The first season of Legends of Tomorrow has wrapped up and, speaking personally, it exceeded my expectations in a number of areas. This episode not only wrapped up this year’s Vandal Savage storyline, but it also laid the tracks for next season out pretty clearly. Keep reading, but be warned that spoilers follow.
1. Rip’s Back to the Future Part II moment
There are few things I love more than the Back to the Future series, and getting to see Rip Hunter fall off a building, only to be hoisted in the air by the Waverider was one of the coolest visuals of the season, let alone the episode.
However, while we’re talking Back to the Future Part II, the show really needs to make clear a few things – the team has messed with the timeline plenty in this season, with some small changes and some big changes resonating out of it. There needs to be some explanation as to why they can’t simply do things like save Snart or Laurel, but they can kill Vanadal Savage and/or any number of grunts along the way. Rip needs to give us a good Doc Brown speech to help us understand why certain things must remain the way they are.
A simple sentence like “Without Laurel’s death, Oliver Queen would never have taken the steps to stop Damien Darhk from destroying the planet” would put it all into perspective and be fine, but the show doesn’t give us that nearly enough.
Also, without all the Time Masters tech, how is Rip going to protect the timeline? Does he have a really great Encyclopedia Brittanica set?
2. The helmet thing
Kendra got a message to Rip by placing a note in the helmet of a soldier – a helmet that she knew would end up in the Waverider. The mechanics of this are insane, even for a superhero show that travels through time and space. I can’t recall if they picked up that helmet on one of their trips this season, but even if so, Kendra would have to know some insanely specific information about the soldier whose helmet it is, and would have to know that by placing a note in there it would change locations in the ship. It is silly, and the show obviously couldn’t think of a less silly way to get that information into Rip’s hands.
3. How is Cold coming back?
Now that Savage is dead, and the show is moving on to new things, one big question remains: we know that Snart is a character in the DC TV-verse next year – how is he coming back? Will the team eventually save him from his heroic end at the Vanishing Point? Commenter Ian A had a great idea in last week’s review – Snart knows the Waverider can regenerate limbs – why not freeze/break off his arm holding the pin, and then escape?
I can’t seem them simply snatch Earth-2 Snart and have him be the new Captain Cold…but maybe? To me, that is the biggest mystery going forward for the DC TV-verse in general, because Snart is one of the best characters they have, and one that makes sense across all four shows to a certain extent.
4. See ya, Hawks!
I can’t say I saw this coming, but it is interesting to me that the Hawks are being written off the show, especially as the Justice Society of America is being introduced. But, if we are being real, the Hawks never quite worked as well as they should have. But, with Savage gone, what does this mean for their immortality? That is a story I’d like to see more of, and it looks unlikely that we will.
5. JSA!
The fact that they are bringing in the JSA – and not the JLA – could mean we are dealing with a team from the past. But, due to the fact that metas are new in this world, it could also be an alternate Earth scenario. Or, maybe, it is from the future? Who knows, but I’m excited to see which JSAers become a part of the show’s case, aside from the already introduced Hourman.
Continued belowHourman, for those that haven’t been paying attention, has been rumored to be the star of a CW show for a few years now, but it was never presented in the context of the JSA before, just a solo show. The character is sort of built for episodic television – he takes a drug, Miraclo – that gives him one hour of superpowers. That’s the perfect setup for a show, and so it doesn’t surprise me that this is the CW’s way to introduce the character and, potentially, spin him off in the future.
But what future is that? There are already four nights of DC programming on the CW – could they possibly bring us more?
Anyway, thanks for sticking around all season and reading my rambles on Legends – we will have some Legends content during the summer, and I’ll be back in the fall. Until then – see you in the future!
