If you watch Arrow or The Flash, most of the characters from DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will look familiar to you. Most recently, some of them were introduced in crossover episodes. I suppose that’s necessary when you have a team of eight people. And the formation of this eclectic group is how the season premiere of Legends begins. So here is the recap and review of the premiere.
We’re first introduced to Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill), a Time Lord Master trying to convince the Time Masters Council that he needs a team to help him stop Vandal Savage (Casper Crump). Savage was introduced in the crossover episodes as the big bad that was sort of defeated, but apparently not so much. Hunter’s drive is the fact that by 2166, the immortal Savage has managed to take over the world to devastating results. He kills a mother and child right away for goodness sake!
Hunter heads off to collect this team by zapping them with some light? The team he wants to assemble consists of this hodgepodge of misfits:
- Ray Palmer, a.k.a. The Atom (Brandon Routh) — Thought dead in Arrow, Ray is very much alive. He’s completing a mission for Oliver Queen when Hunter shows up.
- Sara Lance, a.k.a. White Canary (Caity Lotz) — Another “dead” person from Arrow, Sara is brought back from the dead thanks to the Lazarus Pit. She’s in a bar fight with some man in Tibet when she’s zapped.
- Martin Stein (Victor Garber) and Jefferson Jackson (Franz Drameh), a.k.a. Firestorm — This duo, first introduced in The Flash, has gone through a few changes. Jax is new to this life, so Stein and Jax are trying to get a handle on each other’s personalities and skills when Hunter shows up.
- Kendra Saunders (Ciara Renee) and Carter Hall (Falk Hentschel), a.k.a. Hawkgirl and Hawkman — They are the ones tied to Savage in that he has been after them for thousands of years. They are immortal by dying and resurrecting in different bodies every time. They were first introduced in The Flash. Kendra is still getting used to her powers and doesn’t remember her past lives yet.
- Leonard Snart (Wentworth Miller) and Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell), a.k.a. Captain Cold and Heat Wave — These criminals were terrorizing the Flash with their dangerous weapons. But they aren’t all bad, even though Hunter catches them when they are committing a crime. Eh.
After Hunter gathers them all together, he explains that he needs their help to stop an immortal mad man from taking over the world. He says that their destiny makes them “legends” in the future, no matter what they think now. Hawkgirl and Hawkman are obviously confused because they thought Savage was dead, but no matter. Hunter gives them 36 hours to decide.
Ray turns to Oliver (Stephen Amell) to discuss his options. He decides to go and make his life worth something, because after he was presumed dead, he didn’t feel like he left an impact. Sara talks with her sister Laurel, Arrow’s Black Canary (Katie Cassidy), about the choice. Laurel convinces her to do it and gives her the name White Canary (outfit included!). Hawkgirl and Hawkman decide to fight it out because Hawkgirl doesn’t really want to risk her life on a past she’s trying to figure out still. Guess who wins the fight? Heat Wave follows Captain Cold, so when Cold decides that they could commit crimes in the past, they’re both in. And last but not least, Stein and Jax can’t agree, so Doctor Stein does something seemingly out of character: he DRUGS Jax and basically kidnaps him.
Everyone shows up, and Hunter then shows them his time ship, the Waverider, and Gideon, the artificial intelligence that controls the ship and is Hunter’s right hand. If you watch The Flash, you already know her.
Hunter breaks down the main mission: Savage is nowhere to be found, so they have to travel to an expert in the subject, a man named Aldus Boardman, who has been studying Savage for years. The only thing is they have to travel to St. Roch, New Orleans, October 1975 where Boardman is alive and teaching.
The team is warned about some of the time travel side effects and the ship takes off, but not before two innocent bystanders spot it. Unfortunately for them, a robot soldier thing from the future zaps them to death for not being “integral to the timeline.” Looks like he works for the time masters, so why is he shooting at Hunter’s ship?
After landing, Hunter tells the group that they must split up. He doesn’t quite need the violent ones of the group (Sara, Cold, and Heat Wave), so he wants them to stay behind. As for Jax, he volunteers to stay back because he’s furious at Stein for drugging and kidnapping him. Understandably so.
The rest of the group follows Hunter to find Boardman. Apparently he is supposed to die the next day anyway.
The trio of Heat, Cold, and Sara leave Jax on the ship to go drink in the 1970s. But obviously this couldn’t just be a calm event; a bar fight breaks out after Sara goes after a sexist man.
After meeting with Boardman some new facts are discovered, and he reiterates the past story shared on The Flash about how Hawkgirl and Hawkman are connected to Savage. But the biggest shock? Boardman is the son of a previous incarnation of Hawkgirl and Hawkman. They were killed when he was 10. He shares the information about where Savage is located, but as they prepare to leave, Stein senses that something is wrong back at the ship (thanks to his connection with Jax).
The soldier thing is named “Chronos,” and he has found them. He’s shooting at the ship and disabling their camouflage.
The group rushes back, along with Boardman, because his mom doesn’t want to leave him behind. Mother’s instincts. The trio that was out drinking returns in time to see the fighting happen (Cold makes a funny Boba Fett comment), and they all barely make it back inside because all of the weapons and suits are basically in the ship. Boardman is shot in the process.
The ship needs repairs and Boardman is taken to the infirmary. Hunter puts them in “time limbo” so he can fix things, but the team, like me, wants to know why they were being shot at. Kendra and Sara punch him to make him tell the truth, and it turns out he lied to them.
The council didn’t want him to go back and change time, so he ventured out on his own to get this team together. He picked them because they weren’t “legends,” in fact, they pretty much left no impact on the world/timeline. Talk about a depressing realization. But Hunter so desperately wanted to change the time because remember that mother and son killed at the beginning? Yeah, that was his family, a family he wasn’t even supposed to have because the Time Masters don’t encourage it.
This means the team members have a decision to make: to stay or not to stay?
Kendra goes to talk to her son, and he dies from his wounds after giving her an old ring that used to be hers. (Hunter explains that time has a way of getting what it wants. Since he was destined to die, he did, just in a different way.)
Jax agrees to stay with Stein after Stein apologizes, because he sees the team as something that can do good now, if they work together.
Ray is struggling to decide, because he joined to become a legend. Thanks to Sara, he manages to put his bruised ego aside for a moment and decide to try and save the world and change his fate.
The criminals of Heat Wave and Captain Cold just really don’t care. They can be bad anywhere and anytime, so they’re still in. Looks like the team isn’t going anywhere.
So now that the team is still together and the ship is fixed, Hunter charts the course for their next location, Norway, 1975. Scene flashes to Savage and we see him there. To be continued.
I see this show heading in the right direction, but with such a large cast, they are going to have to find a way to make everyone useful, but also not always use them all together. I think they need to develop these characters individually, which is hard when you focus on all of them all of the time. I’m intrigued.
Read more TV reviews on ClicheMag.com
DC’s ‘Legends of Tomorrow’ Premiere Recap and Review: Photographs courtesy of the CW
