Gideon, and Ava become the Time Bureau’s versions of Charlie’s Angels. A puppet is possessed by the soul of a dead serial killer. And that’s not even a tenth of it.
The show is zany, but it believes in the zaniness. For every bananas moment there are two more full of heart and sincerity. Each choice in the writers’ room is made with the best intentions toward the characters, setting, and story. Brick by brick, the writers have built a strong foundation. They have crafted an expansive world that straddles the line between deeply odd and unexpectedly believable. Season 5 has just begun and the writing has never been sharper; the actors are at the top of their game, cranking out stellar performance after stellar performance. It takes a lot of skill to pull off weirdly serious and seriously weird without overwhelming the audience or becoming unpleasantly camp, but every cast member has nailed it.
The show also leans in hard toward diversity. At first, it’s small but noticeable and by the fifth it’s delightfully obvious and integral to the structure. Across the CW, almost half of the 2019-2020 season regulars and two-thirds of the writers, directors, and executive producers on scripted shows are women and/or POC. The current Legends lineup has two Persian Muslims, two openly bisexual white characters, a white lesbian, a pansexual shapeshifter currently presenting as a Black woman, two white cishet guys who are openly and platonically affectionate, and another white cishet male character who started off as a toxic masculinity trope and has evolved into a dude who writes passionate romance novels under the nom de plume Rebecca Silver. Guest and background characters come in all shades of ethnicities and races. You can tell the difference between a company that just slaps a brown face on the cover of a book by and about white people and calls it “diversity” and one that builds an inclusive infrastructure by valuing and supporting diverse voices in front of and behind the cameras.
Legends is not perfect by any means. It could be better at representing the gender spectrum, body types, and disabilities, but at least it avoids stereotypes and offensive jokes. Black characters like Jackson and Amaya obviously experience life in the past different than white characters, but where many shows would either ignore the question or try to write around it, Legends tackles it head on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s rarely harmful. Early episodes struggled with how to discuss race and racism in sensitive and appropriate ways, but I appreciated that the writers didn’t just try but learned from their mistakes.
Endearingly bizarre, laugh-out-loud funny, mindbogglingly outlandish, and refreshingly candid, Legends of Tomorrow is the best of the CW superhero shows. For those of you who still refuse to give the scrappy little channel the credit it deserves, that won’t register as a compliment, but trust me, it is. All of the found family joy, supportive teammates going into battle together, surreal locations and scenarios, and biting social critique you love is waiting for you in Legends. Come to the dark side. Ray made cookies!
Alex Brown is a teen services librarian by day, local historian by night, author and writer by passion, and an ace/aro Black woman all the time. Keep up with her on Twitter and Insta, or follow along with her reading adventures on her blog.
My favorite scenes so far was the unicorn at Woodstock.
As we fans of the show say at the beginning of each season, “Praise Beebo! Bonkers is back!” Any show with such joy and silliness yet decent plots, characters, and worldbuilding deserves far more viewers than it has. It wasn’t until Season 2 that it began to embrace its fun tone which culminated in the most awesome season ender ever in 3 with the fight between a giant stuffed toy and a demon. (Do a search on YouTube for Beebo vs. Mallus. It will be worth the trouble.)
Sure, it wobbles here and there because the tone is hard to get just right, and it’s now more fantasy than science fiction, but the characters are awesome, and it’s a very rare episode that I don’t finish it happier than I was before I started it.
Now, can I tell you about our Lord and Savior, Beebo, God of War and Cuddles?
Yeah, I’ve gotta concede Legends has been among the most pleasant surprises of the Arrowverse.
I wasn’t initially sold on the concept or impressed with Season One. But the show’s reinvention of itself beginning in Season Two worked liked gangbusters and since then it’s been my favorite of the Arrowverse shows after The Flash.
The Beebo fight with Mallus alone remains among the funniest things I’ve ever seen on TV.
The show is still lots of fun, but for me it’s losing focus. There’s a whole Constantine-driven overarching plot that gives the Legends something to do this season, but at times seems like the Constantine Show 2.0, with our lovable cast functioning as sidekicks.
It’s not really a superhero show anymore. Of the four in the header picture, only Behrad used his air totem/Isis powers briefly. Nick hardly ever steels up, Ray rarely uses his armor or shrinks, Ava has no powers, and Mick just carries a flamethrower.
@@.-@ Sadly superheroes are expensive to CGI and Legends doesn’t have a big budget. I, personally, love the show to bits in all its bonkers glory.
I watched Constantine on NBC and was sad when it was cancelled. Although Constantine has taken the show into magic and away from superheroes, I think he fits, because he is part of the outcasts who find family theme that is the strongest part of the show.
@6, Yeah, I’m also biased in favor of Constantine since the Hellblazer’s one of my favorite DC characters (and Matt Ryan was perfectly cast as Johnny).
And I’m just happy they’re using John’s presence on Legends to provide closure for Constantine and to tie up loose ends (i.e. Astra).
@6/Mr. Magic: Well, they’re tying off one loose end, and that’s probably just because Astra is a core component of Constantine’s comics backstory. They’ve avoided dealing with any other characters or plot threads — no Zed or Chas or Papa Midnite, no Manny or Rising Darkness. I assume that since it was on a different network and from different producers/writers, they’re limited in how much they can get away with referencing without needing to pay royalties.
And yet they have actually used a brief clip from Constantine a couple of times, the flashback to the demon taking Astra. So I’m not entirely sure what they can or can’t use.
@6, Yeah, that’s what I was trying to articulate.
Astra’s the only real feasible loose end the show can tie off for the production-related reasons you outlined. But that’s fine since it’s an intrinsic part of John’s backstory (and they’re getting great dramatic conflict out of it).
But once it presumably gets resolved by Seasons’ end, I’m unsure how they would justify John remaining aboard the Waverider. Season Six is confirmed, but we don’t know yet if Matt Ryan’s returning, so it may not matter.
Speaking of what they can and can’t use, I assume Bear McCreary’s gotten royalties since they’ve reused his Constantine theme at points (which I love because, heh, it’s a damm good theme for the Hellblazer).
One thing I’d love to see is if they use more arcane characters, like Dr. Fate or Deadman. If the show is changing focus to mystical or even horror (see the serial killer episode recently), they may as well dip into the dark side of the DC universe. Dr. Fate as a regular would make me happy.
@8/Mr. Magic: They did use McCreary’s Constantine theme the first couple of times Constantine showed up in the Arrowverse, but since then they’ve used an original motif that just sounds similar.
It is interesting how often Blake Neely and his composers have quoted past DC productions’ themes. The first time Mark Hamill reprised his 1990 Flash role as the Trickster (or the Earth-1 doppelganger of Earth-90’s Trickster, as we now know), Neely used a new arrangement of Shirley Walker’s Trickster theme… and later when Corinne Bohrer reprised his sidekick Prank (sort of a proto-Harley Quinn), they went one better, inserting an actual cue from the soundtrack to “The Trial of the Trickster” into the episode. They used Danny Elfman’s 1990 Flash theme in both appearances of that version of the Flash in Elseworlds and Crisis on Infinite Earths, and in Crisis they also quoted Elfman’s Batman theme, John Williams’s Superman theme, and Neal Hefti’s Batman theme (“Holy crimson skies of death!”).
@9/Sunspear: Dr. Fate seems a bit rarefied for the Legends, though maybe there’d be a place for him on Superman & Lois. Deadman could be an interesting Legends character, given that he’d be mostly invisible/inaudible and would usually be played by whichever cast member he was possessing. I could see that being used for quirky humor. Though Constantine could probably see and hear Deadman, the same way he could see and hear the angels in his own show.
@9 and @10:
As much as I wanted to see more arcane DC character pop up in the Arrowverse, I think characters like Fate and Boston Brand will probably be off-limits soon due to the recent Justice League Dark development deal Warner Brothers struck with Bad Robot.
They might end up losing access to Constantine too given he’s been linked to both comics iterations of the JLD, too and is a safe marketing choice, but that’s just speculation on my part.
@10,
I think Neeley and his team also put in a subtle reprise, or reworking, of Shirley Walker’s Batman: The Animated Series theme during Kevin Conroy’s first scene in “Crisis” as well. But I’d have to go back an double-check.
And really, all those musical touches were part of the fun of “Crisis” and linking together decades of DC multimedia for the mini-series.
I was a fan from the get-go even with all of it’s original clunkiness. I am so happy watching this show hit it’s stride and I think it’s solidly on top as my favorite Arrowverse show. I am sad to see Ray will be leaving as a regular crew mate.
@12/Mr. Magic: No, they used the Elfman Batman theme in that scene.
Now that I think of it, did they ever wrap up Rip Hunter’s story? I can’t remember what happened to him after setting up the Time Bureau. It’s a shame as I really enjoyed his character.
I never watched Constantine, but his appearances in Legends made me determined to stream it on CS Seed when I get a chance. It continues to amaze me that something this wackazoid comes out of the normally uber-serious, bordering on morose, Arrowverse. I mean they made Supergirl morose, and that takes a real commitment to moroseness. So far, Legends (starting with season 2, but kicking into high gear only with season 3) has managed to overcome that.
@16/Bill: There’s always been plenty of humor and silliness on The Flash, and I’d say Supergirl has more of a comedic side than you’re acknowledging, or at least it did in its first couple of seasons.
I’m a recent convert to Legends myself. My local used media store had season 1 on for $8, and while I agree with others that it is definitely the weakest of them all, it was enough to hook me, and I ended up buying the digital downloads for seasons 2, 3 and then 4 in fast, successive order, and I have to say, I’m hooked!
One thing I love about the show that I haven’t seen anyone touch on yet (if I missed it, please forgive me) is the show’s ability to mould itself to whatever kind of story type or homage they want to do on a given week, while still progressing their overarching story. Be it an E.T. homage, knights of the round table, a Groundhog Day loop, or a straight up horror movie, they do it with enthusiasm, and the cast is clearly having a blast with it. That, the chemistry among the characters, and the occasional 4th wall near-breaks (“This feels like a cross overs”).
Obviously, there are times you need to suspend your disbelief due to the limited budget of the show. I remember having issues with Nate when he was introduced, believing he grew up the sickly hemophiliac kid who was never allowed to play because, let’s face it, Nick Zano is just this beautiful specimen of a human being (at his introduction I thought he could have used some MCU style CG skinny-fying but that may be just my ignorance of hemophilia showing), but his charm and comic timing quickly sold me, especially after Nate and Ray formed their lovely, affectionate bond.
@15 The actor left because he didn’t like being in the US away from his family. Plus, BROADCHURCH. Rip came back several times. After the Legends “broke time,” he started the Time Bureau, then screwed up something and left it to Ava. He was involved in the Spear of Destiny debacle. Later, he gave his life to stop Mallus. RIP, Rip.
@14, Ah, my mistake.
Given it’s my Batman (i.e. Conroy), heh, I think I heard what I wanted to hear.
Incidentally, it was really surreal seeing Conroy perform the Bat in live-action after nearly 30 years of listening to him voice the character.
It was not unlike watching the behind-the-scenes videos of Mark Hamill doing the Joker voice, actually. Heh, I still can’t accept that the Clown Prince of Crime’s voice is coming from Luke Skywalker.
@19, I’d add that there’s the potential to bring Rip back to life at some point down the road now thanks to the blank slate provided by “Crisis on Infinite Earths”.
@20/Mr. Magic: “Incidentally, it was really surreal seeing Conroy perform the Bat in live-action after nearly 30 years of listening to him voice the character.”
I was amused that they constructed the scene so that we heard that familiar voice first and only then had his face revealed. It was fitting.
“Heh, I still can’t accept that the Clown Prince of Crime’s voice is coming from Luke Skywalker.”
I think of Luke Skywalker as an early, minor career achievement for Hamill before he discovered his true calling as a voice artist and screen villain. Sort of like how Wil Wheaton didn’t blossom as an actor until he started playing obnoxious jerks. Although the older version of Luke in the sequels did let Hamill use his real talents at last.
@21, Yeah, I grew up with Luke as a childhood hero, but whenever I think of Hamill nowadays, I do think of him as the Joker first rather than the Jedi.
And, heh, I still think this is the best summation of his VO career.
I do hope, though, he we see him in again on The Flash. His guest appearances as the Trickster in the earlier Seasons were always hysterical.
@19 MByerly Ah thanks! I thought maybe that he was just considered to be narratively unnecessary. I had no idea it was at least partly due to real world issues.
@16 BillReynolds, @17 CLB I’m disappointed at how morose Supergirl has been too. For a while Supergirl (the character) was too righteous and too convinced of her own moral superiority. And then on top of that they let emotionally downer storylines like the Worldkillers, Agent Liberty and the breakup with Lena drag on for entire seasons at a time while being very foregrounded. I’m hoping for some joy and wonder to make themselves felt again in the show.