DC's Legends of Tomorrow: The Season 2 Midseason Report Card

THE HEROES

In short, Team Legends traded Hawkgirl and Rip Hunter for Vixen and Citizen Steel; the show also traded the elaborate mythology and occasional appearance of Hawkman for that of the Justice Society of America.

All around, it's turned out to be a good trade.

The Hawks were a weak link on Legends in the show's first season, and the nature of the conflict made too many episodes all about them. It was a miscalculation that was impossible to fix on the fly, and in most cases, even fans of the Hawks from the comics weren't all that broken up to see them go.

Nick Zano's Steel, on the other hand, is a scene-stealer who has made just about every episode better.

Both Rip Hunter and Vixen have been good in the episodes where they've had stuff to do, but have been generally underserved so far...but Vixen, who has been there every week, has managed to remain likable and to feel necessary in the way the Hawks often did not.

Like last year, most of the characters are on an arc but it will be difficult to judge the effectiveness of those arcs until closer to the end of the season, since there are so many major characters on Legends that anything not directly tied to the A-plot often gets shunted to the back burner. Still, the heroes have been more entertaining this year, their week-to-week adventures more fun to watch, and the humor landing much more reliably.

THE VILLAINS

There have been fewer week to week villains not associated with the overall threat this season, but somehow that hasn't impacted the viability of the ones they've introduced.

The best episodes for non-Legion of Doom villains were probably "Outlaw Country" and "Shogun," both of which featured villains who did a great job of utilizing the heroes' weaknesses to do something different than we had seen before, and of course the Dominators in "Invasion!," which felt more fully realized in Legends than it did in the other shows.

THE STORY

Here's probably where Legends season 2 wins over season 1 most dramatically.

Quick: what was Vandal Savage's plan?

Yeah, pretty much. He certainly had a plan, but it was serpentine, played out over centuries, and mostly involved just staying alive forever.

Certainly that last bit is on Malcolm Merlyn's radar, but otherwise, the villains of Legends have a very different agenda: they want a specific thing, and they are willing to kill to get it. Yes, it took them a while to reveal exactly what the plan was, but everything they've done has been in service of that goal and so it all makes sense.

Similarly, the week-to-week episodes have all felt like they were "necessary" pieces of the puzzle with less throwaway storytelling. A few episodes last season really felt like filler, and that isn't a problem the series has had yet this year.

Even episodes set in the past have informed the mythology of the Arrowverse, with Jonah Hex, the origin of Katana's family, and more informing the episodes even before you think of the mythology they're building around the Justice Society and Obsidian.

THE BIG BAD

The Legion of Doom is still not 100% formed, but it's safe to say at this point that their plan is clearer, their agenda more menacing, and their overall presence more welcome than was Vandal Savage's at this point in season 1.

Savage gets a bit of a bad rap; last season, there were structural problems in the season and, were they not there, it's likely Savage wouldn't have gotten beat up by fans and critics the way he did. Still, he was underdeveloped, not menacing enough, and like the Hawks, got far too much exposure to be able to hide his flaws.

The Legion of Doom has the opposite problem, if anything: we know who they are. We know their capabilities and their flaws. And they're sticking to the shadows and operating by proxy so much that we haven't really had a chance to see how they interact with the team outside of a few token fight scenes yet.

Certainly the Reverse-Flash is the biggest example of this: so far all we really have seen is that when a speedster is fighting a bunch of people who aren't speedsters, it's almost impossible for them to beat him.

That said, having a force of villains that's "too" mysterious and "too" powerful is certainly better than the opposite option.

THE NUTS & BOLTS

The cast on Legends might be the best of DC's lot on The CW, which is saying something considering some of the talent on these shows.

There have been some really memorable guest stars, as well; Johnathon Schaech as Jonah Hex continues to delight, and we would watch a whole series around Mei Melançon's Masako.

The effects, though, are a bit dodgy this season. They've come together nicely in the last few episodes, but the early visual effects for Citizen Steel, in particular, were not great. It's perhaps a testament to the visual effects department as well as to where technology is right now that there were comparisons being made to Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, a big-budget feature film from not that long ago, and people were taking that as an attack on the effects.

THE VERDICT

Last year proved that Legends is a tough show to put together. There are a lot of moving parts to a show like this, a lot of egos that need to be serviced, and more.

This year, they've proven more adept at juggling all of those things while also servicing a longer-form story without feeling like the team is constantly suffering unnecessary setbacks in order to make that story happen. They've done so while introducing some interesting new characters, falling back on some of the best mythology of the rest of the Arrowverse, and creating some interesting and engaging time travel stories that have done a really good job of not letting consequences get in the way of fun.

Grade: A-