As someone who regularly watches, “The Flash” and “Arrow,” this entire season for both shows has been a big promo for the new “Legends of Tomorrow” spin-off. The idea is to take eight secondary characters from both shows and turn them into some sort of Justice League type group that get to time travel. Turns out, this is “Legends of Hey, This Isn’t Half Bad.”
The premise is just out there. Some time travelling dude who is finding humanity on the brink of extinction from Vandal Savage, bad guy from this year’s Flash/Arrow crossover episode, thinks that he can travel back to 2016 and assemble eight “legends.” Captain Cold and Heatwave are legends? I have no idea, but they’re damned funny and a great addition to this mix. Or how about the newly combined Firestorm? Jackson wants nothing to do with this whacked out premise, while Professor Stein is chomping at the bit to realize his dream of time travel. What happens? Shenanigans with a mickey. Hawkgirl and Hawkman have no trouble with this since it’s their bad guy they’re chasing and they get the whole time thing. That just leaves two others, Ray Palmer and Sara Lance.
These are the two from “Arrow” and given the appearances of Stephen Amell and Katie Cassidy in the episode, turns out this has been just an “Arrow” spinoff all along. Huh, go figure. Ray, who’s been working with Oliver to shrink and look at Damien Darhk’s computer systems, tells Oliver he’ll be going away for a while, even though in time travel it won’t look like he was gone at all. Yeah, assuming you live. Sara has a training workout with Laurel, who for some reason seems to accept with big pride the chance for her baby sister to go traveling in time. Does she even know about this happening on The Flash? Wouldn’t it be the first time she’s ever heard of time travel? I would be freaking out over the idea! She even has a suit ready for Sara and has given her a new name, The White Canary. How convenient.
So the eight are off and where do they go of all places? The 1970’s? Granted it was supposed to be a milk run, find some expert who know about Vandal Savage, the same guy we saw to be the expert on the video tape that Felicity hacked easily in the Flash/Arrow spinoff. Oh, but we learned something new about this guy. He’s the son of Hawkgirl and Hawkman from a few lives ago. He meets his parents who are younger than he is! A pretty wild scenario. For some strange reason Professor Stein and Ray Palmer get to go visit this guy while the others stay behind. It’s the scene that results from this that finally won me over. It’s a dream scenario, Sara Lance, Captain Cold and Heatwave partying in a bar in the 1970’s. Beers are $1 and Heatwave actually loves the Captain and Tenille! Put “Love Will Keep Us Together” on a jukebox and suddenly you’ve got the best bar fighting music ever. Kudos to the fantastic fight choreography of these three taking on a whole bar of bikers.
It was inevitable, something had to be up. I figured there would be a twist for putting this particular band of misfits together. They aren’t legends, they’re nobodies. . If they die, the timelines won’t miss them. Rip Hunter needed muscle because Vandal Savage killed his family and the time council wouldn’t do anything about it. Which BTW, they’re after him too and did almost destroy the ship Yeah, that has to be a crushing blow to their fragile egos but for everyone to decide to keep going, I had a little trouble believing that. The most rational reason actually came from Captain Cold and Heatwave. “We like killing things.” Well at least they weren’t suffering from delusions of grandeur.
So all in all a promising start, but I’m curious to see where this goes from here. So far what we have is a glorified buddy comedy/action thriller. That’s the main strength of this series though, the cast chemistry is amazing. That’s what sold the pilot for me, not the fantasy plot and the nail biting action.
