Who Will the Legends of Tomorrow Be Battling in Season 5?

In last week’s season finale of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Neron was defeated, but his vault had already been raided by Astra Logue, who “checked out” over a dozen sould from Hell. Some of history’s greatest monsters, the souls are set to be the threats faced by the Legends in season five — a season which is already off to a weird start, given that it will be a midseason return and its premiere will likely tie into “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” which is being billed as a five-part story told over two quarters. Lucky for fans who are upset about a long wait, though, we have some tiny idea of exactly how the season will play out.

“We [have] established that everybody’s welcome on the Waverider because it’s a place where people come to find second chances,” executive producer Phil Klemmer recently told ComicBook.com. “But I think next season, we’re going to deal with some of the historical pieces of s–t that don’t deserve second chances, and it’s probably going to be a tough thing for the Legends to realize. Maybe they’ve started to drink their own Kool-Aid and feel that Genghis Khan was just misunderstood, because whatever he did, he didn’t get a pony for his birthday.”

Astra raided the vault of 16 total souls, and while not all of them are accounted for in the count below, all of the ones whose “name” could be seen on their soul token are included here. That gives a pretty solid starting point to the season. In addition to these, of course, don’t be too surprised if we don’t get a surprise or two like Vandal Savage, Malcolm Merlyn, or Damien Darhk back for an episode or a few.

You can check out the “confirmed” names below, along with brief bios.

Genghis Khan

Given that he has already appeared in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Khan might be one of the only villains to appear on this series that have done a funnier version of time travel than Legends of Tomorrow.

And, yeah, as we noted earlier in this story, Khan was specifically name-dropped by Klemmer, so we assume he will be having a big role.

Born as Temüjin, Genghis Khan was the founder and first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia. After founding the Empire and being proclaimed “Genghis Khan”, he launched the Mongol invasions that conquered most of Eurasia. Campaigns initiated in his lifetime include those against the Qara Khitai, Caucasus, and Khwarazmian, Western Xia and Jin dynasties. These campaigns were often accompanied by large-scale massacres of the civilian populations – especially in the Khwarazmian and Western Xia controlled lands. By the end of his life, the Mongol Empire occupied a substantial portion of Central Asia and China.

Before Genghis Khan died he assigned Ögedei Khan as his successor. His descendants extended the Mongol Empire across most of Eurasia by conquering or creating vassal states in all of modern-day China, Korea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and substantial portions of Eastern Europe and Southwest Asia. Many of these invasions repeated the earlier large-scale slaughters of local populations. As a result, Genghis Khan and his empire have a fearsome reputation in local histories.

While he is mostly known as a military tactician and brutal leader, Genghis Khan also advanced the Mongol Empire in other ways. He decreed the adoption of the Uyghur script as the Mongol Empire’s writing system. He also practiced meritocracy and encouraged religious tolerance in the Mongol Empire, and unified the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia. Present-day Mongolians regard him as the founding father of Mongolia.

Genghis Khan was known for the brutality of his campaigns, and is considered by many to have been a genocidal ruler. However, he is also credited with bringing the Silk Road under one cohesive political environment. This brought relatively easy communication and trade between Northeast Asia, Muslim Southwest Asia, and Christian Europe, expanding the cultural horizons of all three areas.

 

Mary Tudor

Mary I, also known as Mary Tudor, was the Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death a little over five years later. She is best known for her aggressive attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII, and continued under her half-brother, who succeeded Henry on the throne. The executions that marked her pursuit of the restoration of Roman Catholicism in England and Ireland led to her being referred to as “Bloody Mary,” a reputation that stuck throughout history, although more recent scholarship has been somewhat less quick to condemn her entire reign.

Per Wikipedia, “Mary was the only child of Henry VIII by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to survive to adulthood. Her younger half-brother Edward VI (son of Henry and Jane Seymour) succeeded their father in 1547 at the age of nine. When Edward became mortally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because he supposed (correctly) that she would reverse the Protestant reforms that had begun during his reign. On his death, leading politicians proclaimed Lady Jane Grey as queen. Mary speedily assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane, who was ultimately beheaded. Mary was—excluding the disputed reigns of Jane and the Empress Matilda—the first queen regnant of England. In 1554, Mary married Philip of Spain, becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556.

“During her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions. After Mary’s death in 1558, her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, at the beginning of the 45-year Elizabethan era.”

Do not be surprised if we get a bit of debate about exactly how evil Mary I was (especially given that there is some contention that if she were a man she would not face the same level of criticism) — and likely a reference to the song “I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am.” Because it’s Legends.

 

Caligula

This is another one where the pop culture version of the historical figure looms so large that it would be virtually impossible to imagine the Legends not making at least one Malcolm McDowell joke.

Here’s the bio:

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus; 31 August 12 – 24 January 41 AD) was Roman emperor from 37 to 41 AD. The son of the popular Roman general Germanicus and Augustus’s granddaughter Agrippina the Elder, Caligula was born into the first ruling family of the Roman Empire, conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Germanicus’s uncle and adoptive father, Tiberius, succeeded Augustus as emperor of Rome in 14.

Although he was born Gaius Caesar, after Julius Caesar, he acquired the nickname “Caligula” (meaning “little [soldier’s] boot”, the diminutive form of caliga) from his father’s soldiers during their campaign in Germania. When Germanicus died at Antioch in 19, Agrippina returned with her six children to Rome, where she became entangled in a bitter feud with Tiberius. The conflict eventually led to the destruction of her family, with Caligula as the sole male survivor. Untouched by the deadly intrigues, Caligula accepted an invitation in 31 to join the emperor on the island of Capri, where Tiberius had withdrawn five years earlier. Following the death of Tiberius, Caligula succeeded his adoptive grandfather as emperor in 37.

There are few surviving sources about the reign of Caligula, although he is described as a noble and moderate emperor during the first six months of his rule. After this, the sources focus upon his cruelty, sadism, extravagance, and sexual perversion, presenting him as an insane tyrant. While the reliability of these sources is questionable, it is known that during his brief reign, Caligula worked to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor, as opposed to countervailing powers within the principate. He directed much of his attention to ambitious construction projects and luxurious dwellings for himself, and initiated the construction of two aqueducts in Rome: the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus. During his reign, the empire annexed the client kingdom of Mauretania as a province.

In early 41, Caligula was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy by officers of the Praetorian Guard, senators, and courtiers. The conspirators’ attempt to use the opportunity to restore the Roman Republic was thwarted, however. On the day of the assassination of Caligula, the Praetorians declared Caligula’s uncle, Claudius, the next Roman emperor. Although the Julio-Claudian dynasty continued to rule the empire until the fall of his nephew Nero in 68, Caligula’s death marked the official end of the Julii Caesares in the male line.

And, yes, there was a 1979 movie starring McDowell, which was critically maligned but became a cult classic. The movie was produced by Penthouse and beset by numerous issues, with Gore Vidal paid $200,000 to write a screenplay that became little more than a suggestion. The film was disowned by director Tito Brass in post-production and became known for its nudity and violence. It raised $23 million for an unrated version, with an R-rated version released later with much of the objectionable material removed. At the time, it was hailed as one of the highest-grossing pornographic films ever made. It would be hard to imagine Mick Rory wouldn’t have something to say about that.

Joseph Stalin

Mentioned way back in Legends of Tomorrow‘s first season, Stalin is, like Genghis Khan before him, somebody who became close with Vandal Savage.

Here’s Savage’s accounting of the man: “In my long life, I have met some of the most skilled interrogators in history, but… But since we are in the Soviet Union, let me tell you a story about a friend of mine… Joseph Stalin. He became quite skilled at breaking a man… Carefully aimed strikes to the bridge of the nose, along the shoulder blades, and right underneath the chin.”

Stalin led the Soviet Union from the mid–1920s until 1953 as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1953) and Premier (1941–1953). Initially presiding over a collective leadership as first among equals, by the 1930s he was the country’s de facto dictator. A communist ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin helped to formalise these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies became known as Stalinism.

Like Khan, he is credited with having a brilliant political and strategic mind, something that helped to keep him in power even when his reputation became brutal and controversial. 

Through the Five-Year Plans, the Soviet Union under Stalin underwent agricultural collectivisation and rapid industrialisation, creating a centralised command economy. This led to significant disruptions in food production that contributed to the famine of 1932–33. To eradicate accused “enemies of the working class”, Stalin instituted the “Great Purge”, in which over a million were imprisoned and at least 700,000 executed between 1934 and 1939. By 1937, he had complete personal control over the party and state.

John Wayne Gacy

One of the most notorious serial killers in American history, Gacy is an interesting case because, relative to most of the names on this list (with one or two exceptions), he has living children — and in all likelihood, many of his victims have family and friends who are still alive, as well. Gacy was a rapist and serial killer active in the 1970s and known to have sexually assaulted and murdered at least 33 young men and teenage boys in the Chicago area.

Besides being prolific and perfectly matching the profile of the white, male serial killer who had a reputation in his community for seeming fairly normal, Gacy has attracted the attention of popular culture because during his lifetime, he did charity work while dressed as a clown. This has created an image of Gacy, a portly clown, terrorizing people. Whether that imagery has any reality to it or not, it would be difficult not to imagine it being referenced by Mick Rory.

Grigori Rasputin

Comic book fans likely know Rasputin best as the villain in Hellboy, but he has a real-life story that is larger than life.

Born a peasant, Rasputin was a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and gained considerable influence in late imperial Russia. (It could be interesting to see whether he and Stalin get along at all).

In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a healer for Alexei, the Tsar and his wife Alexandra’s only son, who suffered from hemophilia. At court, he was a divisive figure, seen by some Russians as a mystic, visionary, and prophet, and by others as a religious charlatan. The high point of Rasputin’s power was in 1915, when Nicholas II left St Petersburg to oversee Russian armies fighting World War I, increasing both Alexandra and Rasputin’s influence. As Russian defeats in the war mounted, however, both Rasputin and Alexandra became increasingly unpopular. In December 1916, Rasputin was assassinated by a group of conservative noblemen who opposed his influence over Alexandra and the Tsar.

Historians often suggest that Rasputin’s terrible reputation helped discredit the tsarist government, and thus helped precipitate the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty, which happened a few weeks after he was assassinated. Accounts of his life and influence have often been based on hearsay, rumor, and legend…including that of his death, which famously influenced the character of Vigo the Carpathian in Ghostbusters II. In real life, after a previous assassination attempt in which he was stabbed, Rasputin was poisoned, beaten, and shot three times (once in the head). His body was dumped in a river where, according to some accounts, it was discovered with some evidence that he was still alive and tried to claw his way through ice before finally drowning.

Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted for the 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Massachusetts. A pop culture icon long after the case was over, Borden has been the subject of numerous movies, TV series, etc.

Per Wikipedia, “The case was a cause célèbre and received widespread newspaper coverage throughout the United States. Following her release from jail, where she was held during the trial, Borden chose to remain a resident of Fall River despite facing ostracism from the other residents. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts elected not to charge anyone else with the murder of Andrew and Abby Borden. Even though the crimes occurred 126 years ago, speculation about the crimes still continues. She spent the remainder of her life in Fall River before dying of pneumonia, aged 66.”

It will be interesting, given the fact that her soul coin in Hell likely means she is considered guilty in the Legends canon (she remained the prime suspect after her acquittal and local law enforcement never charged anyone else), to see how they talk about her trial.

Charles Manson

Charles Manson is far and away the newest addition to Hell to make his way out via the Legends of Tomorrow soul coins, and the other figure most likely to have living victims that the writers will have to consider when approaching the story.

Manson, who in the late ’60s launched a cult that would come to be known as the Manson Family, never actually killed anyone by his own hand that anybody knows of, he created a culture where his followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969. At trial, the Los Angeles District Attorney claimed that Manson hoped to start a race war, though Manson and others involved long disputed this motive. In 1971, he was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people. Although the prosecution conceded that Manson never literally ordered the murders, they contended that his ideology constituted an overt act of conspiracy. Manson was also convicted of first-degree murder for the deaths of Gary Hinman, and Donald Shae.