Synopsis of 1×1 & 1×2: Rip Hunter: Time Master assembles a crew of misfit superheroes to save the world from the immortal Vandal Savage, also themselves.
Rating: ★★★1/2 out of Five
Rip Hunter’s Waverider is full. Counting himself (and discounting the AI that runs the ship), his crew totals nine, the same number it should be noted as once populated the Serenity. There’s a rich guy in a flying suit who is an exact combination of Iron Man and Ant-Man, a vague assassin with very exposed shoulders, a nuclear man made up of a scientist and a mechanic, two Lotharios with heat-based guns, and a pair of reincarnated hawk people. They are the only team capable (and unimportant enough to the time stream) of stopping Vandal Savage, the immortal who will one day take over the world.
What the hell did I just say?
The time has come for DC’s Guardians. After the continued success and acclaim of The Flash and Arrow, the CW (already largely DC: The Channel) feels confident enough in the Greg Berlanti/Marc Guggenheim duo to let them swing for the weird, as if those two fellas needed even more projects on their plate. Thus, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, an ensemble show about a crew of send-offs from The Flash and Arrow traveling through time every week to take on the immortal future Dictator of Earth, Vandal Savage.
The way Rip sees is, there is but one thing to do: recruit a team and stop Savage. He picks up some of the finest (and most antiheroic) Central & Starling Cities can offer and scampers off into the time stream.
Rip Hunter says things like “in the place where—when—I’m from” and there are endless conversations about how we MUST NOT AFFECT THE TIME STREAM. Changes to the time stream are slowly blinked out of existence. Paradoxes are events spoken about in the hushed tones one might use to describe a relative’s drinking problem. Every single time travel trope you’ve grown tired of over the years is on display here.
Having such a huge cast doesn’t make for the most dynamic pilot, either. When big decisions have to be made, that means we often have to watch the same scene five or six times back to back. If a character is part of a duo, they have this scene with their partner. If they’re not, they have it with a guest star from Arrow. This happens twice in “Pilot: Part One.” Twice.
None of this is deal-breaking. A pilot with this many characters is difficult to pull off with elegance. Remember “Serenity,” Firefly’s two part pilot, and how that was probably the worst episode of the show? There’s a lot of fun on display here (who couldn’t love Chronos, the time travel bounty hunter) and the potential of the show is strong. “Pilot” gives us a good idea of what Legends will be like going forward. And it shows off the show’s secret weapon.
*What do we gotta do to get Golden Glider on this show?
But let’s keep the Firefly comparisons alive for a second. That show, great as it was, always had a pair of weak links in Simon & River. Legends has its own pair of Tams who also bring down the bigger ensemble, who are a duo given unto the show whose storylines are always about the two of them and not the rest of the crew, who pull away from the rest of the team to have scenes that are the most boring things conceivable if you aren’t invested in their overall mythology plotline. On Legends, these drags are the Hawks.
You could blame this maybe on the actors’ unfamiliarity with the characters, but Darville doesn’t have the same problem with Rip, so what’s the deal here? Why do genre shows do this? Why do they have the characters most central the premise of the show be their least interesting ones to watch?
I hope that Legends of Tomorrow keeps Carter dead, and not just because I hate him. I know how easy it would be to bring him back. His whole thing is reincarnation. They could pick up another version in a second. But the drama at the end of “Pilot” would be lost with his resurrection. His death is the pilot’s biggest surprise and the rally point around which the Legends accept their positions as the only team for the job. It’s important.
Don’t make the same mistake as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Don’t bring Coulson back.
Legends is a show with a lot of potential energy* that needs some time to come into its own. The cast enlivens the exposition-heavy first episode enough to give me hope that once that heavy-lifting is no longer needed, this will be a truly rousing program to check out every week. In summation: Captain Cold is bae, #KeepCarterDead, let’s do this thing.
*Flash joke!