Tonight’s episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow showed how our team handled both a classic DC Comics villain and one of the enduring questions of time-travel.
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“Would you kill Hitler as a child, to prevent the Holocaust?” It’s a very real parallel to what Rip and the crew faced tonight as they were faced with a young Per Degaton, a futuristic dictator who in the comics is an actual time-traveling Nazi.
And, perhaps unsurprisingly, there were plenty of Easter eggs to go around.
So…what did we see? What did we miss?
Read on, and comment below.
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KASNIAN CONGLOMERATE
Kasnia (sometimes Kaznia) is a fictional DC Comics nation-state that’s sometimes used as a stand-in for Balkan nations like Yugoslavia.
It first appeared in the Justice League animated series and has been referenced previously on Arrow, but never seen until now.
…And, yes, their flag has always looked like a red-and-black version of Booster Gold’s costume; that’s not a new thing just for Legends.
Another random tie to Booster Gold is that whenever they said “the Conglomerate” in this episode, I didn’t think of a generic corporate entity like the script wanted me to. Instead, I was thinking of The Conglomerate, a for-profit superhero team of which Booster was briefly a member before he became a Time Master.
PER DEGATON
Per Degaton is a longtime DC Comics supervillain, who has battled against the Justice Society, Infinity Inc. and the Time Masters in the comics.
His most notable appearances — as far as this series are concerned — were as a member of an organization called the Time Stealers, who opposed Booster Gold and Rip Hunter and tried to take over Vanishing Point.
Other members of that team include Despero, Supernova (Booster Gold’s father), the Ultra-Humanite, Black Beetle, and Rex Hunter — no actual relation to Rip, but rather a former apprentice of his in the Time Masters who went rogue.
In the context of Legends of Tomorrow, Per Degaton was name-dropped in the pilot as one of history’s great dictators alongside Hitler and Caesar.
ARMAGEDDON VIRUS
There isn’t anything called an “Armageddon virus” in DC lore as far as I know — but there’s Moritcoccus, a mutated offshoot of the OMAC virus sent back from the future. It’s the deadliest virus known to human history.
There’s also Armageddon 2001, a crossover event from the ’90s, the plot of which bears a more-than-passing resemblance to the idea behind Legends of Tomorrow. Sent back from the future, a hero called Waverider rallies DC’s heroes to stop the rise of the super-powered tyrant Monarch, who had once himself been a hero.
BABY HITLER
You get the old “would you kill Hitler?” hypothetical a lot in this episode…
…Almost literally, since Per Degaton is a Nazi in the comics.
Everybody notes the parallels, with team members referring to Degaton as “Baby Hitler” at several points in the episode.
Ironically enough, in one issue of Booster Gold, Degaton shoots a literal infant in its crib in order to prevent the child from growing up to give Rip Hunter and Booster Gold information about the Time Stealers.
COAST CITY
“I have some vacation time coming up; we can drive to Coast City,” suggests Hawkman in Kendra’s flashback.
Coast City, of course, is the home to Green Lantern in the comics. It’s been frequently referenced in all of the CW/DC shows.
S.T.A.R. LABS CORPORATION
Apparently Harrison Wells’s company eventually recovers from the damage to its reputation and bottom line done by the particle accelerator explosion.
How else would it be wealthy enough in 150 years or so to literally take over Coast City when corporate control becomes the norm?
DWARF STAR ALLOY
White Dwarf Star material is what Ray Palmer uses in the comics (and on TV) to power his size-changing belt.
So when he tells the future version of his company that he knows how they power the A.T.O.M. robots, he really does have an intimate understanding.
HANNIBAL LECTER
When asked to give a name, Ray identifies himself as Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
Apparently The Silence of the Lambs doesn’t survive until the mid-22nd Century as a major cultural phenomenon, or his great-great-great-great granddaughter would know something was up.
ALDUS BOARDMAN
In Kendra’s flashback timeline, we get to see the young Aldus Boardman, the son of Hawkgirl and Hawkman, who lived his childhood on the run from Vandal Savage until Savage found and killed Boardman’s parents.
Aldus, of course, was killed in the Legends of Tomorrow pilot while trying to help the team stop Savage. He was, by that point, significantly older than this child and an accomplished professor.
We first met Boardman via a videocassette message in the Arrow/The Flash crossover that set up Legends of Tomorrow.
