Needless to say, Legends of Tomorrow is both incredibly hyped, and very risky. On one hand, you have several established characters across the Arrow and Flash universes coming together to stop a villain who we just recently discovered via the Arrow/Flash crossover. On the other hand, with no “leading star”, or even a true comic book connection (as in “this team is in the comics”), they’re putting a lot of faith into the idea that they have.
Thankfully, “Their Time Is Now” does a decent job of bringing the pieces into place for another potential CW hit. Yes, there are some familiar beats, and even a forseeable twist, but, it all works in the shows favor.
What really sells this is Rip Hunter, played by Arthur Darvill. You might say he was made for this role, as he was a companion on Doctor Who, and now is his own time-traveler, complete with ship. There are numerous references to Doctor Who through Rip Hunter, but there’s plenty of difference to make him a unique and very enigmatic character. One who’ll no doubt have many more twists up his sleeve as the next 15 episodes play out.
What really sold the episode was the “Legends” team, as each of them had to decide both why they should come on the mission with Rip, and then why they should stay after it was revealed that he lied to them on multiple accounts. That lie was that they were actually not legends, but rather small blips in the timestream that likely no one would miss. That actually gives this show a lot of power, as instead of being a show about future legends guaranteed, anyone and everyone is expendable to an extent. Yes, it’s likely none will die, however, that’s now not a guarantee.
Even more was the interactions between the Legends team. Palmer and Stein had some fantastic back and forth, and it appears that Sara Lance is going to get along just fine with Captain Cold and Heat Wave. Even the Hawks had some really powerful moments, arguably some of the more powerful ones as they found a son they once had, and further learned of their history.
Like I mentioned, it wasn’t perfect, and in fact, not a lot happened in some ways. But that’s fine, with a show of this scale, it wasn’t needed up front. The setup was good, now, it’s time for the execution. I’m looking forward to seeing where this is heading.
Todd Black
Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!
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