The new DC original show for The CW, Legends of Tomorrow, featuring a few side characters from both Arrow and The Flash, didn’t start out with a huge bang. But it gathered enough attention to keep viewers wanting more.
Time-traveling rogue, Rip Hunter, has to recruit a rag-tag team of heroes and villains to help prevent an apocalypse that could impact not only Earth, but all of time.
Legends of Tomorrow was created as a spin-off by Supergirl, Arrow and The Flash producers Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg and Arrow writer Mark Guggenheim. It mainly follows the origin of Hawkgirl and Hawkman’s storyline, along with the resurgence of Vandal Savage (played by Casper Crump), a villain who will only be defeated when he’s killed by one of them. In a distant future, Savage is about to destroy the world and Time Master Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) travels back in time with his Waverider to assemble a team and defeat him. He brings together the newly resurrected (White) Canary (Caity Lotz), Firestorm (Victor Garber and Franz Drameh), The Atom (Brandon Routh), Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller), Heat Wave (Dominic Purcell), Hawkgirl (Ciara Renée) and Hawkman (Falk Hentschel).
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There are two elements that made the Legends of Tomorrow premiere a very fun show: the sci-fi aspect of time travel and how much it felt like a comic book. The fact that the show is going to be exploring the concept of traveling back and forth through time is a very fascinating idea, especially the way it was established from the beginning of this episode, where there were a few rules and consequences (of course, the risk of altering somebody’s timeline has to be taken into consideration every time they interact in a different period from theirs).
Also, the tone of this series appears to be quite lighthearted, more like an adventure with plenty of action and humor instead of gritty and dark themes. Despite its dramatic premise it doesn’t seem to take itself very seriously, meaning: it’s closer to The Flash than to Arrow in comparison.
In a nutshell, this first episode was straight to the point. Considering all the characters except Rip Hunter had already been introduced to us before, and although we also get to see all their abilities quickly recapped (in case new viewers tuned in, I imagine), this first part of the pilot served to set the main storyline as a whole.
We learned: 1. Who got to be part of the team and why. 2. What do each of them bring to the team’s potential success – something we might continue to discover as the plot unravels. 3. Everybody’s reasons as to why they accepted Hunter’s offer. 4. What’s the goal and how can they achieve it.
There were more than a few secrets revealed in the pilot, which I can’t generally consider a good thing (it’s what turned me against Supergirl in the first place), but the writers have a lot of great characters, actors and writers to work with to make the show more than entertaining. At least this was a solid start, which will hopefully lead to a great superhero sci-fi show.
I wish for them to develop the time traveling concept, also give us something more meaningful for us to care about than an unoriginal apocalypse and also give a lot more credit to the villain who, as of now, hasn’t made a significant impact and is probably the weakest point in the series. It’s still soon to tell anyway, so let’s keep watching… “for now”.
