I'm a huge fan of Arrowverse or Flarrowverse or whatever the hell it's called, so clearly I was excited to hear about the development of DCs Legends Of Tomorrow or Legends Of Tomorrow or whatever the hell it's called. A joint spin off of two shows I love that are using minor characters that I enjoyed a bit, how could it go wrong? It sounded like it was going to be brilliant and the little teases that we'd recieved from The Flash and Arrow seemed promising until we reached the major The Flash/Arrow crossover event with the introduction of Hawkman (Falk Hentschel) and Hawkgirl (Ciara Renee). The dialogue, the premise, the wings, heck everything in those crossover episodes was just plain bad and it certainly didn't help that the actors that they cast to play said characters are wooden as hell.Then again those are only two characters in a roster of 8 (9 if you include Rip), and I'd been introduced to the other characters and didn't hate them so there was still some hope. I will now admit that my hope in this show may have been misplaced. The Hawk-couple seemed to be the driving force behind the main story arc of Legends and the show has now invalidated the crossover Arrow/The Flash episodes. In those episodes the goal was to take down Vandal Savage (Casper Crump) who had been hunting down the reincarnations of Chay-Ara/Hawkgirl/ who in 2016 is Kendra Saunders and Khufu/Hawkman, now Carter Hall. Apparently the three have been linked to one another since their time in ancient Egypt and the show taught me that ancient egyptian princes look just like caucasian men wearing eyeliner. I should probably get back on point, Savage was killed in the crossover episode but somehow he's back in Legends as he has to be killed by the hand of one of the hawks. No wait, that was retconned in the first couple episodes of the show and now he can only be killed by Hawkgirl. With a special dagger. At midnight on a full moon. The last one hasn't been stated yet but I wouldn't be surprised if the writers pulled that out of their ass. You see my frustration, they didn't just retcon but they retconned a retcon and they clearly have no idea what to do with the show.
One decent thing to have happened in the show is the demise of Carter Hall/Hawkman, a producer high up must've watched they cross over episode and realised their mistake. The only probably with the hawkcouple now is the Kendra/Hawkgirl remains and they can't kill her off as she is apparently the only one that is able to kill Savage. This woman is supposed to be a goddess, a strong and fierce warrior that is a hero and someone that young girls can admire. Instead she seems incredibly bland and in all honesty doesn't really add anything to the group other than a speech about how she used to be a barista up until a few months ago and she doesn't know how to tap into her inner goddess. Seriously, that happens every freaking episode and I'm going to start taking shots of absinthe when she does it again so I'll probably be dead by the end of the next episode. The writers really shot themselves in the foot with the Savage story and they could really have benefited from cutting Kendra loose and focusing on developing the characters that are more bearable.
Sure the other characters are likeable enough but I feel that maybe they should've stayed as supporting characters on their respective shows as the writers don't know how to make them deep or interesting enough to be main characters. Take Mick Rory/Heatwave (Dominic Purcell) for example, all he seems to be is a brute and 7 episodes in and he hasn't changed at all other than becoming more dangerous and childish. Another character that seems to lack development it Ray Palmer/Atom (Brandon Routh) and it really does pain me to say this because I loved his character when he was on Arrow. He was loveable, sweet and brilliant but now they've turned him into a caricature of what he once was. Sure, him being used as comic relief sometimes is fine but they seem to be making him a complete joke. It's hard to believe that he is a billionaire tech genius because in the majority of the aired episodes he seems to come across as a baffoon.
The one character that has shown signs of grown is Leonard Snart/Captain Cold (Wentoworth Miller) but we actually saw this while he was on The Flash, he has morals and he does care for people, it's just now we've seen him around people other than Mick and his sister. Sure, he may seem hammy at times but it's clear to me that's the character covering his feelings as you do see hints of him being quite a nice man. Sara/White Canary (Caity Lotz) and Martin Stein/Firestorm (Victor Garber) were actually pretty solid characters coming into the show and to me they are the backbone of it, without these two the show would fair even worse than it does already. It's been 7 episodes and to be honest I have yet to form a solid opinion on Jefferson Jackson/Firestorm (Franz Drameh) as he doesn't seem like a good or back character, he just seems to be there. I have formed an opinion on Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) and all I can say is what a moron! He has recruited a team of people but episode after episode he refuses to let them work together and he often leaves out vital information to them deeming it in their best interests. He will inevitably lose the trust of this group which would be just, he doesn't have the temperament or the skill to be a leader.
The casting was off with Kendra and Carter but the writing is bringing down a lot of the characters and the show is already starting to go stale. Savage is not nearly as threatening enough as the main villain of the season as we've already seen Barry and Oliver take him down within two hours. He's not all that compelling either, the thing with The Flash and Arrow is that you kind of loved their villains including faux-Wells, Merlyn, Slade Wilson as well as many more but Savage you just don't give a damn about. The show also probably shouldn't have played with timelines, sure it's an interesting idea but not when you're sharing a universe with two other shows. Savage is supposed to rule the World around the time that Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash is making his way to becoming a villain and we've never heard a peep about Savage from the whole of The Flash season 1 or from the return of Eobard this season. The writers are clearly writing themselves into a corner that they'll never be able to dig themselves out of.
I'm going to wrap up shortly but I have one more complaint, the show needs to stop repeating itself. Like I said earlier (the irony, me repeating myself as evidence that the show is repeating itself, I truly am laughing as I type) Kendra is always moaning about how she was a barista and Rip always tries splitting the group up and realises that's a bad idea and sends them all in. Almost every episode they seem to have chats about whether they should go on with the mission of go back home as well. There's probably more like that but I can't think of them at present. The show is nothing special and the episodes are bland and the same things happen over and over. The only saving grace is its occasionally brilliant one liners and the fact that it shares the same universe as The Flash/Arrow. The writers and producers seem to love their crossovers and keeping all three as one single entity rather than three different shows which sucks if you're really not a fan of one of those shows and it's easy to not like one, they share a universe but they are completely different from one another tonally. I'm afraid if I give up watching this then I will miss major events that happen on the other shows as I did with Arrow's Vixen episode because I didn't watch the webisodes.
So I'll keep watching the show out of necessity rather than enjoyment which is a shame as there was so much potential when the announcement came about but the show is a mess. Calling it Legends Of Tomorrow was a little too optimistic on their part, there is no way the show will end up being memorable enough for them to even become legends within the realm of cult TV.
Live Long and Blog!
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