Legends of Tomorrow S01E01 Review: Getting Weird in the 70's

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot, Part 1

(Lots of 1's in that title)

Legends of Tomorrow is a series that I have been looking forward to for a long, long time. And, well, it delivers. Mostly. It's the CW-verse's answer to superhero movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and the upcoming Suicide Squad, taking a bunch of C-listers and throwing them into a big adventure away from the bigger names that are dominating the movie screens... or TV channels, in this case. Legends of Tomorrow has the benefit of actually having these characters being already established in their home series Arrow and The Flash, so this feels more like a C-List Justice League movie instead of 'let's introduce the audience to a bunch of people they're likely to know jack shit about!'

And, well, the only real newcomer in this whole Star-Trek-esque team is Dr. Who Rip Hunter, who quickly brings us up to speed in a big meeting with the mysterious Time Masters that our favourite immortal, Vandal Savage, has basically conquered the 22nd century and is lording it like some video game villain or something, shooting little kids in the head and shit. The rest of the team are mostly known quantities. Sara Lance, the White Canary, has been a major supporting character in Arrow's seasons two and four, and is a major source of personal grief for her sister and father, both prominent characters in the show. Ray Palmer, the Atom, is likewise a major character in season three and featured in season four as well. Captain Cold is a prominent recurring villain-slash-anti-villain in both seasons of the Flash, while his buddy Heat Wave has shown up ever now and then in the first season.

One half of Firestorm, Jefferson Jackson, may only have one episode's worth of screentime prior to this, and as I had said in my review of said episode, seemed to be quite hurriedly written in to cover for Ronnie Raymond's actor not being available for whatever reason. But Firestorm as an entity, and Martin Stein, one of the characters with the most screentime in this episode, is certainly an established character in both seasons of the Flash, graduating from recurring character to full-on supporting character for a brief time in the second season. Hawkgirl and Hawkman, like Jefferson, suffer from having only two (plus a couple of earlier bit roles in Hawkgirl's case) episodes which are mostly introdumps about their unconventional backstory, so they're likewise more ciphers. Especially Hawkman.

So anyway, the focus of this episode is mostly bringing the team together, and while Rip Hunter seems like a benign, happy-go-lucky "let's save the world!" mission command type dude who knows what he's doing... British accents tend to have that effect... it soon spirals out of control as more and more rogue elements show up. There's the evil time-traveler, Chronos, who DC fans might just assume is there as an appropriate time-travelling enemy... but turns out to be more than meets the eye. Lenny, Mick and Sara going wild at a bar in the 70's is hilarious, but it definitely left their timeship defenseless. Jefferson Jackson does not want to be on board the time travelling business, but is drugged and forced on board by Stein. Kendra is insistent on bringing her son-from-a-previous-life with them to avoid his supposed destined death. And Rip Hunter turns out to not be exactly who he says he is.

Chronos in his low-budget Vision cosplay...

See, while a good chunk of the episode shows Rip Hunter as a slightly-maverick but seemed-to-be-totally-legit Time Master, fooling both the audience and the Legends (which is what I'll call the group for now), he turns out to have gone rogue after acquiring the timeship Waverider, which for whatever reason comes with Eobard Thawne/Barry Allen's A.I. buddy from the future, Gideon. All more and more mysterious on that end with Gideon, but hey. Rip Hunter's a rogue Time Master, and instead of the 'you are all legends where I came from' line, apparently Hunter picked out the Legends simply because they have minimal impact on the timeline after that particular time... except maybe the Hawks, who seemed pretty integral to the whole Vandal Savage immortality thing. Plus people like Ray and Stein, as we saw, are pretty desperate for some validation in life, for some glory and recognition, enough for them to get myopic and realize that Rip Hunter didn't go for what is easily the most powerful hero in the CW-verse, the Flash himself.

Chronos in his high-budget Darth Vader cosplay

Also, Chronos, a.k.a. time-travelling Boba Fett (as Captain Cold points out) turns out to not be just a time-thief like he is in the comics, but is in fact working for the Time Masters... albeit he shares Boba Fett's role as a bounty hunter so as not to make him too good in this adaptation. Chronos himself honestly isn't just that threatening, even if he does have a laser gun (Rip Hunter has a laser revolver, which does not make sense even if it looks cool) to vaporize the two random witnesses who have minimal impact to the timeline. He's at least awesome-looking, though, and despite not doing much other than break the Waverider's cloaking device, it did take almost the entire Legends team to drive him off.

The episode itself is honestly pretty much setting things up, and thus we get a rather long exposition about the origin of Vandal Savage, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, something that we have already gotten back in the crossover episodes a while back. I thought this could've been shortened, since it's just exposition we don't really need. Yes, it's nice to make Legends of Tomorrow relatively standalone by making the exposition repeated here so anyone who's just interested in seeing Firestorm and Captain Cold time travel don't have to work through a backlog of six seasons to understand everything, but still, I thought it was a wee bit too much, and kinda hurt the pacing as someone who views this is next in a series of superhero-themed material. But oh well, it doesn't impact the show too much.

We get a couple of requisite tie-ins from Arrow characters. Ray Palmer has apparently been helping Oliver out off-screen in his war against Darhk and HIVE, presumably in a scene that takes place after the whole 'Felicity is in danger over her life' episode that premiered a couple days before this one. Ray's going around sabotaging HIVE computers with the ingenious method of expanding to full side while being inside one, and Ray and Oliver get a bit of a heart-to-heart as Ray considers whether he should accept Hunter's offer. I thought it was a nice little scene for the two of them, and it's telling that Ray went to Oliver instead of Felicity, who he's closer to. Ray and Oliver have always been portrayed as love rivals or simply just allies, but we have a dearth of the two of them just talking and acting like friends. It's nice to have that scene.

Sara and Laurel get a nice sparring lesson, and Laurel's own character development from being a joke of the least-likable character in the show into the Black Canary post-Sara's-death, finding a purpose and a sort of twisted release in punching criminals in the face, certainly is a nice analogue for Sara's own search for a purpose after returning from death and attempts to distance herself from her older Canary assassin moniker. To this end Laurel rebrands Sara's alter-ego as White Canary (cleverly tying in to Oliver's similar change of persona from the more violent Arrow to the more idealistic Green Arrow) and tells her to go for it.

Rip Hunter, prior to being British
and posh and everything

I thought the montage of them considering Rip Hunter's offer was pretty decently well-done, explaining why they ended up going with it. Hawkman and Hawkgirl's scene didn't work out as well for me, mostly because Hawkman is still a gigantic tool and they're just arguing over hunting down their arch-nemesis and ends up settling it with an off-screen fight. "Couples' counselling is in order" indeed. Stein is being adorable about time-travelling and shit, and he's still a joy to behold in this show, but Jax is far more reluctant. He ends up getting drugged, which is hilarious, and mellows out later in the episode, and I'm honestly slightly more receptive about Jax and Stein's relationship in this series than the one they were forced upon in the Flash. Captain Cold just wants to steal stuff through time. Heat Wave just wants to punch people through time.

The character dynamics are certainly the focus of this episode, with unlikely friendships and partnerships being formed between the group of people with scant little interaction with each other previously. Sara and Lenny quickly struck up the most unexpected and oddest of friendships as they just kinda hang out and walk around in the 70's, and it ended up being extremely fun. Stein and Ray grow a bit of a mutual respect for each other, and apparently Ray Palmer used to be one of Martin Stein's students, a fact that was not alluded to in either one of their home series... but totally makes sense.

We also get the return of Aldus Boardman, previously seen in a short video clip from the Flash/Arrow crossover where he was apparently this expert on Vandal Savage from the 70's. We learn that he, in fact, was the son of a previous reincarnation of Hawkman and Hawkgirl, all grown up. There's definitely a sense of parallelism with Hector Hall (maybe he will show up in the show's future?) from the comics, though obviously Boardman is not donning a mystical golden helmet any time soon. But the surprise and the sheer confusion on Kendra's face as she has to accept that she's somehow the mother of this man older than her who she has no memories of... and the conflicted, guilty look on her face as she lies about remembering her son on his deathbed, plus another layer of guilt for inadvertently causing Boardman's death by bringing him along with them.

Meanwhile, Carter Hall, Hawkman, who apparently remembers everything from his past lives (he even says something about his 4000-year-old memory) doesn't even share a scene with the son he supposedly remembers... and doesn't even acknowledge him! Any defensive action Hawkman makes is only because Kendra was the one to initiate it first and he just wants to score points. You birdbrained asshat, Hawkman.

Jax and Stein don't really work too well. There's the nicely-written scene about how Jax was inspired because he saw Stein run towards the ship to help him, and how he likes being a team and whatnot... but honestly you'd think Jax would jump at the chance of getting glory again since his past characterization has been about his desire to be someone great like how he was when he was a football star. Yet he spends a good chunk of the episode trying to run away from this chance at glory, when you'd think he would have a reaction similar to Ray Palmer. It's just odd, is all.

Rip Hunter gets a great scene near the end when the cocky Dr. Who persona breaks down, and he reveals himself to be as flawed as the other people in the room, revealing that he broke the rules of the Time Masters in trying to want to change time, and he's going to seek revenge for Vandal Savage killing his son, Jonah, who was the kid Savage shot in the cold open. That was an unexpected tie-in to the seemingly-throwaway scene at the beginning, which is clever even if Vandal Savage himself doesn't really do anything at all and Chronos steals the show's villain role. What little Savage got this time around is great, though, and the descriptions from Hunter and Boardman certainly makes him feel great.

Meanwhile, Sara, Lenny and Mick are just having fun mucking around in the seventies. Fuck being benched, right?

We get some nice little nods to DC comics -- the Waverider, Rip Hunter's ship, borrows its name from Waverider, an actual person and member of the Time Masters. While talking about 'rank amateur' dictators throughout time, Rip Hunter name-drops Per Degaton, who is a time-travelling villain that nominally battles the Justice Society and would actually be a more appropriate antagonist for the time-travelling Legends team...

Overall, though, there are a couple of things that don't really work here. Hawkman is easily the weakest of the characters (Heat Wave doesn't count as he is intentionally simple), and Jax is still kind of a cipher. The amount of introdump and repeated information also hurts the pacing somewhat... but honestly, those are minor problems. The show was fun, the show had an insanely and unexpectedly awesome series of action scenes against Chronos, Rip Hunter's twist near the end of this episode isn't wholly unpredictable but ends up being pretty great. This is awesome. I'm looking forward to the next episode.