Legends of Tomorrow: What Does Vandal Savage Have to Do With The Legion of Doom?

01/09/2017 06:57 pm EST

In its second season, most fans and critics agree that DC's Legends of Tomorrow is better than it was last year...but there's still a big question mark left over from back before the first season even started.

Now that Malcolm Merlyn is officially a part of the Legion of Doom -- season two's villains -- we have to wonder whether that long-unresolved plot point will finally bear fruit.

During 2015's The Flash/Arrow crossover, the heroes and their supporting casts battled Vandal Savage. He wielded a mystical staff that helped him concentrate his powers and tried repeatedly to kill Hawkman and Hawkgirl before Green Arrow and The Flash figured out how to use the staff against Savage and reduce him to a pile of ash.

Of course, the story didn't end there: it was later revealed that due to their shared origins, only Hawkman and Hawkgirl could defeat Savage, and that any damage his body took from another source would eventually be undone. Savage rose from the apparently-dead and faced off against the crew of the Waverider on the first season fo Legends of Tomorrow.

How does one recover from being reduced to ash? Well, that was never specifically addressed, beyond the throwaway reference to the fact that people not involved with the meteor strike that gave him (and the Hawks) powers in ancent Egypt couldn't kill Savage. It's the kind of thing that's taken as a given, especially since both Legends and Arrow last year trafficked in so much magic that seeing a bolt of energy simply possess and reinvigorate the ashes themselves wouldn't be outside of the realm of plausibility.

Of course, what might be a little less plausible was a pile of unattended ash just kind of staying in "pile" form, and not being scattered by the elements, or a janitor, in the course of the time it would take Vandal's powers to step in and resurrect him.

That wasn't a concern, though, because Vandal had an "old friend" by the name of Malcolm Merlyn to come scoop him up and place his remains in an urn.

Merlyn, who was the principal antagonist in the first season of Arrow and then a secondary antagonist in seasons 2, 3, and 4, always has an angle, and as soon as fans saw him scooping up Savage, the question became what the angle was.

The concern seemed to fade after a while; it seemed as though they weren't going to follow it up anyway, given the fact that Savage just kind of...came back...without much in the way of explanation and Merlyn never mentioned it during his appearances on Arrow last year.

Nobody yet has even brought up the fact that Merlyn -- one of the Legion of Doom members who are squaring off against the Legends in search of mystical artifacts of their own this season -- has ties to Savage, whose own quest for same is what kicked off the entire series.

Could we see Vandal Savage appear on Legends of Tomorrow at some point this season? If not, will we finally learn something about the nature of his resurrection, his relationship with Merlyn, and why the former head of the League of Assassins is palling around with Damien Darhk (who already screwed him once) and the Reverse-Flash?

Hopefully we'll know soon; Legends is back in just over two weeks.

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DC's Legends of Tomorrow moves to its new night and time, Tuesday, January 24 at 9/8c on The CW!

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