Aaaaaaaaaand, we are back! All the CW shows have debuted, and we are getting reacquainted to the idea of watching more superhero programming than ever thought possible. Legends of Tomorrow is the wildcard of the bunch, a Doctor Who-ish trip through time, with a heft dose of cheese tossed in for good measure. How did the season premiere compare to the other three CW shows? Keep reading to find out.
1. When an episode has too much time travel for me, you know it’s a problem
Let me start of by saying that I absolutely understand what the producers of the show were going for with this episode. A lot of viewers may be jumping on to the show for the first time (I suspect that Supergirl’s huge CW debut will bring more viewers to all the CW shows), and they want to show how batshit insane the show can be. Einstein! Dinosaurs! Musketeer garb! Nuclear bombs!
The problem is that the show failed in its most critical way: I barely cared about any of the action because of how the episode was framed, and because so much of it was rushed to cram it all into forty four minutes. Sure, all of the trips through history were fun, but the really fun ones (Ray going all Kirby and running away from dinosaurs) were all too short, and there was very little drama involved with any of the stories.
It also did its first really poor ‘famous’ person casting. Sorry John Rubinstein, but your Albert Einstein was woefully lacking.
Side note: it was an interesting choice to have the viewer meet Einstein as he was trying to initiate a three way. This isn’t a joke: I’m legitimately surprised and delighted at how sex-positive this show is. The Legends love to fuck.
2. Speaking of sex…
Sara Lance loves to fuck way more than the other Legends. Specifically, the show has been digging into her bisexuality and, more specifically, her love of introducing women from the past to the joys of lady on lady action. I love how much she loves it – her little wink at a Salem lady before she was about to be hung was so perfect. Even her team members josh her about it! It’s great – there is zero shaming from non-Puritans about it, and it adds a wrinkle to what can sometimes be a one-dimensional character.
3. Nate Heyward and Ollie Queen
While the episode left me cold in a lot of ways, it was very smart to include Oliver Queen as the audience surrogate, and by introducing Dr. Nate Heyward, it gave a nice connection to the Justice Society of America, who we will get to in a little bit. Stephen Amell was in his full on mayor mode, and the show made nice reference to him not having time to drink beer with Mick, as he was, you know, the mayor of a major American city and a superhero.
But Ollie is the perfect surrogate, as he’s just a regular guy without powers, and while he has seen metahumans and understands what all that means, he’s still sort of a skeptic (or, at least, he looks for the logical solution first).
Nate Heyward, a time detective, is a welcome member of the team, too. I like the idea of the team having someone on the academic side. With Rip missing (although I’m sure that’s not a long term situation), they need someone to help steer the team towards what is really important to fix, instead of just making the Mets win the World Series in 2000 or whatever.
4. The Legion of Doom begins to form
I often lament modern entertainment society, as it spoils so many good things. Imagine if we didn’t know that the Reverse Flash and Damian Dahrk were part of the Legion of Doom, the big bads this season? Because that reveal was pretty amazing, and Matt Letscher is so good at playing Reverse Flash. We’ve seen far more of the Harrison Wells iteration of the character, but Letscher as Thawne is a revelation (see last week’s premiere of The Flash for more).
Continued belowThe ongoing “Sara wants to kill Darhk to save Laurel” plot thread is a one that I hope gets resolved relatively soon – the danger of Legends is that it can undo so many things that Arrow and The Flash have done. I could see the Legends team undoing Barry’s alteration of the timeline, let’s say, or Laurel’s death, or anything else that makes certain aspects of the show inconvenient or overly sad.
So, establish early that killing Darhk won’t bring back Laurel in the longterm, and let’s move on. She can still pop up in the past, but raising her from the dead seems like a bad idea, especially considering how much her death has meant on Arrow so far this season.
5. The JSA
We saw Rex Tyler (aka Hourman) last season, and now we get a full slate of Justice Society of America members to join him: Stargirl, Obsidian, Commander Steel, Vixen, and Doctor Mid-Nite. It appears that this team is from the 40s, which kills my hopes of seeing Jack Knight show up in any meaningful way, but I can’t be sour on this. The DC/CW shows have been so incredibly fun and reverential to DC history, that this season alone, across the four shows and the CW Seed, we will see:
Supergirl
Superman
Martian Manhunter
The Guardian
Metallo
The Flash (two versions)
Kid Flash
Vibe
Killer Frost
Green Arrow
Black Canary
Wild Dog
Vigilante
Artemis
Ragman
White Canary
Vixen (two versions)
Commander Steel (two versions)
Hourman
The Atom
Firestorm
Rip Hunter
Stargirl
Obsidian
Doctor Mid-Nite
Heat Wave
Captain Cold
Reverse Flash
Damian Darhk
Rival
Doctor Alchemy
Prometheus – well, maybe it’s not all good
I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but fucking look at that list. We are living in the golden age of comics tv, folks. Soak it in.
What did you think of last night’s episode? Let me know in the comments!
