22/12/2023
This week’s Throwback Thursday is the DC superhero series Legends of Tomorrow. The series premiered on January 21, 2016 as part of The CW’s “Arrowverse’s”. It was developed by Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Andrew Kreisberg, and Phil Klemmer. This time-travel adventure series was based on characters from DC Comics. It is a spin-off of Arrow and The Flash, set in The CW’s Arrowverse and features characters introduced in both series.
along with new characters.
Originally premiering as a self-serious and dark superhero drama where the band of heroes and anti-heroes battled high stakes throughout time, but the series hit its stride when it adopted a lighter tone with meta-humour, social commentary, and the greater creative freedom afforded to its cast of mainly lesser-known or wholly original characters.
Season one starts as Time Master Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) goes rogue after the immortal tyrant Vandal Savage (Casper Crump) who has conquered a future Earth and killed his wife and son. Intending to save humanity and avenge his family, Rip recruits a team of superheroes and villains, consisting of Ray Palmer / the Atom (Brandon Routh,) Sara Lance / White Canary (Caity Lotz,) Martin Stein (Victor Garber), Jefferson "Jax" Jackson / Firestorm (Franz Drameh,) Kendra Saunders / Hawkgirl (Ciara Renée,) Carter Hall / Hawkman (Falk Hentschel,) Leonard Snart / Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller,) and Mick Rory / Heat Wave (Dominic Purcell,) who venture through time on a stolen time ship, called the Waverider, to stop Savage's rise to power. Meanwhile, the Time Masters send Chronos (Dominic Purcell) after Rip for interfering 'with the timeline and in the season's final episodes it turns out that the Time Masters were working with Savage all along, as his reign will eventually successfully counter an upcoming Thanagarian invasion of Earth. Snart also sacrifices himself to destroy the Time Masters.
In season two, following Snart's sacrifice while defeating the Time Masters, Rip goes missing and Sara takes charge of the team who continue protecting the timeline from aberrations. They are joined by historian Nate Heywood / Citizen Steel (Nick Zano,) who later gains the ability to turn to steel at will, and Justice Society of America member Amaya Jiwe / V***n (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) who joins the Legends to pursue Eobard Thawne / Reverse-Flash (Matt Letscher,) a speedster and Barry Allen's archenemy. After learning of the Spear of Destiny, an ancient artifact that can rewrite reality, Thawne recruits Damien Darhk (Neal McDonough,) Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman,) as well as a time-displaced Snart, from different points in time to form the Legion of Doom. However, after retrieving the Spear, Sara successfully defeats Thawne and restores the Legion to their proper times.
In season three, Rip forms the Time Bureau to replace the Time Masters and fires the Legends for causing anachronisms. When Bureau agent Ava Sharpe (Jes Macallan) is captured, Rip is forced to take the Legends out of retirement. Elsewhere, the demonic entity Mallus (John Noble) forms a cult led by Darhk's daughter Nora (Courtney Ford) pursuing the six totems of Zambesi, two of which are wielded by Amaya and near-future hacktivist Zari Tomaz (Tala Ashe.) The Legends, assisted by speedster Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) retrieve all the totems and use them to successfully defeat Mallus.
In season four, after Rip's sacrifice during the Legends' fight against Mallus, occult detective John Constantine (Matt Ryan) informs the Legends that Mallus was not the only demon that escaped and that "magical fugitives" are on the loose. John joins the team, along with shapeshifter Charlie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) and Mona Wu (Ramona Young) who is host to a Kaupe, to stop them. Ava and Sara and Ray and Nora begin relationships, and Nora becomes a fairy godmother. The Legends come into conflict with the demon Neron, who was banished by John during a show at Heyworld intended to help humans be less afraid of the magical creatures. In addition, Neron manipulates Time Bureau member Gary Green (Adam Tsekhman) into working for him. Following Neron's defeat, Zari's time line changes and she is replaced as a Legend and wielder of the Air Totem by her brother Behrad (Shayan Sobhian.)
In season five, Astra Logue (Olivia Swann,) whom John accidentally sent to Hell in a botched exorcism, has resurrected evil individuals from history known as "Encores". Meanwhile, Charlie is revealed to be Clotho of the three Fates who is being pursued by her sisters to recover the Loom of Fate. Mona, Ray, Nora, and Charlie leave the Legends, who defeat the Fates and Encores. Astra is convinced to join the Legends, with John offering to be a roommate (at his house) and a mentor to her. In the final scene, Sara is captured by a mysterious beam.
In season six, it is revealed that Sara was kidnapped by Gary & his fiancé Kayla (Aliyah O'Brien) (who are both aliens). Sara's alien abduction was orchestrated by a scientist named Bishop (Raffi Barsoumian,) who created the Avas. He plans to create the perfect warrior by copying Sara's DNA and memories and combining it with other aliens upon claiming that he has seen the end of the human race. While attempting to escape her imprisonment, Sara accidentally releases a menagerie of aliens throughout the timeline, including Kayla, whom Mick becomes romantically involved with. To find Sara, the Legends enlist Esperanza "Spooner" Cruz (Lisseth Chavez,) an off-the-grid recluse who can telepathically communicate with aliens following her own abduction, as they repel alien invasions throughout Earth's history. Bishop then goes after the Fountain of Imperium that would restore Constantine's powers only to double-cross him and destroy it so that the Zagurons would invade Earth, but the Legends revive it and defeat Bishop with help from Bishop's younger counterpart. Mick, who now has several kids with Kayla, decides to leave the Legends. In the final scene, a duplicate Waverider destroys the original, stranding the Legends in 1925 Texas.
In season seven, the Legends work to find a way back to their own time after what happened to the Waverider. While Astra unknowingly gives Gideon (Amy Louise Pemberton,) a human form, the Legends make their way to New York City to seek out scientist Gwyn Davies (Matt Ryan) who was said to have invented a form of time travel. Meanwhile, a younger Bishop is revealed to have copied Gideon before being mind-wiped and regained some of his memories following a recurring dream. Having become a Time Master, Bishop starts to see that the Legends are not as bad as he thought as he goes against his Gideon copy. After Bishop's sacrifice, the Legends go up against their robot clones that Gideon created through a combination of Gideon's technology and Bishop's cloning technology. When the robot clones are defeated, the Legends work to save Gwyn's boyfriend Alun Thomas (Tom Forbes) from being a casualty during World War I, while also dealing with a fixer named Mike (Donald Faison,) who later makes off with the Waverider. Alun is saved at the cost of Nate's powers. He officially moves into Zari's totem to be with the original Zari, which had been contemplated for much of the season. The Waverider returns where they find Mike on the bridge in handcuffs. The Legends are then arrested by the Time Police that Mike works for as he is revealed to be Booster Gold. That cliffhanger is how the series ended. Season seven was not intended to be the series finale. However The CW canceled the series on April 29, 2022. Shortly thereafter, fans began campaigning to save the series by renewing it for an eighth and final season to wrap up the series' loose ends. The introduction of Booster Gold, played by Donald Faison in the season seven finale, was meant to deter The CW from canceling the series, and Faison would have been a main cast member had an eighth season been ordered.
Lesley Goldberg of The Hollywood Reporter noted that although CW chairman Mark Pedowitz wanted the series to continue, Warner Bros. Television did not want to continue paying the leases on the studio space, which were set to expire on May 1, leading to the series' cancellation. Having the series continue on HBO Max or Paramount+ was considered impossible by Goldberg due to the series being part of a deal Warner Bros. signed with Netflix in 2011. With The Flash being the last remaining Arrowverse series at the time, its showrunner Eric Wallace expressed interest in the series' ninth season trying to resolve the loose ends left behind by Legends of Tomorrow, but was uncertain of the viability because the number of episodes for the season had not yet been decided, and he believed incorporating the Legends was difficult to achieve when he had to conclude his own story.
If you are looking for a fun, campy superhero series Legends of Tomorrow seasons 1-7 are streaming on YouTube, Google Play, Apple TV, Vudu, Amazon Prime and Netflix. Check it out!
