Legends of Tomorrow: What's Up With Sara and Ava in Season 6

At the start of DC's Legends of Tomorrow's sixth season, which launches tonight, the crew of the Waverider are missing Sara Lance (Caity Lotz). The timeship's captain has been abducted by aliens, and her absence will shape the first part of the season, as everyone -- but especially her girlfriend, Ava Sharpe (Jes Macallan) -- will struggle to keep things going without her. According to executive producer Phil Klemmer, Sara's absence is going to be much more disruptive than anyone on the ship could have guessed, with Ava's type-A, plan-for-everything mentality gone out the window and Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) abandoning his usual emotional detachment to be really hard hit by the abduction.

Ava, who discovered during the second season that she is a clone and her parents had lied to her for years, is reluctant to make human connections, and slow to open up. Even among many of the Legends, her relationships seem pretty perfunctory. That will have to change this season.

"In Sara's absence, it's the one thing that Ava had never planned for," Klemmer told ComicBook. "She has a contingency plan for everything. I don't think she's ever allowed herself to be vulnerable. And not that she's a Vulcan, although she did play the Vulcan, kind of, in the Star Trip version."

(For the uninitiated, that's a reference to last year's episode "The One Where We're Trapped on TV," in which Sara and Ava are trapped in a Star Trek-like alternate timeline as a genderbent, queer riff on Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.)

It isn't just the unexpected change that's hitting Ava, of course, but the loss of Sara.

"She has two things going against her: One is Sara's gone, which breaks her heart. And two is, she's the only person who can do Sara's job without her, even though she's brokenhearted," Klemmer explained. "And Sara has been... I don't want to say domesticated, but she's not a killer anymore. Or at least when she kills, she does so with reluctance. She's going to be thrown into a hostile alien world in which she's going to have to embrace the League of Assassins, blood-lusty version of herself that she has put aside in order to find this connection with the Legends, but especially with Ava. So Sara is going off to war, and Ava's having to keep the home fires burning when she's gone. And the Legends are all traumatized by Sara's absence. So Ava's really going to have her hands full because, surprise surprise, the person who takes it the worst is Mick Rory. Who knew that he cared so much, but for him, Sara was the only connection that he had to the OG Legends. And I think they all realize that she was a glue that was holding the family together."

DC's Legends of Tomorrow will premiere tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.