Starman Easter Egg Spotted on Legends of Tomorrow’s Waverider

The time lab on board the Waverider, the primary set on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, is a treasure trove of Easter eggs, many of which were detailed by DC’s official Instagram account last season.

New set dressing is added all the time, though, and during a walk through the elaborate set in Vancouver last week, ComicBook.com noticed a few new details — including one that almost completely evaded us, and which raises some interesting questions about the show’s continuity.

That item — pictured below — appears to be the Gravity Rod wielded by Ted Knight, the Golden Age Starman.

Why is that interesting? Well, besides the obvious — it suggests that the character exists in the world of Legends of Tomorrow — there’s the fact that in the world we’ve seen so far, Stargirl existed in 1942.

In the comics, of course, Starman and Stargirl were only tangentially related: Stargirl began her career as the second Star-Spangled Kid, a name that originated in the Justice Society of America days, where he was the partner to the hero Stripesy. Later in life, “Stripesy” — Pat Dugan — became S.T.R.I.P.E., and his stepdaughter Courtney Whitmore, Stargirl.

The Starman legacy was different: Ted Knight, the Starman of the Justice Society of America, got his powers from a “gravity rod” he designed, and used it to battle injustice for generations. After the years caught up with him, Knight retired, handing off the costume and cosmic rod to his son David.

David was killed on his first night of patrol, forcing Knight’s other son — Jack, who never really wanted to be a superhero and certainly wouldn’t wear his father’s costume — to take on the role of Starman in order to avenge his brother’s death. He did so with a “cosmic rod,” another version of the gravity rod his father had never regularly used.

With the cosmic rod damaged early in the run, Jack used a larger, odder-looking Cosmic Staff, one of his father’s earlier designs, during his time as Starman. It’s the cosmic staff that he passed along to Courtney Whitmore upon his retirement.

Jack Knight’s staff was seen on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow — in 1942, in the possession of Courtney Whitmore. The implication for many was that the Justice Society’s star-themed hero had been Courtney and that the Knights weren’t a part of the Starman legacy in the Arrowverse. Instead, though, this Easter egg seems to suggest that at some point — perhaps after Courtney’s retirement, or perhaps concurrent with Stargirl at some point? — there was either a Starman, or Courtney herself used a simpler, more compact cosmic rod.

Unfortunately, the Sgt. Rock helmet and other Golden Age DC paraphernalia in the cabinet distracted our eye, and we only noticed what is almost certainly the cosmic rod in the photos after the fact — so these shots with the top of the rod cut off are the best we can share, until and unless the object shows up onscreen during the show’s second season. Any doubt that the item is the cosmic rod, though, is certainly limited by the fact that it’s placed both on top of a cabinet full of ’40s and ’50s-themed items, and next to a telescope. After his retirement as Starman, Ted Knight took up residence in an observatory and lived in the shadow of a giant telescope.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow airs on Thursday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.