Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: cw, dc, entertainment, Legends of Tomorrow, Leonard Snart, Ray Palmer, Rip Hunter, television

DC's Legends Of Tomorrow: Today, Tomorrow And Beyond

Moving on today to the group show on the CW Network, DC's Legends of Tomorrow. Now this show is a bit different in that it's not a 23 episode season as the others. This one is only 13 episodes in season one and now 17 for season two after the additional 4 episode order.

I liked the team make up in season one a lot. I thought Captain Cold and Heatwave were an excellent balance to Firestorm and the Atom. I thought there was enough gray area with White Canary and Rip Hunter to not overshadow the other groups and Hawkgirl was there to help give a reason for Vandal Savage to care about them. Killing off Hawkman was a nice touch to show that anything could happen. My problem with the first season was that the team was constantly failing because their sole mission was to stop Savage. They would pick up little side missions occasionally, but it was all in the purpose of stopping Savage. This made some of the episodes feel like filler or getting the team into the situations became very convoluted. This was something I hoped they would take care of in season two.

The haven't. Even with the premise of fixing time anomalies, the team is constantly making mistakes and making things worse instead of better. And the convoluted set ups remain… like Atom and Steel fighting in the cargo bay, shooting the door off to put them in feudal Japan. Also, the team make up has taken a turn for the worse. With Rip gone, Sara has had to stop into his role and is doing okay, so they bring in Vixen and now she's having a similar relationship with Rory that Sara and Leonard had last season. And the new edition of Nate is almost a carbon copy of Ray in geeky eagerness. But without Rip, there is no one to tell them what they should do, not what feels right. And without Leonard, there is no one to say, "well that's a stupid idea". In a ship full of optimists and pessimists, sometimes what you need is a realist.

And at some point you'd think that the Legends would start figuring out how to do things without making a bigger mess. They don't work as a team. Everyone wants to be 'the guy' (except Rory) and it's starting to get old. Multiple times last season there was that moment when everyone had to decide if they were sticking around or not. This season they need a moment to decide if they want to work as a team. And now we have the Legion of Doom who are working as a team and have already manipulated the Legends to get exactly what they want.

When the season returns, we'll be getting Rip Hunter back… but in what condition we don't know and the Legion captures him first. Plus they'll need to explain why Thawne, Merlyn and Darhk need the necklace to find the Spear of Destiny if they're time travelers and should be able to go back to when it was first used and pick it up right then. Seems like they're going through a whole lot of extra work for nothing. We've also seen a moment of Nate and Amaya in bed together which could be this seasons love triangle if Rory has feelings for her.

My hope for the rest of this season is that the writer already had the season planned out at thirteen episodes and by the time we hit episode thirteen, the Legion of Doom story is wrapped up. That's five episodes more to figure it out. Then I hope they take that last four episodes and give us another short story arc with a couple new characters added in. We learned from season one that dragging things out over a full season can get old, hence not starting the Legion story too quickly. But when you're talking about a group that can time travel, things should happen much faster than on other series. And with those last four episodes, do something a little more serious and intense. Maybe more character driven and less end of the world.

As for going into season three, I'd like to see the waverider's time ability break. It's a space ship too. Let's have a season that isn't about time travel and make it about space travel and I know just the story. You start off with Adam Strange, running from some bad guys and leaping off a building to jump into a Zeta Beam that never comes. He starts to plummet to the Earth only to be caught by one of the Hawks (writer's choice). They contact the Legends to help Strange discover what happened and take him to Rann only to discover that the planet is gone. You spend the first few episodes doing the Planet Heist storyline from Andy Diggle and Pascal Ferry with a Legends team made up of more space-friendly heroes and it leads into the Rann / Thanagar war with the Legends caught in the middle and both Strange and one of the Hawks on board. You get to dive into the Hawks's backstory even more and you can introduce a few more heroes plus keep ones around like Atom, Firestorm, etc. And Legends gets to do something very few shows have ever pulled off, a complete direction change for a series, and then they can go somewhere else for season four… and four the the big crossover, it's simple. The war comes to Earth for a week.

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