The first and most maniacal villain the Legends ever faced could be making an unexpected return to the Arrowverse. Tonight’s episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow — the season four finale, and the final episode before “Crisis on Infinite Earths” — promises to be a wild ride. With a chunk of the team stranded in Hell and the demon Neron using public paranoia about magical creatures to develop an app that will help him condemn more souls to that same realm (long story), the Legends are in the same place now that they were a year ago: a lot going on, and no firm answer as to whether or not they can wrap it all up in one episode. Ending on a cliffhanger seems like a real possibility.
That impression is furthered by the official synopsis for next season, provided to press at last week’s upfront presentation in New York. According to that write-up, “As we reach the conclusion of season four, a demon named Neron has possessed the body of Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh), leaving John Constantine (Matt Ryan) to wrest Ray’s soul from the hands of Astra Logue (Olivia Swann), the “innocent girl” he failed to rescue from Hell years all those long years ago. Meanwhile, up in our world, Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) and her girlfriend Ava Sharpe (Jes Macallan) must deal with a magical creature-fueled paranoia. Harvesting souls via an insidious Palmer Tech app, Neron is poised to ‘Make Earth Hell Again.’ To make matters worse, Sara’s Timeship has been turned into a Noah’s Ark for various unruly monsters and magical creatures. Oh, and Ava’s Time Bureau was taken over by an evil Fairy Godmother. To defeat Neron, the Legends realize in the end that they will have to sacrifice one of their own. But it gets way worse… In attempting to change her future, Zari Tomaz (Tala Ashe) will accidentally change not just the past she shared with Nate Heywood (Nick Zano), but fundamentally change who the Legends are in season five. Can our team go back to who they were next season? Can a reformed arsonist turned romance novelist Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell), a half-werewolf named Mona Wu (Ramona Young), and a punk rocker shapeshifter named Charlie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) stop the literal Hell that Astra unleashes on the world in the finale? And what happens when the Legends awaken the original guardians of Time (no, not the Time Masters, sillies, that was season one!) who wish to erase everything the Legends have ‘screwed up for the better’ over the past four seasons?”
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The idea of Astra unleashing “literal Hell” could mean a lot of things given the context provided this season, but one particular plot point could be teased on Instagram right now: Casper Crump, who delivered a memorable performance as heavy-hitting DC villain Vandal Savage in the series’ much-maligned first season, could be returning to the show. How so? Well, it does not seem impossible — or even improbable, maybe — that the villain could be released from Hell somehow. It is not just idle speculation, either; Crump posted a cryptic message to his Instagram account recently, praising the show’s evolution since that first season and using the hashtag “#VandalIsOut.”
If Vandal were to be freed from Hell, it could set up a rematch between Savage and the Legends in the show’s fifth season — one that executive producer Phil Klemmer might have cleverly teased during an interview with ComicBook.com last week. When we asked about the recurring theme of redemption that has run through much of the show’s third and fourth seasons, Klemmer told us that next year, the addition of some truly irredeemable figures would change that math.
“We [have] established that everybody’s welcome on the Waverider because it’s a place where people come to find second chances,” Klemmer told ComicBook.com. “But I think next season, we’re going to deal with some of the historical pieces of s–t that don’t deserve second chances, and it’s probably going to be a tough thing for the Legends to realize. Maybe they’ve started to drink their own Kool-Aid and feel that Genghis Khan was just misunderstood, because whatever he did, he didn’t get a pony for his birthday.”
The specific example of Genghis Khan is interesting, in part, because in both the comic book source material and on Young Justice: Outsiders, Savage — and immortal and diabolical schemer — actually is Khan. In the first season of Legends of Tomorrow, it was established that Vandal Savage served as Genghis Khan’s most trusted adviser. In the season three episode “Necromancing the Stone,” it was suggested that Genghis Khan might end up being one of the time aberrations caused by Mallus, although it was never confirmed.
The return of Savage might also play into another tease that has been hanging over the Arrowverse for a while: in The Flash, the “future newspaper” that reveals Barry Allen’s disappearance in the Crisis has long maintained that Hawkwoman would be a part of the forces uniting against the Anti-Monitor. The first season of Legends centered on Savage hunting down and killing Hawkman and Hawkwoman throughout time, using their powers to fuel his immortality. When Savage was defeated, the pair left the series and have not been seen since. If Savage were to resurface, it could force the Hawks to seek help from the Legends or the other heroes with whom they work. Given that “Crisis on Infinite Earths” is the biggest event The CW has ever tried, and will culminate with the end of Arrow, it could also make sense to see almost all of their major villains come back for it in some capactiy.
This is all piled on top of a months-old piece of circumstantial evidence: when DC’s Legends of Tomorrow was filming its season finale, Crump took some photos with a member of the Legends crew, with the explanation being that he was visiting some old friends while in Vancouver. When fans began to speculate that he might actually appear in the finale, the images started to disappear from social media. At the time, Warner Bros. declined to comment. It looks like the audience will have its answers tonight, though.
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will end its fourth season tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW. “Crisis on Infinite Earths” will launch in December.
