'Legends of Tomorrow': Brandon Routh Says He Thinks The Atom Can Time Travel By Himself

Does The Atom even need the Legends -- or the Waverider -- to travel through time?

DC's Legends of Tomorrow star Brandon Routh is not totally sure on that, telling ComicBook.com during the DC in D.C. event last weekend that he sees similarities between going subatomic as The Atom and running faster than light as The Flash. The question came up when we asked whether Ray Palmer might use the presence of Kid Flash on Legends to study the Speed Force.

"Keiynan is great, and he's a ray of sunshine kind of guy," Routh said. "As far as the Speed Force is concerned -- I don't know if The Atom has ever time-traveled in comics, but I figure it must be possible if he can go subatomic."

Going subatomic has always been discussed as very dangerous on the show; in the comics, Ray is able to do so, but in so doing he can slip between the fabric of reality. In Countdown to Final Crisis, reeling from the revelation that his ex-wife had murdered a friend of theirs in order to try and win him back, Ray disappeared into the multiverse. In DC Universe: Rebirth, Ray found himself trapped in subatomic space and reached out to his successor, Ryan Choi, for help.

Probably one of the most famous instances of Ray being stuck in miniaturized size is the "Sword of the Atom" storyline, in which he found a microscopic colony and ended up stuck there and did swashbuckling battle to earn the love of a princess while wearing a loincloth instead of his traditional costume.

"Certainly for me it would have been cool, but I don't know if that's going to happen or not; I don't think there's enough worked into the current storyline of Ray in that time for it to work right now," Routh said of that story back when Legends launched. "The changes have come mostly from him coming back into the world versus the experiences that he had. And we might come back and play in that world a little bit, or something like that might happen again, certainly. There will be adventures of Ray being small and fighting bugs and other things that seem bigger than life to him at some point down the road and I certainly talk about the Sword of Atom stuff all the time — mostly because I want to have a sword and sword fight in the Atom suit or just as Ray."

DC's Legends of Tomorrow returns on Monday, February 12 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.