[Upbeat music]
“Okay, what is going on?”
Superhero shows tend to have one of two tones: they’re either super gritty, dark, and serious
-- [Intense music] [In scary voice] “You missed me.”
Or they’re still kind of serious but the main hero has lots of quippy one-liners.
“I know Zoom sent you here to kill me.
Good news, you don’t have to do that.”
There’s nothing wrong with either of these two tones, both of them can make for great shows.
But there’s something that most superhero shows aren’t doing, and that’s allowing
themselves to be as weird and fun as they can possibly be.
The exception to this is the CW show: Legends of Tomorrow.
Using time travel as a key plot driver, Legends of Tomorrow is able to put its characters
through some truly bizarre situations, like vikings worshipping an Elmo-like toy called
Bebo, or a unicorn murdering people at Woodstock.
And it’s that weirdness that makes Legends of Tomorrow so great, especially because it
acknowledges that weirdness and embraces it.
“We are all happy that there was only one dragon, right?
We don’t want to be fighting werewolves in the Alamo.”
“Ehh…”
“Well, it would be good for our ratings.”
“Where’s my nipple!?”
Because it’s one thing for a show to be ridiculous and not be aware of it.
That’s just… painfully awkward for the viewer.
But Legends of Tomorrow knows that its strength is in its weirdness, it’s running
with it, and that gives it an edge that no other superhero show has.
However, it did take Legends of Tomorrow a couple seasons for it to find the right balance
for that edge.
In the beginning, it was trying to be more like its sibling shows on the CW: Arrow, The
Flash, and Supergirl.
It had humor, for sure, but it was more serious, more intense, and hadn’t really found it’s groove yet.
“I’m from East London.
Oh, and the future.”
The basic premise of the first season is that a guy by the name of Rip Hunter shows up in
2016 on his time ship and recruits a bunch of superheroes to help him save the world.
Rip says he’s from the future and that someone called Vandal Savage is going to take over
the world in 2166 unless they can stop him.
But the catch is the reason he chooses the initial 8 heroes.
“I chose you all because 100 years from now, your lives have a minimal effect on the recorded timeline.”
I’m sure you’ve heard of the butterfly effect -- well that’s what Rip is trying to avoid.
Presumably, he’s run some calculations and found that the timeline stays basically the
same even without those 8 people.
Which makes the title of the show, Legends of Tomorrow, kind of a jab at the characters themselves.
They’re not Legends.
In fact, they’re basically the opposite of legends, because the timeline wouldn’t
even notice their absence.
Obviously, since they’ve gotten four seasons out of it, the main crew do end up having
a pretty substantial impact on the timeline, but the basic premise of the show, baked into
the title itself, is that these aren’t your typical superheroes.
They’re nobodies who are trying to be Legends.
And that allows the show to go in a direction that wouldn’t necessarily work for other
superhero shows.
No one expects the Legends to be intense crime-fighting superheroes because that’s not what they’ve ever been.
They’re some people with some interesting abilities trying to fix the timeline.
And in that way, it almost has a Doctor Who kind of vibe to it.
Obviously, they’re very different shows, but they both involve a leader with “time”
in their title--
“I’m the Doctor.
I’m a Time Lord.”
“As a Time Master of long standing.”
--who recruits people to join them on their time ship--
“It’s called the Tardis.
It can travel anywhere in time and space.
And it’s mine.”
“It’s called the Waverider.
It’s been my ship for over a decade.”
--so that they can go to different points in time and fix what’s wrong--
“Still got a couple of floors to go, and if I know my history, that makes the date somewhere around…”
“November 1st, 1930.”
“What do you guys say we get out of 1942?” --all the while cracking some jokes.
I don’t think people really expect that kind of a tone from a superhero show, but
that’s what Legends of Tomorrow is -- or at least what it started off as.
By season 3, Rip is basically out of the picture working at the Time Bureau while Sara Lance
becomes the captain of the Wave Rider, and that season is where Legends of Tomorrow starts
to play around with its plot and find its sweet spot.
A few other characters have left and a few new ones have taken their places, and the
premise of this season is that the Legends are working under the Time Bureau to hunt
down what they call anachronisms, basically errors in the timeline, and fix them.
This includes things like getting Caesar out of Aruba, getting Helen of Troy out of 1930’s
Hollywood, and preventing a telepathic Gorilla named Grodd from killing the President, twice.
“Clearly, you have some grievances."
[Roars]
"Well, perhaps we can look for a common ground?”
In the end, the big finale fight is between Malus, the demon, and Beebo, the Elmo/Furby
toy of this universe.
[Roaring]
[Squeaking] “Beebo can’t breathe!”
Season 3 seemed like a testing ground for how weird they could get, and apparently it
was a success, because season 4 gets even weirder.
In this season, Rip is completely gone, and the show gets straight up paranormal.
The plot for this season is that a bunch of demons have been released from hell and scattered
through time, and it’s the Legends job to track down these magical fugitives and send
them back to hell.
This plotline brings the Legends all over the place, including to Woodstock where they
face off against a killer unicorn, the Salem Witch trials where they encounter a Fairy
Godmother, and Paris 1927 where they encounter Ernest Hemingway and hunt down a Minotaur.
“We have to go! Now!”
“I’ll never surrender!”
[Roars]
“But I will strategically retreat!”
I know all of that sounds like it doesn’t fit into the same show, but with Legends it just -- does.
They’ve mastered the art of taking the most out-there concepts and tackling them with humor.
If they tried to keep the gritty superhero archetype with these kinds of plots, it would be a mess.
But the characters know that this stuff is ridiculous and point it out regularly.
[Magical twinkling sound of something appearing] "Hello!"
“What in the Disney Hell is this?”
Apparently, they’re even aware of the crossovers between their show and the other CW superhero shows.
“Gideon, any messages while we were gone?”
“You missed calls from Barry Allen, Oliver Queen, and Kara Zor-el.”
“Sounds like the annual crossover.”
“Ugh, yeah, that’s gonna be a hard pass.”
They had a plot-based reason for missing the crossover in the 4th season but I also have
to believe that decision was partly made because the show has become so tonally different from
Arrow, The Flash, or Supergirl.
While those three shows still have no problem mixing with each other once a season, the
Legends at this point might as well be in a different universe.
Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl tackle legitimately terrifying villains like, oh,
nothing major, just the rise of a massive anti-immigrant movement that’s clearly an
allegory for white nationalism -- meanwhile, the Legends are over here at summer camp hunting down
a monster called a Shtriga.
“Well, today’s subject is wilderness survival, which includes tracking and orienteering.
Who’s excited?”
[Small cough]
“Well, you will be!”
And honestly, we need more shows like this.
TV doesn’t need to keep getting grittier and grittier to be good.
You can make good things and still have them be funny and silly and wholesome.
I’d even argue that lots of people are in desperate need of that kind of feel-good content,
partially because of the overwhelming deluge of dark content out there but also because
the world is a dark place and we’re constantly reminded of every bad aspect of it all day every day.
Escapism isn’t just about entering a fictional world to forget about the real world for a
second, it’s also about experiencing joy and happiness in a world that often seems
deprived of those things.
Also, it’s just f*ing hilarious to see a giant blue stuffed animal fight a demon.
Plus, there’s just a certain joy in a time travel show like Legends.
In every episode, you don’t know what time period they’re going to end up in.
And, being the dramatic folks they are, you know they’re going to get in costume for
that time period.
”What? Why are you staring at me?”
“You know, I’m waiting for you to, do the thing you do.”
“What thing?”
“You know, you usually send us into the field with a little more pizzazz.”
“Alright Legends, put on your Sunday best because we are going to church!”
[Snaps] “Was pretty good.”
“Amen!”
“Well, I hope you’re feeling morally superior because are getting our Puritan, Purit-on.
That was too much, right?”
That could be the Wild West in the 1800s, Chicago in the 1920s, London in 2166, North
America in the year 1000, the Bahamas in the 1700s, or even the moon in 1970.
You can’t get these kinds of dramatically different backdrops from any other kind of show.
That, mixed with the pure goofiness of Legends, means that you get a show that’s really
unlike any other.
Just don’t come to this show hoping for the most coherent, thought-provoking plot.
I mean, their time travel logic itself is seriously broken.
There’s an episode where most of the team is in the Bahamas in 1717 while Sara is in
present day 2018 on a date.
When some of them come back to the present, Sara leaves her date and tells Zari, “Zari,
get this ship back in fighting shape because until then, Rory and Amaya are on their own.”
The only problem is… there is no “until then”.
Those two events aren’t happening at the same time.
Their friends are in the past, the thing they’re rushing to get to already happened.
They could wait 10 minutes or 10 months, and they could still travel back to the exact
same time in 1717, it would make no difference for Rory and Amaya.
But nope, apparently if they spend three hours in 2018, three hours have passed in 1717.
That makes… no sense.
“For real, we’ve been going non-stop for the past 6 months!”
You don’t have to be going non-stop!
You can time travel!
You could wait a hundred years and still time travel to the exact same time period when
the aberration happens!
You, quite literally, have all the time in the world.
For the time travel logic to vaguely make sense, they’ve kind of introduced a whole
new timeline that’s separate from the regular universe, just for time travellers.
And from that time traveller timeline, you can affect any time on the regular timeline.
But you can't time travel within the time traveler timeline.
This timeline exists within what the show calls, “the temporal zone” which is just
a space where their ship can fly through without being in any particular time period.
And so if someone messes something up in present time on the time traveller timeline but in
1940 on the regular timeline, and that screw-up makes it so that none of the Legends are born,
they have to act quickly to fix it because those changes happened in the present on the
time traveller timeline and within a certain amount of time will ripple throughout the
temporal zone and erase them from existence.
Are you confused? Because so am I.
Does it make the most sense?
Not really.
But hey, time travel stuff never really makes sense, and these plot devices lend themselves
well to the drama of a TV show.
They only have a couple other rules, one of them being that once they’ve gone back to a specific
time, they can’t go back again to that exact time again and interact with their past selves
because it would break the timeline or something.
I guess that helps their actions seem more meaningful because you know they can’t really
go back and correct any mistakes, but it’s not much.
Their other time travel rule -- don’t try to save your loved ones and change the timeline
-- is messed with pretty much constantly.
“But while you were all saving Einstein, Sara was off on her own secret side mission
to kill Laurel’s killer in the past.”
“And I suppose you never thought about saving your fiancée?”
“Yeah of course I did, but I never did it because it’s against the rules.”
“What rules?
We’re not Time Masters.
There are no rules.”
That’s not to say that Legends is mindless, though.
I think there’s a strength in those kinds of shows as well, when they have so little
plot that you can turn off your mind and just relax for a bit.
But while Legends is weird and silly, I wouldn’t describe it as mindless or bad.
It’s just captivating in a different way.
It makes you care about the characters not because they’re brooding and intense but
because they’re funny and real.
Legends of Tomorrow does have its touching and emotional moments, like Zari teaching
Mick about Ramadan; or Ava, who is a clone and therefore never had a childhood, getting
to transform back into a kid and have her first kiss; or Sara helping a lesbian from
the 1950s accept that she’s okay just the way she is; or Mick coming to terms with his
daddy issues, or Nate coming to terms with his daddy issues; or Amaya reconnecting with
her ancestors; or Zari realizing that she can’t save her family.
“That’s my mom, and that’s me.
We lived in DC in 2018 before my brother was born.
It’d be so easy, Ray, to just walk over there and tell her to get her family and go
to Canada before everything changes.
Before this country that she worked so hard to become a citizen of, betrays her.
Look at her, Ray, how could anyone be afraid of her?”
Legends is the goofier of the Arrowverse shows but it’s genuine and heartfelt too, and
it strikes a good balance between those things.
On top of all of that, Legends of Tomorrow isn’t afraid of having queer characters
like so many other shows are.
Sara, the captain in the later seasons, openly has relationships with men and women.
When John Constantine becomes a regular in season 4, we learn that he’s also had relationships
with men and women, and in fact his relationship with a man becomes one of the major plot points
because of what he does to try and save the guy he loves.
“I begged Des to run, I knew that Neron would use him against me.
The bloody fool didn’t listen.”
Legends of Tomorrow knows that not everyone in the world is straight, and it’s not afraid
to have its show depict that.
Ava, Sara’s girlfriend, is obviously attracted to women -- and she also makes this iconic
uhauling and subaru joke which is how you know this show is nailing the realistic queer representation.
“I’m sorry, ugh, that was stupid.
You just got back into town and here I am hitching the old u-haul to the back of the Subaru.”
“No, no, hey.”
And Gary, a side character who’s become more of a series regular, is shown to be attracted to men.
“One more question: Are you sure that I’m a virgin because… that thing we did?”
“Positive, mate.”
So many major TV shows shy away from having openly queer characters, or they might just
have one token gay character.
For Legends to have multiple queer main characters is huge.
There is not a lot of queer representation on TV, especially bisexual representation,
and especially not in superhero shows.
Having Sara and Constantine just be themselves in Legends means the world to a lot of people
watching this show.
Especially because the show isn’t about their sexuality.
It’s not a coming out story.
It’s just who they are.
Because you don’t need a reason for a character to be queer, sometimes people just are that way.
And yet, so many shows don’t have the courage to do what Legends does with ease.
It’s all of this together that makes Legends of Tomorrow, in my opinion, the best superhero
show on TV right now.
It’s weird, it’s fun, it’s entertaining, it’s telling stories that nobody else is telling.
What more could you ask for?
And even though the fourth season is coming to an end soon, it’s already been renewed
for a 5th season, which means there’s a whole lot more wackiness still to come.
[Dinosaurs roaring]
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Anyway, thanks so much for watching this video, and I’ll see you next time.
“Whose brilliant idea was it to let an ancient demon out of his bloody cage?”