DC’s Legends of Tomorrow EP On Making a Time-Travel Superhero Show With No Time-Travel or Costumes

When DC’s Legends of Tomorrow launched, it was a bit of an Island of Misfit Toys, taking abandoned supporting characters from Arrow and The Flash and mashing them together into a team of time-traveling B-listers. It fairly quickly became one of the only Arrowverse shows where the characters spend most of their time out of costume, and at the end of season six, the team lost their timeship, The Waverider, when it was mysteriously blown up by what appears to be another Waverider. Now, they’re stranded in Texas in 1925, and looking for a way to get back home.

Of course, where “home” is can be pretty variable for Legends. Many of them are presumed dead, or forgotten, or simply homeless (after all, Astra grew up in Hell). That’s where we are at the start of this season, though, and executive producer Phil Klemmer told ComicBook that the writers may not have done it exactly that way again.

“It’s funny, the decisions that you make at the end of the season are the decisions that you should never be entrusted to make, because you are so exhausted and discombobulated, and you’re forced to make these really significant dramatic moves that will affect  your whole subsequent year,” Klemmer joked. “You just do them, and it’s like waking up after a bender, and you’re just like, ‘Wait. What did we do? Oh, we blew up the ship and we’re stuck,’ and then you’re just like, ‘Okay. I guess going live with the consequences.’ These consequences have been really good. The actors have really, really enjoyed just having to live on planet Earth as human beings. We still have genres, we still manage to stumble our way into crazy conceits, but it’s allowed for more serialized character exploration. It is The Odyssey, the oldest story in western civilization. It’s a dude who can’t get home to Ithaca. Every time he thinks he’s got a good lead on getting home, he gets sidetracked with some bizarre, O Brother Where Art Thou side chapter. It’s been interesting to have such a simple drive this season. It’s really stripped the Legends down to reveal parts about themselves that I think are pretty surprising. Given that we’ve known Sara Lance for 100 episodes now, the fact that we’re still discovering new things about her is pretty amazing.”

That feeling of being lost and abandoned is thrown into even sharper relief, given that it comes on the heels of both John Constantine (Matt Ryan) and Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) leaving the team (and Purcell leaving the show altogether). 

“I think what we really wanted to do was to forge the current incarnation of Legends in a different crucible,” Klemmer explained. “If you’ve ever been on a road trip with people, that’s either going to bring you close, or it’s going to make you hate one another’s guts. There’s nothing that forces you either to bond or to repel faster than being stuck together. Our Legends, on the ship, they live in such creature comfort. All the food’s made, Gideon is like their mother who babies them. Now, Gideon is the person who can’t even take care of herself. It is forcing the Legends to be self-sufficient in a way, and also to learn how to care for each other, in a way. [With] John being gone, and Mick being gone, this Odyssey is forcing the remaining Legends to hang onto each other even more dearly, because things have changed so much. Especially from Sara’s perspective, to be the last remaining. You understand her; she’s always protective, just being the captain, but having seen literally every other Legend come and go makes her want to hold on to this current incarnation more dearly than ever.”

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow returns tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.