The DC’s Legends of Tomorrow series premiere aired tonight. Read our recap and discuss the episode with fellow fans!
Getting the band together
In 2166, Vandal Savage has taken over the world. The Doctor A time lord, Rip Hunter, requests a time ship, a team, and permission to change the timeline so Vandal Savage doesn’t come to power. In his quest, he travels to January 2016 and collects his chosen team: Ray Palmer, Sara Lance, Jax Jefferson, Martin Stein, Carter Hall, Kendra Saunders, Leonard Snart, and Mick Rory.
He gives them his spiel about why he needs them, tells them they’re going to become legends, and gives them 36 hours to make up their minds.
The thought processes go as follows:
- Ray decides to go for it because it provides the opportunity for him to do something the matters; it’s the purpose he’s been looking for since Team Arrow rescued him. It’s interesting that Ray talks over his decision to join the team with Oliver, as the two were never close. If we take this as occurring simultaneously with Arrow and The Flash as well, Felicity — who seems a more likely confidante for Ray — is recovering from the shooting.
- Carter wants to go for it, but Kendra isn’t interested. She doesn’t want to give Savage the chance to kill them again. Carter, on the other hand, realizes this is their best chance to kill Savage for good. They agree to fight and the winner decides. (Carter wins, obviously.) It’s going to be a while before these two are truly a team.
- Sara is talked into joining the team by Laurel, who wants her sister to leave the shadows and become a hero in the light. She even had Cisco make a White Canary costume for Sara. This is a lovely scene between the sisters; one thing that felt lacking from Sara’s revival on Arrow was her reaction to learning that Laurel had become the Black Canary in her memory — and while we don’t quite get that here, we get a conversation filled with love. The purity of the white suit Laurel had made for Sara shows just how she sees her sister, which is incredibly touching.
- Martin Stein wants to join the team, to see everything there is to see through time travel, but Jax isn’t interested in getting even crazier than fighting crime in 2016 as Firestorm. He’s still pretty new at all of this, after all. To get what he wants, Stein drugs Jax and takes him along. He’s learned a few sneaky tricks.
- And finally, Leonard Snart and Mick Rory decide to join the team, but not for the right reasons. They plan to do some real thieving through time and make a killing. That should come as no surprise.
The team splits up
The newly formed team travels to 1975 to visit Professor Boardman, the Hawk-obsessed professor we saw in the video in the Arrow/Flash crossover. It turns out the Hawks were Boardman’s parents in a previous life. He was 10 when the Hawks were murdered, which explains his obsession with them.
It’s hard to imagine what it must feel like on both ends of that dynamic — for Boardman to see his parents and not a spark of recognition in their eyes when they look at him and for Kendra and Carter to learn they had a child they don’t remember and whose life they missed most of.
Meanwhile, Sara, Leonard and Mick have been left behind so they decide to go get a drink. When a biker tries to hit on Sara, a bar fight ensues. There’s some flirting going on between Sara and Leonard, so it’ll be interesting to see if anything happens between them.
It’s also intriguing that Sara is being lumped in with the criminals; yes, she is an assassin, but she’s mostly been aligned with the good guys despite her past — though she’s always seen herself as good guy-adjacent.
The truth
When a bounty hunter from the future attacks, the Hawks bring Boardman to the ship, but he’s injured during the flight. He later dies, but not before giving Kendra a necklace that belonged to her in her previous life. Meanwhile, Rip admits that he quit being a time lord because his wife and child were murdered by Savage; he went rogue to stop him. He chose this group because none of them are essential to the timeline. So much for being legends.
After a bit of thinking, each member of the team decides to stay the course to fight Savage — and change their own fates. What’s the point of time traveling if they can’t do something that matters? It’s hard to believe that none of these individuals could be important to the future of the world, but clearly they will become the legends of the title by the end of the season.
Also worth noting
- Certain events, like the death of Boardman, cannot be changed. It will be interesting to see which events the team can change and which they will affect.
- Rip Hunter’s on-board computer system is Gideon, the system that Barry Allen created and the Reverse Flash brought back into the past with him on The Flash.
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