Marc Guggenheim: More DC Characters in Legends of Tomorrow Season 2 By a Large Margin

It’s just a few more days until fans get their first look at the DC’s Legends of Tomorrow season finale — easily the most buzzed-about episode since the pilot.

Like Supergirl, the series started out white-hot but shed viewers throughout the season — and like Supergirl, Legends has managed to win over some of its critics, with the strongest episodes of the season taking place in its final act. Meanwhile, Thursday’s episode will feature a mysterious DC character who will play a key role in guiding the crew of the Waverider in Season Two.

Executive producer Marc Guggenheim joined ComicBook.com to talk about the finale and tease the second season. You can see part of that conversation below, and more of it will run on Thursday once the episode has aired.

When did you decide that the Time Masters were going to be, essentially, the bad guys?

I think it came out of the pilot. When we first met Rip, the Time Masters were saying “Sorry, we’re not going to help you,” and it got us wondering — why wouldn’t they?

Their reasoning, ultimately, came down to feeling they needed Savage to repel a Thanagarian invasion. Considering the Thanagarian connection to the Hawks in the comics, it can’t be a coincidence that Savage’s destiny and that of the Hawks are so linked on the show, can it?

No, I would say not.

Can we expect to see the Thanagarians play a role in the finale?

You know — the idea of the Thanagarians will connect up with the finale, but probably not in the way that you think. It doesn’t involve an invasion, but it acknowledges the connection.

Obviously fans were thrilled with the way Jonah Hex worked on the series. Could that open the door to more appearances like that by other DC heroes?

We really — when it comes to something like having Jonah on the show, we didn’t look at it as something that would thrill the fans — we look at it as a bucket list. We wanted to do Jonah.

We love the idea that the show is a gateway to the whole of the DC Universe, and we have an actual opportunity to go to every corner of the DC Universe, any time or any place that the story makes sense.

I also think that Johnathon Schaech was an incredible Hex, and we were talking last night about doing another episode with him already.

I will say that you’ll see even more DC characters in Season Two. By a large margin.

You’ve been dealing with the “When’s John Constantine coming?” question for a while now — and now you’ve got Supergirl coming to The CW…

Yeah, my life never gets any easier, does it? [Laughs]

Well, here’s the thing: do you guys ever talk about balancing stuff like that, where people really want to see it, versus introducing new characters and expanding out the DC Universe even more?

Well, and I know there are plenty of people on my Twitter feed who don’t believe this, we don’t start an episode with “how do we please the fans this week?” If there’s anybody who we’re trying to please when we make these episodes, it’s us.

That isn’t to say that we don’t want the fans to be happy, but I’ve found that when you set out to please everybody, it hardly ever works and it doesn’t usually make for good storytelling. When we set out to make the show that we would want to watch, that’s when it tends to be its best.

So we don’t start with trying to build a story around a character we want to include. We start with what’s happening in the characters’ lives, and we ask what’s cool, what’s fun, and what do we want to see?

You can’t feel obligated to check a box. The most assured way to not please the fans is to try too hard to please the fans and lose sight of story and characters.